Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Is This Any Way To Run A Government?

16 Comments

Is it reasonable to expect the peoples’ representatives to at least read the bills they vote on and pass, let alone comprehend them? Jimmie at The Sundries Shack has done the math:

Let’s start with two generous assumptions: that the bill remains at 1,434 pages, and it gets in the hands of your member of Congress at 8 PM. Let’s also assume that there are about 350 words on each page

In order for anyone to read the entire bill in 13 hours, they’d have to start the very minute they got it and read over 1.8 pages a minute every minute, without a break. They’ll be clocking in at a reading speed of 640.5 words per minute at that rate. If anyone needs a potty break, they’d better take the bill with them. Forget eating.

By comparison, the average human reads about 200-400 wpm if “reading for comprehension”. You only hit 640 wpm if you’re skimming the text (and the top end average skimming rate is 700 wpm and the comprehension rate drops dramatically).

Now, let’s face it, it’s not exactly unheard of for legislators to vote on legislation they haven’t read, but usually there is at least time for their staffers to get a gander at it.

This is the biggest political travesty of my lifetime, and (unfortunately) I’m no spring chicken. Which of my commenters is going to attempt to defend this?

[Friday Update]

Hope! And Change!

It stands to reason that perhaps the most basic obligation members of Congress have is to know what they are voting for. And this is doubly true on a spending bill of this unprecedented magnitude. It’s also worth noting that President Obama campaigned on pushing for explicit transparency measures in Congress. John Dickerson at Slate helpfully pointed out what Change.gov says about legislative transparency:

End the Practice of Writing Legislation Behind Closed Doors: As president, Barack Obama will restore the American people’s trust in their government by making government more open and transparent. Obama will work to reform congressional rules to require all legislative sessions, including committee mark-ups and conference committees, to be conducted in public.

Just a few weeks in office, and we already have the President enabling and encouraging one of the least transparent processes imaginable to muscle through an $800 billion spending bill. Does the administration think this amounts to change, or should I wait for them to get their new website, worsethanever.gov, up and running?

I guess we’ll just have to wait. I guess it was “just words.” Just like the words about “going through bills, line by line, and eliminating wasteful spending.” Anything to get elected.

Have these people no shame?

[Bumped]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Random Question

31 Comments

If a census recording had occurred on George Bush’s watch, and he had the process bypass the Secretary of Commerce and report directly to Karl Rove, what would the New York Times have to say about it?

[Afternoon update]

Judd Gregg has withdrawn from being Commerce Secretary, according to Fox News, and will stay in the Senate. I guess he didn’t like the thought of being treated like chopped liver when it came to the census. Another black eye for the administration’s cabinet appointment process.

[Update a couple minutes later]

“I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me.”

[Friday morning update]

Rick Moran:

The issue of the Census director reporting directly to the White House means that Gregg, as commerce secretary, would lose control of one of the major programs in the department. By, in effect, politicizing the Census, the Obama administration is throwing down the gauntlet and risking an all out war with congressional Republicans over the fruits of the national head count; redistricting the 535 congressional districts to reflect changes in population and the allocation of billions in federal spending. . . . Is this the real reason that Gregg decided to withdraw? Perhaps he felt he was being set up to be the front man for a Census that could cripple the Republican party for years to come and wanted no part of it. We may never know.

It doesn’t really matter. I’m just glad that he came to his senses.

[Bumped]

[A couple minutes later]

Byron York:

After he looked into it more, he said, ‘Whoa, this was a mistake.’” Plus this: “At the very least, the Census issue would have made for a very uncomfortable confirmation hearing. Gregg’s fellow Republicans on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee would certainly have asked him what he thought of a plan that would move control of the Census from professionals in the Commerce Department to Rahm Emanuel, the hyper-partisan White House chief of staff. What would Gregg have said? It was the stimulus problem all over again; Gregg couldn’t have said what he believed, but he probably couldn’t have brought himself to support the president, either.

Still waiting for all the outrage in the press about politicizing the census. Not holding my breath, though.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Goodie

12 Comments

Iran will have enough fuel for several Hiroshima-level bombs by the end of the year.

I should note that their ability to put a satellite into space isn’t quite as concerning to me as it has been portrayed by some in the news. Though we had ICBMs before we had launch vehicles, it doesn’t follow that having a launch vehicle implies ICBM capability. It’s actually a lot easier, from a guidance standpoint, to put an object into orbit than it is to hit a target precisely. Also, warhead and entry vehicle technology is a completely different beast than a launcher, so simply having throw capability doesn’t mean that you have all of the pieces in place. In addition, it’s one thing to build a bomb — it’s another to make it small enough to be able to loft it around the world.

Of course, none of this is of much consolation to Israel, because it’s a lot closer, and I would imagine that the Iranians are indifferent to how precisely they can kill hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Avoiding Hoover

7 Comments

Jim Manzi has a good post on the real implications of this disaster wending its way all too quickly down Pennsylvania Avenue.

What I find most appalling about it are the perverse incentives and moral hazards that it sets up. Buy more house than you can afford? No problem, the taxpayers will prop you up and keep you in it. Spending more than revenue in your state capital? Don’t sweat it, we’ll just steal money from other states so you can keep it up.

It is punishing the prudent and rewarding the irresponsible. And when you set up a system like that, you’ll get a lot less of the former and a lot more of the latter behavior. At some point, Atlas will shrug. I don’t know how far off we are from it, though.

[Update a few minutes later]

Welcome to the Great American Handout.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Thugs Ransacking My House”

24 Comments

Well, Arnold Kling certainly isn’t mincing any words:

“I think about the stimulus as an economist but I feel it as a father. Barack Obama is destroying my daughters future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs. That’s how I feel, now back to how I think.”

As noted if you read the whole thing, this isn’t a “stimulus” plan. It’s a grow-government-and-make-us-all-increasingly-dependent-on-it plan. The welfare provision alone is proof of that.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

That Seventies Show

4 Comments

It’s the return of malaise.

More confidence building, from the “indispensable” tax dodger who is now in charge of collecting our taxes:

Where was Geithner the Technocrat when you needed him? Because that is just what the markets need right now: a detailed, technocratic explanation of the way forward. This might have been the clincher as far as investors are concerned: “We are exploring a range of different structures for this program, and will seek input from market participants and the public as we design it.” In other words, “We have have concrete and high detailed plan to develop a concrete and highly detailed plan. We’ll get back to you.”

Oh, and it would be nice if he could do all that without painting such an unremittingly bleak picture of the economy. But more important is to change the mark-to-market accounting rules that are needlessly driving the financial system into the ground. Former FDIC Chairman William Issac has told the Securities and Exchange Commission that every money center bank in the 1980s would have gone bust had they been forced to sharply write down the value Latin American debt: “If we had followed today’s approach during the 1980s, we would have nationalized nearly all of the largest banks in this country and thousands of additional banks and thrifts would have failed. I have little doubt that the country would have gone from a serious recession into a depression.” Sound familiar?

And along with that change, how about embracing the private sector as the surest path back to prosperity? Cut corporate taxes. Suspend capital gains taxes. Indeed, one reason why Geithner may have been so vague about the bank rescue plan is that ultimately the plan may entail such high government borrowing that announcing it now would have derailed the current $800 billion Obama stimulus plan.

And wouldn’t that be a shame?

Speaking of cutting corporate tax rates, what would really help would be to simply eliminate them. A simple reduction in rate does nothing to reduce the high costs of bookkeeping and accounting that are made necessary by the need to sort out taxable deductions from other expenses. I’m sure that this is a huge drag on the economy (though it would still exist, unfortunately, for individuals). Eliminating the tax completely would free up vast amounts of corporate wealth for more productive activity.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Well, people do laugh at clowns:

The laughter was at its height when Obama officials explained that the White House planned to guarantee a wide swath of toxic assets — which they referred to as “legacy assets” — but wouldn’t be asking Congress for money. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a bailout opponent in the fall, asked the officials to give Congress the total dollar figure for which they were on the hook. The officials said that they couldn’t provide a number, a response met by chuckling that was bipartisan, but tilted toward the GOP side. By guaranteeing the assets, Geithner hopes he can persuade the private sector to purchase a portion of them.

Financial messes like this are fundamentally a crisis of confidence. The Dow plunged 400 points after the news conference. I think that the Geithner pick is turning out to be a disaster, on multiple levels.

[Another update]

More thoughts from Megan McArdle:

I don’t envy Geithner his position. But he’s known this was coming for months. I expected a little more than telling us that he wanted to spend a lot of money to help banks clean up their balance sheets. We knew that much already.

I’m glad I don’t have his job, but I wish that someone else did. And the buck stops with the man who appointed him.