Mark Byron

Newt the Red Tory?

Here's an interesting piece from Volokh's David Bernstein declaring Newt as a "Right-wing Progressive." That seems oxymoronic, but not if viewed from the vantage point of the Teddy Roosevelt-style of Progressive from the turn of the 20th century.

And please note that while Progressivism is today associated with the “left,” historical Progressivism encompassed many important figures who would not have been considered such (and wouldn’t have considered themselves such) at the time, most prominently Theodore Roosevelt. What they had in common with their left-leaning compatriots was opposition to laissez-faire, faith in government’s ability to solve and manage social problems, and, with regard to the politicians among them, confidence in their own ability to lead and direct the masses for the latter’s own good.

If I could borrow from Canadian politics of the 20th century, Newt is a lower-case progressive conservative. Prior to getting reunited with the Tea Party-esque Reform/Alliance Party, the main party of the Canadian right was the Progressive Conservatives. The farmer-centric Progressives of Manitoba brought a small-businessman vibe along with distrust of big businesses like railroads and banks; that can lean left (as in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor fusion in Minnesota) or right (in the case of the Canadian PCs, who absorbed the Progressives during WWII).

Newt's not a conservative in the William Buckley mold, standing athwart history hollering "Stop!" Newt's more the ground crew of history, with his semaphore flags out, pointing the plane of history a little to the right.

That's not a bad thing. Sometime, change is good. This blog wasn't possible much over a decade ago, as I come up on that 10 year anniversary in less than a month; true conservatives would shy away from such innovations, but people liking progress will take it on. While both sides have used the Blogosphere and other newer social media, the use of blogs allowed conservatives and libertarians a voice in the 00s that they didn't have elsewhere in print media; the progessive tool of the blog was a conservative force for good.

Thus, you could call Newt PC... the Canadian version.

Edifier du Jour-I Timothy 5:17-18(NIV)

¹⁷ The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. ¹⁸ For Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”

I'm not sure if this is a good passage to be discussing Albert Pujols with, since we weren't dealing with church leaders, but it's the go-to verse in my mind for fair wages.

Pujols is the best all-around hitter in baseball (the Tigers' Miguel Carbrera is a close second, but second nonetheless) and a devout Christian to boot; he just signed one of the largest contracts in baseball history, a 10-year, $250 deal with the Anaheim Angels. Is he doing the Kingdom of God a disservice by accepting that big of a contract and disappointing his fans in St. Louis?

Were he solely in it for the moolah, he'd have likely taken the Miami offer, for a state with zero income tax looks good to a one-percenter; going out to California, where a cash-strapped state government is looking to raise taxes, isn't a good choice for maximizing cash flow. Also, Pujols would have to deal with the profane and mercurial Ozzie Guillen as a boss in Miami, which might prove more taxing than Jerry Brown.

Had Pujols offer to play for a tenth as much, making a "modest" couple of million a year, where would the other $20m go? Into the owner's pocket and partly into Uncle Sam's pocket, for if the owner is less charitable than Pujols, the owner will pay more taxes than Pujols would on a like amount of marginal income.

Pujols has an charity looking after Downs Syndrome kids; that and other charities are likely to get the lion's share of that salery. He can probably do more good with it than the Angel ownership.

People are generally worth their wages; what the person does with those wages is between him and God, but the wage is usually what the market feels is a fair price for the worker's services. Playing Monday-morning QB with salaries is more an exercise in envy than in seeking fairness.

Edifier du Jour: Luke 1:34-38(NIV)

³⁴ “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

³⁵ The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶ Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. ³⁷ For no word from God will ever fail.”

³⁸ “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

The Virgin Birth hasn't been a hangup of mine, but I think it was that God is in the miracle business from the get-go. If we take at face value God creating the universe from scratch, He can tweak the normal bioloigical laws to create a child from scratch as well.

God can make natural long-shots happen, like Elizabeth's baby, but he can also do more direct miracles. That doesn't sit well with naturalists, but we're not in a closed system.

The GOP Death Cage

Going past the early going, who would hold up the conservative end of the spectrum in the primaries? If we're boiling down to a Mitt-Newt race with Ron Paul getting his 10-15%, is there room for a conservative to get the non-Paul vote.

Conservative activists seem less than thrilled with Gingrich or Romney, but the alternatives are split four ways between Paul, Perry, Bachmann and Santorum. Perry would seem to have the best shot to emerge of the last three, since Santorum isn't quite as conservative as the Tea Party would like on economics and Bachmann will have trouble showing leadership skills from a House outsider position.

Messy races always seem like they're heading to a brokered convention, but we could well see a Gingrich-Romney-Paul-Perry brawl with no one getting more than 35%. Or, if none of the Perry-Bachmann-Santorum trio get out of SC alive, we could have Paul fighting above his weight as a non-Mitt, non-Newt for Tea Partiers.

 

Return of the SOBs

Here's a thoughtful yet disturbing line from Charles Krauthammer over the current Egyptian dilemma-

The military is the only guarantor of a democratic system in the future, the same way that in Turkey the military for 50 years after the Ataturk revolution in the early ’20s guaranteed a secular, open society. If the military is gone, as Obama had urged — and it’s a good thing the military didn’t listen to him — then what you are going to get is the rule of the Islamists. If you add up the vote, [they have] over 60 percent of the vote. They can essentially… write a constitution that could be extremely repressive….

The problem is the transition has to be over time. We saw the French Revolution, the Russian, and Iranian. The liberals go out in the street and start it, and then it’s the ideologues — organized like the Islamists or communists (in Russia) — who seize power. So you want the military as a stabilizing influence. And we have to hope that it allows the evolutionary process over time….

A democracy is a place where you have a second election. And the question is: Will Egypt have a second election or not? I think the military is likely to ensure a second. I’m not sure Islamists would.

That last paragraph has some salience when you look south to the rest of Africa for evidence. The anti-colonial leaders would win the first election, then proceed to set up a one-party state, with the Big Man ruling for a generation before leaving either feet first or with the mobs swarming the tarmac as he flies off to the Riviera or Saudi Arabia. "One man, one vote, one time" was the old saw for that dynamic.

In the US, we have a constitution as the backstop for government misdeeds. However, other countries don't have that rule-of-law mentality and some other vehicle needs to keep government in check. In many countries, the military serves as that backstop, stepping in  when the system becomes dysfunctional or steps over a line that cannot be crossed. Pakistan comes to mind, as does Turkey, as Krauthammer mentioned.

The Arab world seems to have a string of Big Men, either generals or monarchs, that keep political Islam at bay or (in the case of the Saudis) bring the Islamists into the tent. That offends the senses of a Western liberal (in this case, Anglosphere conservatives are usually liberals) that they deserve better than a dictatorship.

If the alternatives are a slightly malevolent dictatorship or a very malevolent Islamist democracy, are we in the position to push democracy under the bus? Given that a lot of the Founding Fathers were not thrilled with direct democracy, even the US has its safeguards in place.

Edifier du Jour: Luke 1:26-31(NIV)

²⁶ In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷ to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.

This was the fairly predictable verse for last Sunday's sermon as we move into Advent (evangelicals aren't big on the church calender, but we do do Advent), but the take on it was a bit different. Verse 30 was the focal point, where Mary was told to not be afraid.

If you track this through the OT, just about every time an angel shows up, they give the human they're talking to a verbal chill-pill. Don't be afraid, don't panic, God's got your back.

If I can borrow from Little Enos from Smokey and the Bandit, "Mary, you're about to have your evening ruined for you." She's about have a kid out of wedlock, with all the cultural pitfalls that that entails; think of what a Palestinian Planned Parenthood nurse would be pitching to her at that point. But this angel is telling her to not be afraid, that the child to be born is more than worth the grief.

What we have to do for God is less momentous and less dicey than what Mary went through. God has our back as well, and He is at a place where He can multitask and not dilute His power. Our Hitchhikers Guide has "Don't Panic" written all through it rather than just on the cover, and it comes with 24/7 OwnStar assistance from the Holy Spirit.

Monday Night Meanders

Tariq Aziz... the nominal Christian foreign minister for Saddam during the first Gulf war, is slated to be executed.

Aziz was sentenced to death in October 2010 by the Iraqi High Tribunal for his role in eliminating religious parties during Hussein's regime.

Unless they were eliminated by shoving the members into a mass grave, that doesn't quite sound like a capital offense. There are probably other things he might have had a hand in during Saddam's rule that are worth a trip to Ol' Sparky, but he seems to have been overcharged here.

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Gary Johnson wants more attention, so he's toying with a run as a capital-L Libertarian.

I don't recall him being quite the small-government guy as NM governor, making a name more on wanting to decriminalize pot, so he seems a poor fit for the Libertarians unless they want to play up the civil-liberties side of the equation. Jesse Ventura, who last I check was headed for Mexico after a run-in with the TSA, is higher on their list, and he wasn't exactly the second coming of Ron Paul when governor. The Libertarians might be looking for name recognition more than ideological purity this go-round.

Johnson would hold them to their traditional half-percent or less of the vote, but Ventura would have a shot at replicating his one governor run; Obama would play Skip Humphrey well, while Mitt Romney might serve as a good Norm Coleman. Ventura could run to Romney's right on health care like he did with Coleman on taxes, especially if he were running as a Libertarian.

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The NHL gets four conferences. The big question from a Michigan perspective is whether Detroit will get into the inland East conference with Toronto, Montreal and Pittsburgh or whether they'll stay in their current Central time-zone locale. According to this from USA Today, they are in the Central, an eight-team set up. That would be an improvement than having to do a lot of west-coast trips.

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We've got an early candidate for your evacuation of the solar system. Kepler 22b, about 600 light years away and with an expected temperature of 72 degrees. No life found as of yet, but it's in an orbit that could well be habitable.

Islamic Democrats?

Are we looking to go back to the Cold War era policy of backing pro-US tyrants? I hope not, but that seems to be the logical extension of folks wondering who lost Egypt.

The early returns have about a 60% vote for Islamic-centric parties, with the semi-moderate Islamic Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party getting 37% and a more hard-core Nour party getting 24%. That could lead to, depending on whether F&J looks for secular allies or not, something akin to Iran's bounded democracy.

However, could we also see the F&J turn into, if I can borrow from European politics, Islamic Democrats, analoging from the Christian Democratic parties that litter the mainland European center-right. One can only hope that can happen, for if we have countries that are majority anti-western Islamic, geopolitics gets very strained very quickly.

I don't think there is a lot that the US could have done to reverse this result. Given that the were no solid political movements to back here, the Brotherhood filled that vacuum. The more secular groups didn't have the social services network of the Brotherhood to give them street cred.

Stateside, liberals might not like the Salvation Army for their old-school stance on sexuality, but there aren't too many secular alternatives to the more evangelically-inclined soup kitchens and homeless shelters. The same applies somewhat well in Egypt, where the schools and hospitals that the IB have set up gave them a big heads-up. It would have taken decades of effort for secular outsiders have set up a parallel network, even if the Mubarak regime would have allowed such a fifth column to be created.

The only good alternative to having some Islamic-flavored presence in the governments of places like Tunisia and Egypt is to have the old secular strong-men still in charge. That smacks a bit too much of the "he's an SOB, but he's our SOB" strategy we saw in the Cold War; in a way, Mubarak was a throwback to that era, where he and his predecessor Anwar Sadat opted to cast their lot with the US in the Cold War after first being in the Soviet sphere until the early 70s.

We might get some new Irans, but we might get some Islamic Democratic parties. It's worth taking a stab and seeing if we can see some sort of Islamic equivalent of "Judeo-Christian values" in Arab countries.

Monday Moanin'

Here's one to warm a Occupier's heart-call it Tokyo Drift..into the Railing

A luxury sports car outing in Japan has ended in what may be one of the most expensive car crashes in history.

Eight Ferraris, three Mercedes-Benzes, a Lamborghini and two other vehicles were involved in the pile-up in the southern prefecture of Yamaguchi.

...

Police say they believe the accident, which took place on Sunday, happened when the driver of one of the Ferraris tried to change lanes and hit the crash barrier.

Envy isn't a pretty thing.

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Speaking of Things Eurocrats Like, they want to double-down on the Eurozone-

The statement from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel came after they held crisis talks in Paris.

They said eurozone states should face greater checks on their budgets and face sanctions for running up deficits.

Mr Sarkozy said steps had to be taken to ensure that what had happened in Europe "must never happen again".

The Euro has been an accident waiting to happen, with toothless rules to keep deficit spending in line. Adding teeth to them will further centralize power in Brussels, which isn't a good answer; the better answer would be to punt on the Euro experiment, but sending good money in after bad is the name of the game for folks too wedded to the system to pull the plug.

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Speaking of pulling the plug, this was an interesting piece in the NYT on sleeping pills that have the inverse effect of snapping people out of vegetative states temporarily. That's not the first counter-intuitive drug application, as stimulants are often used on ADD kids to calm them down.

The name of Terri Schiavo wasn't mentioned once in the piece, but the topic of prematurely pulling the plug was broached, as was the cost of supporting such folks when they become a "drain on society." It's cheaper to pull the plug, and a cost-obsessed medical system might increasingly push to get such folks out of the way

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The Donald's hosting a GOP debate and is getting into an exchange of urinary products with Ron Paul. I don't have a dog in that fight; they can treat each other like fire hydrants if they want.

Trump wouldn't be my first choice to host a GOP debate, since Trump is more of a center-left nativist. However, he might ask some interesting questions, more so than your stock Washington reporter.

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LSU-Alabama after all. Alabama nudged out Oklahoma State for the #2 slot; OSU not being OU might have cost them a shot at the title, for Alabama's cache from Bear Bryant on could well have made a difference.

We need an Occupy BCS. You have Boise State and Kansas State at 7 and 8 bypassed for 11 and 13th ranked Virginia Tech and Michigan. It's an economic decision for the bowls, as the more traditional VT and UofM programs will bring more alums and more eyeballs than KSU or BSU will. As a Michigander, I'm not too upset, but it makes the point clear that big-time college football is a business by elites for elites and not a meritocracy.

THe big downside is when good small-conference teams get snubbed is that they go to far lesser bowls; BSU gets the Las Vegas Bowl for it's 7th ranked effort, since there is no way in the current system to get a non-AQ school match up at its proper weight if they fall short of catching the BCS eyes. Kansas State, with its Big 12 ties, gets a very nice Cotton Bowl match with Arkansas.

Edifier du Jour: Galatians 3:26:29(NIV)

²⁶ So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, ²⁷ for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

It's time to bring back my morning Edifier, as much as to spruce up my personal walk as anything.

This is a bit of a classic to me, one that shoots any us-versus-them divisions off at the pass. The easy story in the news was of the Free Will Baptist church in KY where a small bloc blocked interracial couples before having a larger voting majority overrule the smaller vote. Normally, church folks are much less racist than more secular folks, but not always.

The other applications brings me to a post by Bill over at the Thinklings. While the Occupiers demonize the rich 1% and the right demonizes the 15% or so who cast themselves as the 99%, "we are the 100%" who are sinners who need Jesus.

12%+88% adds up to 1, as does 1%+99%. Any division gets added back together by God, who has three parts Himself which add up to 1 as well. Every beliver is part of the Kingdom, even if they don't fit the paradigm of the hour.

Nein, Nein, Nein..... and Nein.

Herman Cain is hanging it up. He's "suspended" his campaign but did not admit to any wrongdoings that he has been accused of by various women. Usually, candidates will initially suspend their campaign in order to still be able to get donations and to otherwise wind down their offices and what-not.

Cain is in a tough spot, for he is hard-pressed to prove himself right. You can't prove a negative, and he has do prove four negatives of not having three harassment claims and an affair. Even with some of the accusers having checkered pasts, that's a lot of goodwill that people have to extend to Cain for him to continue.

Could he have platonicly given his alleged mistress money without his wife knowing it? Yes, but that seems, when coupled with the other charges on the table, rather unlikely.

The acknowledging of giving money to the alleged mistress seems to be the straw that broke the back of the campaign. It's possible to have that be true and honorable, but the preponderance of the evidence points to either something wrong or something very naive in Mr. Cain. If he is honest about everything so far, he might be too trusting a soul to be trusted with the White House and the various con-artists domestic and foreign a President Cain would have to deal with.

The irony is that a guy on his third marriage is the beneficiary of Cain's meltdown. Newt can't be blackmailed out the race since his baggage is a decade old and on the table.

Graceful Policy

Here's an except from a Thomas Sowell National Review piece critiquing Newt's "humane" treatment of veteran illegals-

Let’s go back to square one. The purpose of American immigration laws and policies is not to be either humane or inhumane to illegal immigrants. The purpose of immigration laws and policies is to serve the national interest of this country.

Yes, but it is in the national interest to be humane. A policy of "Eat da slow ones" might be effective in reducing immigration, but it does not help create a more godly society.

The same could be said of the waterboarding debate. Can we extract a bit more data via such low-level-torture (or whatever pseudonym you want to replace the t-word with)? Yes, but it badly flunks the Golden Rule, which applies to even jihadis.

Jon Huntsmann is my co-least favorite of the GOP pack (he might edge Ron Paul by a smidge), but he was right to point out the effects of that policy in the SC debate last month

This country has values. We have a name brand in the world. I've lived overseas four times. I've been an ambassador for my country three times. I've lived overseas and done business.

We diminish our standing in the world and the values that we project which include liberty, democracy, human rights, and open markets when we torture. We should not torture. Waterboarding is torture. We dilute ourselves down like a whole lot of other countries. And we lose that ability to project values that a lot of people in corners of this world are still relying on the United States to stand up for them.

I'm not going to agree with Huntsmann on many points of contention between the Republicans, but I'm with him here. Leave it to a lukewarm Mormon to school the field on the US's moral standing.

Good News Indeed

God has our back. He may occasionally be judged to be stingy with the help in the here-and-now, but He has the big picture covered.

That's what Jesus came for, to carry us into Heaven with him, riding in on His coattiles of blood on the cross.

That's a different message than the world gives, where a vague sense of being a good person punches your eternal ticket. However, that school of thought never gets a final answer, since it doesn't have a passing grade listed.

Jesus is the passing grade. That's what we have to be thankful for this season.

Thursday Night Musings

We have another person below the Pauldoza line-David Stern-

While it's true that before the tentative agreement, hardly anyone on Twitter had his back, it was still true even that euphoric Saturday when the tentative deal was announced. That day positive Tweets about the commissioner climbed just three percent, from a measly eight to an almost-as-measly 11.

Lucky for Stern, this is not a democracy, and he's not up for reelection, because those numbers are miserable.

Hey, Rick Santorum would give his back teeth for 11% right now;-).

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Speaking of Pauldoza lines, Newt has four times it in a Rassumssen national poll; 38 Newt, 17 Romney, with Cain and Paul tied at 8. No one else breaks 5%.

Yours truly, October 28-

• Newt is slowly gaining traction. He's just under the Pauldoza line (11%-10%) and could be a lot of caucus goers' second choice; expect him to do better in delegate count than in popular vote, as 15% is the cutoff for getting delegates if memory serves, and he could be a landing spot for less-popular candidate's fans.
• If Newt does break pass the Pauldoza line in Iowa and comes in third, he's in position to walk away with it all if one of the two leaders (most likely Cain) melts down.

This was pre-harassment-and-affairs, but Cain's meltdown has opened the door wide open for Newt.

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The Norwegian political murderer has been deemed insane. He saw himself as something of an anti-jihadi jihadi; is he any crazier than the terrorists he fears?

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Hockey had three enforcers do themselves in over the summer and soccer just lost Welch national team manager Gary Speed to suicide. Soccer is now going through some of the mental health double-checking that hockey is going through. Macho cultures aren't good places to admit to emotional and mental problems.

Egypt's National Brotherhood Week

Excuse the Tom Lehrer earwig, but seeing coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood brought back memories of National Brotherhood Week. The MB is slated to be at least the plurality winner in the parliamentary elections, with polls pointing to a majority between the somewhat more moderate MB and the more hard-core Salafist faction.

How that plays out post-election is a good question. Hamas is an offshoot of that movement, so that is not very encouraging for Egypt-Israel relations.The MB has a track-record of delivering social services like Hamas; however, Hamas combines a Salvation Army-style ministry to the poor with a jihadi-army to fight Israelis.

The hope is that their Egyptian brothers will be a bit more moderate, especially when the rest of the world has more at stake. Having a relative backwater area like Gaza being under bad management creates less of a problem than when the Brotherhood has control of the Pyramids and the Suez Canal. The former brings western tourists to mull over the false deities of that era; neither the visiting infidels nor the infidel theology of cat and sun gods will sit well with MB.

The Suez Canal will be a different kind of issue. A militant Egyptian government could throw a monkey wrench into the Asian and European economies by making cargo ships go the long way around the Cape of Good Hope. This would be less of an issue for the US, who has more of a straight shot to both of those markets; the disruption would make US goods more competitive, but the overall negative effect of a Suez closure would be bad for the developed-world economy.

However, those fears will be factored into the actions of the MB. If they want to stay in power, they have to deliver the goods. Civilized relations with the western world will keep tolls from the canal coming and possible investment dollars for people wanting to be a part of liberalizing the Arab world. Whether the Arab world wants to be liberalized is a good question.

The best-case scenario is for the MB to be akin to the Islamic-leaning government in Turkey; the downside there is the Turks are becoming more anti-Western in the recent past, so Turkey might not be a great role model. How the Copts would fare in that setting is a good question, since the small Orthodox remnant in Turkey is ill-treated.

The worse-case scenario is that the MB will act more like Hamas and isolate the country from all but Muslims and useful dhimmis from overseas. One future path would have the MB move to a Iranian-style moderated democracy, where secular and non-Muslin thought is proscribed and only MB-authorized candidates can run. That could easily happen.

What could be more dangerous in the long haul is if the MB were to keep winning elections fair and square and yet be toxic to the kind of human rights we're used to in the US; laying the dhimmi status hard on the Copts is a real prospect, which would lead to a refugee crisis with the Copts heading to the US and other countries willing to help.

King Canute and the Tide

This isn't quite right; we have an ESPN piece where a die-hard Sooner fan is rooting for Oklahoma State to win their match this weekend in order to prevent a Alabama-LSU rematch. In that case, it's not as sacreligious since OU-OSU is more like Michigan-Michigan State to a Maize and Blue junkie; the real blood rivalry for OU is with Texas (and Nebraska back in the day) not the cross-state rival they beat four out of five for a century, while a Michigan fan lives to beat THE OSU and is only mildly annoyed that MSU has their number at the moment.

Could a Michigan fan root for MSU if a trip to the title game were on the line? Yes.

However, the last time we had this scenario play out was in 2006, when Michigan and Ohio State went into their matchup 2 and 1, both unbeaten, and OSU won a close game.  Florida snuck past Michigan to claim the 2 spot, largely on the sentiment that they didn't want a Michigan-OSU rematch.

Back then, Michigan was Alabama, the #2 team whose only blemish was a tight loss to #1. Florida did have the SEC title in their defense and a young Tim Tebow as a Wildcat specialist freshman; one loss SEC champs are generally going to trump anyone elses X-and-1s.

However, Oklahoma State isn't Florida. They have a solid Big 12 schedule rather than Alabama's brutal SEC slate with a win over a JoePa still in charge Penn State to boot.

As much as I don't care for Nick Satan after he left Michigan State for the bayou (then South Beach then Tusks-are-loosah {that's why they have an elephant mascot}), Alabama is the second-best team this year.

Failing to Plan is Planning to Succeed... as a Country

When I learned economics in the Carter years, there were three classic inputs; land, labor and capital. When I started teaching economics in the Dubya years, they had added a fourth- entrepreneurship. That's the ability to put the other three sets together in creative and productive ways.

Entrepreneurship is generally lacking in governments, for there is little reward for creativity as a government staffer. Private businesses have rewards for creativity in profit for the business and better wages for the workers if the creativity helps the firm.

This Andy Stern (Service Union boss) piece praising the Chinese political economy got folks on the right rather hot and bothered this morning. Let's drop back ten yards and look at how we got here.

What China has seen in the last 30 years is taking that fourth input and letting it work after having wrung it out of the system for the preceeding half-century. Also, capital was in short supply when no private capital was allowed. When you have a shortage of inputs, the value of adding them is very high at first; adding both foreign capital and foreign and domestic Chinese enterprise has allowed China to have 8-10% growth rates, since they were starting from a very low point.

Is China's secret central planning or just letting loose a healthy dose of capital and enterprise? Stern argued for the former, setting things up with this quote from Intel founder Andy Grove-

As Andy Grove so presciently articulated in the July 1, 2010, issue of Businessweek, the economies of China, Singapore, Germany, Brazil and India have demonstrated "that a plan for job creation must be the number-one objective of state economic policy; and that the government must play a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces of organization necessary to achieve this goal."

After an Occupier-flavored rant at the flaws of modern capitalism, Stern gives us this-

For those of us who love this country and believe America has every asset it needs to remain the No. 1 economic engine of the world, it is troubling that we have no plan—and substitute a demonization of government and worship of the free market at a historical moment that requires a rethinking of both those beliefs.

We're looking at a point in history where our system hit a nasty financial outlier in the mortgage market crunch of the late 00s; free markets don't handle outliers well, for bankrupt firms are worth zero regardless of how deep in the hole they are. A combination of a lack of smart regulation (reigning in the use of ARMs and acid-testing credit default swap formulas before relying on them) and too much bad regulation (encouraging sub-prime loans in minority areas, letting Fannie and Freddie have too much of the mortgage market) coupled with a spike in short-term interest rates created a perfect financial storm that we're recovering from still.

On that level, being a bit skeptical about the markets isn't a bad thing. However, being skeptical about the size of government isn't a bad thing, either. Stern has a point that government gets unfairly bashed by the right; it does have a place in looking after the little guy and keeping folks honest. How big of a place is a fair point of debate, something that Europe is having to deal with in spades right now.

Central planning rarely works well, unless the planners get lucky. Japan in the 60s-80s got lucky, not so much since then. Singapore has had a decent run with a strong central government; Beijing may well be looking at Lee Kwan Yew as a role model for a free-market authoritarian.

We're trying a bit of that in the Obama years. The takeovers of GM and Chrysler helped save some jobs that might have disintegrated had a messier bankruptcy been allowed to occur; you can make the case that the money the US lost on their investment is less than the carnage that would have happened had the markets been left to take their course.

However, we're also seeing some blooper-reel material as well, like the Solyndra debacle, where some well-connected investors made money while Uncle Sam lost his shirt. Creativity is not government's strong suit, nor is predicting what will sell and won't sell in a market economy. A corollary to that is that predicting what industries will deliver the best bang for the investment bunk with regards to job-creation isn't a strong suit of government either.

The US don't plan well, but that's as much a bug as a feature. Stern praises the "technological miracles of Andy Grove, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates." All good liberals (Gates and Jobs surely are/were and Grove seems pointed that way with his quote above) but all private-sector billionaires. It is unlikely that a Carter Administration functionary would have bankrolled Jobs and Woz's garage creations, nor would a Dubya team member look to plow billions into creating a MP3 Walkman or a cell-phone computer. Would Google have been green-lighted by a government staffer?

Government's job in job creation is giving a system where good ideas can thrive; there will be some infrastructure involved, some worker retraining where needed, some pure science R&D and a proper amount of regulation for safety and fairness, but the main driver will be new ideas and new products and services that people need and want (or will want in the future-part of Jobs' genius is thinking a step ahead of the present offerings out to what you would want if it were available). That's largely a private-sector job that government can referee but best not try being a coach or a player.

Most of that innovation happens in new goods, rather than in new services. That's where Stern's SEIU is a bit out of the loop; innovation in services hurts unions more than it helps (think how many cashiers have heen cashiered by the new self-check-out lanes at grocery stores). Government intervention on behalf of workers is one way to mitigatge those changes.

Swapping Deck Chairs on the Euro

Somehow, I have to stifle an inner Ron Paul here on the news of the Fed easing credit terms for European central banks borrowing dollars. That screechy voice is hollering "all that funny money is going to come back to bite us in the butt; they're dollar-swapping deck chairs on a financial Titanic."

The financial markets liked the news; the US markets had a very good Wednesday. However, such moves are mere window dressing unless governments get to the ugly business of balancing their budgets. The British public sector took to the street yesterday, protesting budget cuts, pension cuts/age delays and wage freezes. However, it's tough moves like that that are likely to be needed in order to get governments at a level that is sustainable for the economy to support.

In both Greece and Italy, technocrats are now in charge; in political cultures that are used to having the cabinet ministers being members of the legislature, having non-elected outsiders is abnormal and seemingly undemocratic. It doesn't seem that odd from an American perspective, since the US cabinet is usually about 2/3rd technocrats and 1/3 politicians; the current cabinet has two ex-governors (Sebelius and "Big Sis"), an ex-senator (Hillary) and two-ex-congressman (Panetta and LaHood), with the rest being more technocrats.

However, since the politicians are not in great position to cut programs they campaigned for  not too long ago, cooler heads can sometimes be helpful. They can often lean towards continuing the big-government status-quo rather than more radical downsizing, but consensus is needed in such a major overhaul.

The British government seems to have something of a backbone. PM Cameron seems a bit RINOey by US conservative standards, but he seems to be facing down his critics with some Thatcheresque steel. What's surprising is that he's managing to keep his Liberal Democratic coalition partners on-board through all this.

Cameron gave the vocab lesson of the day, calling the protests of the left a "damp squib." That has a different meaning in US football, where a squib kick is a low, hopping kick that doesn't go far but is hard to return, saved for very late in a half when a long KO return is more of a danger than good field position. In Cameron's use, "wet firecracker" would be the best translation to US English.

You Usally Lose a Shell Game

I've yet to chime in on the Suh taboo-for-two version of Kirk Franklin's Stomp. He's lucky to get just a two-game suspension; had he stepped down with any force, he'd be out even longer.

Suh's appealing the suspension, possibly in order to push it past this weekend's game with New Orleans. However, they're hearing the appeal today and have former Raider great Art Shell as the mediator.

Former Raider offensive line great Art Shell, lest we forget. He and Gene Upshaw made that side of the Raider line one of the best guard-tackle combos ever. Is he going to give this cheeky force of nature much grace here, especially when there is fellow OL solidarity in play?

Suh needs to ratchet things down. He seems to be a neat guy off the field and plays more rough than nasty as a general rule; he did a turkey (Turkey Jones, anyone) of a move on Turkey day and needs to learn from that and go on to be the great player he is becoming rather than be a fine magnet.

The Math of Khan

Here's an interesting story of American assimilation; the Jacksonville Jaguars are about to be sold to Shahid Khan, an Illinois-based auto-parts tycoon. As the name implies, he's of Pakistani descent, having moved to the US to go to U of Illinois; he got an engineering degree and wound up buying the company he was designing parts for. It reminds me a tad of how Bobby Jindal's parents came over from India to go to LSU and saw their son grow up to run the state.

You'd expect a guy with a last name of Khan to be owning a 20/20 cricket team rather than an NFL club, but that's not the case. Khan has become a generous member of the UI community, donating to a lot of college efforts as well as politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Given the current pleasantries between the US and Pakistan, his nationality might set some good-ol-boys off. However, Khan has an American wife and seemingly has gone native, looking to buy the Rams a bit closer to home before doing a Jag snag.