Bin Laden Dead, Question for Obama Fans

I don't need to link to a story, I mean come on, it's all over the news. But I have a question to the Obama fans who are already saying things like "Obama did what Bush couldn't, etc." or "Obama gets Osama," etc.

My question is this; how? With all due respect to the President (and for the record, I don't hate him, I think he's a phony politician like all of the rest of them but I don't think he's evil or anything), how can this be attributed to him? I am not a military tactics expert, I doubt that more than fifty people alive right now fully understand how Osama was killed or even if it was on purpose.

But to give a politician credit for an action carried out by the military, well, hmm, how can I put this, I need to see an explanation of what discretionary actions by the President led to this happening. I say discretionary to mean, did Obama do something that other Presidents might not have? A hypothetical situation: if military experts saw their chance, knew where Osama was, and presented their plan to the President, would it have made a difference whether Obama or McCain was in office? There's also the very good possibility that the President was more or less a bystander whose job it was was to simply give the okay to proposals from the military brass.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Obama, if this kill was a result of a discretionary action or hiring by Obama, if he put the man in place who came up with the plan or something, then fine, credit where credit is due. To this day I can freely give credit to politicians I otherwise don't care for for the actions they took that I approve of. Nixon, opening trade with China, Carter deregulating airlines and finally becoming more sensible on monetary policy (he appointed Volcker), Clinton signing welfare reform bills and a variety of other free trade and free market initiatives he took. Yes, some or perhaps all of these can be explained as a politician making the best choice to maximize popularity with voters and not out of governing skills or ideology. Doesn't matter to me.

But getting back to the main point, I foresee in the coming months many many refrains of "Obama did what Bush couldn't do," etc. I would just like people to think a bit harder about that. Is it really appropriate to credit everything that happens under a President's watch to that President? If somebody in the military had, say, murdered a civilian, do we give Obama the blame for that? Or do we only credit him with the good things and chalk up the bad things to happenstance? Republicans do the same thing. Lots of people just look for reasons to praise "their guy" or trash "the other guy." Doesn't make sense to me. Politicians, at their best, are just cogs. I don't care what brand the cog is or if it agrees with me, as long as it does what it's supposed to do.

John Stossel Says What We've All Been Thinking

Or at least, I've been thinking it. I consider myself anti-war...ish, but I still regarded most "anti-war" protesters as a bunch of dishonest phonies. If you want to have an anti-Bush rally, have an anti-Bush rally and call it that. Don't claim to be anti-war and then just clam up when we change Presidents.

One of the things that bugs me about the left (the American left, anyway) is that the left just isn't that honest about what they really want and what really motivates them, left-wing politicians even less so. The hard left has a long history of this, they say innocuous-sounding things like "equality" and "workers rights" instead of "socialism" or "big government," and they even built such deliberate deception into their philosophy (see "popular front"). I believe in Europe things are quite different, and left-wing politicians will openly say they prefer socialism, or don't believe in the rule of law or private property, or whatever. I prefer honesty. I don't always agree with conservatives and Republicans but by and large they are extremely upfront about what their policy aims are and why they push for the policies they do.

Perhaps in a more left-wing country it would be right-wing politicians who hide behind popular fronts and left-wing politicians are more open. I just don't know.

My worry is that in many parts of Europe the only "right-wing" political movements with a real grass-roots push seem to be anti-immigrant, protectionist, xenophobic ones. I consider such big-government policies to be the antithesis of my own right-wing libertarianism, but the powers that be have decided to classify people like that as "right-wing" right alongside with myself, so what am I gonna do?

Obama's Travel Expenses.

Conservatives, promise me you'll still complain about Presidential travel expenses when a Republican is President.  Don't just complain when it's a Democrat, and then make excuses (or ignore it) for a Republican.

Screwl "Reform"

Here's the brochure, sorry, I mean the article, from the AP on Obama's education proposals.  As always, I suggest you read the whole article.

And here are my comments on some bullet points:

"A plan to overhaul the 2002 education law championed by President George W. Bush was unveiled by the Obama administration Saturday in hopes of replacing a system that in the last decade has tagged more than a third of schools as failing and created a hodgepodge of sometimes weak academic standards among states."

Only a third of our schools are failing?  I can see why the law needs to be changed, it's understating the problem.  Basically, the teacher's unions (NEVER forget the awesome importance of the labor cartels to the Democrats, they are even more important than Hollywood money) don't like having their failings pointed out.  So the focus must be on schools that are "improving," according to some phony standard.  That way the only headlines we'll ever see will be about this or that school improving, rather than the headlines we see about schools failing.

"The proposed changes call for states to adopt standards that ensure students are ready for college or a career rather than grade-level proficiency — the focus of the current law."

Okay, testing whether kids are "ready for college" depends on a universal definition of what "ready for college" means.  And with the record number of remedial English and math classes colleges have, that bar is pretty low these days.  As for testing whether kids are prepared for a career, well, the government is not qualified to do that.  Most employers have a hard enough time telling whether somebody is ready to work for them, some bureaucrat in an office in DC sure as heck ain't going to devise a scheme to tell when people are ready for a career.

Ah, but what am I thinking, this is just a pretext to add more classes like shop, woodwork, computer repair, etc.  Thus providing more employment for teachers and more money for the teachers unions (and for the Democrats).  Remember, the US public education system is NOT, repeat NOT, designed to educate.  Its purpose is to provide employment to teachers so they can hand over money to the unions in the form of dues, who can then give a cut to the Democrats.  Any actual education that happens is incidental.

"Give more rewards — money and flexibility — to high-poverty schools that are seeing big gains in student achievement and use them as a model for other schools in low-income neighborhoods that struggle with performance."

The problem with "high-poverty schools" is, and never has been, a lack of money.  All sorts of money is spent on these dumps, you would truly be shocked.  But so much of it is absorbed in administrative and labor costs and red tape, that very little of it trickles down to help the students.  Not that you need oodles of cash to provide a basic education in English, math, science, history, etc.  Many textbooks from thirty years ago are perfectly usable for a great many topics, and these schools typically wind up spending money on totally unnecessary facilities and services.

Many other countries have proven that a voucher-based system (where actual choice is involved, and you can attend a traditional public school, private school,  or some type of home-based alternative) is the way to go, but since this scares the teachers unions to death, the left is 100% opposed to it.  It would mean that they'd actually have to shape up and trim the fat from their ranks.

"Punish the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools using aggressive measures, such as having the state take over federal funding for poor students, replacing the principal and half the teaching staff or closing the school altogether."

This was put on their so they can create the impression they are being tough on failing schools.  Fear not, teacher's unions, you are well-protected.  For this "nuclear option" to be unleashed, there will undoubtedly be an insurmountable wall of hoops to jump through, i's to dot, appeals to be heard, red tape to be cut, etc.  In the same way that it's theoretically possible for a teacher to be fired, they pretty much have to murder a student on videotape for it to actually happen.

"It was criticized by educators for focusing too much on testing and not enough on learning. Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said he is glad to see No Child Left Behind go away.

"We're delighted over that," he said. "We have not been a fan of No Child Left Behind."
"

Says all you need to know.  Of course, as any REAL educator could tell you, testing is the only means by which it can be verified that actual learning has occurred.  It is not something separate from learning, it is what CONFIRMS learning.  By setting standards for tests, you are in effect setting standards for what must be learned, and thus what must be taught.

But unionized employees are terrified of an honest day's work.

A few last points to make.  First, I'm not defending the No Child Left Behind act, which I don't know much about except that it's part of the status quo.  As I said, we need radical reform, not more vote-buying stuff that helps the unions out.

Second, yes, I'm well aware that many people employed by the public education system take education seriously (I'm not counting the people who take indoctrination seriously, I mean the actual educators who want to teach math, science, reading, etc.).  These also happen to be the same people who are fed up with the politics that gets in the way of education.  Many of them have their hearts in the right place but they may not have realized the true cause of their problems or what really needs to be done about them.  Many of these people may even see a larger role for the government, in spite of it being the government in the first place that is creating these problems.

Third, yes I know Republican politicians are also beholden to their own lobbyists, whether they be agricultural firms, insurance firms, defense contractors, or whatever.  That's one of the many reasons why I do not belong to a political party and don't want to.  I'm also aware that few, if any, lobbyists (and this includes unions) are truly partisan; defense contractors will donate to Democrats, and you'll see unions donating to Republicans, etc.  Lobbyists donate to whoever they believe will be most receptive to pulling strings for them.  Some categories of lobbyists just tend to find more receptivity in one party or the other.  I have a lot to say about lobbyists but that will have to wait.

Lastly, a brief word on what I believe is the government's proper role in education.  I believe it is more limited than most people do, but nor am I a doctrinaire libertarian.  I believe that having a citizenry that is competent in English, math, and basic science and basic history and basic economics is a boon to everybody and that there is a role for the government in supplying it.  I do not believe that government needs to be involved in college education, or any kind of vocational education (I'm counting everything from welding school to medical school), as those are private goods and best provided by the free market.  I also believe that it is not up to the government to require that everybody get an education, or to define what form that education should take.  I believe that standards should be set in math, history, etc., and that competence in those areas should be confirmed with testing.  I believe it should be flexible.  If a ten-year-old can take the tests meant for 12th graders and pass, then that student should be confirmed as a 12th grader.  If a seventeen year old can only pass as high as the tests meant for fifth-graders, then that student should be confirmed as a fifth-grader.  Of course, different subjects could have different grades.  I believe that vouchers should provide for this system, and the vouchers can be spent at a private school, on home study materials, or whatever, and that parents should receive a tax credit on any voucher money they do not spend so as to give them the incentive to get the most with the least.

I do not believe in forcing education on people, I do not believe that what we now call a school system is really about education or even that education should take the prison-like form that it does now.  I think compulsory education is the second-worst environment to grow up in after prison, and no kid should be forced to attend a school where he or she is bullied, and I believe that bullies should be kicked out of school the same way they'd get kicked out of a restaurant or grocery store.

Lastly, I don't think my ideas are the be-all, end-all, in fact I could see the system evolving over time as our society adapts to the new system, but they are my suggestions for changes that could be made.  They are heavily inspired by the writings of Milton Friedman.

STOP CALLING OBAMA A MARXIST!!!!

It makes as much sense for you to call Obama a Marxist as it does to call Rush Limbaugh a Hindu.

Obama isn't even a communist, even if he's forged alliances with communists in the past for political gain.

Karl Marx was a philosopher and economist of the 19th century who would be a footnote in the history of economic thought had his ideas not inadvertently influenced half the population of the globe, and served as a philosophical basis for the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, etc.

Why do I say inadvertent?  Because Marx wasn't a malicious totalitarian (misunderstandings of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" notwithstanding), he did not advocate, and even implicitly or explicitly opposed many of the tactics later put into practice by communist countries--tactics and policies which were purely hypothetical in Marx's time but which were nonetheless considered by communists at that time as possible courses of action.

Marx's own opinions were all wrong (anything he said that happened to be true was existing economic theory that he had studied), but he was also taken out of context, distorted, and misrepresented by people claiming to be his followers.  And that just in his lifetime, he himself said "I am not a Marxist."

Whatever you can say about Marx, he never planned for a brutal police state (indeed his views on fighting crime centered around changing the social environment, not on more policing), brainwashing propaganda, education being controlled by the state for its own ends, a body of central planners deciding everything in the economy.  Quite the contrary.  In fact, the alleviation of poverty via was not his aim, it was rather incidental, a side effect, a natural outcome, to his true aim:  to free mankind of all restrictions and allow him to reach his full potential.  That's how he saw it anyway.

Now, I happen to think that a free country with a free market and a system of law and order allows that to happen far better than a communist country, and I sincerely believe, based on my understanding of Marx the man, that if he were alive today he'd recant his belief in socialism and become a libertarian free marketeer.  After all, he valued empirical fact and logical reasoning, and now that socialism has been discredited in the eyes of all serious, non-political economists, he'd have to admit that the free market works far better than he originally thought it did.  Economic theory has come a long way since the 1800s and the economies themselves have developed.

As the world economies modernized and became less and less dependent on simple manual labor, standards of living soared, productivity soared, mankind's potential to fulfill his own destiny has soared, and people have more freedom and options and luxuries than ever before.

Never forget that Marx believed that the free market was not something to squash, but a necessary step in mankind's evolution, as were the hunter-gatherer stages, the tribal stages, the feudal stages, the mercantilist stages, etc.  Given how far economic theory (and economies themselves) have advanced since then, he'd have no choice but to admit he was wrong about the free market.  And he certainly would weep with shame at his name and his face being attached to the horrors of real-world communism.

Back to Obama...

In no way, under no definition of the word, can Obama be called a Marxist.  He is not a follower of the historical Marx, nor is he one of the vulgar Marxists who never gave a fig about economics or what Marx really said.  Obama has borrowed a lot of communistic rhetoric and approaches, and he's appointed communists or far-left nutbars to meaningless, just-for-show cabinet posts (really, a "green jobs" csar?  nothing more than a PR stunt), but where the rubber meets the road, where the real economic policy of the administration is devised, he has hired mainstream market economists.  Christina Romer, Larry Summers, Austan Goolsbee, etc.  These are devotees of the so-called neoclassical synthesis, a take on Keynesianism that incorporates classical micro and macroeconomic thought and has become even more grounded in free market economics after the influence of the Chicago School and Austrian School.  He reappointed Ben Bernanke as "head" of the Federal Reserve Board, another mainstream economist (who fully recognizes that the Great Depression was caused by the Fed in the first place).

This shows that Obama has no intentions of communizing America--this isn't the crowd he'd hire if he were.  Heck, he could have surrounded himself with even more far to the left (but still mainstream) economists such as Krugman, Stiglitz, Blinder, Tyson, etc. (and indeed many of these characters have worked as informal advisors at one point or another), but for his core economic team he chose mainstream market economists.  He could have gone whole-hog heterodox and hired nothing but Galbraitheans and socialists and communists to devise his economic policy.  But he hasn't.  So stop saying he's a Marxist or a communist, it just makes you look foolish and extreme.

Now I'm not naive, clearly Obama sees a larger role for the government in peoples' lives, he clearly wants to shape society according to his own vision rather than letting the dictates of the market (i.e. the demands of the people themselves) shape society.  But he's not so stupid to think that he doesn't need economic growth to fund his projects and that requires a market economy.  It needs businesses turning a profit and hiring people, it needs people getting rich, making millions, people spending their money on stuff.  He's under the delusion that the government can stimulate growth, but he's not so delusional that he thinks the government alone can make the economy "run."

So what role does Obama see for the government?  Clearly he sees a larger welfare state.  Indeed, making people dependent on the government for something as basic as their health care guarantees that the welfare state will become a way of life for the whole population.  It puts a floor on whatever government-shrinking measures reformers will try in the future.  Nothing short of a world-war level catastrophe or depression-level recession can create enough turmoil to force a government to drop socialized medicine, once enacted.  Or a very severe debt crisis.....

He sees greater government involvement in education, in using education to foster collectivism and "volunteering" as an end to itself.  I don't think Obama has any grand end in mind other than being able to shape society according to his vision, or the vision of "people like him," i.e. elitist leftists who never produce anything of value yet are wealthy anyway.