Not Really Too Smart

At the six-month checkpoint in the Obama adminstration, Michael Barone has a few thoughts.

1. Obama is a long-range strategy guy who is flummoxed by events that threaten the plan.
2. Obama leaves the details to others (e.g., Congress)
3. Obama thinks Chicago-style that "there will always be a bounteous private sector that can be plundered endlessly on behalf of political favorites."

To me, this is a recipe for disaster, and it shows that the Obama people really aren't that smart.

First, the long-range strategy, to grow government. It may not be obvious to people inside the liberal bubble, but the century-long expansion of government, already complained about by Herbert Spencer in the 1880s, is about over. Growing government is the natural thing for a politician to do, but it also creates opposition. The century-long ascendancy of the progressive educated class is starting to get people really angry. And it is anger that fuels political change.

Second the details. Details matter. Every successful businessman is a details man. You can have all the business plans in the world, but without execution of the details it will remain a glorious vision. Politicians have a problem here, because their principal expertise is getting elected. But the success of government is doing the boring, gritty details. If Obama doesn't want to bother with the details then that is the best news that conservatives have heard yet.

Third, the Chicago style. We are getting numerous sightings of Chicago-style politics, from the overall strategy of piracy and plunder to the recent flap over the firing of the inspectors general. This sort of thing may go down without a murmur in Chicago but ordinary middle-class Americans hate it. Democrats know this. That's why they made such a big deal of Bush and Republican corruption in 2006-08, and were full of talk about transparency. The truth is the Obamites don't believe in any of that transparency and good government stuff. They believe in power.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard," said H.L. Mencken. A gentler version of that is that people need to experience things to find out whether they really like them. In 2008 people were really fed up with Republicans and decided it was time for a change.

Chances are that the change they had in mind is not the change that President Obama has in mind, neither in the grand vision, in the gritty details, or in the Chicago style.

In the next six months to a year, the American people are going to wake up to that. The president won't like it; liberals won't like it; Democrats won't like it; the mainstream media won't like it. But it won't make a bit of difference.

Obama's Double Bind

Nobody likes the bailouts. Conservatives hate them because, for us, they are a lurch towards socialism. But now the Wall Street Journal has discovered that the left hates the bailouts too.

The Journal's Laura Meckler writes about local government worker Laura Zamora. She's worried about losing her job, and she doesn't like to see money going to corporations.

"He's bailing out the private sector. He's putting all kinds of money into the private sector," says Mrs. Zamora. "The money should be going to social programs, not to bailing out banks and GM. It should go to people who are unemployed."

Even the jaunty Rush Limbaugh has noticed. Obama supporters are calling up his program and complaining about Obama throwing money at corporations. As an economic conservative, Rush deplores the bailouts because they put the government in control of more of the economy.

But the Obama supporters see money going to corporations that they thought was going to be spent on them. And they are mad. What's the point of Hope and Change if all the change ends up in the pockets of corporate greed?

You have to feel sorry for the president. Here he is spending all his political capital on, e.g., saving all those union jobs at GM and Chrysler, not to mention keeping Wall Street afloat so that it can push all that government debt out into the world.

So what does he get? His supporters are mad at him. Don't they realize that he is helping Democratic constituencies all over America with his policies?

Well, it serves the politicians right. They have been making hay for over a century blaming business for everything. It's hardly surprising that the American people actually believe their lies about corporations.

The truth is that corporations are the geese that lay the golden eggs that politicians then get to spend on buying votes. So it really matters that the private sector should be healthy.

Too bad that politicians have been telling their supporters otherwise.

But don't worry. They'll think of some way of pinning the blame on someone else. How about Bush, Cheney, and the evil right-wing extremists? They tricked Obama into all these bailouts!

Yes. If they hadn't let Wall Street bankers run riot with outrageous bonuses there would have been plenty of money for social programs.

Meanwhile, the president's approval numbers keep nudging lower, and this week everyone was shocked, shocked, when they found out how much health reform was going to cost.

A Pattern of Corruption

Maybe we shouldn't call it corruption. Because in the Obama administration the high-profile firing of Gerald Walpin, Inspector General of the government volunteering programgs, is not really a betrayal of principle.

Modern liberalism combines a kind of high-minded intellectualism with bare-knuckle power politics, a kind of Jekyll and Hyde combo. You talk to the media in high-flown phrases taken from recent university press books written by fashionable professors and featured in the New York Review of Books. But behind the scenes you run a ruthless Chicago-style political machine, where everything is quid-pro-quo and pay-to-play.

Now Dan Riehl reveals that the Walpin firing is part of a pattern. There's Neil Barofsky, inspector general for the federal stimulus program.

He was appointed with fanfare as the public watchdog over the government's multi-billion dollar bailout of the nation's financial system. But now Neil Barofsky is embroiled in a dispute with the Obama administration that delayed one recent inquiry and sparked questions about his ability to freely investigate.

On top of that, the inspector general for the International Trade Commission is also in trouble.

The third instance involves an acting IG for the International Trade Commission, Judith Gwynne, who has been told her contract would not be renewed amid allegations that an ITC employee forcibly took documents from her possession. Just three hours after Grassley sent along his letter asking questions, she was told she'd be hitting the road in July when her contract is up.

The bigger point here is that this sort of thing really would be more scandalous in a Republican administration. Republicans are supposed to believe in limited government, especially where economic interests are concerned.

Republicans believe, more or less, in Michael Novak's greater separation of powers between the political sector, the economic sector, and the moral/cultural sector.

But Democrats believe that the political sector must dominate the economic sector, otherwise the nation will revert to a nineteenth century economy of robber barons and rampant exploitation. The only remedy they know is political power, and they are prepared to apply it ruthlessly. So when they wield the ax on inspectors general who expose corrupt practices, they are consistent with their principles in choosing political power over an excessive regard for the rules and dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s. Why should a politician helping out a political ally be hauled up before the green eyeshade boys?

There's only one problem with this relaxed attitude towards political insider dealing. The American people hate it. And now with the blogosphere backing up the MSM it's hard to hide it.

We know the American people are trending conservative, according to the Gallup Poll. We know that the American people hate the bail-outs. We know they hate the deficit. We know that, all of a sudden the health reform express doesn't look quite the shoo-in now that the GAO has put a $1.6 trillion price tag on its head. But the Obama administration is still doing liberal business-as-usual.

I'd say that a a wake-up call is coming. Particularly since the Democrats made such a big deal about corruption and ethical behavior in the last two election cycles.

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.