A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Krauthammer + Goldberg = Demoralized Obama

I often wonder what men like Barack Obama think when they read such devastatingly accurate analysis of his (and his Party's) economic performance since January of 2009 as that provided by Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg today.

Obviously as a self-confident progressive-liberal - one from the "head-in-the-sand when anyone proves you're doing a rotten job" school of politics taught in Chicago - the president is set in his ways and ostensibly certain of his ideology's eventual success, but a twinge of doubt has to scurry down his spine (if and) when he reads columns like the ones Chuck and Jonah laid down this week.

Or if not the president himself, perhaps more importantly, his supporters.

The first of the rhetorical beat-down came from Dr. Charles Krauthammer, nationally syndicated columnist from The Washington Post.  The good Doctor deftly makes the critically-important point that the current administration's biggest problem isn't any inheritance it received from George W. Bush, but its own ideology and belief system.  The notion that "shovel-ready jobs" (via the stimulus) would turn the world's largest economy around is painfully naive.

"Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected," observed President Obama this week, enjoying a nice chuckle about the unhappy fate of his near-$1 trillion stimulus. To be sure, Obama has also been promoting a less amusing remedy for anemic growth and high unemployment: exports. In this year's State of the Union address, he proclaimed a national goal of doubling exports by 2014.

One obvious way to increase exports is through free-trade agreements. But unions don't like them. No surprise then that for two years Obama has been sitting on three free-trade agreements – with Colombia, Panama and South Korea – already negotiated by his predecessor.

Under the pressure of dire economic conditions and of the consequences of stiffing three valued allies, Obama appeared ready to relent – only to put up a last-minute roadblock. He's demanding an expansion of Trade Adjustment Assistance – taxpayer money (beyond unemployment compensation) given to workers displaced by foreign competition, something denied to Americans rendered unemployed by domestic competition. It's an idea of dubious fairness but nicely designed to hold up ratification, while placing blame on Republican heartlessness rather than on political sabotage by Democrats beholden to unions for the millions they pour into Democratic coffers.

He continues:

Nothing new here. In 2009, Obama pushed through a federally run, questionably legal, bankruptcy for the auto companies that robbed first-in-line creditors in order to bail out the United Auto Workers. Elsewhere, Delta Air Lines workers have voted four times to reject unionization. A federal agency, naturally, is investigating and, notes economist Irwin Stelzer, can order still another election in the hope that it yields the answer Obama's campaign team wants.

But Democratic fealty to unions does not stop there. Boeing has just completed a production facility in South Carolina for its new 787 Dreamliner. The National Labor Relations Board, stacked with Democrats – including one former union lawyer considered so partisan that he required a recess appointment after the Senate refused to confirm him – is trying to get the plant declared illegal. Why? Because by choosing right-to-work South Carolina, Boeing is accused of retaliating against its unionized Washington state workers for previous strikes.

In fact, Boeing has increased unionized employment by more than 2,000 at its Puget Sound plant. Moreover, the idea that a company in a unionized state can thus be prohibited from expanding into right-to-work states by a partisan regulatory body is quite insane. It violates the fundamental principle in a free-market economy that companies can move and build in response to market conditions, rather than administrative fiat. It jeopardizes the economic recovery, not only targeting America's single largest exporter in its attempt to compete with Airbus for a huge global market, but also threatening any other company that might think of expanding in any way displeasing to unions and their NLRB patrons.

Krauthammer goes on to note the ruling handed down by the WI State Supreme Court, which upheld Scott Walker's "anti-Union" legislation and gave a much-needed black eye to activist judges everywhere.

The Wisconsin maneuver ultimately failed, as likely will the assault on Boeing. In the interim, however, there is collateral damage – to U.S. exports, to the larger economy, to bankruptcy law, to free trade, to a constitutional system wherein the legislatures make the laws, rather than willful judges and partisan regulators.

But what are those when there are unions to appease and elections to win?

Both parties "pay off" supporters and lobbyists when once they've obtained power.  The question is not whether pay-offs should or should not exist, but who is being paid off and is it helping this country.  We're all entitled to petition those we lend power to for whatever grievances we may have.

If a group of private citizens raises money and support for a politician who promises them that he will lower taxes across the board, and that politician gets elected and follows through on his promise, then I, for one, am glad that there was a pay-off involved.  But if the group that raises money and support for a politician then demands higher wages, more health care, less hours, and the ability to strike whenever they want more of those things - well, then, I'll pass on that.

But getting back to the whole "shovel-ready jobs" question: what's so wrong about them?  Isn't is smart to "re-invest" in infrastructure?

Funny I should ask.  The second crippling piece I came across this week is from the mind of Jonah Goldberg over at National Review.

In a New York Times Magazine profile last October, the president admitted he had to learn the hard way that there’s “no such thing as shovel-ready projects.”

This is a staggering indictment of the president, the team he assembled, and the journalists who accepted this administration’s arrogant assertions that they knew exactly what to do, how to do it, and what would happen as a result. Remember, this is the administration that to this day insists it is “pragmatic” and simply cares about “what works.”

“I think we can get a lot of work done fast,” President-elect Obama said shortly after a gathering of governors in December 2008. “All of them have projects that are shovel-ready, that are going to require us to get the money out the door.”

Jared Bernstein, economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden — the White House’s point man on the stimulus — said in a cable-news interview in February 2009: “I think what people need to understand is that this really isn’t rocket science.” Spend a bundle on public works projects and — boom — you get a lot of people working.

They were wrong.

They were wrong not just about the effect of infrastructure spending — even an analysis by the Associated Press found no evidence unemployment was significantly improved by the Recovery Act’s public-works projects — but they were wrong about the existence of shovel-ready jobs in the first place. (They were also misleading, since only a tiny, tiny fraction of the stimulus went to any infrastructure at all. The bulk went to social programs.)

He continues:

But progressive liberals were the ones who were blinded by ideology. One need not be an ideologue to understand that public-works contracting has become bloated and inefficient. Indeed, one must be an ideologue of a certain kind not to understand that. Or one has to be incredibly naive. Or both.

Perhaps that’s why Obama’s real economic agenda never changed to fit the economic crisis. During the campaign he promised to reform health care and fight for a green economy. After the financial crisis, the “pragmatist” stuck to his outdated agenda, saying — surprise! — what the economy needs is the same agenda he promised before. So while he kept saying he was obsessed with job creation, he spent all of his political capital on health-care reform and energy. All the while, the White House tries to spin its agenda as something it’s not.

Good stuff, no?

The heart of the problem for liberal Democrats is their ideology.  President Obama is failing because he is doing what he said he would do (had more listened to his actual words during the 2008 campaign...or read his two autobiographies).

The simplest way to say it is this: the private sector is the only sector that can create jobs and can create wealth.  The public sector (i.e. our government) can only re-distribute wealth and hand out favors (on the taxpayer's dime) to the people that put them into office.

It's a ponzi scheme.  At best.