The Libertarian
Economics No Match For Politics
Richard A. Epstein, 12.08.09, 12:01 AM ET
Last year, even at the height of Obamamania, the president's ardent supporters questioned whether he possessed the technical skills or practical experience needed to deal with the domestic economy. My own view was that Obama's archaic New Deal world view was sure to lead him astray. Not to worry, I was told. He was a responsible and intelligent centrist, who would rely on good professional advisors to fill in the gaps in his knowledge and experience base.
The recent "upbeat" news is that the level of unemployment has leveled off at about 10% after its earlier climb this year. And just what has been the role of his professional advisors in the sorry performance of the last 10 months? To tell, it appears, the president exactly what he and his political advisors want to hear.
Exhibit A is Christina Romer's recent Wall Street Journal column, "Putting Americans Back to Work." Romer heads the president's Council of Economic Advisers. Her column rates as a bit of transparent propaganda that belongs in a fan magazine, not a serious newspaper. If she wrote it of her own volition, she should be fired for economic incompetence. If, as seems more likely, the White House wrote it for her, or told her just what to say, she should resign in protest.
Her column contains nine awestruck references to presidential omniscience and benevolence. Its opening sally places all the blame on the Bush administration, by claiming that Obama took office at "the height of the worst downturn since the great depression." Funny that she failed to mention the tumultuous events of September and October 2008 had cooled off before then. Nor, of course, did Obama "stop the economic free fall" in those tempestuous autumn days, unless Moses also parted the Red Sea.
Worse still, she blindly celebrates Obama's worst economic blunders as his greatest triumphs. The $787 billion stimulus package in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was a bust. Its protectionist "Buy American" provisions remain a perpetual irritant to international trade. The warped Cash for Clunkers program created a short bubble via a massive public giveaway, while doing nothing to help the environment.
Why, one might ask, with all these supposedly farsighted maneuvers on the books, does the president still face a "weak" employment market? Romer offers no explanation for how Obama's wise decisions made matters worse. Instead she hyped Obama's inconclusive meeting with various community leaders that took place the next day.
High on its agenda was an investigation of public-private partnerships that could, at best, only usher in yet another round of economic gimmicks. No credible economist could think that "direct incentives of homeowners to retrofit their homes to improve energy efficiency" could place a dent in the ranks of the 15.4 million unemployed. Far more likely is a replay of the older story: subsidies for these programs sop up wealth and thus kill sensible job opportunities elsewhere.
Instead of her presidential genuflection, Romer should have given this blunt advice to the president:
You can only improve labor markets by freeing them up. Scrap the talk about goofy ad hoc subsidies, and tell the president, for the first time in his life, to think hard about deregulation. Roll back the three recent minimum-wage increases that have blunted job creation for low-skilled workers in a stagnant labor market. Announce he will veto any effort by Congress to pass the Employer Free Choice Act, whose uncertain threat of compulsory unionization has prompted many businesses to shelve any plans for expansion. Abandon the monstrous health care bills winding through Congress, whose panoply of taxes, subsidies and regulations are job killers of the first magnitude. Put a halt on legislation for carbon caps and taxes until the science gets sorted out. Don't let the EPA make a hasty endangerment finding on carbon dioxide.
Deregulation costs nothing to administer, increases jobs and adds to the tax base. It is only an added benefit that sound economics reduces presidential power.
So how then does Romer come to serve her readers such intellectual pabulum? Simply because Obama's policies are not shaped by his vaunted professional advisors but by political operatives who answer solely to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod. Their joint knowledge on economics is negligible at best. Their political agenda is to win elections by buying off enough of the electorate to form a winning political coalition. Any libertarian has to be dismayed (but not surprised) at this systematic misuse of political power.
The president's basic gut instinct is to offset every unwise market restraint with an equally foolish government subsidy. Romer should understand this basic point and fight it with every bone in her body. But that won't happen so long as professional advisors always take a backseat to the political ones.
Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The University of Chicago, The Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, and a visiting professor at New York University Law School.
Read more Forbes opinions here.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Thursday, December 03, 2009
I always knew global warming aka climate change aka fleece the west was politically motivated!!!
Democrats Censor Climate Skeptics in Congress
Jillian Bandes
Thursday, December 03, 2009
The Democratically-controlled Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing yesterday to examine the science behind global warming. Two climate experts from the Obama administration testified, but when Republicans asked to have a global-warming skeptic at the hearing, Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) refused to allow it.
Going Rogue by Sarah Palin FREE
Hosting a hearing on global warming with no dissenting opinions made Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the Committee, think the Democrats and the Obama administration were just as complicit in the global warming scandal sparked by Climategate as the Climategate scientists themselves.
“What the hearings showed is that the President’s science advisors are at the bottom of the whole climate change debate,” said Sensenbrenner.
Chairman Markey did not even hold the hearing for the purpose of exploring the Climategate scandal. Rather, it was held to explore the “urgent, consensus view on our planetary problem: that global warming is real, and the science indicates that it is getting worse” in advance of the President’s trip to Copenhagen.
Sensenbrenner said that totally missed the point.
“As policymakers, we should all be concerned when key climate scientists write in private correspondence that they found a ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ in temperature data documented in climate studies,” he said.
Sensenbrenner made it clear that Climategate does not undermine all of global warming science. But the scandal does “read more like scientific fascism than the scientific process,” and very clearly necessitates additional consideration of the global warming issue.
“[Markey] has gone so far as to not provide a debate on the issue, when obviously the mail from the British university indicates that debate should be encouraged rather than suppressed,” said Sensenbrenner. He has formally requested an additional hearing, which Markey will be forced to entertain due to Committee rules. But exactly when that additional hearing will put it on the schedule is uncertain.
Sensenbrenner also complained that the two witnesses who were called, Dr. John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, an administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were not put under oath at the hearing. Markey said that the reason they were not put under oath was because it would be “grandstanding.”
But Markey insisted that oil executive be put under oath during hearings last month.
“Up until the last couple months, I think that Markey has been very fair in operating his Committee,” said Sensenbrenner. But as the whole scientific political argument is falling apart, he’s become increasingly intolerant.”
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved. Democrats Censor Climate Skeptics in Congress
Jillian Bandes
Thursday, December 03, 2009
The Democratically-controlled Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing yesterday to examine the science behind global warming. Two climate experts from the Obama administration testified, but when Republicans asked to have a global-warming skeptic at the hearing, Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) refused to allow it.
Going Rogue by Sarah Palin FREE
Hosting a hearing on global warming with no dissenting opinions made Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the Committee, think the Democrats and the Obama administration were just as complicit in the global warming scandal sparked by Climategate as the Climategate scientists themselves.
“What the hearings showed is that the President’s science advisors are at the bottom of the whole climate change debate,” said Sensenbrenner.
Chairman Markey did not even hold the hearing for the purpose of exploring the Climategate scandal. Rather, it was held to explore the “urgent, consensus view on our planetary problem: that global warming is real, and the science indicates that it is getting worse” in advance of the President’s trip to Copenhagen.
Sensenbrenner said that totally missed the point.
“As policymakers, we should all be concerned when key climate scientists write in private correspondence that they found a ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ in temperature data documented in climate studies,” he said.
Sensenbrenner made it clear that Climategate does not undermine all of global warming science. But the scandal does “read more like scientific fascism than the scientific process,” and very clearly necessitates additional consideration of the global warming issue.
“[Markey] has gone so far as to not provide a debate on the issue, when obviously the mail from the British university indicates that debate should be encouraged rather than suppressed,” said Sensenbrenner. He has formally requested an additional hearing, which Markey will be forced to entertain due to Committee rules. But exactly when that additional hearing will put it on the schedule is uncertain.
Sensenbrenner also complained that the two witnesses who were called, Dr. John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, an administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were not put under oath at the hearing. Markey said that the reason they were not put under oath was because it would be “grandstanding.”
But Markey insisted that oil executive be put under oath during hearings last month.
“Up until the last couple months, I think that Markey has been very fair in operating his Committee,” said Sensenbrenner. But as the whole scientific political argument is falling apart, he’s become increasingly intolerant.”
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Democrats Censor Climate Skeptics in Congress
Jillian Bandes
Thursday, December 03, 2009
The Democratically-controlled Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing yesterday to examine the science behind global warming. Two climate experts from the Obama administration testified, but when Republicans asked to have a global-warming skeptic at the hearing, Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) refused to allow it.
Going Rogue by Sarah Palin FREE
Hosting a hearing on global warming with no dissenting opinions made Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the Committee, think the Democrats and the Obama administration were just as complicit in the global warming scandal sparked by Climategate as the Climategate scientists themselves.
“What the hearings showed is that the President’s science advisors are at the bottom of the whole climate change debate,” said Sensenbrenner.
Chairman Markey did not even hold the hearing for the purpose of exploring the Climategate scandal. Rather, it was held to explore the “urgent, consensus view on our planetary problem: that global warming is real, and the science indicates that it is getting worse” in advance of the President’s trip to Copenhagen.
Sensenbrenner said that totally missed the point.
“As policymakers, we should all be concerned when key climate scientists write in private correspondence that they found a ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ in temperature data documented in climate studies,” he said.
Sensenbrenner made it clear that Climategate does not undermine all of global warming science. But the scandal does “read more like scientific fascism than the scientific process,” and very clearly necessitates additional consideration of the global warming issue.
“[Markey] has gone so far as to not provide a debate on the issue, when obviously the mail from the British university indicates that debate should be encouraged rather than suppressed,” said Sensenbrenner. He has formally requested an additional hearing, which Markey will be forced to entertain due to Committee rules. But exactly when that additional hearing will put it on the schedule is uncertain.
Sensenbrenner also complained that the two witnesses who were called, Dr. John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, an administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were not put under oath at the hearing. Markey said that the reason they were not put under oath was because it would be “grandstanding.”
But Markey insisted that oil executive be put under oath during hearings last month.
“Up until the last couple months, I think that Markey has been very fair in operating his Committee,” said Sensenbrenner. But as the whole scientific political argument is falling apart, he’s become increasingly intolerant.”
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved. Democrats Censor Climate Skeptics in Congress
Jillian Bandes
Thursday, December 03, 2009
The Democratically-controlled Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing yesterday to examine the science behind global warming. Two climate experts from the Obama administration testified, but when Republicans asked to have a global-warming skeptic at the hearing, Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) refused to allow it.
Going Rogue by Sarah Palin FREE
Hosting a hearing on global warming with no dissenting opinions made Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the Committee, think the Democrats and the Obama administration were just as complicit in the global warming scandal sparked by Climategate as the Climategate scientists themselves.
“What the hearings showed is that the President’s science advisors are at the bottom of the whole climate change debate,” said Sensenbrenner.
Chairman Markey did not even hold the hearing for the purpose of exploring the Climategate scandal. Rather, it was held to explore the “urgent, consensus view on our planetary problem: that global warming is real, and the science indicates that it is getting worse” in advance of the President’s trip to Copenhagen.
Sensenbrenner said that totally missed the point.
“As policymakers, we should all be concerned when key climate scientists write in private correspondence that they found a ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ in temperature data documented in climate studies,” he said.
Sensenbrenner made it clear that Climategate does not undermine all of global warming science. But the scandal does “read more like scientific fascism than the scientific process,” and very clearly necessitates additional consideration of the global warming issue.
“[Markey] has gone so far as to not provide a debate on the issue, when obviously the mail from the British university indicates that debate should be encouraged rather than suppressed,” said Sensenbrenner. He has formally requested an additional hearing, which Markey will be forced to entertain due to Committee rules. But exactly when that additional hearing will put it on the schedule is uncertain.
Sensenbrenner also complained that the two witnesses who were called, Dr. John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, an administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were not put under oath at the hearing. Markey said that the reason they were not put under oath was because it would be “grandstanding.”
But Markey insisted that oil executive be put under oath during hearings last month.
“Up until the last couple months, I think that Markey has been very fair in operating his Committee,” said Sensenbrenner. But as the whole scientific political argument is falling apart, he’s become increasingly intolerant.”
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
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