The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore has some inconvenient questions of President Obama over Obama’s theme of “fairness”:
Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country’s income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?
Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?
Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones? …
Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007? …
Is it fair that the three counties with America’s highest median family income just happen to be located in the Washington, D.C., metro area?
Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy—pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is “subsidized”? …
Is it fair that thousands of workers won’t have jobs because the president sided with environmentalists and blocked the shovel-ready Keystone XL oil pipeline? …
Is it fair that federal employees receive benefits that are nearly 50% higher than those of private-sector workers whose taxes pay their salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office?
Is it fair that soon almost half the federal budget will take income from young working people and redistribute it to old non-working people, even though those over age 65 are already among the wealthiest Americans?
Is it fair that in 27 states workers can be compelled to join a union in order to keep their jobs? …
Is it fair that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids—who never voted for Mr. Obama—will have to pay off the $5 trillion of debt accumulated over the past four years, without any benefits to them?
Don’t expect an answer to any of Moore’s questions. Or to this question posed by a predecessor of Obama’s:
The 2012 U.S. elections could be the most exciting and consequential in years. In Wisconsin, we might be looking at political Armageddon. …
For public-sector unions, the [Scott] Walker recall is no mere exercise in payback. The unions, upon which Democrats depend heavily for funding and foot soldiers, say Walker must be ousted and his reforms reversed for the sake of the middle class. Progressive values — even democracy itself — are in mortal danger.
Actually, the opposite is true. The threat to such progressive goals as majority rule, transparent government, a vibrant public sector and equality comes from public-sector unionism. …
Of course, collective bargaining in the public sector is inherently contrary to majority rule. It transfers basic public-policy decisions — namely, the pay and working conditions that taxpayers will offer those who work for them — out of the public square and behind closed doors. Progressive Wisconsin has a robust “open meetings” law covering a wide range of government gatherings except — you guessed it — collective bargaining with municipal or state employees. So much for transparency.
Even worse, to the extent that unions bankroll the campaigns of the officials with whom they will be negotiating — and they often do — they sit on both sides of the table.
Progressives believe, correctly, that government can and should provide such public goods and services as education, parks, or aid for the poor and disabled. It’s axiomatic that the public is entitled to the highest quality at the best possible price. Yet unions, by their nature, increase the price of public services, without necessarily increasing quality. Just ask New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg about the “rubber room” where, until a couple of years ago, hundreds of union teachers languished, on full pay, while awaiting disciplinary hearings.
Which brings us to equality. To be sure, public-sector pay and perks hardly put union workers in the 1 percent. But their clout enables them to enjoy retirement and health-care benefits that are often better than those available to the middle-class citizens whose tax dollars support them. What’s fair about that? Even after Walker’s bill, Wisconsin public employees pay just 5.8 percent of their salary toward their pensions and a modest 12.6 percent of their health-care premiums. …
Maybe there are enough voters in Wisconsin who support actual progressive governance — as opposed to “progressive” interest groups — to retain Walker.
Or maybe it’s dawning on Wisconsinites — even some who don’t like Walker’s policies — that it would be a disaster to cut his term in half at the behest of a special interest group. That would confirm Wisconsin’s public-sector unions as the state’s de facto rulers, which really would be the end of democracy.
Lane’s employer is based in the District of Columbia. Note that federal employees, who also are unionized, do not have collective bargaining rights.
The Super Bowl has become one of the few mass-audience appointment TV events left, to the extent that for several years the Super Bowl commercials have been avidly watched and scrutinized.
The title of best commercial is a matter of personal opinion. The title of most controversial commercial undoubtedly was the halftime Chrysler ad.
Neither Chrysler nor NBC is saying how much the 2-minute spot cost, but 30-second ads were going for $3.5 million. Suffice it to say that the ad cost Chrysler — which, remember, took more than $13 billion of our tax dollars — several million dollars.
I believe this counts as Eastwood’s first media experience with Chrysler products:
Rugged Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood proclaimed it was “Halftime in America” in the spot that did not mention a Chrysler car or truck but intoned that the automaker’s successful turnaround could be used as an example for the United States as it struggles with high unemployment and a slow economic growth rate.
“Detroit’s showing us it can be done,” Eastwood said.
Eastwood — or, more accurately, the script writer — left out the rest of Eastwood’s sentence — “by a bailout funded by non-Chrysler owners to benefit President Obama’s buddies, the United Auto Workers, in time for Fiat of Italy to buy Chrysler.”
(This probably is a good place to explain the headline: The Volaré and Dodge Aspen was the highest-rated, if you want to call it that, Chrysler product on Edmunds Inside Line‘s 100 Worst Cars of All Time list, described as “terribly built and rust-prone” while “subject to a long series of recalls.” One of my Boy Scout Scoutmasters was a Madison police officer, and he told me of an squad that had Aspen logos on one side of the car and Volaré logos on the other wide. I could have included two higher-rated AMC products, the Pacer or Gremlin, but they we”re built before Chrysler bought AMC in 1987.)
If Obama advisor David Axelrod felt compelled to tweet what a wonderful spot it was, then it counts as propaganda, irrespective of the White House’s and Obama campaign’s denials — and for that matter, the denials of Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s (which means Chrysler’s) CEO, whose company is sticking the taxpayers with billions of dollars that won’t be paid back.
It particularly counts as propaganda on behalf of the unions, who worked hard to destroy their Detroit employers, as Christian Schneider points out:
While most cheeseheads saw the Super Bowl as a rare night off from the sucking hole of union politics, there it was in the ad — an image of the state capitol occupation by union protesters nearly a year ago.
While the video of the capitol’s illuminated east wing plays, Eastwood growls, “I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. [Edit. note: “Huh?”] And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. The fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.”
Of course, the “division, discord, and blame,” in Wisconsin began when unions tried the burn the state down over Governor Scott Walker’s plan requiring them to begin paying into their own pension accounts, and to pay a little more toward their health insurance (although still half the private-sector average.) Walker scaled back their ability to collectively bargain, although they still retained more bargaining rights than federal workers, who can’t bargain for wages and benefits.
Everyone knows the results. Union protesters calling the Lieutenant Governor a “f***ing whore” to her husband’s face after a Walker speech. Screeching demonstrators being dragged out while attempting to disrupt Walker’s State of the State address. WWII veterans being greeted with Nazi salutes at a capitol Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony. Protesters disrupting a Walker-led ceremony for Special Olympics award recipients. Forged recall petition signatures. Lawmakers having beers dumped on their heads. The list goes on and on.
According to Chrysler, these are times when we just “didn’t understand each other,” and where both sides can be ascribed “blame.” In fact, it was the union protesters that understood perfectly — that their boorish behavior would probably one day land them in an ad lauding their activism. …
It also seems somewhat incongruous that Chrysler would lionize the Wisconsin union movement in such a way. Organized labor’s pay and benefit demands are what brought U.S. auto makers to their knees in the first place. As George Will is fond of saying, American car companies actually became health-insurance companies that happened to sell automobiles. It’s no coincidence that the American entities who have struggled the most in recent years — car companies, the American educational system — are the ones that are the most heavily unionized. (Wisconsin, of all places, should recognize this, as a major GM plant in Janesville closed in 2008, tearing the heart out of that union town.)
Schneider could have mentioned Milwaukee and Kenosha, which used to have Chrysler plants, but now do not. Wisconsin has no auto assembly plants, which means the $23.6 billion we will lose on the GM and Chrysler bailouts were of no real value to Wisconsin.
Eastwood had his own, uh, clarification Monday to Fox News:
Following the fall out over the controversial Chrysler Super Bowl halftime ad, Clint Eastwood spoke exclusively with O’Reilly Factor producer Ron Mitchell…
“I just want to say that the spin stops with you guys, and there is no spin in that ad. On this I am certain.
l am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about just about job growth and the spirit of America. I think all politicians will agree with it. I thought the spirit was OK.
I am not supporting any politician at this time.
Chrysler to their credit didn’t even have cars in the ad.
Anything they gave me for it went for charity.
If any Obama or any other politician wants to run with the spirit of that ad, go for it.”
Evidently Eastwood, formerly known as a conservative/libertarian, misjudged the reaction to the ad. His reaction came out before the late Monday news that Eastwood opposed the Chrysler bailout, according again to Reuters:
“We shouldn’t be bailing out the banks and car companies,” actor, director and Academy Award winner Eastwood told the Los Angeles Times in November 2011. “If a CEO can’t figure out how to make his company profitable, then he shouldn’t be the CEO.” …
Eastwood’s manager Leonard Hirshan said the actor has not changed his views on the auto bailout.
“He did a commercial that had nothing to do with politics,” Hirshan said. “What he did was talk about America. If anything, this was a pro American commercial not a Chrysler commercial. Chrysler just sponsored what he had to say.”
(And if you believe any of these denials, I have a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird with a 426 Hemi to sell you. It was driven only to church on Sundays.)
Truth be told, the most outrageous part of the ad doesn’t have to do with Chrysler, but with Detroit:
“People are out of work and they’re hurting and they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback,” Eastwood said. “The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again.”
That would be the same Detroit with, as a National Review comment put it, “a downtown that looks like a bombed-out ruin, large tracts of land and ornate buildings in a state of advanced decay, an indicted mayor, and a mass exodus of everyone with the means to escape.”
This ad is, in the words of Karl Rove, who was to George W. Bush what Axelrod is to Obama, “a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising and the best wishes of the management, which is benefitted by getting a bunch of our money that they’ll never pay back.” Yet it’s unlikely to make much difference in November. It won’t even make a difference in sales of Chrysler products, given that no one is buying cars or other big-ticket items these days unless absolutely necessary.
A former actor whose birthday was yesterday poses the correct question for November:
The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute’s George Lightbourn on the correct way to assess state finances (which is not now being done by the Walker administration, nor was it done by the Doyle, McCallum, Thompson, Earl, Dreyfus, Schreiber or Lucey administrations, and so on, and so on, and so on):
Sheila Weinberg from the Institute for Truth in Accounting coined the term, “political math.” When politicians delay a payment and refer to the delay as a “savings,” they’re using political math. Or when no money is set aside for a bill they know is coming due, practitioners of political call the IOU a “savings.” It’s political math that allows state government to meet the balanced budget requirement while state accountants show it to be running a $3 billion deficit (according to the official tally released over the Christmas holiday).
Both Republicans and Democrats have used political math to make budgets balance over the years. Political math allowed my former boss Scott McCallum to balance the budget using one-time tobacco money and it was political math that green lighted Jim Doyle to “borrow” over $1 billion from the transportation fund. Thanks to political math, Governors and legislatures of all political stripe have been able to buy more government than they could really afford.
Last summer, conservatives celebrated the budget Walker put together with the help of a friendly legislature because it squeezed nearly all the political math out of the process. (We say nearly because they still used a couple of old tricks which included $264 million of “debt restructuring” a practice that permits state government to delay its debt payments for a couple of years). We finally have a budget that comes pretty close to balancing, i.e. spends no more money than is actually available.
Yet, no one, especially fiscal conservatives, should think the job is finished; far from it. What Walker and company accomplished was a one-off budget, one that can easily be undone – and then some – by the next governor and legislature. Wisconsin’s budget is as vulnerable as ever. …
Either an uptick of the economy or a change in the political whim could lead Wisconsin right back into the old style of budgeting where our politicians spend way more money than they have.
As long as the official books of the state are kept using cash accounting, political math will forever be part of our heritage and we will continue to spend more money than we actually have. It is time for the Governor to take a giant step toward creating a legacy of balanced budgets that will inevitably yield a more limited government.
One rather wonkish change would kill political math once and for all. Wisconsin state government to do what every local government and every Wisconsin business does – use generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to balance its books. If our government made that one budget change, then any commitment to spend, no matter how far into the future, would have to be backed by actual money. …
Revolutionary? Hardly, since this is the same accounting standard that every local government and business in Wisconsin has learned to live with.
As I’ve written here before, it is crazy that an enterprise that spends $35 billion each year uses cash accounting. A business 0.0001 percent of that size wouldn’t use cash accounting. And using cash accounting instead of GAAP accounting has gotten us to where we are in government finance. During the past decade, one-third of the states ran GAAP deficits in any year, but Wisconsin ran GAAP deficits in every fiscal year.
As usual, we taxpayers have to be protected from our elected officials. Counting dollars correctly is a start. So are strict controls on government spending at every level, enacted in the state Constitution and essentially impossible to surmount.
Super Bowl XLVI wasn’t a bad game (particularly the finish), but it was missing a team, of course.
Between my overscheduled weekend and my head getting plugged, I lacked motivation to write a Super Bowl column.
Then, while watching (particularly the halftime show, which was a yawner), I wondered what might be the ultimate Super Bowl, which would be in parts, of course.
The broadcast begins with for my money the best NFL theme of all time that few remember:
You need a pregame with the world’s greatest marching band:
The National Anthem:
It begins with a bang, on a certain team’s second offensive play:
Add an unlikely hero, Max McGee, who demonstrated the best way to prepare for a Super Bowl is to be out all night with two women:
A better halftime than Madonna:
How about a kickoff return?
The Minister of Defense:
Another huge defensive play:
The best game-winning drive in Super Bowl history, called by my all-time favorite NFL announcer:
One more defensive stand …
… and a trophy at the end …
… with one more band performance:
The ultimate Super Bowl wraps up with the ultimate NFL Films Super Bowl music from, oddly enough, the Super Bowl V video:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 