Mr President, Tear Down This Plan

President Obama is addressing the nation today on health care. But the girls got their word in first. Camille Paglia wants heads to roll at the White House. She wonders how the president's staff could have allowed such a train wreck over health care and over everything else.

As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year.

Yeah, that's right. In this consumer society political contributor Paglia expects to get good value for money.

And then there's Sarah Palin, doubling down on "death panels" in the Wall Street Journal. She quotes Ronald Reagan, " that 'no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds.'" But then she takes apart President Obama's op-ed on health care in the New York Times. You go girl!

How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.

You know what is so refreshing? Sarah Palin is arguing from first principles.

News reports today suggest that President Obama is not going to abandon his "public option." So I call on President Obama, at this last moment, to abandon his unjust plan.

What really sticks in my craw about most liberal policies is the crude compulsion. It is not enough to tax all Americans to pay for liberal programs to help the poor, even though the programs usually devastate rather than build up. Comes the day when liberals decide that it's not enough to screw the poor. No. Liberals want everyone has to submit to the liberal program themselves. Because liberals want it.

I have no problem if liberals want to join together in pre-paid health cooperatives, like Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. If that's what they want, good for them.

But that's not enough for liberals. Everyone else has to join their lovely cooperative plan too.

The president's plan is advertised as an expansion of health benefits. Maybe it is, in a way. But the main thrust seems to me to corral the folks that are dodging out of paying for health insurance--the young, the unemployed, the illegal, the rich--and make them pay.

Now, there may be an argument for trying to capture these free-loaders and make them pay. But surely it is not necessary to turn the health care system into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Congress in order to do so. Apart from the crudity, it utterly misunderstands the nature of health care--indeed any human need. Hugh Hewitt's Clark Judge:

Social democratic models of policy reform assume we know everything we need to know about how to do things right. Social democrats believe it just takes a rational government t[o] bring that knowledge to bear. In contrast, market models assume that knowledge is limited and that progress comes through experiments – often entrepreneurial experiments -- in which the determinant of success is the cumulative impact of choices that millions of people make in their own lives with their own money.

This is the basic argument that F.A. Hayek made sixty years ago, and it is the fundamental problem we conservatives have with all liberal government programs. How do you know that your administrative 1,000 page bill really comprehends the problem? And how can you suppose that you have the bandwidth to adapt the program to changing circumstances even if your program is exactly right for today?

The fact is that the satisfaction of every human need is a moving target. It changes all the time as conditions and knowledge changes. People find new ways of satisfying human needs, and the world changes.

But this ObamaCare proposal will cast the provision of health care in concrete. It will make it much harder to change health care in the future. And it will encourage Americans to come to government to force society to provide them with their needs instead of working it out on their own.

Mr. President. Tear down this plan!

Never Trust Experts

The New York Times columnist and liberal economist Paul Krugman had a deeply misleading article in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday, titled "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?"

Misleading? Well, he represents that economists, especially the neoclassical kind, believe in a rational model of the economy, and were taken by surprise when the credit system collapsed a year ago. There's an argument between "freshwater" economists in the heartland and "saltwater" economists on the coasts as to what, if anything macroeconomics could or should do about regulating the economy.

I'll have more to say on Krugman's argument later. But let us at least start with this.

All economists are experts that want to influence government policy. And they all seem to believe in some sort of rational bureaucratic model of economic policy. They want to be the political advisers of whom Lord Salisbury said: "Never trust experts."

That's because experts are people on the fringes of political power who want their pet theories implemented by the politicians. They aren't really principals with ownership and responsibilities. They are just bit players who would do anything for a starring role.

Since the advent of big government, say at the turn of the twentieth century, the big economic problem has been how to deal with the dreadful distortions that governments routinely impose upon national economies. The monetarism of Milton Friedman is one attempt to deal with the problem. The Keynesianism of liberal economists is another.

But both approaches are grossly simplistic, and really fail to deal with the central problem.

The problem is that politicians and special interests are eternally trying to game the economic system for their benefit. In the 1920s politicians were trying to game the system to deal with the distortions created by the Great War and the reparations imposed upon Germany. And in the United States there were people trying to gun the economy to increase home affordability.

Of course, all this meddling produced all kinds of unexpected results. And in addition, when the economy turned south in 1929, the newly created Federal Reserve Board wasn't up to the job and didn't really know what to do. Why be surprised. The nation's de-facto central banker, J.P. Morgan, had been replaced by political hacks. So the Fed temporized, as political hacks will do--and allowed a ton of banks to fail.

In the 1990s the economy was naturally boomed by a remarkable technical revolution. But it was also being boomed by a vast increase in credit for home mortgages driven by the government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

We now know that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were disasters waiting to happen. But the economists didn't seem to think so. Not at the time. I remember being troubled by the housing boom, but I didn't realize the exact mechanism: the sub-prime loans that were driven by political mandates on the banks. And I didn't think that the Fed would let a major bank like Lehman Brothers fail.

The point is that the silly intramural quarrels over monetarism and Keynesianism rather miss the point when you've generated $5 trillion in Fannie/Freddie mortgages that completely overwhelm the market operations of the Federal Reserve Board. I didn't read too many academic economists putting their fingers on this problem. But I remember wondering why the Monetary Base was going up so slowly in the mod 2000s when it was clear that credit was booming.

My argument is that this argument between monetarists and Keynesians is what President Obama would call a "false choice." The problem is that government is trying to game the economic system all the time and that makes it very difficult for markets to provide a clear signal to investors.

We need a lot less gaming, a lot less leverage and a lot more equity in the markets. And that should start with government. It's got to stop favoring special interests with cheap credit.

The Sad Decline of Unions

Today the Gallup Poll puts out its annual poll on labor unions. Alas, unions have suffered a sharp drop in popularity in the past year.

A year ago Gallup asked "do you approve or disapprove of labor unions," and 59 percent of Americans said they approved. Now, only 48 percent approve.

The 48% of Americans now approving of unions represents the first sub-50% approval since Gallup first asked the question in the 1930s. The previous low was 55%, found in both 1979 and 1981.

When unions emerged in the 19th century they were spontaneous groupings of working people joining together to generate genuine collective benefits. They flourished most often during inflationary periods when wages were declining. Apart from bargaining over wages, unions offered their members significant benefits such as health care and death payments. They were similar to the fraternal associations that also provided mutual aid to their members.

But then unions got involved in politics and they started supporting the welfare state. So unionism became a political movement rather than a social movement. Of course, if the government provides benefits, who needs the unions.

Today labor unions are the major prop supporting the Democratic Party. Their agenda is a political agenda, trying to game the system through changing the law on labor union certification, and providing "astroturf" to support the Obama administration's legislative agenda.

And, of course, the Obama administration has done a lot to help labor unions, most notably in the bailout of the auto companies, General Motors and Chrysler, that died in part because of union power.

All social institutions have their day, and inevitably decline. When workers get more prosperous and confident of their ability to compete in the job market, they get less inclined to want the protection, the solidarity, of a labor union. Then they only need them as a lobbying force, as in government worker unions.

But still the romance of labor continues, and we celebrate Labor Day each year,

We humans have other nostalgic notions, like the notion of the family farm. That notion costs us a bundle, too.

Our Community Organizer in Chief

The trouble with Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals is that its a manual of tactics. OK. tactics are important. But without strategy you are wasting your time.

The whole community-organizing thing seems, to me, to be a foolish emphasis on tactics. But for what? You rile up the poor folks in South Chicago into a fine froth, and then what? OK, we know. Then you implement The Plan, to fold everything into the State.

But what happens if, after you've riled up the People, and you start confidently leading them into a Glorious Future of Health Care and Green Jobs, the People suddenly discover that that's not what they had in mind at all.

What happens if the People are not desperate proletarians scrabbling a living out in the inner city? What happens if they are small "c" conservative middle-class folks that want a sensible and steady economic environment without all the excitement. They would be people that want to get jobs, get married, start a family, and squeeze enough cash to buy a starter house? Or if they are a bit older, and are thinking about paying for college or even retirement?

Well, if you are the community-organizing President of the United States, you've got a problem. All of a sudden your vision of change, complete with transparency and tax cuts, comes crashing down. All of a sudden you look like the usual politician that's talking about fighting for the people while he's doing deals with the powerful.

The feeling that I'm getting is that the president and his crew came all kitted up to play the wrong game.

They say that the president and his top campaign advisers all have a background in big-city politics. That explains a lot, doesn't it. These folks are good at playing the Democratic faithful, but don't really know much about politics in the heartland.

But the game you need to play in the United States of America is center-right politics. That's what Bill Clinton was so good at. He knew how to push through center-left stuff and make it look center-right. He learned his game as a liberal in a conservative southern state.

But President Obama has spent most of his adult life in Liberal Land, the liberal enclave of Hyde Park created by the University of Chicago.

Well, eventually, the Obama people will figure out how to get their presidency to limp along. Maybe they'll even limp to a reelection in 2012.

The problem is that from now on out, liberals are going to be facing hard decisions. The bills are coming due on the welfare state and there isn't enough money to pay for it. They'll do what politicians always do. They'll cheat.

Guess what. It is going to make the American people as mad as hell.

Like they say: you ain't seen nothing yet.

Liberals Not Getting It

I belong to a liberal group in Seattle that meets to discuss "integral theory." This integral theory grows out of developmental psychology: that people live in and grow through different developmental stages. The group experiences itself as transcending the liberal culture of sharing and caring and moving to a higher plane where you can understand the beliefs of peoples and cultures that don't think like you.

But now, after the Summer of the TeaPartiers and Townhallers, they are perplexed. Writes Gary:

I've been wrestling with myself, as well, trying to define just what is the highest response to this unholy alliance between right-wing political ideologies and right-wing Christian movement in the United States today that confuses soldier and warrior, prophet and soldier.

Another participant, Don, relates the culture war to the health care issue:

I have been trying to get my head around the unhinged response in some quarters to the health care proposals coming out of congress[...] So, the question I have is, is there a [way of communicating] that would resonate with those in this country who currently see health care reform as the implementation of death panels or whatever?

I think there's a rather simple answer to this. The problem is that the president's health care proposal isn't "integral." I.e., it doesn't treat people as naturally different, and with a right to be different. It assumes that health care is a public good and that everyone's needs are the same, and the government ought to provide for these needs.

But if we move to such a system a lot of people are going to have to change. Some people at present take no provision for health care and act on the assumption that, if they need care, society will provide it. Some people have a complete pre-paid plan. Some people have insurance to protect their assets. Some people like to pay for routine medical care out of pocket and only have insurance against major risks. Some people are rich enough that they can afford to pay all their health care out of pocket. If the president's program is passed, all this will change. Or more exactly, armed with new powers, the government will force people to change.

Very often in human history, you will find that people react to force with force.

The point is that in a free country, people have the right to make mistakes. So even if policy analysts come up with the best of all possible health policies, people should still have the right to say "no thanks." In fact, of course, the experts do not typically come up with the best of all policies. Their brilliant ideas get shredded by the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The interesting thing to me is that the liberals quoted up above have studied and believe that people at different developmental levels can and do have different ways of understanding the world and living in the world, and this is natural and normal. Yet the first one can still regard people that don't think like him as evil, and the second can be perplexed that people might react to a one-size-fits-all government program with rage.

Is this a great country or what!

Healthcare and the Limits of Reason

I'm sure that in the groves of academe they are shaking their heads over the outpouring of opposition to the president's health plans.

After all, it's pretty clear that we can't go on as we are. Someone is going to have to formulate a rational national policy on end-of-life care and regulate the offerings of insurance companies. Better leave it to the experts in medical ethics.

I had an epiphany on all this a few years ago when I read Sam Harris's The End of Faith. After roundly critiquing religious faith for a few chapters he began to develop his own ideas. It was strong on meditation and "rational ethics."

Well. There is a problem with that, Sam old chap. By the time you have got to a rational ethics you have already made the serious decisions. Let's illustrate the point with abortion.

Some people think that the laws on abortion should turn on the question of the beginning of life. And life, the activists say, begins at conception.

Other people, including the Supreme Court at one time, believe that the question turns on viability. At what point can the fetus live outside the womb? Obviously, this allows for early-term abortions, since a fetus in the first few months of pregnancy cannot survive outside the womb.

Still other people argue that a woman has a right to control her own body. On this view, it is clear that abortion is permitted up to, and perhaps including, live natural birth.

Some advanced thinkers are proposing a return to infanticide; someone will have the power to determine if a born-alive infant shall continue to live.

Then you could say that, as in the days of the patriarchy, the father has absolute power over the lives of the people in his household.

Now, it seems to me that you can build a rational ethics out of any of these approaches to the question of taking young life. What matters is your defining value about when it is permissible to take human life.

And that, of course, follows the traditional view of logic and reasoning. You start with certain premisses, and you then argue, using the rules of logic and reason, to prove certain conclusions.

So the experts in the liberal academy are missing the point. They are taking their view of human life as an incontestable premiss. But, of course, it is precisely their assumption that is in question.

The work of Zeke Emanuel, for instance, assumes that we should take a utilitarian view of human life. We should focus health care resources on productive people in the middle of life and less at the beginning of life and the end of life.

But that conflicts with the natural instinct of women, which is to care for the people they love, especially babies, and even including their ageing mothers.

The question is: who is right? The rational experts or the loving women?

I'm inclined to go with the women. Obviously, the obsessive care of loved ones is one of the great forces in the story of life--particularly mammalian life.

Rational speculations have their place. But I think that we need to be careful how far we extend it. There is a limit to the utility of reason.

CIA Probe: Another Obama Blunder

You can understand why the Obama administration has decided to launch a probe into the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorist detainees by the CIA. The left is restless.

So why not sicc a special prosecutor on the CIA (and maybe former Vice-President Dick Cheney) and throw some red meat to the angry lefties while the dirty work of compromise proceeds on the president's health reform?

Well, there are several reasons why not.

1. Remember Last Time. Back in the 1970s Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) had a grand old time with Senate hearings on the CIA and the FBI. His Church Committee flayed the CIA and the FBI and reduced the effectiveness of the national intelligence establishment. But Frank Church was defeated in the 1978 elections.
2. Are You Sure, Mr. President. No doubt a special prosecutor will satisfy the angry left for a while. But suppose there's a terrorist incident between now and the 2012 election. That could be a game changer. The reason that the Bush administration went for enhanced interrogation was because they decided that their policy should be "Never Again." I don't think I would want to be the president facing the American people after another high-profile terrorist incident on the US homeland involving thousands of casualties. Not after a special prosecutor has tamed the CIA into complete immobility.
   
3. The CIA Isn't Defenseless. Back in the 1970s when the left last had a go at the CIA there wasn't anyone to defend it. Former President Nixon had left office in disgrace, and President Ford wasn't going to spend political capital on the Nixon era. But clearly Dick Cheney ain't gonna go quietly into the good night. In fact he is doing a bang-up job of sucking up all the oxygen in the room. He was on TV last Sunday. And on Saturday the Washington Post quietly admitted that the CIA was right to go for enhanced interrogation, to the fury of lefties like Glenn Greenwald. Let's face it. Dick Cheney is loaded for bear, and he can make things very difficult for the Obama administration.

So go ahead Mr. President. Go ahead with another major political blunder. As they say. Don't stand in the way when your opponent is destroying himself.