G’wan, throw me in dat briar patch!

Jonathan Capehart (Washington Post):

Progressives and other peeved supporters of President Obama who aren’t happy with the all-cuts-no-revenue deal to raise the debt ceiling need to see it as the beginning of a very long (and necessary) process to get the nation’s fiscal house in order.  But it also means that the president will have to be more aggressive in his use of presidential power.  In short, I want him to use everything the bully pulpit has to offer to get what he wants, including shutting down the government if he must.  After what we just went through to avert economic catastrophe, padlocking Washington ain’t no big thing.

Walter Russell Mead:

For large numbers of voters the professional classes who staff the bureaucracies, foundations and policy institutes in and around government are themselves a special interest.  It is not that evil plutocrats control innocent bureaucrats; many voters believe that the progressive administrative class is a social order that has its own special interests...

The problem goes even deeper than hostility toward perceived featherbedding and life tenure for government workers.  The professionals and administrators who make up the progressive state are seen as a hostile power with an agenda of their own that they seek to impose on the nation.

Only a beltway progressive would think that "padlocking Washington” could serve as an existential threat.

For the rest of us, ehhh... "no big thing.”


Capehart via Insty.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 02:15:00 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 240 words, total size 3 kb.

The sales pitch and the offer

There are benefits. And then there are costs.

And if you what to know the public really wants, you must ask them about both.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 16:44:04 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 30 words, total size 1 kb.

Clipfile - August 3, 2011

Posted by: Old Grouch in Clipfile at 19:34:14 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

Just in case you hadn’t figured it out...

Cato’s Chris Edwards:

Republicans and Democrats have come together on a "historic” budget deal that cuts federal spending by more than $2 trillion over 10 years.  The Washington Post’s lead story calls the cuts "sharp” and "severe.”

However, the budget deal doesn’t cut federal spending at all.

Only the weasels in Washington would call annual increases that reach $191 billion by the 9^th year a "cut.”  They lie, and the DSM helps ’em.


Related:

Cato via Bill Quick.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:08:15 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 92 words, total size 2 kb.

Clipfile - August 2, 2011

Posted by: Old Grouch in Clipfile at 14:53:53 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 34 words, total size 1 kb.

Toward a government of men...

In response to last weekend’s Wall Street Journal article As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Ensnared, a law professor writes:

...You suggest that it is "increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side” of a "balloon[ing]” body of federal criminal law.  What you fail to discuss is the prosecutorial discretion imbedded in our criminal justice system.  Not every violation of criminal law brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities results in an indictment...  I suspect that in each of the cases [cited in the article] the prosecutors had reasons beyond the surface elements of the crimes... for commencing the particular prosecution.  I also suspect that in each of their jurisdictions many more instances of similar conduct were resolved civilly or not pursued at all.

The real question, in my view, isn’t wheher Congress has criminalized innocent behaviour, but whether prosecutors are exercising their discretion properly...

Prof. R. Michael Cassidy
Boston College Law School
Newton, Mass.

Prof. Cassidy writes as if the "many more instances” being "not pursued” is a good thing.  He’s wrong.  Every violation of the law "brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities” that does not lead to prosecution takes us one step closer to a "government of men, not laws,” in which there will be one law for the elite and connected, and another law for the targeted (and the rest of us).   The only barrier:  The good behaviour of men who, after all, are not only lawyers but also politicians.

That Cassidy sees the question of "whether Congress has criminalized innocent behaviour” as less important than whether prosecutorial discretion is being "properly” exercised may stem from confidence that a J.D. (Harvard) "Masonic handshake” will protect him from the "ballooning law + prosecutorial malice” mousetraps that lie in wait for the rest of us.  But circumstances have a way of changing; just ask Martha Stewart.


Related:
Outside reading (HT for some: Instapundit):

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 21:03:32 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 412 words, total size 7 kb.

Taking in each other’s laundry

Walter Russell Mead believes the future of employment lies in "value-added intermediation”:

There is much more room for growth in non-traded services than people think. Last spring Matt Yglesias had an important post that offered a glimpse of the promised land.

In "The Yoga Instructor Economy” Yglesias pointed out that there will be a rising demand for personal services that can’t be outsourced.  Dinners in fancy restaurants are more labor-intensive than burgers at McDonald’s.  Yglesias continues:

Artisanal cheese is more labor-intensive to produce than industrial cheese.  More people will hire interior designers and people will get their kitchens redone more often.  There will be more personal shoppers and more policemen.  People will get fancier haircuts.

That makes it sound like the new economy will be all about frills, but in reality much more serious forces are at work.  Three in particular need to be taken into account: We are developing a surplus of both educated and uneducated labor, making workers relatively cheap; the drastic decline in the prices of computing power and bandwidth has changed our relationship to the world of information; the rise of the two-career family and the growing demands of the professional workplace have created a substantial group of families who are, comparatively speaking, money rich and time poor.
...
Value added intermediation is the rationale for a whole range of services that entrepreneurs will be building in coming years.  You might have a family tech agent that for some reasonable fee reviews and manages your communications life: helping you select the right phone package for your family’s patterns and needs, advising you about major electronic purchases, making sure you get the most out of your equipment and software, serving as your tech back up and troubleshooting.  When something goes wrong you don’t call New Delhi; you call the people down the street.

I’m not sure that Matt Yglesias is the person whose ideas I’d want to bet my future on, and this strikes me as ridiculous for several reasons.

The key assumption (which Mead expands upon) is that our massive decline of manufacturing and the accelerating outsourcing of white collar jobs will still leave behind a sufficient population of "money rich and time poor” "professionals”^[1] to support a projected horde of personal assistants, financial advisors. party planners, and other "intermediators.”  And not only support them, but support them at a close-to-"professional”-level income, so they themselves will find it not only affordable but also desirable to employ other "intermediators.”  (Sort of everyone taking in each other’s laundry, right?)

And Mead goes on to assume a population of well-educated workers who are unwilling, unable, or uninterested in becoming part of the "professions,” and will therefore be ready and eager to work as "intermediators.”  But in the quote above, Mead stumbles over the problem: The current fire sale on otherwise-unemployable educated people cannot last.  Because "intermediators” gotta work cheap (otherwise the "professionals” won’t be able to hire enough of them to support everybody), but if they’re that cheap, how do they pay for their schooling?^[2]  Wow, dilemma!

And just how many "personal trainers,” "private college counselors,” or "relocation advisors” will some barista be able to afford, anyway?


Elsewhere:

Related:
-----

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:49:59 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 590 words, total size 6 kb.

So... Who’s “the party of no” now?

Via:  Instapundit.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 02:02:55 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 9 words, total size 1 kb.

“We could try liberty.”

Jerry Pournelle:

We just spent $9 Trillion we didn’t have, but we will make a $1.1 Trillion cut – over ten years.  Which is to say we will cut $100 Billion a year, having spent $9 Trillion.  The deficit will continue to grow...  Inspectors in the Department of Agriculture will continue to get "cost of living” raises and step increases in their civil service ratings.  Department of Education SWAT teams will get their raises including full health and pensions...  The EPA will continue to impose regulations, the courts will continue to accept lawsuits to harass anyone who intends to open a mine, drill an oil well, or create a business.

The only remedy will be to raise taxes.  We must have shared sacrifices so that the Washington elites can go about business as usual...

In other words, the Dance goes on...

RTWT. 


(Via: Insty)

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 15:50:39 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 146 words, total size 1 kb.

Run for the border!

Bloomberg:

General Electric Co.’s health care unit, the world’s biggest maker of medical imaging machines, is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing.

"A handful” of top managers will move to the Chinese capital and there won’t be any job cuts, said Anne LeGrand, general manager of X-ray for GE Healthcare.

However, the facility’s "65 new engineers and support staff” will be Chinese, as will the "large number” of engineers already hired and in training.

GE CEO (and chairman of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness) Jeff Immelt was unavailable for comment.

Related:

HT:  razorbacker, who wonders whether GE will have to pay taxes in China.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:32:38 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 128 words, total size 3 kb.