Big apologies for the lack of content of the last week or two. Strangely enough, we all got hit with fairly large things at the same time: finals, illness, crushing workloads, etc. For now, here is some excellent reading to tide you over. Some of it is a bit older (from a few weeks ago) but all relevant/interesting.

“Jolting” the Economy by Thomas Sowell, from TownHall.com

Peter Wallison on how the government created the financial crisis, from Instapundint.com

Why Reporters — and Judges and Professors — Are Biased by Dennis Prager, from TownHall.com

Iraq’s New Dawn: Victory Across The Board by Michael Yon. From the New York Post.

Guy who predicted the financial meltdown: Obama’s only making it worse, from HotAir.com

Scientists urge caution on global warming, from Politico.com

Tracking ‘The Gore Effect’, from Politico.com

The Barack-Blagojevich Stand Off, from The Weekly Standard Blog.

The Employee Free Choice Act Is Unconstitutional, from The Wall Street Journal.

Channeling Jimmy Carter, by Stephen Moore. From The Wall Street Journal.

Quantum of Solis, from the Wall Street Journal.

Obama Administration: Too Many Cooks? from the Weekly Standard Blog.

Adding on to Walter’s point below, the myth of the government being able to “create jobs” is the “broken window fallacy” where the focus is on what is seen instead of what is unseen.

Paraphrasing, it goes as follows: if a store owner accidentally breaks his window, he must hire someone to fix it, thus providing that man with work. So it creates jobs right? Why not break more windows and thus, create more work for the populace? Because the store owner who is paying to have his window fixed cannot use that money for something else. As Stossel writes:

A broken shop window will create work for a glassmaker, but that work comes only at the expense of the cook or tailor the shopkeeper would have patronized if he didn’t have to replace the window.

In other words, if the store owner hadn’t broken his window he would’ve spent that money at lunch in a restaurant across the street or maybe bought his wife flowers on the way home or even put it in the bank to one day purchase a new home. As he spent his money on the window, he cannot spend it elsewhere.

Breaking proverbial windows to create jobs is the solution for failure. Only business owners can creates jobs that push the country forward. America did not become the world’s largest economy by having the government shuffle money around. Eventually, the electric car and alternative forms of energy will become realities because of human ingenuity improving technology to the point where it becomes profitable, not because the government raised taxes in order to subsidize the creation of the electric car or because the environmental lobby guilted the American people into taking public transportation. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the government setting goals for private industry or for the nation in general; however, to demand technological ingenuity with one hand while bailing out the auto industry with the other is utter foolishness. Would your teenager improve his grades if you bought him a car for getting a D on his report card?

On Saturday President-Elect Obama gave us for the first time some details from his forthcoming economic plan. While we all can appreciate his well meaning intentions, his rhetoric seemed to be displaying the same enormous deficiency that should have derailed his entire campaign: a complete disregard for historical precedent. Obama intends to “save or create at least two and a half million jobs, while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil, and saving billions of dollars.” And he’s going to do this by investing (taxpayer) dollars in infrastructure construction and repair- rebuilding roads, retrofitting government buildings and schools to be more energy efficient, and installing the internet in schools and hospitals. (The careful observer will notice that Obama’s promise of 5 million jobs made repeatedly in the campaign has now been scaled down to 2.5 million jobs.) Unfortunately, this proposal seems to be suggesting a warm and fuzzy sounding band-aid to a cancer patient in need of serious chemotherapy. What he is presenting is a re-packaged New Deal/Great Society government solution to a problem government created in the first place. It has never worked before, and it won’t work this time. Just ask FDR and LBJ. History shows that government intervention turned a recession into the Great Depression. As Reagan said in his first inaugural address, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” In a great article entitled “Green Jobs“, John Stossel points out the fatal flaw in the “government created jobs” idea:

The fallacy is the same in every case: Even if the program creates jobs building bridges or windmills, it necessarily prevents other jobs from being created. This is because government spending merely diverts money from private projects to government projects…. Governments create no wealth. They only move it around while taking a cut for their trouble. So any jobs created over here come at the expense of jobs that would have been created over there.

Obama said in his address that one of the measuring sticks he will use to determine the success of these programs is “whether America is more competitive in the world.” It’s really much more simple to do than he thinks. Forget this “new” job investment idea. Cut business/corporate tax rates, of which America currently has the 2nd highest in the world. Why would business people want to invest in a financial environment like we have now? Make income tax cuts permanent. Cut capital gains taxes. Wealth cannot be created by the government, it can only happen in the private sector. So set the American entrepreneur free- let us keep our own money and invest it back into the market, or wherever we see fit. That is how jobs are created, and they will be created here, on our own soil. The stock market, which thrives on stability, would sky rocket knowing exactly where its money will remain. The only way to fix this economy is to allow the private sector- the American people- to fix it themselves. The government can only get in our way.

The Democratic hopes of having a filibuster proof super majority (60 seats/votes) in the United States Senate was dashed when Saxby Chambliss won re-election in his runoff election with Jim Martin.  This is good news for conservatives–thank you Georgia voters.  Before President Obama can sign legislation into law it must pass both the House and Senate.  This means that some ultra-liberal legislation can be blocked my a minority of conservative Republicans in the Senate.  I hope they use this power wisely–with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid they will need it.

I’d like to elaborate a on a great point brought up by The Professor. In an Iowa campaign speech Obama said “The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result. And that’s a risk we can’t take. Not this year. Not when the stakes are this high.” Obama’s “change we need” campaign slogan was as inescapable as it was vague. In a brilliant Wall Street Journal article Fouad Ajami discussed how Obama’s personality and promises were ambiguous enough as to allow any member of his adoring crowd to project their own individual needs and expectations upon him, knowing their own personal version of him would fulfill their every heart’s desire. Comparing Obama’s crowds to the ones Ajami has spent much of his career documenting in the Middle East, he says “A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession — its imagination.”

Obama’s promise of “change” is vague in the same way. Can anyone identify exactly what it means? It obviously means many different things to many different people. To Obama, (at least for the past year), the primary definition of change is “Not Bush.” By that same token, anyone elected would represent change, so Obama spent the campaign comparing McCain to Bush, and it worked. McCain seemed to have not even noticed the comparison until midway into the third debate.

But for the voter, it meant something on an emotional level. Things are not “going well” now, so change is needed. War is universally bad and we only do it to kill innocent people, but Obama will change that. Bush gets some of his words mixed up on TV and therefore is a complete idiot, but Obama will change that. The environment is being destroyed and bunnies are being driven from their homes on a daily basis, but Obama will change that. Evil greedy Wall Street people are stealing money from my paycheck daily to provide padding for the seats of their golden sofas, and Obama will change that. Only rich, old, white men are involved in our government, so Obama will definitely change that. Washington DC has probably never even seen a black guy before he came into town. Above all, Obama understands me where Bush never could, so that’ll be a change too. All of this gives me hope. Hyperbole? I wish.

Now the happy feelings are starting to fade, the tears of joy have dried up, and we are looking face to face with reality. Change has come, and so far, Obama has evidently completely forgotten his own talking points. I have heard pundits and lay-people on both sides say “it’s not fair to criticize him yet, he’s not even into office!” To which I say: excuse me, I was under the impression that change is coming. That gave me hope. I was led to believe that change and hope radiated from every pore of Obama’s being. The words “change and hope” accounted for 87% of his speeches for the past year. So I expect change from minute one. Aren’t I entitled to it? I don’t believe change comes a week, a month, a year, or even a 2nd term after he is elected, I think it began on Nov. 4th.

So where’s America’s change so far? He’s well into his most important pre-inauguration step, setting up his teams. Unfortunately for the “change and hope” crowd, nearly every member of his cabinet shows that despite a year’s worth of saying the contrary, he is indeed planning on “playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and [will be] expecting a different result.” Let’s step back a few months, to his first pick, VP. Who does he pick? Joe Biden, the most insider of insiders, a guy who has never held a single non-government job in his life. Biden has been in the Senate for 30+ years, since Nixon was in office. Nice one there. Rahm Emanuel? Greg Craig? Clinton hacks. Tom Daschle? Hillary Clinton? Are you kidding me? Every single one, a complete and total government/Washington insider, through and through. None of them have brought any kind of noteworthy (read: beneficial) change to our country so far, but that doesn’t mean they won’t get there this time, right? Perhaps my favorite appointment was that he has decided to keep Robert Gates on as Sec. of Defense. The only issue I heard mentioned about it on the news today was how incredible is it that Obama’s keeping a Republican on staff. Which is completely missing the point- why is the agent of change, who has been talking about Bush’s “failed war strategies” and “failed foreign policy” choosing to keep Bush’s Sec. of Defense? Wouldn’t that imply that Obama thinks Gates is doing a good job? But I thought the definition of “change” was “not Bush?”

If I were an Obama fan I’d be pretty confused right now. You know that cliché, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results? Apparently Obama thought it was a prescription for how to pick his cabinet members. Now that’s change I can believe in! Or not.