The real poll

(Thanks to Instapundit)

The results of the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are a major warning sign for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. On some key issues, the gains that Democrats had made on Republicans in the last couple of years have disappeared, and the GOP has begun to reassert itself. In other policy areas, traditional Democratic leads are diminishing.

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What I'd like to see: The Jerk Poll: which party has bigger jerks?

That's what people react to. When they see Wall Street traders pulling down hundreds of millions -- and then a worldwide financial meltdown reveals most of those jerks literally don't know what they're doing -- then the Democrats gain.

When people see arrogant Democrats passing huge spending bills and planning a huge health care bill -- and literally not knowing what's in the bills -- then the GOP gains.

That's what people react to: who's the bigger jerk.

Why Romney will never be president

His well-intentioned experiment in Massachusetts has flopped. This is too much ammo for opponents.

And, as per the NRO article, let's hope the Republicans don't get rolled in Congress.

Again.

What really needs to happen

In our editorial today, we noted a local couple who actually gave stimulus money back.

Amos and Gloria Wright sent $500 back to President Obama at the White House.

Personally, I think this is what is needed. Tea parties and so forth are interesting. But protests against spending won't have any impact until people demand the government stop spending when it benefits them or one of their causes.

So maybe we can do without some F-22s for awhile. Or Social Security raises needed to be dialed back or frozen.

I love hiking. But if the national parks need to cut back on maintenance or even close, so be it.

The Retirement Home for Widowed Mothers of American War Heroes? Put it on hold.

Let's go back to the tea parties. A lot of them are my age (58) or older. Would they be willing to deal with a freeze on Social Security cost-of-living raises? Or work longer without taking it?

When the tea parties and other protests begin having that effect, then they'll be a force to reckon with. Not before, however.

Gates brouhaha

A shocking admission for a blogger: I wasn't there so I don't know what happened.

One fact sometimes overlooked: Gates needed a cane to get out to squad car. So how dangerous can he be?

So we newspaper people like to take one incident and think we can find the meaning. That's like saying one day can tell you what the climate will be.

So what do we learn from this? Old men can be cranky, Harvard profs can be arrogant, cops can be pushy, people sometimes don't understand each other, it's not a racial paradise, no kidding.

OK, and even presidents blurt out things they later regret.

Important move by Utah senator

Sen. Hatch shows backbone:

A senior Republican senator who sits on the two Senate committees dealing with health care legislation said Wednesday that he is stepping away from the negotiating table, citing concerns about the towering cost of the plans on the table and the lack of bipartisanship

Options

A health care suggestion:

Don't increase government spending and taxes in the midst of a recession and further strangle productivity and kill jobs. Instead, develop incremental, patient-centered reforms that address fundamental problems. Help the low-income uninsured, eliminate fraud and waste in federal health programs, and empower small businesses to expand coverage.

Look on my works

Contemplating Las Vegas, thinking of "Ozymandias." tinyurl.com/VegasBust

Now this is frightening

I thought Joe Pyrah's story on indigent deceased was one of the scariest of the year.

Funeral home director says:

"People want what they want, and think they should get it without paying for it," she said. And if they can't do that?

"Ethically they just walk away from their loved ones and not think twice," Sundberg said. "It's just a change in the human element."

She said a woman came in recently pleading poverty despite owning a home and having an income of nearly $60,000 a year.

The story says it's a nationwide trend.

Have we as a nation become such moochers, such freeloaders, so greedy and needy, that we can't even summon the moxie to take care of these basic responsibilities?

That scares me. Go a few trillion into debt -- that can be paid off. But if we have become just serfs, begging the government for everything, then we're done. Finished. Kaput.

That's what conservatives are really, and rightly, concerned about: that our willingness to assume responsibility is being whittled away by big government.

And note this: It's part of the collapse of values. More and more, we just don't care about anything but our own pleasures. If we can't taste it or touch it, too bad.

Then too we'll be serfs, as long as we're well fed.

On health care overhaul

From a while back:

Utah's senators are being styled as key players in a frenzied Democratic push to fundamentally alter the American health-insurance system.

According to a Washington Post pundit, "Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch may hail from one of the most Republican states in the country, but both men are seen by Democrats as critical to their efforts to sell the bill."

If that's the case, then it might be argued that it's more urgent than ever that Bennett and Hatch use their clout to stop such reforms. Any attempt in Washington to tinker with health insurance right now courts disaster.

Clearly, there are some features of the health care system that should be changed. Bennett in particular has floated some interesting ideas. Republicans are working out their own proposals that, at the proper time, may well be worthy of serious consideration.

One might wonder if today is premature. The nation is listing badly and taking on water as a result of economic strains, so it might be prudent to put aside health care legislation until the ship is secure -- meaning after federal spending is reined in and the issues can be considered calmly and rationally.

Look at the news from Monday, for instance. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of national health care plan put forward by Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. Although President Obama says health-insurance changes would save money, the CBO said the plan would cost at least $1 trillion over the first decade.

Moreover, the scheme would fail on its own terms. One of the reasons Democrats have long pushed the idea is to cover people with no health insurance. But the Kennedy/Dodd plan would still leave 36 million people uninsured.

Thus, the nation would add to its spiraling debt, yet fall short of the main goal.

Democrats have been scrambling for ways to cut costs. But that only means that any final plan will fall even further short of its original goals. Congress is in such disarray that any health-insurance legislation passed this year will likely disappoint everyone.

Consider another key wrinkle: a government-run health-insurance plan that's called a "public plan." The problem is that the government plan would undercut the private insurance industry and conceivably damage or drive it out of business. That's not just GOP rhetoric, either. The CBO estimate of the Kennedy-Dodd bill says it would cause 23 million people to lose their private coverage. Analyses of similar proposals yield similar results.

"A public plan is a non-starter," Hatch said. "They are trying several ways to come up with a public plan without calling it that. I just don't see that as working."

Bennett was also critical: "The sticking point in this entire debate is the demand on the part of the Obama administration that the final product have a government plan as one of the options; and if that happens, I will do everything I can to say no because I am convinced we would end up with only one option that survives.

"Right now, nearly 1.8 million Britons are waiting for hospital or outpatient treatments at any given time. Let's realize that the American voter will never stand for the kind of rationing by delay that seems to have crept into every other government-run health care system."

That's the kind of role Utahns should hope their senators continue to play. Both Bennett and Hatch have been around for awhile and have earned respect in Washington. They're in a position to say "Whoa!"

The danger, however, is that Republicans will get sucked into the debate this summer. Washington has been in chaos since the financial meltdown began last fall. In just months, the inconceivable has become routine on Capitol Hill. For example, a year ago even the most fanatical socialist or paranoid right-winger wouldn't have thought the government would end up running General Motors and Chrysler, but it happened. In this political cyclone, keeping a stable footing is difficult or impossible.

And that's what proponents of national health care appear to be counting on. It was best put by New York Times columnist David Brooks, who recently wrote that Obama wants to lure Republicans and the health care industry into "the final stage, the scrum."

"This is the set of all-night meetings at the end of the Congressional summer session when all the different pieces actually get put together," Brooks wrote.

In the hurly-burly of those sessions, laws can be passed without even being read by the lawmakers, much less understood. (Remember the bailout package?) Before the American people realize it, government might be running health care and telling you what medical procedures you can or can't have.

The longer the debate goes on, the worse the reforms look. No wonder the majority party is in a hurry to pass them. As Hatch has said, among other criticisms of the big push to get this done by August, "Why? What is the rush? What are we trying to hide?"

Should Bennett and Hatch go along? Or should they do everything possible to put health-insurance changes on hold until some sanity returns to Washington?

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_0279c458-1495-520e-afa8-9eeccef4c5af.html

Edit on SB 81

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_ef530bd2-f33b-57f4-a1bc-1a53c568d657.html

It's been about two weeks since a major immigration law went into effect in Utah. So now we can see what SB 81 has actually done.

Depending on which partisans you ask, jackbooted storm troopers are making mass arrests of decent, law-abiding immigrants across the state, or crime is plummeting and business is booming in the wake of deportations.

In truth there has been no major upheaval.

What will happen in the long run? It might help to look at the key parts of the law:

• The law requires a sheriff to make a reasonable effort to determine a jail inmate's citizenship and to consider an illegal immigrant a flight risk. These seem fairly obvious.

• Illegal immigrants can't get a liquor or private club license. But considering the obstacles Utah still places before people who want to serve legal beverages, why would an illegal immigrant want to get into this business?

• The law creates identification documents for U.S. citizens, nationals or legal permanent resident aliens and places time restrictions on documents when immigration status is in question. However, people have shown they are willing and able to forge documents, or to ignore the legal mandates.

• Public employers are required to use the Status Verification System for new employees. With the recession, however, public employers shouldn't be hiring anyone anyway.

• The law also bans public employers from firing a lawful employee while still employing an illegal immigrant. How does a public employer come to hire an illegal immigrant in the first place? Bureaucrats constantly harp on the stringent standards applicants must meet.

• Agencies must verify citizenship before providing federal, state or local public benefits. So if an illegal alien with no money shows up at an emergency room bleeding copiously, the hospital won't stitch up the wounds? Seems unlikely.

• Procedures have been set up for making state and local officers eligible to enforce federal immigration laws. But the great majority of Utah law enforcement agencies claim have they don't have the money, time or manpower to handle an added job. Some apparently have no desire to do this job, and the law can't make them.

• Makes transporting or harboring an illegal alien for financial gain a Class A misdemeanor. It's hard to see that a misdemeanor will deter anyone hardened or desperate enough to smuggle people across the border and into Utah.

In light of all this, SB 81 may not accomplish much. The legal aspects are limited. As for economics, the continuing recession is having a much bigger impact than this state law ever would.

The law doesn't really address the issue of private businesses that, knowingly or not, hire illegal aliens. Nor does it address widespread sympathy for the many people who came here to improve their lives and who have contributed positively to the state.

If the law is unlikely to have a huge impact on the streets or in the job market, it nevertheless is having some effect in the political world.

State Rep. Chris Herrod, R-Provo, has engaged in a running debate with Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank and Mayor Ralph Becker about the impact of illegal immigration on crime, with the Sutherland Institute and other politicians chiming in.

But even this limited slice of the issue has problems. Some observers hope the law would at least allow the authorities to find out how many illegal immigrants there are in jail. That, however, will require "reasonable" efforts by law agencies, and there's no guarantee that will be forthcoming.

Nor is it likely that someone languishing in the slammer will willingly pipe up, "Oh, by the way, I sneaked across the border in 2005. Just thought you'd want to know."

Identifying how many illegals are in custody won't end the questions in any case. Since nobody really knows how many illegal immigrants there are in Utah, it's hard to know whether the number of aliens in jail reflects a disproportionate impact.

Anyway, the number incarcerated only shows suspects who have been apprehended. Maybe illegal immigrants have a tougher time dodging the law or making bail.

Finally, no matter how many illegals are in jail, most illegal aliens cause no trouble. The crime issue is only one a small part of the legal, political and social quandaries attached to this issue.

All in all, the activation of Utah's biggest immigration law in years may have little effect. There's a limit to what a state law can do, and SB 81 may be at that limit.

Say vs. Keynes

The real battle in politics and economics isn't between liberals and conservatives, it's between the theories of Jean-Baptiste Say and those of John Maynard Keynes.

Until Republicans understand this, they're going to keep losing political battles. And the American economy will keep tanking.

The fundamental idea of Say's ideas is that it is production (with its siblings investment and saving) that creates wealth.

Say's Law has been expressed various ways, including that "aggregate supply creates its own aggregate demand." He himself wrote, "... a product is no sooner created than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value. ... (T)he mere circumstance of creation of one product immediately opens a vent for other products."
Consider the automobile. When various mechanics and tinkerers began making horseless carriages, they created first a demand for this revolutionary form of transportation. Then their factories hired workers and bought raw materials and other items — creating wealth.

Of course, as today's auto industry makes extremely clear, production and demand can get out of synch. But according to Say and the dominant stream of classical economics, prosperity is based on production. Indeed, a corollary is that consumption destroys wealth.

The Keynesian view, of course, takes the opposite tack: It claims that consumption and spending are the basis of prosperity.

The current recession could be a fine model to test these theories. It could be argued that an orgy of consumption in the United States eventually ate away at the nation's vast wealth. Meanwhile government policies encouraging loose money and housing undercut saving and fueled an oversupply of houses and autos. Right now, the Keynesian solution of pumping money into the economy looks like a flop.

But it remains irresistible to the media and politicians. Sadly, most Republicans buy into it too.

When the Obama administration opened the money spigot, Republican politicians dove right in. Only a few governors even hesitated. And they were unable to convincingly say why they should balk at accepting money from the government.

That's even true here in Utah, one of the most conservative states. Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert (who is virtually governor while Jon Huntsman Jr. awaits confirmation as ambassador to China) has eagerly accepted the money, and is even thinking of pumping more state money into housing.

But this way lies ruin. If it is spending and consumption that have gotten out of whack, only when the U.S. makes production (and savings and investment) primary will the recovery start.

And until then, Republicans will keep getting hammered politically. After all, If spending and consumption are the mainsprings of the economy, then the more spending the better. After all, if spending is good, voters draw the logical conclusion and back the party that spends most enthusiastically.

So Republicans have to fight back. Not to be irreverent, but they must recite Say's Law when they get up in the morning and when they go to bed all night; it should be on their lips and in their hearts: Supply creates demand.

If the liberal/Democratic mantra is "tax and spend," for Republicans it has to be "save, invest and produce."

That will take guts and political skill, however. Transitioning to a savings and production-based economy, and away from the consumption model, will be painful. Taxes on consumption might have to rise.

Other painful political steps await. They have to come out against government spending, but far more intensely than ever before. This doesn't mean fighting just "pork" or "waste," it means fighting all spending. If the feds want to spend money on a Home for Widowed Mothers of American War Heroes, Republicans in Congress have to vote "no."

Then, if Congress, in its current insanity, passes another bailout, the "red" states have to say "no."

Here in Utah, for instance, we're fighting to keep various kinds of nuclear waste out. If classical economics is right, Republicans ought to be fighting to keep federal cash out too, for it's just as toxic.

Transformation would include such touchy issues as free trade. If the U.S. is going to focus on making things, not just buying them, it will have to have places to sell them. Free trade right now can be a tough sell.

Yet there could be selling points too, if understood correctly. Yes, capital gains and corporate taxes would have to go down. But so should payroll taxes. The important thing, however, is that taxes wouldn't be cut to "put money in pockets." They would be cut to help productivity. From the viewpoint of classical economics, payroll taxes are insane. They penalize people for working, and companies for hiring workers.

Republicans could help ordinary Americans by lowering the tax burden on savings, once a backbone of the American economy, but which now seems as outmoded as typewriters and slide rules. That too can help all Americans -- but Republicans have to sell it: "You don't have to be a Wall Street insider to profit from saving money. Just go down to the bank and open an account. And we will make sure you get to keep the interest it earns."

So it can be done. All that's required is sustained intellectual effort, party discipline, imagination and courage. It should be heartening that Ronald Reagan and the GOP had those qualities once, so it's not impossible Republicans could get them again.

But until they do, the party and the economy are destined to flounder.

The biggest danger

End of this highlights the greatest danger of socialism: the infantilization of the people.

Matheson becomes a player

Jim Matheson could play a key role in health care debate. But what will it be? Will he and other blue dogs just water the bill down enough to get it by?

Or do enough to create real reform?

What if he wins

More on Palin: of course, can she be a competent executive?

Look at FDR. Even admirers should admit his erratic and chaotic style hurt the nation.

Ditto for Clinton and JFK. Chaos in White House hurts.

Palin: guerrilla warfare and Reagan as a thinker

Joe Pyrah makes good points. Why didn't she do a better speech? Doesn't she owe it to people who voter for her?

Is she just a charismatic figure without the backbone to stick to something?

Or is she something different?

GUERRILLA FIGHTING

Here's a hypothesis, offered in the scientific spirit; it may be wrong; but, just as an idea:

If she runs a conventional campaign, she will lose, as a revolutionary army cannot win a conventional war against regular forces.

That's what she found in the Alaska governor's office. She was pinned down, and exposed to air and heavy armor attacks by the media and political establishment.

She has to go guerrilla. She has to attack when the conventional forces least expect it -- July 4th weekend, for instance.

She has, as it were, gone into the hills. She will sally out at times and places of her choosing -- speeches for conservative candidates, perhaps gigs on Fox News or talk radio, writing a book — then retreat before the conventional media can bring all their firepower to bear.

It also may be that her personality, even the many shifts, are suitable for our age. This isn't to give our age any medals. It's just to say that in the age of Twitter and multi-tasking, her style may fit in.

Maybe she just is a flake. But here's the thing: a politician challenging the establishment by definition will look flaky too.

She just connects to people. Nobody can explain it. It isn't fair. But she does.

Of course, that is indeed her weakness. A populist can be blown along by the people. And there's little sign the people won't want bigger government, in the end, if not led well.

RONALD REAGAN

I am not one of those conservatives who fawn over Reagan. I volunteered for Ted Kennedy in '80, so I have no nostalgia for him. No personal tie; I find him cold and odd as a human being.

But I grudgingly acknowledge his accomplishments.

Also, he's an interesting comparison to her. Eureka College, then an acting career. But

1. He had to learn. He changed. He went from FDR liberal to a conservative. He had to think about it. He had to find out about conservatism.

Palin, in contrast, comes to conservatism naturally. So, does she really understand it?

In this case, she is no different from 99 percent of Republicans. They scream about deficit spending -- but take the money. They say Obama spends too much -- but can't say how much.

They don't have the theory. That's why they can't say no, in the end, to almost anything.

Palin has to pick up the knowledge. I'm not sure books are the way in our post-book age. I'm not hailing that, just seeing it.

But she has to talk to a lot of smart people, she has to grasp the ideas, and incorporate them into her life.

2. Reagan got the ideas. I'm not saying he was a modern academic thinker. But he thought about all these ideas. He got to the core. And he understood it.

Plenty of politicians can parrot the conservative slogans in, say, Austin or Provo. But can they keep it up, even in Washington?

Reagan had the intellectual grounding. He gave speeches year after year, he did all those radio talks. It's possible to exaggerate what this means; but it's also possible to miss the significance. Maybe he didn't get the nuances. So what? He got the core.

And, as someone who worked in Hollywood and lived in California, he must have taken the heat. As president, he took the heat?

Can she? Right now, now.

On the other hand, she's just a baby politician. As one pundit pointed out, she could be around for decades. She could change and grow. Or flame out.

On Palin

This noted professor and farmer gets it right:

Yes, she needs to read more, find out more, learn more. But she also knows a lot that the intellectuals don't.

Reagan did read, did learn. More important, he made those ideas fundamental to his life.

More later.

More on Palin

From a real expert: Palin's move sets her up for a comeback.

On this score: Being guv of Alaska earned her no points, anyway.

It's a new era. It's the Twitter Age; the old rules don't hold.

And what good are the establishment Republicans anyway?

Palin by comparison

On Sarah Palin:

As a wordsmith, I must humbly confess that the current president has shown that words must be connected to deeds, and are irrelevant until they do.

So her words have no meaning, until she acts.

If she leads a revived and valid Republican movement, more power to her.

That "I-quit-a-rod" is funny. But in our wired world, that a political leader would skip around a lot restlessly might not be bad; it might even be good. In the era of Twitter, politicians too might jump from idea to idea.

If she's just burned out, well, bully for her for admitting it.

And I give her kudos for not wanting to take a state paycheck if, for any reason, she didn't think she was going to earn it.

This is bipartisan. In the last election, Obama, McCain, Clinton and others picked up their gummit paycheks, had their gummit staffs and perks, and did not work.

Everywhere else they'd be fired.

When, in the meltdown panic, McCain actually went to the Senate, it was as if he hardly knew where the men's room was.

After all that, I have my doubts. She's a genuine populist politician. But does she have the intellectual grounding?

I don't mean she killed time at Harvard, Yale, etc., absorbing the cliches and conventional wisdom.

But if she is just a populist force, she'll just be blown whichever way "the people" are moving.

Both Bushes, and most right-wing politicians, don't really grasp conservative principles. So in the end, they're blown by the biggest wind.

I'm no personal fan of Ronald Reagan. But I have to grudgingly say he understood the core principles of conservativism, and in the main tried to follow them.

Does she? I have my doubts. But her words are nothing, until connected to deeds.

Aiiieeee!!!!

Nooooo! Not more stimulus plans!

Many objections. Many.

Say's law says production drives the economy, not consumption. By one view, consumption just consumes wealth. (That may be a necessary part of the business cycle, but the main point remains.)

Republicans and conservatives must fight a new Obama-ist stimulus, as actually harmful to the economy, not just too much.

Right now, however, even conservatives can't resist the siren's song of government bucks. Until they do, they'll fail.

Delusions

More on the global warming farce.

When the history of our era is written, it won't be about mistakes or clashes of profound ideas. It will be about blindness to facts, and even delusion.

Our modern world lives in a bubble of words, images and ideas, with little connection to fact.

Until, perhaps, it's too late.

The core economic debate

The real battle: Keynes vs. Say:

Mises:

The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the "deficit spending" policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations.

Another commentator:

Say was emphatic that consumption destroys wealth and that only production creates wealth.

Earth to Congress.

This is just plain obvious:

Perhaps Hatch and the other members of the Judiciary Committee could devote more attention to Sotomayor if they canceled a hearing, scheduled for next week, to investigate the College Bowl Champion Series (BCS). The upcoming hearing is a colossal waste of time.

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It ain't 2005 anymore! Or 1995! Or 1965!

The Democrats are planning to destroy our economy and political system (in a way, of course, they are the same thing.)

Hatch, Bennett and Chaffetz have to man the barricades. Full-time. Fighting the climate bill, fighting health nationalization, fighting defeatism -- that's more than enough to keep a lawmaker working 24/7.

Forget the diddly stuff!