Obama and Sowell: who can tell when people have made enough money?

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember Barack Obama, Joe the Plumber, and “spreading the wealth?” It seemed a surprising revelation at the time. But Obama’s income redistributive tendencies have become an old and familiar story, if hardly a ho-hum one.

Now Obama has done it again, giving a speech in his home state of Illinois in which he included the following remarks:

We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.

The original speech as written was to have gone like this:

Now, we’re not doing this to punish these firms or begrudge success that’s fairly earned. We don’t want to stop them from fulfilling their responsibility to help grow our economy.

But apparently, he just couldn’t resist the additional embellishments. Michelle Malkin points out that:

We have a commander-in-chief who presumes to know when you have earned “enough,” who believes that only those who provide what he deems “good” products and services should “keep on making it,” and who has determined that the role of American entrepreneurs is not to pursue their own self-interest, but to fulfill their “core” responsibility as dutiful growers of the collective economy.

That famous mock-up poster of Obama as the creepy socialist Joker never seemed more apt.

None of this should be a surprise; it was all apparent before Obama was elected. Nor are such ideas unusual among that group of people known as intellectuals, of which Obama is a full-fledged member. Here’s another intellectual (and another black man), the conservative economist Thomas Sowell, on the subject. The excerpt is taken from his excellent book Intellectuals and Society [emphasis mine]:

Many intellectuals and their followers have been unduly impressed by the fact that highly educated elites like themselves have far more knowledge per capita—in the sense of special knowledge—than does the population at large. From this it is a short step to considering the educated elites to be superior guides to what should and should not be done in a society. They have often overlooked the crucial fact that the population at large may have vastly more total knowledge—in the mundane sense—than the elites, even if that knowledge is scattered in individually unimpressive fragments among vast numbers of people.

If on one has even one percent of the knowledge currently available, not counting the vast amounts of knowledge yet to be discovered, the imposition from the top down of the notions in favor among elites, convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue, is a formula for disaster.

Sometimes it is economic disaster, which central planning, for example, turned out to be in so many countries around the world during the twentieth century that even most governments run by communists and socialists began replacing such top-down economic planning by freer markets by the end of the century…Other forms of this general notion include judicial activism, urban societies, and other institutional expressions of the belief that social decisions cannot be left to be determined by the actions and values of the less knowledgeable population at large.

One of the most interesting things about the Obama quote under discussion is that, if you look at his scripted speech, he was trying to do his version of supporting what Sowell says—that is, of praising the power of capitalism’s ability to allow the aggregate forces of private enterprise and personal initiative to grow an economy. He knows that’s the American way, and that it is necessary for a president to pay some sort of lip service to it. But he couldn’t help blurting out what for him is the truth—that he doesn’t really believe in it at all—and that he and the other brilliant intellectuals surrounding him know much better, both practically and morally.

Immigration reform: Obama and Congress vs. the citizens of the United States

The New Neo Posted on by

Used to be that when the leaders of Congress said they would move on a certain bill (or not move on a certain bill), you could kinda sorta believe them. Now trying to figure out what’s really happening is like being a Kremlinologist back in the USSR’s heyday.

And so we get, simultaneously, articles at Memeorandum that say that Democrats are going ahead on an immigration bill and that it is doubtful that an immigration bill will be passed this year.

Reading between the lines, it appears that, with the defection of the lone Republican previously on board, Lindsay Graham, the Democrats have lost their already-shaky claim to bipartisan cover. This leaves them with the problem of placating their Hispanic supporters and trying to make Republicans look bad, which points to their adopting a strategy of pushing a bill they know is unlikely to pass, just so they can say they tried and the Republicans didn’t. This might be especially helpful to Harry Reid, who needs to appeal to Hispanic voters in his home state of Nevada.

The issue is complicated by the fact that Arizona forced Congress’s hand somewhat by passing its own attempt at handling the problems of illegal immigrants, and that the Arizona law is very popular nationwide. Despite this popularity (or perhaps because of it; who knows any more?) the Justice Department is contemplating challenging it, extending the Obama administration’s continuing war against the opinions and wishes of its own citizens:

Although it was the federal government which ignored Arizona’s repeated pleas to help patrol the border and thus caused the state to feel the need to pass the bill in the first place, Obama and Holder would dearly love to stop the state from implementing its solution. Such an action by the administration would be shocking and unprecedented—words that keep coming up in describing the actions of Obama et al:

“It’s relatively rare for the federal government to directly challenge a state law,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University Law School, who could not cite a comparable example. “It’s even more rare when there is no shortage of people challenging the law.” A coalition of civil rights groups announced Wednesday that it is preparing its own suit against Arizona, and officials in Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff said they are considering suing the state…

“It would absolutely inflame people,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, an Arlington group that calls for tougher immigration enforcement.

“Arizona passed this law because the federal government abdicated its enforcement responsibilities on immigration,” said Jenks, a lawyer who says the new law is constitutional. “To now have the federal government come in and say ‘You can’t do that’ is going to outrage a whole lot of people.”

“A whole lot of people,” indeed. For example, there are reports that seven other states are considering legislation similar to that passed by Arizona. The majority of the people of the United States want this, and their own government wants to stand in their way. And remember, what the Arizona law does is to empower state officers to enforce federal laws already on the books, because the federal government refuses to do so—not to go beyond the law or to violate it.

Obama: the press’s abusive lover

The New Neo Posted on by

When I saw the title of this Politico story—“Why reporters are down on President Obama”—I thought it would be about the press’s disillusionment with Obama’s policies as president.

Not at all; silly me. It’s about the press’s disillusionment with Obama’s policies towards—the press.

Now, I’m not saying that’s completely unimportant. Actually, it matters, both as policy and as a reflection of the character of the current administration, its leader, and his aides. Obama treats the press with arrogant contempt—and you can’t say they haven’t earned it by their fawning shilling for him in the past. For someone like Obama, that sort of adulation breeds an increase in condescension; he knows he can abuse them with impunity. And so he does, when he thinks it suits his purposes.

Obama’s last lingering need to cooperate with the press or to treat them with any sort of respect ended when he was elected and ascended to the powerful post of POTUS. Now, the more they try to please him, the more he realizes he has nothing to fear from them, and the more they realize they have something to fear from him.

During Obama’s recent, brief trip to Prague, a message went out to one of the top reporters to assemble the handful of traveling reporters for a dinner with Gibbs and other top members of the president’s entourage. The journalists dutifully complied, picked out a restaurant, made a reservation and showed up at the appointed time.

When Gibbs and the others were late, it wasn’t too surprising. But soon several hours passed with no sign of the White House contingent. The food came and went.

Eventually, the press gave up and headed out on some late-night sightseeing. As they strolled the Charles Bridge, they ran into Gibbs, who was doing the same. Asked about the dinner appointment, Gibbs said the White House group had simply decided to grab some pizza…

The difficulty in tracking down Gibbs isn’t limited to the road. Even reporters for major newspapers say they have trouble getting their calls and e-mails returned.

Obama knows how to play the spineless reporters like so many tuneless violins:

And just what happens when you upset the White House?

Among White House reporters, tales abound of an offhand criticism or passing claim low in an unremarkable story setting off an avalanche of hostile e-mail and voice-mail messages.

“It’s not unusual to have shouting matches or the e-mail equivalent of that. It’s very, very aggressive behavior, taking issue with a thing you’ve written, an individual word, all sorts of things,” said one White House reporter…

One of the most irritating practices of the Obama White House is when aides ignore inquiries or explicitly refuse to cooperate with an unwelcome story ”” only to come out with both guns blazing when it takes a skeptical view of their motives or success.

“You will give them ample opportunity on a story. They will then say, ”˜We don’t have anything for you on this.’ Then, when you write an analytical graph that could be interpreted as implying a political motive by the White House, or something that makes them look like anything but geniuses, you will get a flurry of off-the-record, angry e-mails after you publish,” one national reporter said. “That does no good. If you want to complain. Engage!”…

Some reporters say the pushback is so aggressive that it undermines the credibility of Obama’s aides. “The willingness to argue that credible information is untrue is at its core dishonest and unfortunately calls into question everything else the press office says,” one White House reporter said.

So they are finally getting the fact that there’s a lot of lying going on with this administration—but only because they’re been lied to. And of course it’s not the Great Man himself, it’s his nefarious aides (“if only Stalin knew!”).

According to the article, even the administration’s favorite reporters have been frozen out when they don’t toe the line. It reminds me of what Easton Jordan of CNN revealed about his cable news network’s cooperation with Saddam Hussein, done in order to gain protection and access from the regime:

For CNN, the highest prize is “access,” to score live camera feeds from a story’s epicenter. Dictatorships understand this hunger, and also that it provides blackmail opportunities. In exchange for CNN bureaus, dictatorships require adherence to their own rules of reportage. They create conditions where CNN–and other U.S. media–can do little more than toe the regime’s line.

Obama is not Saddam, of course. But the modus operandi of his thuggish relationship with the American press is the same, and the MSM’s craven behavior has also so far been very similar to that of CNN back in the bad old Saddam days.

In the case of reporters and Obama, however, the MSM’s motivation initially sprang from reverence and even love for the candidate, rather than fear of a dictator like Saddam. Now that the press’s love for the president may be fading because they realize it’s unrequited, they remained trapped by his bullying—plus their own stunned amazement that the object of their affection is treating them with such rudeness and disdain. And after all they’ve done for him!

They still do not quite seem to understand who and what they’re dealing with. Their surprise seems unfeigned to me, which is a surprise in and of itself. It appears that they didn’t just cover up all the evidence—available during the campaign to anyone willing to look—that their man was a thinskinned, rude, arrogant, bully. They actually denied it, repressing their knowledge of and/or excusing such behavior, so strong was their need to believe in Obama.

And insight dawns slowly, very slowly, if at all. The press remains shell shocked. Love is a funny thing, and hope dies hard when one is blinded by it.

[NOTE: The Anchoress adds some thoughts of her own.]

Water chestnuts

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s another entry in my effort to popularize neglected but fabulous vegetables (see this for my paean to parsnips).

Today, gang, it’s water chestnuts. No, not those ubiquitous ones that come in cans. They are but a bland and pale reflection of the fabulous glory of the fresh water chestnut.

To get the fresh ones you must have access to a Chinese grocery store. They are a bit labor intensive to prepare because they have to be peeled—and some are always a bit mushy and have to be discarded.

But those are small quibbles, as you will see when you taste them. Peel, slice, and then use them in almost any stir-fry recipe. They are crunchy and incredibly sweet, kind of like a wonderful apple that has been transformed into a vegetable that does not get mushy when cooked.

Will the party of “no” be able to stop the immigration reform and climate change bills?

The New Neo Posted on by

Republicans have been accused of being the party of “no.” The idea is that being perceived as blocking rather than facilitating legislation is ordinarily an unpopular stance. But it could wind up being popular to say “no” to unpopular bills.

But—as I wrote yesterday—we can no longer credit reports that a certain bill is dead in the water. So I take this and this news with a hefty grain of salt.

RINO Lindsay Graham appears to be the key figure in blocking both efforts, since he was previously the key “bipartisan” figure in support of both efforts. I do not trust him to maintain his opposition. But there is little question that, without the election of Scott Brown, the Democrats probably wouldn’t even need to court Graham’s favor at all; they could probably garner enough votes without him, as they did for HCR.

Language and that “controversial” Arizona immigration law

The New Neo Posted on by

The new Arizona immigration law is described in nearly every MSM article as “controversial.”

And I suppose it is, if by “controversial” you mean the usual definition of arousing “strong disagreement.” The word also fits the bill, however, if you are going by the definition that appears fourth from the bottom in that link I just gave: “anything a liberal doesn’t like.”

It is certainly true that each side disagrees with the other, and feels strongly about its own position. But the sides are hardly equal in size. If popularity enters into the calculation of whether a certain decision is controversial or not, this particular Arizona law would be considered one of the least controversial in recent memory, since it is supported by fully 70% of Arizona’s likely voters, with only 23% opposing.

The national figures are only slightly less powerfully in favor of the law, with 60% supporting and only 31% in opposition. And when the liberal rhetoric used to attack the legislation (such as, for example, accusations that it smacks of Nazism and is tantamount to apartheid) is stripped away, it’s hard to see how can it be controversial to attempt to enforce a general policy (illegal immigrants shouldn’t be here) that has been on the books—and supported by most people—for decades.

How can it be controversial to do what all nations do: decide on immigration limits, make rules about who can legally enter a country and who cannot, and actually try to enforce those rules?

These things outrage two groups: illegals themselves, and the liberals/leftists who believe that making any such rules is unfair, and that any attempt to actually enforce them in an effective manner is tantamount to the worst racist excesses committed during the 20th century. And, in the fight against those common sense efforts, opponents of the law (including first and foremost our very own president) draw on the full force of misleading and obfuscating language to do the work of stirring up still more controversy.

I don’t think it’s working—at least, so far. But if so, it’s not for lack of trying. It’s not just the “apartheid” charges. It’s there in Obama’s proclamation on the matter, which states:

…[T]he recent efforts in Arizona…threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans as well as the trust in policies and their communities that are so crucial to keeping us safe.

As usual with the president, his language is purposefully vague, uplifting, meaningless, and/or Orwellian. I would have thought that “basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans” would include playing by the rules and abiding by the laws, and enforcing them against those who break them—but hey, maybe that’s just me. For Obama, “fairness” is a screen word like “justice,” one that sounds good at first, but of which we might say, like Inigo Montoya in “The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Obama turns the word “fairness” on its head. The law is actually an attempt to implement basic notions of fairness, not eliminate them (see further discussion of its actual provisions a bit later in this post). And if “trust in policies… that are so crucial to keeping us safe” has been undermined in recent years (and it certainly has), this is a consequence of the failure of the federal government to enforce its own immigration laws (and especially to police the borders), not of this new law, which is Arizona’s attempt to take over where the feds have been negligently remiss.

One of the main tools of the law’s opponents is misrepresentation of the law itself. As Byron York points out:

Has anyone actually read the law? Contrary to the talk, it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted measure designed to help law enforcement deal with a serious problem in Arizona…

The law requires police to check with federal authorities on a person’s immigration status, if officers have stopped that person for some legitimate reason and come to suspect that he or she might be in the U.S. illegally. The heart of the law is this provision: “For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency”¦where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person”¦”

Critics have focused on the term “reasonable suspicion” to suggest that the law would give police the power to pick anyone out of a crowd for any reason and force them to prove they are in the U.S. legally…

What fewer people have noticed is the phrase “lawful contact,” which defines what must be going on before police even think about checking immigration status. “That means the officer is already engaged in some detention of an individual because he’s violated some other law,” says Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri Kansas City Law School professor who helped draft the measure. “The most likely context where this law would come into play is a traffic stop.”

As far as “reasonable suspicion” is concerned, there is a great deal of case law dealing with the idea, but in immigration matters, it means a combination of circumstances that, taken together, cause the officer to suspect lawbreaking. It’s not race — Arizona’s new law specifically says race and ethnicity cannot be the sole factors in determining a reasonable suspicion.

Ah, but who cares about the facts when the rhetoric is so much more likely to stir up “controversy?” Even Rasmussen has fallen prey to a mistaken idea of what this law is. Although the Rasmussen report doesn’t offer the exact language of the question asked in its polls, here’s the first paragraph of the Rasmussen article on the subject:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer last week signed a new law into effect that authorizes local police to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 60% of voters nationwide favor such a law, while 31% are opposed.

No, it doesn’t do that at all. But the word gets spread and the meme grows: Arizona police are allowed to stop people on the street for the crime of being Hispanic. That perception serves the purposes of the liberal and leftist element that’s running the country right now. Trying to correct the misconception may be a losing task, but it’s a worthwhile one nevertheless.

All the pretty little horses

The New Neo Posted on by

You want cute? I’ll give you cute: here’s the world’s smallest newborn horse.

This reminds me that I have passed this way before. Several years ago I came across this website on mini-horses for the blind, otherwise known as guide horses. This is not a spoof; these things are real, and really cute, and really smart, and really helpful.

And they wear little sneakers on their feet, and are housebroken. And they are ordinarily allowed to ride on airplanes.

[NOTE: And speaking of cute…]