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Summers . . . has begun to call for government policies to correct the transfer he identifies as beginning in 1979 of some $664 billion, or $600,000 per family, to the top 1 percent of the income distribution, at the expense of the bottom 80 percent, whose family incomes, Summers argues, are on average $7,000 below what they would have been had income gains been distributed equally to each percentile."Transfer"? "Distributed equally"? That income was never transferred or distributed, it was earned. There are many reasons for the rise in income inequality, but to begin a discussion of the income gap with the concept of income being "distributed" is to begin with a false premise.
You'll excuse me if I failed to blog the last three touchdowns. I've been basking in the glow!Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been on the attack lately in regard to the New Deal. His new book "The Return of Depression Economics," emphasizes the importance of New Deal-style spending. He has said the trouble with the New Deal was that it didn't spend enough. . . .As I said Monday, many of Obama's supporters "will be disheartened to discover that there is no magic in Obama's economic plan, a patchwork of warmed-over Keynesian 'pump-priming' claptrap as stale as the memory of Hubert Humphrey."
New Dealers raised taxes again and again to fund spending. The New Dealers also insisted on higher wages when businesses could ill afford them. Roosevelt, for example, signed into law first his National Recovery Administration, whose codes forced businesses to pay an above-market minimum wage, and then the Wagner Act, which gave union workers more power. . . .
High wages hurt corporate profits and therefore hiring. The unemployed stayed unemployed.
PREVIOUSLY:
As documented by this superb Washington Post Op-Ed today from Dileep Padgaonkar, former editor of the Times of India, the Indian Government -- inThat's what we need: Journalists and bloggers running the world's counter-terrorism programs.
response to prior terrorist attacks -- has been employing tactics all-too-familiar to Americans: "terrorism suspects have been picked up at random and denied legal rights"; "allegations of torture by police are routine"; "suspects have been held for years as their court cases have dragged on. Convictions have been few and far between"; Muslims and Hindus are subjected to vastly disparate treatment; and much of the most consequential actions take place in secrecy, shielded from public view, debate or accountability.
As Padgaonkar details, many of these measures, particularly in the wake of new terrorist attacks, are emotionally satisfying, yet they do little other than exacerbate the problem, spawn further extremism and resentment, and massively increase the likelihood of further and more reckless attacks -- thereby fueling this cycle endlessly -- all while degrading the very institutions and values that are ostensibly being defended. The greater one's physical or emotional proximity to the attacks, the greater is the danger that one will seek excessively to empower and submit to government authority and cheer for destructive counter-measures which allow few, if any, limits.
The "Camelot" comparisons for the Obama administration might be a little more accurate than we thought. "Watch, we're going to have an international crisis . . . to test the mettle of this guy. . . . I guarantee you it's gonna happen."Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to help start a nuclear energy program in Venezuela and said Moscow is willing to participate in a socialist trade bloc in Latin America led by President Hugo Chavez.
Medvedev used his visit to Venezuela—the first by a Russian president—to extend Moscow's reach into Latin America and deepen trade and military ties. Chavez denied trying to provoke the United States, but he welcomed Russia's growing presence in Latin America as a reflection of declining U.S. influence.
Chavez and Medvedev planned to visit a Russian destroyer docked in a Venezuelan port on Thursday. The arrival of Russian warships this week for training exercises with Venezuela's navy was the first deployment of its kind in the Caribbean since the Cold War.
Authorities released few details about the mayhem that broke out at the Toys "R" Us store around 11:30 a.m. Friday, sending scared shoppers fleeing. . . .(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)
The victims were identified as Alejandro Moreno, 39, of Desert Hot Springs, and Juan Meza, 28, of Cathedral City. No one else was hurt.
Witnesses Scott and Joan Barrick said they were checking out of the store when the brawl began between two women, each with a man. . . .
One woman suddenly started punching the other woman, who fought back as blood flowed from her nose, said Scott Barrick, 41. The man who was with the woman being punched pulled a gun halfway out of his pocket, then shoved it back in, he said. . . .
The other man pulled a gun and pointed it at the first man but forgot to cock it, Scott Barrick said. The first man tried to run but was blocked by the line of people, then ran back toward the store's electronics section as the other man fired his gun, he said. The first man reached a dead-end in electronics, turned around and ran toward an exit, pulling his gun and firing back, Scott Barrick said.
HAGERSTOWN, Md. -- Some of the "Black Friday" shoppers flocking to malls were buying bullets, boots and hunting licenses for Maryland's modern-firearm deer season, which opens Saturday.Liberals look at a deer and see Bambi. Conservatives look at a deer and see venison.
Drew Trimble, pushing a loaded shopping cart out of Dick's Sporting Goods in Hagerstown, said hunting helps stretch his food dollars.
The 28-year-old information-technology worker from Harpers Ferry, W.Va., said he and his hunting buddies got two deer in the Green Ridge State Forest during the early muzzleloader season. They hope to bring back more meat during the rifle season, which ends Dec. 13.
"It's nice not to have to buy beef from the store since we have venison," Mr. Trimble said.
More than 68,000 people hunt for Maryland deer, an activity that helps control the deer population while contributing more than $150 million annually to the state's
economy, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
The rifle season is the most popular deer-hunting season, accounting for nearly half
of the deer taken each year. DNR Deer Project Leader Brian Eyler predicted hunters will kill up to 45,000 deer during the next two weeks.
Exactly how is Ms. Salamino different from those idiots who end up caught on camera with Chris Hansen? I am unfamiliar with the New York Department of Education's rules, but I'm reasonably sure that the taxpayers of New York would frown on any teacher dating a 17-year-old. The taxpayers be damned, of course, when it comes to a tenured teacher in the union-controlled public school system.A Queens teacher fired for bedding a 17-year-old male model is suing to win her job back, saying she had no idea her lover boy was enrolled in high school during their affair.
Gina Salamino, 37, contends her job as a tenured second-grade teacher at Public School 121 should have been spared because Joshua Walter was so busy catwalking he never attended a single class during the 2006-07 school year.
"They have no case," Salamino angrily told the Daily News. "There is no improper relationship."
Salamino maintains in Manhattan Supreme Court documents that it's "complete fiction" and "ludicrous" for the Department of Education to insist the globetrotting runway star was a "student" when he hooked up with the teacher, who was then 34.
Fifteen-year-old Disney "Hannah Montana" franchise starlet Miley Cyrus poses in her panties, shows her bra, and now poses topless in Vanity Fair -- and yet no legal action is threatened? Meanwhile, in Texas, the mere suspicion that teenagers are getting married causes a SWAT raid and state officials take 416 children away from their parents.Notice how the pop-culture sexualization of adolescents plays a role here, just as with the Miley Cyrus photos. Because this New York boy was modeling for Hugo Boss as a teenager, he is therefore legally "fair game," according to Ms. Salamino and her lawyers. The popular culture is offering up teenagers as sex objects and, therefore, some people feel entitled to act on these cultural messages. And yet what is winked at when it involves a TV starlet or a fashion model is enough to land others in prison. But who are we to judge? After all, didn't the Supreme Court tell us that "individual decisions concerning the intimacies of physical relationships . . . are a form of 'liberty' protected by due process"? Ms. Salamino can ride her teenage lover like a pogo stick and that's her constitutional right.
Maybe if the polygamous cult would make some Disney movies, they could get away with it. Otherwise, Texas officials might fear those fundamentalist kids are being deprived of an underwear-flashing, topless-posing normal adolescence like Miley's.
"Yes, I'm thrilled that he won the election, underscoring the American ideal that we live in a forward-thinking democracy, where any man or woman can rise to the highest office in the land. And I'm proud that even Obama's staunchest foes -- particularly the man he defeated, John McCain -- seem to be willing to accept his victory and pledge to help him turn around the economy and cure the nation's other ills."
-- Jon Friedman
You know, that is kind of an odd statement for a "media watchdog" to make. And I share William Jacobson's skepticism of the president as a magical healer who can lay hands on the nation's ills and effect a cure.
Friedman's a big Rachel Maddow fan, go figure.
The change we've been waiting for may not be immediately quantifiable, but personal responsibility, educational ambition and smart public diplomacy -- all by example rather than exhortation -- could go a long way toward curing what ails us.
After a GOP beating, there is always a debate between the people who want the party to become more principled and those who want to turn the GOP into a poll-driven pile of mush that they believe will be more appealing to centrists. . . .The big-government approach -- whether you call it "national greatness" or "compassionate conservatism" -- is not a fighting creed, because it does not offer a meaningful alternative to Democratic Party liberalism. Republicans were able to win elections in 2002 and 2004 on national-security issues, but ultimately it was failure to pursue a politically effective domestic agenda that undid Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority." More to the point, as I've previously noted, independent voters are not "centrist" or "moderate" in an ideological sense. Independents are actually "low-information" voters whose political ideas are an ill-informed hodge-podge that conforms to no ideological template. There is no coherent middle-of-the-road agenda to which they subscribe.The moderate argument that Republicans lose independents because of specific conservative policy stances -- on immigration, abortion, gay rights, etc. -- simply does not fit the reality of who these voters are. (And there is plenty of evidence that independents tend to be conservative on social issues.) Low-information voters often can't name their representatives or senators, but they usually know who the president is and which party he belongs to, and if they don't like the president (Bush is at 26% approval), his party will pay the price. The Republican Party's electoral problems, then, are more simple than some would have us believe. The simplicity of the problem doesn't mean the solution will be easy, but "moderation" -- chasing a centrist will-o'-th'-wisp -- is unlikely to be part of the solution.
One of the most surreal aspects of the post-2008 campaign is listening to moderates pretend that the last eight years never happened.
You say that the GOP can't win as a small government party. Well, we've already tried being a big government party for the last 8 years and it failed. You think running a moderate, pro-amnesty candidate who eschews social issues is the key to winning elections? Well, that's who we ran in 2008 and he received even less votes than George Bush did in 2004.
(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)
The U.S. State Department said on Friday two Americans were among those killed in the attacks by militants in the Indian financial capital Mumbai.Allahpundit has a fresh thread.
Spokesman Gordon Duguid said the department had notified the families of the victims. He did not give details or identify the dead Americans.
Earlier, a group called the Synchronicity Foundation said two Americans who were in India as part of a meditation program had died in the attacks.
The Synchronicity Foundation said in a statement on its website that Alan Scherr and his 13-year-old daughter Naomi were killed.
It gave no details about how they were killed but said Scherr and his family had been involved in the Synchronicity community in Faber, Virginia for more than a decade.
A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.Should have shopped the Holiday Book Sale.
The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.
Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.
"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
But you knew this, right? The network's attempt to revive the primetime variety show failed to draw an audience Wednesday night, tying for the evening's lowest-rated program.Gee, let's give a show to an obnoxious, unattractive lesbian, and then when it flops, we'll blame the format. These Hollywood people are geniuses, I tell you!
A mere 5 million viewers tuned in for the 8 p.m. premiere of "Rosie Live," with the program earning a 1.2 preliminary adults 18-49 rating. The telecast matched ABC's recently canceled "Pushing Daisies" as the night's lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.
NBC had high hopes for the special and planned to expand the program into a series should viewers re-embrace the decades-old variety format.
Of course, if one defines "grownup" as a person who agrees with Paul Krugman, and "hack" as a person who does not, then one might come to a different conclusion.The important thing is not Krugman or his opinion, but the fact that nothing proposed by Team Obama will fix the economy. It's all warmed-over Keynesianism, and it won't work. But when it comes to simple arithmetic, Mankiw smokes Krugman.
Finally, every student of the war should try to get past the interpretations of historians and see the conflict as it was seen by the men who fought it:
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In The Year of Bottomless Bailouts, I am most grateful this Thanksgiving for Americans who refuse to abandon thrift, personal responsibility, and self-reliance. When the moochers and entitlement-mongers drive you mad, remember that our nation still serves as home to millions of citizens who do for themselves. Like our Founding Fathers, they are God-fearing people -- the ones elitist pundits deride as "oogedy-boogedy" -- who will never put their faith in The Cult of You Owe Me.She tells a nice story. Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Jules Crittenden writes:
The tide of history remains opposed to tyranny. One of the worst of the modern era, Saddam's Baathist regime, is out of business. In Gaza, in Burma, in Zimbabwe, in Sudan, in China, in Georgia, in North Korea and Iran, while tyranny still exists, it is widely condemned. For all the rhetoric we sometimes hear, people know where the tyrants live. The values and freedoms nurtured in America and exported, gratis, at the expense of our own nation’s blood and treasure, are the values and freedoms most widely admired, and desired where they are not already emulated in the world.People seeking grievances to grumble about and evidence to justify discouragement will always find it. Gloom and self-pity are always easier than gratitude and hope. We complain of what we don't have and neglect to be thankful for the blessings all around us.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. . . .We cannot deserve God's grace and mercy. We are "sinners in the hands of an angry God," as Jonathan Edwards said: "There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God." Deserving nothing but destruction, then, it behooves us to reflect in all humility upon whatever design God means to accomplish by our preservation, to be grateful to play some part in His purpose, and to understand that it is through no merit of our own that we are called.
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.My six children are all healthy, and my beautiful wife is even now preparing a lavish Thanksgiving feast. Alabama is undefeated. With so much to be thankful for, I cannot complain. And history still teaches us to hope.
if you believed that then you would also believe tyrants are the will of god, and if so, you will find them in heaven, since the will of god cannot be denied, they are not only commanded and obligated but tools of the all mightyEh? I very definitely believe in good and evil, and don't understand why someone would say that an attitude of humility -- God's absolute sovereignty, a divine will beyond our comprehension -- should result in the belief that Hitler is in heaven. God is sovereign; evil men cannot escape or defy the will of God. Our puny mortal minds cannot fully comprehend this, but it is so. God's will appears to us mysterious, and it is our arrogant faithlessness that causes us to question and doubt.
in other words, if you believe these words then Hitler and every single person is in heaven and you must also believe there is no good and there is no evil.
Fresh gunfire and explosions were heard late Thursday in Mumbai as police battled terrorists at three sites almost 24 hours after the first wave of violence hit the city.Possibility of an al-Qaeda link is unclear:
Fresh explosions have been heard at the Taj Mahal hotel, where police are trying to free hostages.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested the group behind the terrorist attacks, which killed 125 people, was based outside the country.
CNN reporters said regular gun fire and blasts could be heard Thursday at the Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels and a Jewish center in the city. . . .
"It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the financial capital of the country," [Singh] said. . . .
Authorities found 8 kilograms (17 pounds) of RDX, one of the most powerful kinds of military explosives, at a restaurant near the Taj, indicating that the attackers may have been planning more violence.
Gunmen also remained holed up in a building called Chabad House, where several Jewish families live. Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg, the city's envoy for the community, was being held inside with his wife, a member of the Hasidic Jewish movement said. The couple's 18-month-old baby was released unharmed.
Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, was careful to say that the identity of the terrorists could not yet be known. But she insisted the style of the attacks and the targets in Mumbai suggested the militants were likely to be Indian Muslims and not linked to Al Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba, another violent South Asian terrorist group.Allahpundit has a fresh thread today. PREVIOUSLY: India is hit with the kind of large-scale coordinated attacks that are an al-Qaeda trademark:
“There’s absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it,” she said of the attack. “Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar. They don’t do hostage-taking and they don’t do grenades.” By contrast, [security expert Sajjan] Gohel in London said “the fingerprints point to an Islamic Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group."
At least 101 people have been killed in attacks by gunmen in Mumbai , police said on Thursday. At least six foreigners have been killed and the death figure has gone up to 101 now," Ramesh Tayde, a senior police officer told from Mumbai's control room.The Indian Mujahideen group that has taken credit for the attack has clear ties to Pakistan, the Weekly Standard reports:
In one of the most violent terror attacks on Indian soil, Mumbai came under an unprecedented night attack as terrorists used heavy machine guns, including AK-47s, and grenades to strike at the city's most high-profile targets -- the hyper-busy CST (formerly VT) rail terminus; the landmark Taj Hotel at the Gateway and the luxury Oberoi Trident at Nariman Point; the domestic airport at Santa Cruz; the Cama and GT hospitals near CST; the Metro Adlabs multiplex and Mazgaon Dockyard -- killing at least 80 and sending more than 900 to hospital, according to latest reports.
The attacks have taken a tragic toll on the city's top police brass: The high-profile chief of the anti-terror squad Hemant Karkare was killed; Mumbai's additional commissioner of police (east) Ashok Kamte was gunned down outside the Metro; and celebrated encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar was also killed.
Indian intelligence believes the Indian Mujahideen is a front group created by Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami to confuse investigators and cover the tracks of the Students' Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, a radical Islamist movement. The groups receive support from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence and are al Qaeda affiliates.Hot Air has an extensive roundup, including this CNN video: The Counter-Terrorism Blog names the group Lashkar-e-Toiba as a likely sponsor of this attack. The terrorists were seeking American and British hostages at the luxury hotels in Mumbai:
Two terrorists carrying guns tonight took 15 people, half of them foreigners, hostage on the roof of the luxury Taj Hotel, one of the hostages who managed to escape said.Via Ace of Spades, where the flaming skull alert is in effect.
...Replying to a question, Patel said the terrorists wanted to know if any one of the hostages was carrying American and British passports.
They clearly wanted foreigners, he added.
A few months back, my little boy came home from Second Grade and said to me, "Guess what we learned today?" I said: "Rosa Parks." He said: "How did you know that?" I said: "Because it's always Rosa Parks."I'd laugh, except it's no joke. The Historic Victimhood Narrative is virtually the only history or civics taught in American public schools today. "America The Beautiful" has been replaced by "America The Oppressive." Parents who send their offspring to these government-run indoctrination camps should be prosecuted for child abuse.
The 2008 Holiday Book Sale continues with three excellent books on the immigration issue:
Let's face it, if Thanksgiving reminds us of nothing else, it reminds us that the Indians paid the price for having a weak immigration policy. Now the country's so overcrowded, you can't even find a parking space at the mall. Fortunately, with Amazon.com, you don't have to go to the mall. Just one click and you can have your gifts delivered nationwide. Why wait? ORDER NOW!
PREVIOUSLY:For author Richard Rodriguez, no one is talking about the real issues behind Proposition 8.The "real issues," my foot. This argument is a transparent coalition-building gesture: "We're all gay now!" Rodriguez utterly ignores that gay militants are the aggressors in this battle of the "culture wars," that this is a fight of their choosing, and that -- far from seeking to "scapegoat" anyone -- opponents of same-sex marriage are strictly playing defense.
While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriguez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures.
Admission to Monday's events is first-come, first-serve, but attendees are urged to RSVP with the Chambliss campaign.
Today, meanwhile, the Chambliss campaign is hosting a "BBQ Lunch Victory Rally" with Gov. Sonny Perdue and former Gov. Zell Miller in Gainesville.
(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)Essentially, you cannot take a job if the salary was increased during your current congressional term. And the salary for cabinet officials has gone up in the past year.Not that the Clintons have ever let the Constitution stand in their way before, but Ed Morrissey points out:
Still, the intent of the founders is clear, and not something to shrug off so lightly. They wanted to keep Congress from creating cushy sinecures for them to occupy when a friendly President took office. The attraction of power, cash, and cronyism would lead to corruption and a permanent political class that would cease answering to the electorate.We are well past the point where constitutional restraints have any real meaning. On the one hand, the Supreme Court looks at the Constitution and sees things -- "penumbras and emanations" and the "sweet mystery of life" -- that aren't there. On the other hand, the limits of the enumerated powers are ignored and the 10th Amendment eviscerated by the very existence of the massive establishment in Washington. If the Constitution had any real power, the Department of Education would not exist.
