Quote Of The Day, Hillary Edition

Way back at the beginning of this endless campaign, in April 2015, I had a post titled "What Does Hillary Stand For?"  My inspiration for the post began when I went to Hillary Clinton's then-new campaign website, looking for specific policy proposals, and found next to nothing -- other than the vaguest of platitudes, like "I want to be your champion."  (Egads!  How can I avoid having this numbskull as my "champion"?)  A further inspiration for the post was that both the Wall Street Journal and the Economist had just run editorials asking the exact same question, with both coming up equally empty handed.

Anyway, my conclusion was, at least on the domestic front, you don't really need specific proposals from Hillary to know what she stands for.  Don't expect any actual vision from her.  She just stands for the absolutely conventional thinking of the unthinking left -- more money out of the infinite taxpayer fountain to fund my friends and cronies to create every new program they can think of and to fix every known human problem.  Of course it will work this time!  Here's how I put it in that post:

We know that she is the very most conventional of left-wing thinkers.  We know that she has no interest whatsoever in rocking the government gravy boat.  We know that she deeply believes in the main project of the Left, which is to bring social justice and equality to the world through government action and crony capitalism.   

Fast forward a year and a half, and Hillary's website has at least a few specifics, very much along the lines that I foresaw.  But she mostly avoids talking about policy specifics, let alone any concept of vision for the country.  When I see parts of her campaign events on the news, in every case she is not engaged in promoting her own policy proposals, but rather is trying to scare her potential supporters about Donald Trump, while avoiding discussion of any actual issues in the election.

Which brings me to the quote of the day.  Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal has a column today, headline "Hillary Becomes the Unsafe Hand," with the theme that various aspects of the email/national security controversy make Hillary far the more risky choice in this election.  And then we come our quote of the day, on Hillary's "vision" for the country:

With Mrs. Clinton, as with Mr. Obama, a voter naturally struggles to understand what the overarching vision is. There isn’t one. They exist to deliver the wish-list of Democratic lobby groups for more power over the people of the United States. Period.

Too bad I wasn't the first to come up with that pithy turn of phrase.  Anyway, if you're wondering why there is near total unanimity among the government-funded and government-cradled sectors of the economy (federal and state government workers, teachers, academia, crony capitalists, unions) in favor of Hillary, that's all you need to know.  

The New York Times Does Poverty

Just a couple of days ago I pointed out that in New York Times-world "all human problems are subject to being "fixed" by spending more government money."  That post was in the specific context of "fixing" the death spiral of Obamacare.  

The Times's treatment of the problem of poverty is not different.  This week it chooses to give the lead article of its Sunday Review section to one of its regular op-ed writers on the subject, Nicholas Kristof.  The headline is "3 TVs and No Food: Growing Up Poor in America."   

This is the New York Times, and one of its signature op-ed writers.  So therefore, do you expect -- or even hope for -- any meaningful insights?  Don't be ridiculous.  It's completely the usual formula:  first, to rouse your sympathies, a few descriptions of the lives of selected people living in bad circumstances; and second, outraged calls for politicians to fix the problem with the universal cure of more government money and more government programs.

Of course, there's a small difference between Obamacare and poverty.  Obamacare has only been around for a few years, and has only recently begun to collapse.  The War on Poverty has been around for over 50 years, and has been subject to dozens of efforts to expand it and fix it to make it work, usually by throwing more, and yet more, and yet still more money at it.  We're up to a trillion dollars a year in round numbers in so-called "anti-poverty" spending, none of which has ever worked to cure poverty, or even reduce it by a little.  Indeed, in the face of vast spending supposedly designed to reduce poverty, the number of people in measured poverty, per the Census Bureau, has gone up from about 27 million when the War on Poverty began in 1965 to about 47 million today.  This distinction between the issues of Obamacare and poverty makes Kristof's article particularly insulting to the reader.  Does he even know about, or will he acknowledge, the trillion or so dollars of current annual spending on so-called "anti-poverty" programs?  Will he acknowledge, or even mention, the vast increases in recent years of spending on things like food stamps, disability, EITC, and Medicaid?  Actually, from all indications, Kristof is completely unaware of the vast existing government efforts to cure poverty, let alone of the total failure of them all.  Certainly, if he is aware, he does not acknowledge their existence.  It's really appalling.

Kristof has recruited an intern to go off traveling with him around the United States to get some first-hand observation of poverty in America.  The first subject up is a 13-year-old kid named Emanuel Laster in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.  Here's the description:

Emanuel has three televisions in his room, two of them gargantuan large-screen models. But there is no food in the house. As for the TVs, at least one doesn’t work, and the electricity was supposed to be cut off for nonpayment on the day I visited his house here in Pine Bluff. . . .  The home, filthy and chaotic with a broken front door, reeks of marijuana. The televisions and Emanuel’s bed add an aspirational middle-class touch, but they were bought on credit and are at risk of being repossessed. The kitchen is stacked with dirty dishes, and not much else.  “I just go hungry,” Emanuel explained.    

Do you read that and immediately wonder if it is really Kristof's intention to suggest that it's the government's responsibility to help a family clean up the filth and put away the dishes?  Or perhaps you are wondering, if American taxpayers spend well over $100 billion per year on food stamps and multiple other nutrition programs for the poor, how is it possible that these people could still have "no food in the house" and a kid who "go[es] hungry"?  Another thought you may be having is, if these people have enough credit to buy three flat-screen TVs and enough cash to buy marijuana to make the place "reek," are they actually "poor" at all within federal definitions?  You will not find out any information in answer to those questions here.  

Rather, we move immediately to the calls for more government spending and programs:

[T]here is . . . an array of policies that [can] make a difference. Early childhood initiatives have a particularly good record, as do efforts to promote work, like the earned-income tax credit. Financial literacy programs help families manage money — and avoid buying large-screen TVs on credit. . . .  In short, what we lack most is not means but political will. The main public response to American poverty has been a great big national shrug — and that is why I wish the candidates were talking more about this, why I wish the public and the media were demanding that politicians address the issue. . . .  Chipping away at these cycles of poverty isn’t easy, and we won’t have perfect success. But we aren’t even trying. We aren’t even paying attention.         

So, a trillion dollars of annual anti-poverty spending on literally hundreds of programs and programs and more programs, and this guy believes that if only we just tried a couple more -- specifically "early childhood initiatives" and "financial literacy programs" -- it would all suddenly start to work?  Aren't Head Start and universal or near-universal pre-K "early childhood initiatives"?  

So which is worse?  Is it the touching naivety -- the idea that, if only these people had been offered a federally-sponsored course in financial management they never would have bought the three flat-screen TVs on credit?  Or, really, is the thing that is worse the total failure to acknowledge the trillion dollars a year that the taxpayers are already spending on so-called "anti-poverty" efforts that never get anyone out of poverty?  I'll go with the latter.  How could this guy have the nerve to suggest that Americans are responding to poverty with a "national shrug," and not "even paying attention," when in fact they commit a fresh trillion dollars every single year to fixing the problem?  A trillion dollars a year -- only to have the bureaucracy make it all disappear, and poverty remain right where it was before we spent a dime, and guys like Kristof accuse you of "not paying attention."

Really, could it get more insulting than that?  Yes!  Kristof finally turns to an effort to guilt and shame the people into yet more spending on yet more programs that can't possibly work.  Try this:

Child poverty is an open sore on the American body politic. It is a moral failing for our nation that one-fifth of our children live in poverty, by one common measure.

Child poverty may be an "open sore" and a "moral failing," but it's sure not on the "American body politic" or on "our nation," which have with spectacular generosity committed vast resources to relieve the suffering and end the problem -- only to be lectured by supercilious fools like Kristof that they are "not paying attention" and have a "moral failing."  The failing is not on the American people, but specifically on the government bureaucracies, who take and spend the annual trillion in a way guaranteed never to end or even reduce poverty, but instead to perpetuate their bureaucracies and to grow their own power.

Here's who has a "moral failing":  Nicholas Kristof, and people like him, who claim to be concerned about people living in poverty, but then advocate for more and more government programs that only foster dependency and the perpetuation of poverty. 

A Couple Of Thoughts On The Latest Clinton Revelations

(1)  Deep in Friday's Wall Street Journal, at page C3, we find that New York State regulators are "intensifying" their investigation of entities related to one Howard Dvorkin.  The headline is "Dvorkin-Related Probes Intensify."  Mr. Dvorkin is known as an advocate for consumer debt relief, and as "founder and former president" of a nonprofit entity called Consolidated Credit Counseling Services.  He also has stakes in various for-profit businesses.  Here's the gist of the nature of the investigation:  

"The New York State Department of Financial Services is investigating whether Consolidated Credit is directing business to for-profit companies owned by Mr. Dvorkin, the agency said in response to an open-records request by the Journal.  'We suspect that personnel at CCCS, a not-for-profit entity, are steering business to for-profit companies' run by people connected to Consolidated, an attorney for the New York state regulator said." 

What -- do you mean there's something wrong with using personnel paid by your not-for-profit entity to steer business to your for-profit activities?  Somebody better tell the Clintons.

Meanwhile, no word on whether the New York DFS or any other regulator is investigating the Clinton Foundation for any such conduct.  Of course, with the latest revelations, you don't really need to do any actual investigating.  You could just read the now-famous 2011 Doug Band memo to lawyers at Simpson Thacher, helpfully available at the Washington Post website here.  In the memo, Band identifies himself as "the primary fundraiser for the Foundation for the past 11 years."  During the same period, Band also worked diligently on behalf of the for-profit activities of what we now refer to as Bill Clinton, Inc.  From the memo:

[W]e have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities -- including speeches, books, and advisory service engagements.  In that context, we have in effect served as agents, lawyers, managers, and implementers to secure speaking, business and advisory service deals. . . .   [W]e have personally helped to secure [more than $50 million in for-profit activity] for President Clinton to date.

Band was well-paid for his fundraising for the Foundation during this time period.  And how much was Band paid by Bubba to bring in the $50 mil?  Answer: nada:

Neither Justin nor I are separately compensated for these [for-profit] activities [on behalf of Bill Clinton].

But don't worry, the fundraising on behalf of Bill was completely "[i]ndependent of our fundraising and decision-making activities on behalf of the Foundation."  Sure, Doug.  You worked day and night to bring in $50 mil of paid work for Bill and didn't get a dollar from it for yourself.  Any chance I could get you to work for me on those terms?

(2) On Friday we learned that the FBI has reopened its criminal investigation into matters related to Clinton emails.  Madame Hillary promptly took to the microphones to demand that the Bureau "release all the information it has" about her private email server.  From Fox News on Friday:

"We’ve heard these rumors, we don’t know what to believe," Clinton told reporters during a brief news conference in Iowa Friday evening. "And I’m sure there will be even more rumors. That’s why it is incumbent upon the FBI to tell us what they’re talking about."

Good diversion, Hillary.  But the problem is, we know that the FBI is duty-bound not to disclose what it knows in an ongoing investigation.  So, your demand was fake.  On the other hand, there is someone who works for you and who knows what is on Huma's computer, and on Anthony's, and who is not subject to the FBI's duty to keep its ongoing investigations confidential.  That person is -- Huma!  So, Hillary, when will we see you publicly instructing Huma to tell us everything she knows about what is on her or Anthony's computers?  I'm not holding my breath waiting for this.      

What Passes For Sophisticated Thinking Among Progressives

Somewhere along the line, the Republicans got the nickname of "the stupid party" -- and this election cycle, they've been working overtime to prove the label true.  But how about Democrats and progressives?  In their own minds, they are geniuses -- nuanced and sophisticated thinkers.  Is there anything to their self-image?

Actually, the more you look at the proposals of the progressive "deep thinkers," at least in the arena of domestic policy, the more you realize that all of the proposals amount to the exact same thing:  We just need to spend some more of the infinite free government money and shortly we will have fixed all human problems and eliminated all down side risk of life.  Of course in the programs we have enacted so far there are a few problems and glitches, but Democrats and Republicans just need to work together to "fix" the problems, all of which "fixes" entail no more than the costless expenditure of a bit more of the infinite free money.  Meanwhile the evil Republicans have been blocking the "fixes," undoubtedly out of a twisted desire to see old people and babies die.  Or, to put it slightly differently, just give us one more chance and this time we are going to make socialism work.  Really!  

So, is this actually any less stupid than anything that Donald Trump has come out with?  You be the judge!  

There's a limitless supply of examples to choose from, but let's consider just a couple of very recent ones from major news sources.  In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal we have an op-ed by one Alan Blinder titled "It's Not the Economy, Stupid.  It's the Political Gridlock."    You know who Blinder is -- Senior Professor of Economics at Princeton, member of Clinton administration including member of the CEA, economic advisor to Gore and Kerry campaigns, and, of course, 70s-era economics Ph.D. from MIT.  That last qualification really tells you all you need to know -- he's from the same 70s MIT groupthink as Krugman, Blanchard, Rogoff, et al.  This is a true member of the Democrat/progressive genius elite!  So what's his diagnosis of our current ills?  You guessed it -- the major Obama-period legislation (Obamacare and Dodd-Frank) "could stand improvement," but the evil Republicans "seek repeal more than repair," leading to "partisan gridlock":

ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank Act, two landmark pieces of legislation, are prime examples. The former was passed without a single Republican vote; the latter received only a handful. Even Democrats agree that both laws could stand improvement. But Republicans seek repeal more than repair. Partisan gridlock blocks progress—and makes Americans understandably angry.

Obamacare is not a socialist death spiral; it's just a little short of redistributive perfection and can be quickly fixed with few minor "repairs" (i.e., a few hundreds of billions -- or is it trillions? -- of more dollars of the infinite free money).  Sure, Alan.

The New York Times editorial page from yesterday is even more explicit in its delusions.  The unsigned editorial is titled "Taming Affordable Care Act Premiums,"  or, in the online version, "Affordable Care Act Premium Increases Are a Fixable Problem."   In New York Times-world, all human problems are subject to being "fixed" by spending more government money.  Of course, they would never be so crass as to use such explicit words.  Instead, we deal in euphemisms like "strengthening" the act, "helping" families, and applying a new "reinsurance program" -- but you get the idea:

Congress and the next president could further strengthen the health care law by offering subsidies to middle-income families who currently receive little or no help. Lawmakers should also consider applying to the health care exchanges the kind of reinsurance program Congress has used to encourage insurers to participate in Medicare’s Part D prescription drug benefit program. The Affordable Care Act’s flaws are fixable, but only if politicians from both parties work together in good faith.

And there are those evil Republicans again, who refuse to "work together in good faith."  In New York Times-world, anything short of agreement to write an infinite blank check that will make everything perfect is known as "bad faith."  How could anyone be so sinister?

Needless to say, neither in Blinder nor in the New York Times, nor in dozens of other articles of similar nature in progressive media elsewhere, is there any mention of the potential amounts of money they are talking about, nor the slightest consideration that maybe resources are not infinite, nor of the concept that maybe there are trade-offs to be made.  Equally missing is recognition that a supposed insurance program like Obamacare may be subject to adverse selection and an insurance death spiral, meaning that any attempt to solve the problem with money will then require more and more and accelerating amounts of money as time goes on.  How do we deal with that?  They won't say -- or even address the issue.  And how about mention of what else might need to be cut to make way for the blowout of new spending being proposed?  Also missing.  Hey, we're progressives -- which means we believe that all already-in-place government spending programs are sacred and must be allowed to grow on autopilot forever into the future.

Now, one possibility is that these people really are geniuses, and they have thought of these things, but they don't want to trouble their stupid readers with all the complications.  That would mean that they are willing to see the United States suffer a Venezuela-style collapse a few decades out in order to keep their friends and cronies in power in the interim.  The alternative theory is that they are a lot less smart than they think they are.   

Annals Of Fake, Politicized "Science"

If you have never read President Dwight Eisenhower's January 1961 farewell address, you should.   It's not long.  He clearly foresaw the oncoming unchecked expansion of the federal government, and the associated dangers.  The famous passage deals with the risks to science from the new-found gusher of federal grant spending:

A steadily increasing share [of scientific research] is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.  Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. . . .   The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.  

Fast-forward 55 years, and we are deep in the dystopia that Eisenhower foresaw.  In science today, government funding is everything, and control of it empowers orthodoxy enforcement and the banishment of skeptics and dissenters -- the antithesis of science.  Many examples can be cited of science gone completely off the rails through the perverse incentives of government monopoly funding (see, for example, my posts on the government-backed low fat diet, here and here).  But really, nothing can top the hysteria -- underwritten by tens of billions of dollars of annual federal spending -- of the climate change machine.

Readers here are well aware that the scientific house of cards of anthropogenic global warming becomes more unstable with each passing day.  As adverse information continues to pour forth -- from the Climategate emails, to the near-twenty-year unexplained "pause" in world temperature rise, to repeated revelations of alterations of historical temperature records by government functionaries trying to support the failing warming narrative -- nothing slows down the federally-funded juggernaut of political climate activism and fossil fuel restriction.  The most recent body blow to the catastrophic warming narrative was the Research Report from Wallace, et al., reported here last month, showing no statistically significant warming in any major world temperature time series after controlling only for concededly-non-anthropogenic El Nino and La Nina effects.  

So where do our major scientific societies stand on this issue?  If you don't already know, you will be demoralized to learn that, with one notable exception, the principal societies are on record as supporting the official government narrative of dangerous human-caused global warming.  In June 2016, some 31 scientific societies sent a joint letter to Congress, supposedly to "remind [it] of the scientific consensus view of climate change," and to urge further government action to restrict fossil fuel use.  You can follow the link to get the complete list of subscribing societies, and if you do, see if you can spot the big one that is missing.  It's the American Physical Society, the association of physicists!  But, you ask, isn't the so-called "science" of "climate change" a matter specifically of atmospheric physics?  Turns out that the APS commissioned a review of the science of climate change by a panel of its own members in 2014, and the panel's report failed to support the consensus "science."  A battle continues to rage on the issue at the APS (you can read more about it here) but meanwhile, the key fact is that group of people who actually know the subject matter has so many dissenters and skeptics that it hasn't joined the bandwagon.

So who has joined the bandwagon?  Well, as an example, there's the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.  Do they know anything about climate physics?  Probably not much.  But they do know that if you want to study snakes and you want to go where the government money is, you will put something about global warming in your grant proposal.  How about seeking a grant for "the effect of global warming on the range of the lesser eastern tree boa"?  That should work!

Anyway, the issuance of the Wallace, et al., Research Report prompted me to join up with Alan Carlin, an MIT-trained economist and 40-year senior analyst and manager at EPA, to send letters last Friday to each of the 31 unscientific scientific societies demanding to know the alleged scientific basis for their position on climate change in light of the recent findings.  The full text of our letter can be found here.  A few key excerpts:

The June 28 Letter to which you subscribed contains statements strongly implying that there had previously been some sort of empirical validation of a quantitative causal relationship between increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and increasing global average surface temperatures. . . .  However, as noted above, the authors of the [Wallace, et al.] Research Report have been unable to find in any scientific study a rigorous empirical validation of a statistically significant quantitative relationship between rising greenhouse gas concentrations and tropical, contiguous U.S. or global temperatures.  Indeed we can find no paper that actually provides mathematically rigorous empirical proof that the effect of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations on world temperatures is different from zero with statistical significance.  

As you might realize, we are concerned that prestigious scientific societies, including your own, have subscribed to a letter to Members of Congress purporting to convey scientific propositions as having been definitively established, when in fact there has never been a mathematically rigorous empirical validation of the propositions stated, and indeed there now appears to be a definitive scientific invalidation of those propositions. . . .  

In short, if you have mathematically rigorous empirical validation of the hypotheses that underlie your advocacy, kindly provide it. If you do not, kindly say so. 

Joseph D'Aleo (one of the co-authors of the Wallace, et al., Report) has posted the full text of our letter, along with commentary, on his excellent ICECAP website.  Carlin's treatment of the subject can be found at his CarlinEconomics website here.  D'Aleo minces no words in his description of the corruption of the unscientific scientific societies:

The once professional societies continued their slide into unprecedented advocacy in recent years as they boarded the politically-driven grant gravy train and recruited to their memberships a whole generation of eco fanatics indoctrinated in our failing schools at all levels. Their advocacy with congress is not at all scientific. 

What To Do About The Obamacare Death Spiral?

It was back in January 2015 that I first wrote about the phenomenon of the socialist death spiral.  (Not that I was the first person ever to notice this phenomenon.)  The basic idea is that, in a private property/free exchange system (aka "capitalism"), people apply their ingenuity to get ahead, leading to constantly increasing productivity, and every year the economy grows some; but in a world of government giveaways based on demonstrated need, many people apply their ingenuity to appear needy, thus productivity starts to decline, and then faster, and you enter an economic death spiral.  The Soviet Union is the classic case.  Today it's happening in Venezuela.

And it doesn't have to be the whole economy.  The New York City Housing Authority sits on some of the most valuable real estate in the world.  But with socialist-model public ownership, the rents fail to cover operating expenses, there is nothing for property taxes, capital needs go unmet, and the buildings deteriorate.  The need for subsidies goes up every year, already in many cases $50,000 and even $100,000 annually per family, even as the residents live out their lives in deepening poverty.  Higher and higher costs pay for a situation that only gets worse.  The socialist death spiral!

And then, my friends, there is Obamacare.  "To each according to his needs."  Don't worry, this time it's going to work!  We'll "bend the cost curve" downward!  (By what hubris do government functionaries think that they have an ability to do such a thing?)  In this post back in April I reported on new so-called "short term plans" by which healthy people were avoiding all the Obamacare mandates and leaving the federal exchanges to deal with the sickest of the sick.  Why wouldn't they?  And of course the most recent news is that the next round of premium increases will be well into the double digits in most places -- for that small number of suckers who actually pay the full freight.  The New York Times has a roundup last month that projects average increases of 11% even for people who are "savvy" shoppers and make optimal changes to get the cheapest plans.  Of course, that doesn't apply if you are "needy" and can qualify for a government subsidy: 

Most current customers will be insulated from the full increases. To help people afford insurance, the law offers sliding-scale subsidies to people earning less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level, which at $11,880 for a single person means just under $48,000 to qualify.

These things move slowly, but all the classic trappings of an incipient death spiral are here.

So, to get to the $64,000 question, what do our presidential candidates plan to do about this?  Hillary has some so-called "detailed proposals."  Actually, they all consist of exactly the same thing:  transfer more and yet more of the taxpayer money to paper over the problem and pretend that this is all free.  Here is her site on the issue.  It's too long to put it all here, but here are the first five:

• Defend and expand the Affordable Care Act, which covers 20 million people. Hillary will stand up to Republican-led attacks on this landmark law—and build on its success to bring the promise of affordable health care to more people and make a “public option” possible. She will also support letting people over 55 years old buy into Medicare.
• Bring down out-of-pocket costs like copays and deductibles. American families are being squeezed by rising out-of-pocket health care costs. Hillary believes that workers should share in slower growth of national health care spending through lower costs.
• Reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Prescription drug spending accelerated from 2.5 percent in 2013 to 12.6 percent in 2014. It’s no wonder that almost three-quarters of Americans believe prescription drug costs are unreasonable. Hillary believes we need to demand lower drug costs for hardworking families and seniors. Read more here. 
• Protect consumers from unjustified prescription drug price increases from companies that market long-standing, life-saving treatments and face little or no competition. Hillary’s plan includes new enforcement tools that make drug alternatives available and increase competition, broaden emergency access to high-quality treatments from developed countries with strong safety standards, and hold drug companies accountable for unjustified price increases with new penalties. Read more here.
• Fight for health insurance for the lowest-income Americans in every state by incentivizing states to expand Medicaid—and make enrollment through Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act easier.

Don't worry, it's all infinite free money.  Of course she gives no idea of how much it will cost, or whether that is of any concern. 

So, instead of Obamacare being in a death spiral, we'll put the burden on the general taxpayer, and put the whole government in a death spiral.  It will just move more slowly and last longer. 

Donald Trump?  He says he will "repeal and replace" Obamacare.  I haven't found any specifics, but hey, it's a start.