…a few years and a new administration makes in the debt ceiling voting.
The welfare state: goods vs. rights
Carmageddon not what is was cracked up to be
There’s Armageddon, and then there’s Carmageddon.
No, it’s not the time when all your past deeds come back to haunt you in a karmic tsunami. It’s the temporary closing this weekend (to make repairs) of that part of LA Freeway 405 that goes through the Sepulveda Pass.
Why was the event approached with such dread and foreboding? If you know LA, you know the city’s residents love their cars. And if you know 405, you know how incredibly heavy the traffic ordinarily is there.
I’m one of those people who happen to know 405, because I lived in LA for a year and have spent even more time there than that, a great deal of it traveling that exact stretch of that exact freeway. Like much of Los Angeles, it has its own surprising beauty—the pass, that is, not 405 itself. The brown hills dotted with cacti, the vistas of the valleys beyond the pass, the feeder roads that twist through the high surrounding terrain, and the distant mountain ranges snow-capped in winter (easier to see them then, when the air tends to be clearer), are awe-inspiring, if a person takes the time to notice—and time is often taken whether one wishes to or not, because heavy traffic forces a slowdown and/or stasis there with great regularity.
Knowing the freeway as I do, I didn’t think Carmageddon was going to be all that impressive. People adjust if they’re given advance warning. A freeway closing on a weekend means that most people can stay relatively put and avoid that stretch of road. It’s possible to do a great deal in LA and in the San Fernando Valley without going from one to the other, which is what the Sepulveda pass accomplishes. And then there are the surface streets, if one must do it (for example, to go to LAX airport from the Valley—although the Valley has its own busy airport, Burbank).
With fewer people going very far and more people postponing elective trips, it stands to reason that even the surface streets were going to be easier to traverse. And apparently this is exactly what has happened so far:
“It was a breeze,” Coleman said of her 30-minute drive [to LAX].
Speaking of breezes, that was one of the magical things about that particular stretch of 405 in the summer. Magical? you ask. Are you delusional?
No. I’m referring to a moment that occurs when coming from the Valley towards the city through the pass. The San Fernando Valley is notorious for summer heat, a pancake-flat expanse of what used to be desert, housing close to two million people. If a person travels on 405 through the Sepulveda Pass in the summer in a car with challenged air conditioning, as I used to regularly do, and has the windows open, there’s a sharp line of demarcation where the winds from the much cooler Los Angeles Basin meet the baking Valley air, a sudden wall of refreshment that provides instant relief. It’s one of those literal “Ahhh!’ moments in life.
Obama is…
…the man who cried Armageddon.
Heredity…
…is a powerful thing. Case in point, Bette Midler and her daughter:
Robert Reich wonders whether Obama can pull a Bill Clinton before the election of 2012…
…and his answer is: probably not, but maybe so.
It’s sort of humorous to read Reich on the subject. As a former member of Clinton’s administration, he must know how different the two men are in personality and temperament, as well as the fact that it was far easier for Clinton to successfully tack to the middle and be perceived as sincere because he was never perceived as a doctrinaire man of the left by the rank and file voter in the first place.
And yet Reich ignores these two all-important differences. Instead, he implies that Obama’s problem is that he’s had bad luck: he “isn’t as fortunate” as Bill Clinton was, in that the economy hasn’t recovered while Obama’s been in office. Poor, poor Obama.
Reich’s remedy for the situation is that Obama should focus on fostering jobs’ creation. What an amazing and revolutionary idea! And a good one, too. Only problem is that the American public has heard before from Obama that he will do so, and so far it has failed to occur.
Reich may not recall that, over and over during his presidency, Obama has promised to focus (sometimes like a laser) on jobs. Reich may not recall it, but my guess is that the American people do.
How long a memory voters have is always an interesting question with an unclear answer. Reich seems to think they have virtually no memory at all, and that if Obama manages to pull the job fat out of the fire at the very last minute—or even appear to try hard to do so—the American people will consider his dedication to jobs creation impressive, and gratefully re-elect him. I beg to differ. Even if Reich is correct when he says, “Most Americans care far more about jobs and wages than they do about budget deficits and debt ceilings,” why not also conclude that because they care, they’ve been paying rather close attention to Obama’s cavalier attitude towards jobs, and will remain resentful of his empty promises on the subject?
The murder of Leiby Kletzky: parents and the desire to protect
Today I have a piece up at Pajamas Media on the Leiby Kletzky murder. You can comment there, or here if you’d like.
Steve McQueen: tough guy
On the Fourth of July, I posted a short clip from the Steve McQueen movie, “The Great Escape.” It got me thinking about the actor, one of the huge crushes of my youth (and not really limited to my youth, either). So I became curious about his life, and what might have made him the singular personality he was.
His Wiki bio tells us quite a few things. The first is that although McQueen was a good actor, he came by that tough-guy exterior honestly. He came up the hard way.
The second is that it’s not always best when a child is raised by a parent. For McQueen, the best thing that ever happened to him when he was growing up was to be rejected by his alcoholic mother and raised by his great uncle. Unfortunately, she kept asking for him back, and whenever he returned to her, trouble ensued. The next best thing that happened to him when he was young was to have been labeled incorrigible as a result of his stepfather’s petition, and placed in California Junior Boys Republic in Chino, California. The third best thing was that McQueen finally decided to get with the program when he was a Marine.
And the fourth best thing was to have discovered acting; if not for that, he probably would have lived a life of petty crime.
A few interesting factoids about McQueen’s career: he was in one film called “Never Love a Stranger” (1958) and another entitled “Love with the Proper Stranger” (1963). The first had the following improbable plot and casting:
The noir film is about Frankie Kane (Barrymore) who is brought up in a Catholic orphanage. He befriends a Jewish law student named Martin Cabell (McQueen) and becomes romantically involved with Cabell’s sister Julie (Milan). Kane learns later that he is also Jewish, and when told he will be removed from the orphanage and moved to a Jewish home he runs away and turns to a life of crime. Later, after joining a major crime syndicate, he reconnects with Julie, finally deciding to join Martin, now a District Attorney in shutting down the syndicate.
McQueen as a Jewish lawyer?
And then there’s this:
McQueen had an unusual reputation for demanding free items in bulk from studios when agreeing to do a film, such as electric razors, jeans and several other products. It was later found out that McQueen requested these things because he was donating them to the Boy’s Republic reformatory school for displaced youth, where he had spent time during his teen years. McQueen made occasional visits to the school to spend time with the students, often to play pool and to speak with them about his experiences.
And this:
McQueen was conservative in his political views and often backed the Republican Party. He did, however, campaign for Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1964 before voting for Republican Richard Nixon in 1968. He supported the Vietnam War, was one of the few Hollywood stars who refused numerous requests to back Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy…
Somehow it’s not really surprising that McQueen might have been a political conservative.
[ADDENDUM: How could I have written an entire post about Steve McQueen without including any pictures?
Let’s remedy that:
Obama gets mad
This was either an exaggeration of what really happened, a strategically-orchestrated temper tantrum, or the beginning of the breakdown some people have expected from the brittle Obama from the start.
I vote for #2.
The Times—and the White House— tackle the story of his mother’s fight with insurance companies
[My previous post on Obama’s misrepresentations about his mother’s health insurance problems can be found here.]
Perhaps the NY Times decided to cover this story because the author of the Ann Dunham biography is a former writer for the newspaper, who took a leave of absence to write the book. But still, it’s a bit surprising that they do so at all, and that their treatment seems relatively fair.
The White House has not denied the facts. Its basic position is that Obama doesn’t know:
“We have not reviewed the letters or other material on which the author bases her account,” said Nicholas Papas, the spokesman. “The president has told this story based on his recollection of events that took place more than 15 years ago.”
And of course, even if he was wrong, he was right:
Mr. Papas suggested that even if Ms. Scott was correct, Mr. Obama had not mischaracterized the facts because his mother needed her disability insurance payments to cover unreimbursed medical costs.
“As Ms. Scott’s account makes clear, the president’s mother incurred several hundred dollars in monthly uncovered medical expenses that she was relying on insurance to pay,” Mr. Papas said. “She first could not get a response from the insurance company, then was refused coverage. This personal history of the president’s speaks powerfully to the impact of pre-existing condition limits on insurance protection from health care costs.”
Gay marriage and religious freedom
Although gay marriage was approved by the legislature on New York, opponents are vowing to fight on. They propose a state amendment to ban gay marriage, although my sense is that passage would be an uphill battle—especially since there is no referendum process available in New York.
The original legislation contained an important clause protecting (for now) churches from being forced to perform gay marriages if it violates their beliefs. But it lacked protection for any other group or individual that might have a similar problem. The repercussions could have been predicted, and actions such as that of Laura L. Fotusky, who resigned as town clerk of Barker, NY because performing such marriages would violate her religious beliefs, might be followed by similar actions on the part of others facing the same dilemma.
The result will be that religious people with a traditional belief system such as Ms. Fotusky’s will be effectively barred from serving as town clerks in the state of New York, or they will face the possibility of lawsuits or violating their consciences if they do stay in such positions. Would the same be true of caterers and others who specialize in servicing those who are getting married?
The situation for town clerks is clear:
City and town clerks are in an unusual position, because they are government officials. On Long Island, the Nassau County district attorney, Kathleen M. Rice, sent a sternly worded letter to clerks last week, warning that they could be subject to criminal prosecution if they declined to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
“I want to ensure that our local officials appreciate that there will be ramifications in our county for exercising a personal, discriminatory belief, rather than doing their job,” Ms. Rice said Tuesday.
Ms. Rice’s characterization of their attitude as “personal” and “discriminatory” is personal and discriminatory itself, because beliefs founded in a religion that’s been a going concern for two thousand years are more of a group/institutional thing than some personal idiosyncrasy. Plus—at least until the NY legislation was passed less than three weeks ago—the belief that marriage remained the province of man and woman was considered mainstream and nondiscriminatory.
No doubt Ms. Rice, who is a DA, chose her words carefully in order to downplay and/or ignore the real issue here, which is religious freedom, a supposedly protected right. It is the same issue involved in protecting hospital and health care workers who refuse on religious grounds to participate in abortions that run counter to their belief system.
McConnell’s proposal: it’s not kabuki, it’s harakiri
The Wall Street Journal explains Mitch McConnell’s strategy in saying Republicans should let Obama raise the debt limit himself:
Mr. McConnell would then let the President propose three debt-limit increases adding up to $2.5 trillion over the coming months. Senate Republicans (with Majority Leader Harry Reid’s cooperation) would use a convoluted procedure to vote for three resolutions of disapproval on the bills. Mr. Obama could veto the resolutions and 34 Democrats could vote to sustain. The President would get his debt-limit increase, but without Republicans serving as his political wingmen.
The hotter precincts of the blogosphere were calling this a sellout yesterday, though they might want to think before they shout. The debt ceiling is going to be increased one way or another, and the only question has been what if anything Republicans could get in return. If Mr. Obama insists on a tax increase, and Republicans won’t vote for one, then what’s the alternative to Mr. McConnell’s maneuver?
Republicans who say they can use the debt limit to force Democrats to agree to a balanced budget amendment are dreaming. Such an amendment won’t get the two-thirds vote to pass the Senate, but it would give every Democrat running for re-election next year a chance to vote for it and claim to be a fiscal conservative.
Here’s the downside as described by Stephen F. Hayes, and it’s considerable:
The plan isolates House Republicans, it undercuts their (tentative) plan to offer an aggressive debt limit proposal of their own, it turns their principled intransigence from a possible strength to a certain liability, and it virtually ensures that, in the event of default, Republicans ”“ not the White House ”“ will be blamed…
An alternative strategy sounds as though it would have been better, although still fraught with peril:
The chances the White House would have been blamed could well have increased if House Republicans had decided to move forward with their own aggressive proposal ”“ in effect, daring Harry Reid and President Obama to choose to reject it. While this option was discussed at length, there were two main concerns: 1) an aggressive and specific plan puts Republicans once again on the record voting for things that can be easily demagogued by Democrats; and, 2) the opposition to voting to increase the debt limit in the House is strong enough that coming up with a plan that would pass the House and tempt Democrats would have been difficult, if not impossible. Had House Republicans been able to craft such a plan they would have forced a choice on Senate Democrats and the White House: austerity or default. In such a scenario, President Obama, having warned repeatedly about the catastrophic consequences of default, would have had to defend that choice if he refused to accept the House GOP plan. A high-risk strategy, to be sure, but one with at least the possibility of succeeding.
The McConnell plan may be moot, anyway, because it doesn’t have much support from other Republicans:
As one might expect, the House Republican reaction to the McConnell plan was almost uniformly negative. “The rank-and-file were ripping him today,” says one House Republican.
It seems to me that Obama has Congressional Republicans over a barrel. But I can’t say they ever had a lot of great alternatives, although I think the more aggressive approach outlined by Hayes would have been the best open to them. The Wall Street Journal piece describes the impediments to Republican goals quite succinctly:
…[B]ut the truth is that Mr. Obama has more cards to play.
The entitlement state can’t be reformed by one house of Congress in one year against a determined President and Senate held by the other party. It requires more than one election.
So I’m not sure what all those Japanese metaphors are about. A card game metaphor, as in the quote above, seems much more apt.
You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away and know when to run
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealing’s done