Bulldozing Cities

Forty percent of the houses in Flint, Michigan, are vacant. It's become such a problem that the city government is talking about razing whole neighborhoods.

This must be an idea whose time has come, for the Obama administration is proposing to help with a federal program to shrink cities with large vacancy rates.

Cities grow, and cities shrink, but it is telling that the shrinking cities today are all in the industrial northeast, home of the unionized manufacturer.

Of course Big Steel collapsed long ago, and Big Textile has been in decline for decades. But it's the decline of the auto industry that has Flint, Michigan, shrinking.

Flint is the home of General Motors and of General Motors' gadfly Michael Moore, son of a unionized GM worker.

It's worth reading some of Michael Moore's stuff, like his screed on the bankruptcy of General Motors. Says Moore:

It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive... And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation.

Actually, of course, General Motors does make cars that people want to buy. People want great big comfortable cars with lots of cupholders. They don't care too much about gas mileage, except when gas prices shoot up as a result of some government program.

GM's problem is that it just can't sell its cars profitably and also pay for all the retirement benefits and health benefits of its unionized retirees.

General Motors' problem for decades has been politics. Every activist with half a brain has nothing better to do with their time than tell General Motors how to build cars and how to treat its workforce.

Well, now it's all over, and General Motors will slowly strangle to death under the gentle ministration of the Obama administration.

And while GM strangles to death the Feds will thoughtfully help bulldoze Flint, Michigan, home of Michael Moore, back into the Canadian Shield.

Meanwhile, Michael Moore writes, GM's factories should be set to building mass transit!

Obama Reality Check

Every sixteen years, you need to put a liberal in the White House for a reality check. It's the practical, conservative thing to do.

That's why I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and Barack Obama in 2008.

You see, when liberals are out of power they start to hallucinate. They have visions of a world without war. They start to talk about un-clenching the American fist and entering into negotiations without preconditions. They talk about extending health insurance to the uninsured while cutting the cost of health care overall. They start to talk about a rational industrial policy, or the wonders of green jobs. And they always say that the incumbent Republican president is an idiot.

There's only one way to put a stop to this fantasizing. Put a liberal in the White House and give him a reality check.

It looks like we are hitting reality right now, as President Obama sounds an uncertain trumpet in response to the developing Iranian Revolution.

It looks like we are hitting reality right now, as President Obama gets light booing from the physicians at the AMA convention.

And you can certainly talk about reality check as the Obama adminstration tries to put band-aids on all the messes created by a century of liberal meddling, from the mortgage meltdown to the auto bankruptcies.

It's a tricky thing: reality. Is it absolute, or is it relative? Conservatives say it is absolute; liberals say it is all relative. Except when it comes to abortion.

But the Germans are more cunning. That was the point of Kant. He said that we just don't know about reality. There may be an absolute reality out there, the noumenon. But all we get to see is appearances.

Never mind all that. The important question is: after the Obama reality check, then what?

As Lori Byrd writes, watch the opinion polls and start thinking that 2010 may look a lot like 1994 when the American people last upchucked the liberals.

Geithner-Summers Miss the Elephant

Today in the Washington Post Tim Geithner and Larry Summers present an introduction to the Obama administration's five-point plan to prevent future financial crises. Here it is, along with an RMC grading:

1. Raise capital and liquidity requirements, especially on the biggest players. Federal Reserve and "council of regulators" will supervise. Grade: B
   
2. Force "robust reporting requirements" and retention of some assets on issuers of asset-backed securities. Grade: C
   
3. "[S|tronger framework for consumer and investor protection" to fight predatory lending, e.g., in sub-prime mortgage lending. Grade: F
   
4. Feds will "establish a resolution mechanism that allows for the orderly resolution of any financial holding company whose failure might threaten the stability of the financial system." Grade: B-
   
5. Feds will "lead an effort" to improve international financial standards. Grade: incomplete
   

You can see what's missing here, and the chaps at Seeking Alpha are right on it. Yes! Crazy bank compensation and breakdown of corporate governance--Not!

The Geithner-Summers Plan and the Seeking Alpha response is discouraging. The problem is not the banks; the problem is the government. It was not reckless banks that sluiced mortgage lending upon the land; it was Fannie Fire-hose and Freddie Fire-Hydrant. It was not predatory lending that caused sub-prime lending; it was government policy that demanded that mortgage lenders lend to sub-prime borrowers.

That's the basic problem. Governments are sluicing out credit (in which the banks are middle-men) and then unaccountably shocked at the subsequent flood. And Geithner and Summers don't have a plan for that.

We aren't going to solve this problem until government stops meddling with the credit markets and trying to gun the business cycle.

The best way to deal with constant credit crises is to rebalance the financial system away from debt towards equity. But that will be just about impossible to do.

Why? Because government is the biggest player in the debt market. And they play both ends against the middle. First they float out their paper to the world's widows and orphans, then they print money and inflate their obligations away.

But Geithner and Summers write not a word that they are going to do anything about that. Heck no. All that money is power, and politics is all about power.

Unless we citizens rise up and demand that the power of government be limited.

Safeway's Health Plan

In the recent presidential election we heard a lot about Obama's health plan. Candidate Obama was in favor of more government health care. And we heard about McCain's health plan. He was in favor of taxing health benefits above a certain threshold and allowing a national market in health insurance.

But we didn't hear too much about Safeway's health plan. And that is ridiculous. US retail, corporations like Safeway and Wal-Mart, are the world champions when it comes to retail productivity. They might have something to add to the national debate.

Well, now the CEO of Safeway, Steven A. Burd, has corrected the obvious omission. He has written an oped in the Wall Street Journal to tell us all about the Safeway health plan.

Based on the results of Safeway's Healthy Measures plan, Burd thinks that we can lower national health care costs by 40%.

At Safeway we believe that well-designed health-care reform, utilizing market-based solutions, can ultimately reduce our nation's health-care bill by 40%.

The magic bullet? Reward employees for healthy life styles.

Burd trots out the facts, which Safeway discovered in 2005.

1. 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior.
2. 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity).
3. 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable
4. 60% of cancers are preventable
5. more than 90% of obesity is preventable.

Well, it is not exactly a surprise. We've been seeing o lot of facts like that recently. But never in quite such a bald statement.

So what is Safeway doing about it? It is rewarding its employees with discounts on their health care premiums if they pass healthy life-style tests.

Employees are tested for the four measures cited above and receive premium discounts off a "base level" premium for each test they pass. Data is collected by outside parties and not shared with company management. If they pass all four tests, annual premiums are reduced $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families. Should they fail any or all tests, they can be tested again in 12 months. If they pass or have made appropriate progress on something like obesity, the company provides a refund equal to the premium differences established at the beginning of the plan year.

Wow. This seems pretty extreme. So what do the employees think about this? They like it and they want more of it.

When surveyed, 78% of our employees rated our plan good, very good or excellent. In addition, 76% asked for more financial incentives to reward healthy behaviors. We have heard from dozens of employees who lost weight, lowered their blood-pressure and cholesterol levels, and are enjoying better health because of this program. Many discovered for the first time that they have high blood pressure, and others have been told by their doctor that they have added years to their life.

The next challenge for Safeway is to get its unionized workforce to buy into this. Yep. The current system only applies to its non-union employees.

Neither Social Nor Democratic

The folks at the British Spectator are having a grand old time this week in the aftermath of the Labour Party's wipeout in local and European elections. People are even talking about the end of the Labour Party.

We've heard that one before, of course. Pundits are always prophesying the end of political parties when they suffer at the polls.

Maybe this really is the end of the Labour Party. But probably not. Anyway, every nation has its Gimme-stuff-for-free Party. If Labour fades away then another social democratic party will appear to take its place.

But that won't change the fact that social democratic parties are a lie. They are neither social nor democratic.

The word "social" comes from the Latin "socius." It means "companion, ally, associate" according to Online Webster. But that is exactly what a social democratic party is not. It is not social, but statist, with the natural cooperative instincts of mankind brutally chopped down by overweening state power. Democratic? Well, the only way the people would get to rule is by minimizing the power of government so that they could rule themselves in their private families, churches, and associations. Otherwise democracy is the rule of the politicians.

But we don't get that, do we? And the reason we don't get it is the power hunger of the progressive educated elite. They want a political system where they rule, benevolently of course, through vast national bureaucratic administrative structures staffed by their tame experts. But when you get a gigantic hierarchy like that you cannot have a "social" system, characterized by companions, allies, associates. You have a top-down oppressive system obsessed with rule-making and control.

In Britain, this has reached parody, where people openly laugh and sneer at the "target culture" of the Labour government. The target culture is the hopelessly ineffective attempt to force some kind of accountability downwards from the top onto the people actually delivering public services. But it always ends up being a system to make the chaps on top look good, rather than actually direct the people at the bottom to deliver effective social services.

The real joke, or the tragedy, is that we don't need all this government power and oppression. We already have an workable system of social democracy, the system of voluntary cooperation we call capitalism. It forces powerful people to work for the benefits of the consumers. It controls economic power by the system of profit and loss. Screw up enough, and you go out of business.

But that is the last thing that the social democrats in the Labour Party or the US Democratic Party would ever think of supporting.

You can understand their point of view. What would happen if The People just didn't know enough, or care enough, to make the right decision? And what would the progressive educated elite do if it didn't have the power to boss people around--in their own best interest, of course?

Here's another question. What happens if The Progressive Educated Elite doesn't know enough, or care enough, to make the right decision?

The sad thing is that, when the whole system crashes down, it will be the supporters of the social democratic parties that will suffer most. The skilled middle class will do fine, because it has the talent and the skills to thrive whatever happens. But the folk who put their trust in politicians will pay a terrible price.

And that is a crying shame.

Auto Bailouts Give the Lie to Obamanomics

The folks that voted for President Obama felt that Obama would bring a new culture to American politics. John R. Talbot's Obamanomics: How Bottom-up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-down Economics provides a look at what a pro-Obama partisan thinks an Obama economy would look like. Today, America is a travesty.

The rich buy boats and cars and diamonds and jewels and throw lavish parties, while their fellow citizens scrape by trying to pay the rent and feed their families.

Under Obama, things will be different.

In a bottom-up economy, the rules of business and government are fair and apply to all... They feel that their personal success will be determined by their hard work and effort, not by who they know or who they are related to.

It's difficult to characterize the auto bailouts, perhaps the biggest US government intervention into industrial policy ever, as bottom-up Obamanomics. Not when school-teachers and pensioners, holders of auto company bonds, are getting the shaft while the UAW and UAW members are getting 55 percent of Chrysler.

Newt Gingrich calls this a scandal, on a par with the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s when oilman Harry Sinclair got drilling rights to the Teapot Dome in Wyoming after giving Interior Secretary Albert Fall a hefty bribe.

My guess is we are in the early stages of a huge backlash against the Democratic Party. The American People hate the bailouts. They hate the stimulus. They hate the huge deficits. And in the months and years to come, politicians will find out how to lead them and give electoral muscle to this rage.

In the Bush years, liberals convinced themselves that Bush was bad and Dems were good, and that was all you needed to know. But I think that they are living in Fantasyland. Americans hate the bailouts; they will hate federal control of health care; they will hate renewable energy and cap-and-trade.

It will take time. But one day liberals will wake up and find that the American people want them out of there, fast. It is one thing to talk about wonderful health care. It is another thing to change the relationships that American women have with their doctors. It is one thing to talk about bottom-up economics. It is another thing when you've just paid off your supporters with a crony-capitalist deal. It is one thing to talk about wonderful green energy and millions of green jobs. It is another thing to increase taxes on energy.

The reality check on all these liberal notions is right ahead. And it won't be pretty.

"Far Right" Party Wants Nationalization

Why does the left-wing media call national-socialist parties like Britain's BNP a "far right" party? The answer is pretty simple. Because they can. And because they need to. Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism, notes that Britain's BNP has a left-wing economic agenda. He quotes British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan:

Look at the BNP's manifesto: it wants nationalisation, subsidy, higher taxes, protectionism and (sotto voce) the abolition of the monarchy. And look at where its votes came from. The BNP is a symptom of Labour's collapse.

There really isn't much water between Labour and the BNP, except that Labour is racist in a pro-immigrant way, rather than in an anti-immigrant way. You could say that Labour is an "anti-national" socialist party, whereas the BNP is a full-on national socialist party.

But both Labour and the BNP hate freedom, hate responsibility, hate capitalism, hate business. They both want to return to a pre-modern world where people are completely cocooned by the community and the political.

There's only one big difference. The Labour Party gets away with its atavisms. The BNP does not.

Meanwhile the left-wing media get to call the BNP a far-right party. Hannan, again.

It's a brilliant media trick in Europe to always refer to them as “the far right”. The target of that is the mainstream right... When somebody reads that, it doesn't make them think any worse of the BNP, it makes them think worse of the right. Which, of course, is why they do it.

One day, of course, the left-wing media won't be able to define the terms of discourse. But that time is not yet.