Promises are meant to be broken: budget includes back-door taxes for middle class

The New Neo Posted on by

[See UPDATE below.]

Sadly enough, this comes as no surprise whatsoever:

The Obama administration’s plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth.

The article (by non-conservative Reuters, by the way) goes on to describe the many ways in which this would happen.

It seems that, the more Obama emphasized a certain fact in his campaign and/or the early days of his presidency—“The proceedings will be televised on C-SPAN;” “If you make less than $250,000 you will not see your taxes go up”—the more likely he is to do exactly the opposite. In addition, he attempts to accomplish this without stating that he is reversing himself, and in a hidden manner (as the article puts it “by stealth”).

“Back-door,” indeed. And if anyone is so bold as to challenge him about what he’s doing, he denies, lies, twists, and blames—sometimes all at once.

As I’ve said before: presidents lie, and break promises as well. Obama is not the only one. But he is the most blatant, shameless, repetitively lying president ever, deeply mendacious about the most important facts of his program and his character.

[ADDENDUM: The Reuters story has been withdrawn. A new one is slated to appear next week. I had linked to the Canadian version of the story, which is still up as of this moment.

Very interesting development. It could be due to something innocuous. Or the Reuters folks might have found a horsehead or two in their beds.]

[UPDATE: The Reuters story has itself become The Story. Word is that it contained errors of fact, and was pulled at the White House’s request. Reuters writes:

The Feb 1 story headlined “Backdoor taxes to hit middle class” is wrong and has been withdrawn. The story said lower-income families will pay more under tax provisions scheduled to expire Dec 31. The Obama administration’s budget calls for the extension of those tax provisions for households earning less than $250,000. There will be no substitute story.

That sounds like a major mess-up by both the writer and whatever fact-checkers might still reside at Reuters. Obviously, if the entire premise on which the story is based is incorrect the piece should never should have run in the first place, and a retraction is necessary. If a blogger had made such a faux pas, the mistake would be ascribed to lack of professionalism, and contrasted to the skill of the press. Now we can say that it is evidence that standards in journalism have fallen pretty low.

But of course, we already knew that. The unusual thing about this story is that the errors went against Obama, and they seem to have been fairly egregious.

However, was everything in the original article incorrect, or just some of it? It’s hard to know, because the original story has been pulled. But Powerline quoted quite a bit from it, and as best as I can tell from a quick perusal, the bulk of the assertions in the Reuters article did seem to refer to those now-non-expiring tax cuts. If so, then Reuters was correct to pull it, and the Obama administration was correct to call attention to the mistakes.

Of course, we know that it’s not unusual for articles in the MSM to contain errors both large and small. However, it’s rare for them to be pulled in this way. Would Reuters have done the same for a similar article about Bush? And would Bush have asked them to do so?]

O Canada!

The New Neo Posted on by

Fifty-nine-year-old Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams needs heart surgery—and he’s going to the US to have it.

That’s his prerogative. He’s lucky to have the resources to do so. But it’s an especially glaring example of a fact most of us already know: Canadians who can afford it often choose to bypass [pun intended] their system and go south of the border for treatment.

Williams needs an unspecified procedure that may or may not be available in Canada; spokespeople are being cagey about that:

“It was never an option offered to him to have this procedure done in this province,” said [deputy premier] Ms. Dunderdale, refusing to answer whether the procedure could be done elsewhere in Canada.

My guess is that Mr. Williams wanted the best treatment possible, and that was available here.

For now.

[NOTE: The title of this post is a reference to the Canadian national anthem, “O Canada.” When looking it up on Wiki, I discovered the curious fact that the lyrics between its French and English versions differ significantly. The English, which I already knew, goes like this:

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

And here’s a translation of the French lyrics:

O Canada!
Land of our ancestors,
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As in thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic
Of the most brilliant exploits.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.

A very different flavor, non?]

You mean, abstinence-only programs might actually work?

The New Neo Posted on by

We now have some convincing evidence that abstinence-only sexual education programs for teens, long derided as a counterproductive waste of time, actually work.

This is news. This particular study has drawn attention because it is especially well-designed and includes longer follow-ups than usual.

The Obama administration had previously cut funding for abstinence-only programs. But it has also launched “a $114 million pregnancy prevention initiative that will fund only programs that have been shown scientifically to work.” Therefore these new findings may result in a re-evaluation, and perhaps even funding for the programs:

Based on the findings, Obama administration officials said programs like the one evaluated in the study could be eligible for federal funding.

“No one study determines funding decisions, but the findings from the research paper suggest that this kind of project could be competitive for grants if there’s promise that it achieves the goal of teen pregnancy prevention,” said Nicholas Papas, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

There are always big problems with policy decisions of this type: research using human subjects is notoriously difficult to design and execute in a scientifically rigorous, consistently replicable, and meaningful way. It is only over time that trustworthy patterns emerge, and even then evaluators must try to look at only the most well-designed studies. That, unfortunately, is not always or even often done. Research that is essentially garbage in and out is often considered on an equal basis, and politics may subtly shape the way researchers frame their results.

A couple of interesting facts about the study itself: the results, although significant, were modest. In a population of sixth- and seventh-graders who were followed for two years after going through the abstinence-only program, 33 percent had sex, compared with 52 percent who were taught only safe sex (there were other findings, too, but that was the most important one). The students were African-American teens in public schools in an unspecified Northeastern city.

The sobering fact is that this means that, for either intervention, an awful lot of kids in eight and ninth grades have already had sex. And this phenomenon is hardly limited to the population in the study. There are so many other forces pushing young teens in that direction, and so few acting as a brake, that the task is especially daunting.

Yet another interesting fact embedded in the article is that the program studied involved only eight hours of instruction. That’s something, but it’s not a whole lot in the scheme of things. Would more time spent yield even better results?

The left has been disregarding abstinence-only programs for quite some time, considering them to be a waste of time and money. This study may or may not change things. But it spotlights a larger problem for policy-setting on social and health issues in general: we must take outcome research into account, or we risk spinning our wheels or worse—but the research itself is often so inconsistent and poorly designed that it is difficult to have much confidence in the results.

And yet, decisions must be made. They are often based on nothing more than hunches, political leanings and preferences, and the needs of special interest groups, supported by bad science. You could say the same for global warming, or any number of other areas in which science, social policy, and politics intersect.

[ADDENDUM: Stuart Schneiderman has more to say.]

Obama: promises about keeping your health insurance, and those sneaky little provisions

The New Neo Posted on by

You remember Obama’s solemn pledge.

No, not the one about televising the health care debates on C-SPAN. The one about how, if you like your health insurance, you would get to keep it under the Democrats’ health care reforms.

Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics points out an admission embedded in one of Obama’s answers to questions following his recent address to House Republicans. Obama’s statement received little notice at the time, but it seems significant for a number of reasons [emphasis mine]:

If you look at the package that we’ve presented — and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.

This paragraph highlights some of the most disagreeable, manipulative, and duplicitous aspects of Obama’s personality: his refusal to admit that he was mistaken and/or lying, his failure to take any responsibility or offer leadership, and the sophistry he uses to conceal these facts.

Obams’s erroneous (or duplicitous?) assertion about Americans being able to keep their health insurance was not only made repeatedly, it was actually the centerpiece of his argument to the people about what health care reform would do and mean for them. And it was stated not once, but almost every time he spoke on the issue of his plans for health care reform.

Many have remarked that Obama stood back from offering guidance to Congress on the details of the bills, and yet he described his own plan and made promises about it as though the two would be in sync. There has been much speculation about why he chose to do it this way, but I believe that one very important reason was that he wanted to retain plausible deniability when the provisions in the final bill violated his promises.

But Obama must not have had much objection to the breaking of his promises in these bills. If he had wanted to make sure his promises were kept, Obama could (and should) have provided far more leadership, giving Congress details to describe the bill he would have considered optimal. What’s more, he could also have threatened to veto any health care reform bill in which Congress put anything that would undermine people’s ability to continue subscribing to their present private health insurance plans.

We know that he did not provide that kind of guidance. His failure to do so was an abdication of leadership, if nothing else. But don’t sit on a hot stove until he admits it.

Now that time has passed and the American people have learned more about the bills and the effects they would have been likely to have had on their private health insurance, Obama has been forced to admit that his promises weren’t kept. But he is not forced to admit that any of it is his fault.

However, in his remarks quoted above, Obama goes a step further in abdication of responsibility. In characteristic fashion, he manages to absolve himself. But note his language; even the Democrats in Congress (who, after all, designed the bills and voted for them) are not to blame, although he simultaneously seems to admit that something went wrong.

But that “something” had no human locus of action; it just happened. It seems that provisions in bills have minds, motivations, and behaviors of their own. They are autonomous little gremlins that creep into bills of their own volition.

Obama indicates this twice: first characterizing them as animistic “stray cats and dogs” that “got in there” somehow against the will of Obama and his fellow Democrats, who are now bent on eliminating them (perhaps by rounding them up and placing them in the pound?). Secondly, there’s this sentence, “I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.” Note the two careful qualifiers: “I think” and “might have,” as well as the reiteration of the metaphor suggesting that the provisions had no human agents we can identify, but somehow acted with autonomous power, catting around and stealthily getting into places they didn’t belong.

This language is easy to miss unless you’re looking for it and studying it. But for many people who hear them, Obama’s words exert exactly the subtly exculpatory effect he intends. This is one of the reasons Obama retains a surprising amount of support from the public, despite all the broken promises and weasel wrigglings.

Weasel—that’s another animal metaphor, isn’t it? And to complete the image, here we have a few of those stray cat and dog provisions, rounded up and stuck in captivity. Will they manage to sneak out again to wreak their damage? They look so harmless right now.

And then there’s this:

“Hey,” says the Obama administration, “how about…

The New Neo Posted on by

…trying KSM at Gitmo?”

Word is that this brilliant, groundbreaking, never-before-thought-of option is currently being considered.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

A stunning admission from Scott Brown: people aren’t stupid

The New Neo Posted on by

In the end, the animating vision behind the message Scott Brown delivered was rather simple. Here it is folks:

Mr. Brown says it frustrates him that too many politicians still believe that people will be fooled by what they’re proposing. “People aren’t stupid, and leaders should figure out they’re better informed now than ever.”

Brown respected voters, and he was repaid for that courtesy with his startling upset victory.

One of the hallmarks of the Obama administration—and especially the present Congress and its members—is their feeling that they can fool enough of the people enough of the time. Obama has so much contempt for voters that he believes he can lie over and over, be caught on tape doing so, and get away with it. Let us hope that Brown’s election is part of a tide that will prove the bankruptcy of that assumption, and will start a trend for the election of politicians who (gasp!) think the American people are fully able to distinguish rain from pee.

[ADDENDUM: Pretty funny, and closely related.]

Obama: premediation with malice aforethought

The New Neo Posted on by

Jay Cost at HorseRaceBlog takes up the Obama vs. Alito SOTU controversy:

I think it was inappropriate for the President to take a shot at the Court in the way he did. The Court’s solid reputation is a public good for the country, and it should not be tampered with, especially over a case such as the one in question…I’m sure [Alito] regrets what was an impetuous response. Obama should not have been so critical because the Court’s reputation is important yet fragile. For the same reason, Alito should have kept his counsel. Obama has a republican legitimacy that Alito lacks – and it is politically not smart for a Supreme Court justice to disagree openly with an elected official such as Obama…Altogether, I’m much more troubled by Obama’s comment than Alito’s response because Obama is so much more powerful than Alito.

Cost is correct as far as it goes. But he and many others are leaving out another important difference between the actions of the two men. Obama’s words were part of a prepared major speech, written out beforehand and planned and rehearsed with care, and then executed in full voice and full view of others. He was the focus of all eyes and cameras, and he knew it.

In marked contrast, Alito’s response was completely spontaneous, unplanned, and reactive to what Obama had said. In essence, he was sucker-punched, and he and the other justices showed remarkable self-control under the circumstances.

Alito’s reaction was also quite subtle and subdued and not really meant as a public declaration. If he had really thought about it, he might have imagined that a camera might be focused on him at that moment, but it certainly wasn’t clear that this was the case, and he was only one of hundreds in the crowd. In addition, as far as anyone can tell, he did not actually vocalize aloud, just formed the shape of the words almost to himself, in a spontaneous reaction to being attacked (and even lied about) in full view of the world.

A huge difference. Obama is immeasurably more culpable—malice aforethought. But malice seems to be an important element of his character, although the myth of his measured, rational responses continues among supporters. If things continue to go poorly for Obama and he gets more rattled, prepare to see this aspect of his personality come increasingly to the fore.

No professional misconduct for the lawyers in Bush’s Justice Department?

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the worst decisions the Obama administration has made (and that’s saying something) was to go after lawyers Bybee and Yoo, who did the research and made the recommendations that allowed waterboarding under certain circumscribed circumstances.

It appears, however, that the blow is about to be been softened:

Previously, the report concluded that two key authors””Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor””violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action””which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

When asked, the Justice Department denied that Margolis did this at the request of Holder. It is said that he acted on his own.

I wonder. If Margolis was in fact responding to directions from the higher-ups, my guess would be that at this point the Obama administration is afraid that Obama’s successor could do the same sort of thing to Holder and company, after the terrible judgment they have exhibited, both in the KSM decisions and the chaos at Justice revealed by the Christmas bomber hearings.

It’s NIMBY time for Manhattan and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

The New Neo Posted on by

The Obama administration is looking to try KSM elsewhere than New York City.

Apparently the movers and shakers in New York realized Obama had hung a huge millstone around their necks, and demanded he remove it. And although the tip of another island known as Cuba—Guantanamo, that is—would IMHO be a fine place to have the trial, Obama and Eric Holder (who are looking more and more like the Two Stooges of terror trials, except that there’s nothing even remotely funny about them) won’t allow it.

Moving the trial out of NYC is enough of an embarrassing concession to reality and common sense for them to handle at the moment. Taking the trial out of the civilian justice system entirely and putting it in the military courts would be too great an admission of error.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Will the next venue chosen also say “NIMBY (not in my backyard)?” And if it does, will it exhibit enough clout to prevail on Obama and Holder to change the location once again? And will Obama and Holder end up running out of civilian venues?

Pelosi and health care: channeling Churchill and The Runaway Bunny

The New Neo Posted on by

Nancy Pelosi will fight for you. That is, she’ll fight against you.

Or maybe she’ll do both simultaneously: she promises to muster nearly-Churchillian determination in order to pass health care reform.

And whatever she does, remember, she does it for you:

We’ll go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in but we’re going to get health care reform passed for the America people.”

It doesn’t matter what the American people might happen to want. The federal government has become an invader, storming a fort that the people have tried to barricade against its assault.

More apropos than Churchill to the Pelosi quote is the children’s book The Runaway Bunny. Although it has its charms, the book used to give me the willies, actually. It features a young bunny who wants to escape a mother he/she is angry at. But the implacable maternal bunny declares her intent to pursue her hapless (and beloved) offspring to the ends of the earth.

For those of you unfamiliar with this classic, here’s a good description (from a sermon, of all things). I think you’ll see the resemblance; Pelosi is our very own mother bunny:

“Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, ‘I am running away.’

‘If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’…”

The little bunny taunts his mother with hints about running away. No matter where he threatens to go, she promises she’ll be there to find him. When he says he’s going to become a fish and swim away, she answers, “Then I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.” When he comes back with, “I will become a bird and fly away,” and there he is, sprouting wings she counters, “Then I will be a tree that you come home to.”

His fantasies of flight get even more extreme as do mother’s responses. “I will become a sailboat and sail away from you.” The picture is of the bunny’s ears becoming huge sails. But mother bunny is right there. “I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go.”

In the end, little bunny realizes there is no shaking mom and he capitulates. “‘Shucks, I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.’ And so he did. ‘Have a carrot,’ said the mother bunny.”

You can run, but you can’t hide. But maybe, in the end, there’ll be a nice carrot for you.

runaway.jpg