Morning Briefing
For November 26, 2012
1. Obamacare Meets Reality. Reality Wins.
For years the Democrat party has derided the GOP’s view of economics. Our view, essentially, is that your money is yours, not the government’s, and the decisions you make on how to spend it will inevitably be more lucid than anything the government comes up with. The corollary to this is that income redistribution is nothing more or less than theft which characterizes garden variety covetousness as fairness. They call this “trickle down” economics.
The Democrats have their own operating principle: Cargo cult economics. It has many facets but the basis idea is that if the government creates something that is associated with a vibrant middle class then a vibrant middle class will spring from that program as inevitably as Athena sprang from the forehead of Zeus.
Though the term has been around for a while, I first encountered it while riding with a good friend through a dystopic steel town outside Pittsburgh where right in the middle of boarded up store fronts some governmental agency had plopped down an “arts center.” The idea being that somehow funding an arts center in a mostly deserted downtown would revive the downtown area because affluent downtowns all have arts centers. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2. The Forgotten Bailout
When it comes to setting public policy fires, Democrats get away with serial arson. A maladroit opposition party and a complaisant media ensure that the public will never pin the tail of blame on the donkey. Nowhere is this more evident than with interventionist housing policy.
Decade’s worth of government intervention in the housing market almost single-handedly took down the economy. Bill Clinton’s National Homeownership Strategy did to the housing sector what Obamacare will do for the healthcare sector. His administration created entire offices and programs dedicated to forcing banks to underwrite risky mortgages under the dubious goal of universal home ownership. Concurrently, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought up the lion’s share of the subprime mortgage securities and fueled the toxic asset bubble. The bubble popped, bringing down the entire economy with it. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
3. I Think CNN.com Badly Mischaracterizes This Site
I tried to ignore this piece at CNN.com by Tom Cohen, but given how it continues to crop up in my inbox from people on both the left and right, I think it is worth responding to.
I reached out to my friends and colleagues over at CNN.com to tell them I thought both I and RedState were being badly mischaracterized. While making an edit to the article to include “Erick Erickson, who rejected any talk of electoral fraud or an unfair Obama victory” prior to using my quotes, CNN.com’s staff tells me they stand by the article. They are entitled to, but I disagree and I think both my position and that of this site are badly mischaracterized. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
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