Bob Woodward is preparing to release the latest book describing a chaotic Trump White House led by an unhinged ignoramus. Also in the news today, the manufacturing revival promised by the alleged ignoramus is in full swing.
As is his custom, Mr. Woodward includes in his new book a great deal of material from anonymous sources. The result, according to his colleagues at the Washington Post, is a “a harrowing portrait of the Trump presidency.” The Post reports:
A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.
Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.
According to the book, the most senior of the President’s aides thinks the President is out of his mind:
White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was “unhinged,” Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
This afternoon, the White House released a statement from General Kelly that referenced a similar report from NBC in May:
The idea I ever called the President an idiot is not true. As I stated back in May and still firmly stand behind: “I spend more time with the President than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total BS. I’m committed to the President, his agenda, and our country. This is another pathetic attempt to smear people close to President Trump and distract from the administration’s many successes.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders addressed the book more generally today as “nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad. While it is not always pretty, and rare that the press actually covers it, President Trump has broken through the bureaucratic process to deliver unprecedented successes for the American people. Sometimes it is unconventional, but he always gets results.”
The results are not always positive, but she does have a point. Today the Journal reports on what’s been happening outside of Washington:
American factory activity in August expanded at the strongest pace in more than 14 years, despite rising tensions with some of the U.S.’s largest trade partners.
The Institute for Supply Management on Tuesday said its manufacturing index rose to 61.3 in August, the highest level since May 2004, from 58.1 in July. Sales of factory-made products, or new orders, output and employment all grew at a faster pace in August.
Based on this bullish manufacturing report and another pleasant surprise today in the Census Bureau’s report on construction spending, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta raised its estimate of economic growth in the third quarter to a sizzling 4.7%.
One might conclude that allowing the economy to grow by reducing the burden of taxes and regulation is so simple that even an unhinged ignoramus can do it. Yet many seemingly sane and knowledgable politicians have proven unable to grasp the concept.
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No comments on Trump: Truth and/or fiction
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President Trump has proposed a one-year pay freeze for federal bureaucrats, which has reinvigorated the debate over whether compensation levels for the civil service are too lavish.
The Washington Post opines this is nothing but “government bashing,” but this chart from my former colleague Chris Edwards should be more than enough evidence to show that federal bureaucrats have a big advantage over workers in the economy’s productive sector.
And there is plenty of additional evidence that federal employment is very attractive. For instance, it’s just about impossible to get fired from a bureaucracy.
Though defenders of the civil service sometimes make the preposterous claim that nobody gets fired because bureaucrats are such good employees.
The low rate at which federal employees are fired for poor performance doesn’t prove the government accepts it but instead “could actually be a positive sign,”… A report from the Merit Systems Protection Board in effect responds to members of Congress and others who contend that federal managers don’t care, or don’t dare, to take disciplinary action because of civil service protections. “…If the agency is successful in preventing poor performance…, a small number of performance-based removals could actually be a positive sign,” MSPB said. …Of the 2.1 million federal employees in a government database…, about 10,000 are fired for either poor performance or misconduct each year. …That low rate of firing has been cited in proposals to force agencies to take action… Individual employees, too, commonly express dissatisfaction with how agencies handle poor performers among their co-workers.
I have to confess that my jaw dropped when I read this article. Maybe we should ask veterans whether they think all federal bureaucrats do a good job?
Or we can ask non-profit groups whether they think IRS bureaucrats are top-quality workers? Or ask anyone who has ever tried to navigate the federal government?
We also know that the counties where most federal bureaucrats reside are now the richest region of the entire nation.
The three richest counties in the United States with populations of 65,000 or more, when measured by their 2016 median household incomes, were all suburbs of Washington, D.C., according to data released today by the Census Bureau. Eight of the 20 wealthiest counties with populations of 65,000 or more were also suburbs of Washington, D.C.–as were 10 of the top 25. …With Falls Church City included in the 2015 data, the nation’s four wealthiest counties were D.C. suburbs.
To be fair, this data is also driven by all the high-paid lobbyists. contracts, consultants, and others who have their snouts buried in the federal trough. So the incredible wealth of the DC region is really an argument for shrinking the size and scope of the federal government.
But the bureaucracy is part of the problem.
Interestingly, even the Congressional Budget Office concluded that bureaucrats are overpaid. And CBO almost certainly understated the gap, as noted in congressional testimony.
The CBO report’s headline figure is that, on average, federal salaries and benefits are 17 percent above private-sector levels. … I would consider the CBO’s reported federal compensation premium to be on the low end… when I analyze federal employee wages using the methodology that the progressive-leaning Economic Policy Institute has used in numerous studies of state and local government salaries, I find an average federal salary premium of not 2 percent but of about 14 percent. … The CBO chose to value federal employees’ pension benefits using a 5 percent discount rate. Using that discount rate, the federal employee retirement package was found to be substantially more generous than is received by comparable private-sector employees. But…corporate pensions are not nearly as safe as federal pensions, as witnessed by pending benefit reductions for “multiemployer” defined benefit plans. Valuing federal pension benefits using a lower discount rate to better reflect their safety would find a higher overall federal compensation premium.
Notwithstanding all this evidence, the unions representing bureaucrats nonetheless try to crank out numbers showing federal employees are underpaid.
To be sure, overall compensation levels don’t tell us everything. It is important to adjust for education, skills, and other factors.
Which is why the most useful, powerful, and revealing data in this debate is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which measures voluntary quit rates by industry. If there is a lot of turnover in a sector of the economy, that suggests workers are underpaid. But if there are very few voluntary departures, that suggests workers in that part of the economy are overpaid.
And the numbers from BLS clearly show that federal bureaucrats are far less likely to leave their positions when compared to employees in the private sector.
This five-fold gap is staggering. I have lots of friends who work for the federal government. Most privately confess that they know that are making out like bandits. I think I’ll send this chart to the few holdouts.
By the way, I shared the numbers about quit rates for state and local bureaucrats back in 2011. Same story, though the compensation gap isn’t quite as large and may be driven mostly by unfunded fringe benefits.
P.S. I’m much more interested in shrinking government rather than shrinking pay levels. The correct pay for bureaucrats at the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Energy, and Agriculture is zero. Why? Because they bureaucracies shouldn’t exist.
All of that applies to state government as well, centered in what now is the richest county in property valuation in the entire state. (Yes, more property value than Milwaukee.) Limiting increases in spending is not a spending cut. Cutting personnel is how you cut government.
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The number one song in Britain today in 1954 was the singer’s only number one hit, making her Britain’s first American one-hit wonder:
The number one song in the U.S. today in 1964:
Today in 1967, the Beatles probably felt like they were the walrus (goo goo ga joob) after needing 16 takes to get this right:
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For the first day of school, James Wigderson:
A new study by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) shows that increasing school funding may not help school performance, and increased spending on administration may actually lower student achievement.
“When it comes to spending on K-12 public schools, Wisconsin is at the point of diminishing returns and just does not receive a return on investment for children,” said Will Flanders, the research director for WILL. “The state should look at other options—such as increasing competition through choice and charter schools, both of which are drastically underfunded compared to their public schools.”
The study by WILL, Money for Nothing: The Relationship Between Various Types of School Funding and Academic Outcomes, looked at the relationship between test scores and the number of non-teachers in a school district, per pupil spending in a district, and teacher pay. The results suggest that more funding for public schools will not improve pupil performance.
“As other studies have shown, there is no statistically significant relationship between overall per student spending and test scores,” the organization said in a release on Tuesday. “In fact, when proper control variables are included, school districts that spend more per student have lower academic proficiency in both math and English.”
The study also found:
Teacher pay has kept up with inflation, with average pay for teachers similar to teacher pay six years ago when accounting for inflation. There is also no statistically significant relationship between teacher pay and student test scores.
The average school district’s employees are 40.4 percent non-teacher. The study also found 101 districts have at least 50 percent of non-teachers making up their employees. School administrators make on average 305 percent of the average teacher in their district.
Districts with a higher percentage of non-teachers have lower proficiency rates than districts with a higher percentage of teachers.
All 12,919 Democratic candidates for governor, despite the 12 percent increase in school spending since the first Walker budget and the 21-percent increase since Gov. James Doyle’s last budget, claim schools need more money, including the person supposedly in charge of state schools, Tony Evers, of whom RightWisconsin writes:
Superintendent for Public Instruction Tony Evers, a probable Democratic candidate for governor, sent out a fundraising email attempting to play to his supposed strength, school funding:
Our schools need help. Because of Scott Walker’s ongoing budget squabbles and his proposal to give billions of our tax dollars to a foreign corporation, our public school funding is in near constant jeopardy.
As an educator, Tony Evers believes our kids should be the first and last concerns of Wisconsin’s leadership, not political pawns.
Click here to add your name to Tony’s petition to support public school funding across Wisconsin >>
Scott Walker has slashed funding for public education year after year to further his radical political agenda. In 2012, Walker cut $782 million from public schools — and our public education system has never fully recovered.
Today — even after adjusting for inflation — state funding for public education remains lower than it was 10 years ago.
That’s unacceptable. Wisconsin’s kids are being denied a 21st century education because Scott Walker is playing political games.
As an educator, Tony understands that good schools are the key to creating good jobs and the skilled workforce our state needs to bring new employers to Wisconsin.
With your support, we can improve Wisconsin’s public schools and allow our kids to maximize their potential.
Thanks for making your voice heard.
One, let’s point out the obvious that the Foxconn deal is being received enthusiastically by UW System President Ray Cross, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank, and the state’s technical colleges because they know the boon to education that a Foxconn LCD manufacturing facility would be. Evers supposedly oversees public education in Wisconsin (although looking at Milwaukee it’s hard to believe anyone is in charge). Shouldn’t he be able to see the educational benefit of Foxconn coming to Wisconsin, too?
Two, it’s funny how Democrats rail against foreigners when they want to bash Republicans. We’ll just take a page out of the Democratic playbook: What difference does it make whether a company receiving a subsidy from the state is foreign or not? That’s just a dog whistle to Evers’ supporters that it’s okay to dislike Asians. In the days after the violence in Charlottesville, Evers’ campaign to keep Wisconsin free of Asian manufacturers is racist and it’s wrong.
But a recurring problem with Evers is how he uses funny math. Evers claims that the state’s public schools have never recovered from the funding cut in 2012. That would be ignoring the change in state law, Act 10, that occurred at the same time. That law, which has saved taxpayers over $5 billion, allowed school districts to make up for the cuts by saving on teacher health plans and benefits. If school districts actually used the savings allowed under Act 10, the money that was cut by the state was made up in the benefit cost savings.
Before Act 10, in the days of Democratic Governor Jim Doyle’s tax-and-spend policies, school districts couldn’t keep up financially. Milwaukee Public Schools was going to lay off over 500 teachers before a federal teacher bailout prevented it.
Act 10 changed that.
Despite the success of Act 10 in helping the state’s public schools, Evers continues to criticize the law. He blames it for a teacher shortage even though research shows that Act 10 is not the cause. In fact, the teacher shortage is a bigger problem in other states that do not have a law like Act 10.
But even if we don’t include the savings from Act 10, Dr. Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty points out (again) in response to Evers’ email that school districts have caught up:
It is true that spending was cut in 2012 as a response to the end of federal stimulus. The state had a massive hole in its budget, and all parts of state government took a hit. However, the vast majority of those cuts have been restored. Nominally, spending is more today than ten years ago. Moreover, under the proposals of the Senate and Governor regarding per pupil aid, spending is likely to be at the highest level in the history of the state even after inflation adjustments by 2019.
Instead of running for governor, perhaps Evers should go back to school.
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The number one song in the U.S. today in 1961:
Today in 1962, the Beatles recorded “Love Me Do,” taking 17 takes to do it right:
Three years later, the Beatles had the number one single …
… which referred to something The Who could have used, because on the same day the Who’s van was vandalized and $10,000 in musical equipment was stolen from them while they were buying … a guard dog:
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Republicans, not Democrats, passed the $100-per-child tax rebate earlier this year and the sales tax holiday last month.
But as the party in charge in Madison, Republicans are responsible for what the MacIver Institute reports:
Wisconsinites hunting for back-to-school deals are out of luck for yet another year thanks to the state’s minimum markup law, which outlaws sale prices that are too low.
The minimum markup law, formally known as the Unfair Sales Act, bans retailers from selling merchandise below cost. The law was originally passed back in 1939 and also requires a 9 percent price markup on specific items like alcohol, tobacco and gasoline.
Unfortunately for back-to-school shoppers, Wisconsinites are forced to pay for this archaic law that’s still on the books despite multiple attempts to repeal it.
According to advertisements obtained by the MacIver Institute from the end of August, Walmart stores in Milwaukee charged higher prices for a number of common back-to-school items compared with other Walmart stores in Iowa and Michigan.
Like in past years, families in Milwaukee buying basic items like notebooks, markers, and crayons can expect to pay anywhere from 14 to 146 percent more than Walmart shoppers in Dubuque, Iowa, and Kalamazoo, Mich.
A 24-pack of Crayola Crayons posted the largest price difference, costing 146 percent more in Milwaukee than in cities in the neighboring states. The same was true for similar basic school supplies.
Parents picking up a one-subject notebook at Walmart in Dubuque, for example, only paid 25 cents. That same notebook cost 40 cents in Milwaukee – a 60 percent gap. Crayola markers cost 97 cents in Kalamazoo, but thanks to the archaic minimum markup law, those same markers cost $1.97 in Milwaukee, a whopping 103 percent difference.
A Texas Instruments graphing calculator cost $100 in Milwaukee, but just $88 in both Iowa and Michigan.
The added costs stack up. A basic shopping list would cost 17 percent more for a Milwaukee back-to-school shopper than in nearby states – 85 percent more not including the calculator.
Efforts to repeal the antiquated minimum markup law stretch back several years. Most recently, a partial repeal bill led by Sen. Vukmir and Rep. Jim Ott, and joined by Sen. Dave Craig and Rep. Dave Murphy, was the first repeal attempt to receive a hearing in the legislature.
“What are you hoping to accomplish by keeping this outdated law on the books?” Todd Peterson, regional general manager for Walmart Stores in Wisconsin, asked the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Small Business and Tourism. Much has changed since the law was enacted in 1939, he and his colleagues argued.
But as with previous attempts at repealing the anti-consumer law, that bill went no further.
Even though minimum markup repeal has hit a wall in the Legislature, a 2015 poll found that Wisconsinites are tired of paying higher prices and want the law finally taken off the books. The poll found 80 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of the minimum markup law when told “Wisconsin residents are required to pay more for many on-sale items than residents in neighboring states simply because of this 75-year-old law.”
Respondents were just as angry when told that “the law forbids retailers from selling to consumers below cost and also requires that gasoline retailers sell gas to consumers with a minimum 9 percent markup.”
The minimum markup law also outlaws many of the discounts posted on popular national bargain hunting days like Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day, which in Wisconsin could better be called “Amazon Crime Day.”
While this year shoppers in Wisconsin enjoyed a sales tax holiday on many back-to-school items earlier in August, bargain hunters would save money year-round on virtually all products if not for the minimum markup law.
With repeal efforts once again stalled at the doors of the Legislature, bargain hunters should beware: Wisconsin’s Price Police remain on the prowl during yet another back-to-school shopping season.
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Since a brain tumor claimed Sen. John McCain’s life, Democrats have been effusive in their praise of his “maverick” style of politics. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called him one of the “few truly great people….a truth teller, never afraid to speak truth to power in an era where that has become all too rare.”
Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi said “America is in tears over the loss of a great man.” Hillary Clinton praised him for his “example of working across the aisle,” while former President Barack Obama urged grieving Americans to “aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own.”
If we’ve learned anything this week, it’s that America’s Democrats loved John McCain. So why don’t any of them want to be him?
Who is the John McCain of the Democratic Party? The “maverick” who disagrees with his or her party’s orthodoxy and is willing to confront it? Is there such a figure?
Instead, an analysis of Congress by the Lugar Center found that, of the top 10 most bipartisan U.S. senators, just one—Joe Donnelly of Indiana—is a Democrat. Overwhelmingly, most of the “reaching across the aisle” is reaching from the Right.
Yes, there are a handful of Democrats in red states who occasionally vote with Republicans— Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota come to mind. But they’re not “mavericks” bucking their party’s ideology. They’re just Democrats in Trump Country trying to figure out how Democratic they can be and still get re-elected.
How about one of the members of the Senate “Pro-Life Democrats” caucus. Oh, wait—there isn’t one. Because there aren’t any pro-life Democrats in the Senate. Sometimes senators like Manchin, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania are characterized as “pro-life.” But their current scores from the National Abortion Rights Action League are 72, 74 and 100 percent, respectively. In a party whose chairman pledged the Democratic National Committee would only support pro-choice candidates (before he was forced to walk it back), this is hardly a surprise.
The point is not that whether the pro-life or pro-choice position is the right one, but rather that the same Democrats who are celebrating McCain’s political heterodoxy demand ideological purity from their own members. To many on the Right, who weren’t big fans of McCain precisely because they disagreed with him ideologically, it appears what the Democrats and media are really celebrating isn’t McCain’s “independence” but rather his willingness to oppose the GOP.
In a piece that almost reads like parody, for example, the Washington Post just ran an article entitled “Five of John McCain’s most courageous political moments.” At the top of the list: The speech he gave when he lost to Barack Obama. (“Of course the media loved McCain,” one longtime Republican told me this week. “He’s a Republican who lost.”)
All the other moments involved McCain either attacking a Republican or defending a Democrat.
Not to be outdone, USA Today offered “Six memorable moments when John McCain earned a reputation as a ‘maverick.‘” Same thing. They include McCain saving Obamacare and supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants. Political courage, it appears, seems to inevitably involve voting against the Republican Party.
The media can’t stop admiring the many times Sen. McCain took to the floor of the Senate to criticize Republican positions on issues like immigration or campaign finance reform. OK, fine. So where is the Democrat who’s done the same?
Can you imagine a Democratic senator giving a speech condemning the #AbolishICE, open-borders wing of his or her own party? Making the case, as economists have, that large-scale immigration by low-skill workers hurts the wages of Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder? A speech arguing, as labor unions did for decades, that the Democratic Party should be the party of strong borders in the name of economic justice?
That speech will never be given, because there isn’t a single “maverick” on the Democratic side of the aisle to give it.
Or how about this one: “My fellow Democrats, the American people elected Donald Trump. I think he’s a terrible president, and I disagree with him on almost everything. However, I respect the democratic process and I believe it is wrong to spend so much time and effort trying to de-legitimize his election or plotting for his future removal. We owe the voters the respect of doing our jobs, compromising when we can, and moving legislation forward—even if that means working with Donald Trump. It is wrong for us to be the party that #Resists the outcome of an election.”
A speech like that would actually help create the sort of bipartisanship we’ve been celebrating in the life of Sen. McCain. The tricky part: Finding a Democrat with the courage to give it. They would be ostracized from their own party.
Don’t believe me? Ask Joe Lieberman. In 2000, he was the Democrat’s nominee for Vice President of the United States. In 2006, he was driven out of his own party in a primary and had to run as an independent to hold onto his Connecticut U.S. Senate seat. What was Lieberman’s alleged sin? Working to closely with Republicans. One in particular: Sen. John McCain.
What Sen. Schumer and President Obama and MSNBC are celebrating isn’t McCain’s independence, it’s his willingness to join the Democrats and their cause. And we know it’s true because a Democrat who showed the same willingness to work with the GOP wouldn’t be praised. She would be a pariah.
If Sen. McCain had worked just as hard and faced just as much political backlash fighting to on behalf of the causes of pro-life, traditional marriage and school vouchers—would he be receiving the same praise he is today? Not a chance.
For many Americans on the Right, the real lesson of Sen. McCain’s career as a “maverick” is that the definition of bipartisan is a group of Democrats and Republicans getting together to act like Democrats.
There aren’t any Democratic mavericks in Wisconsin either. Just like parrots every Democrat running for governor promised to repeal Act 10 without, say, asking school district administrators and school boards their opinions on the subject. (Those two groups overwhelmingly favor Act 10.) There are no anti-abortion Democrats. There are no Democrats who believe in Second Amendment rights, despite its presence in both the U.S. and state constitutions. Not a single Democrat this election cycle has proposed any kind of tax cut.
U.S. Sen. William Proxmire (D–Wisconsin) gave out regular Golden Fleece awards for government waste. Proxmire also spent hundreds, not millions, of dollars getting reelected. You don’t and won’t see that anymore either.
History will record that the last Wisconsin Democratic maverick was state Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer, who was called by one of his legislative colleagues a better conservative than many Republicans. Ziegelbauer ended his time in the Legislature as an independent because Ziegelbauer had just too much independent thought for the state Democratic Party, though not for his constituents.
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The number one song in the U.S. today in 1955 was written 102 years earlier:
The number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:
Today in 1970, Arthur Brown demonstrated what The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was like by getting arrested at the Palermo Pop ’70 Festival in Italy for stripping naked and setting fire to his helmet during …
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Britain’s number one single today in 1972:
On the same day, the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival was held on Bull Island in the Wabash River between Illinois and Indiana. The festival attracted four times the projected number of fans, three fans drowned in the Wabash River, and the remaining crowd ended the festival by burning down the stage:
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The number one song today in 1962:
The number one song today in 1984 announced quite a comeback:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 