The Technocratic Threat

Jonah Goldberg on the technocratic agenda underlying Obamacare:

There's a troubling contempt for democracy in [the progressive] approach to politics because it assumes that your opponents have nothing of substance to contribute to the discussion. Moreover, this assumption inexorably leads liberals to think that if we could just let the experts run things, then everything would be great.

This was the faith of the original progressives who pushed, in the words of legendary news commentator Walter Lippmann, the "mastery" of scientific governance over the "drift" of messy markets and disorganized democracy. The New Deal and the Great Society were grounded in the same vision of infinitely capable technocrats.

Even John F. Kennedy argued that the problems facing the country "deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men" and should therefore be left to the experts to settle without subjecting them to divisive democratic debate.

Just last year, Peter Orszag, former Obama Office of Management and Budget director, was making the same argument. "We need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions," Orszag argued, "by making them a bit less democratic." The answer to our problems, Orszag proclaimed: "Automatic policies and depoliticized commissions."

It's no wonder that this mindset led to the creation of ObamaCare. Indeed, this is the real principle at the core of the act: the idea that if we can just give the experts, the commissions, the panels and boards enough power to do "what all experts" believe, then everything will be great, particularly if we can force citizens and businesses alike to heel.

This is the great divide that distinguishes all aspects of American, indeed all Western, politics. It transcends national, ethnic, class, religious, and party divisions. It pits those who still retain some faith in democracy against those who would cede control of all aspects of life to expert opinion, and it is the aspect of contemporary political culture that most terrifies me. 

Read Jonah's piece here.

Naivete

Jim Geraghty writes:

Those who voted for Obama won’t call him stupid, and certainly don’t accept that he’s evil. But they have seen grandiose promises on the stimulus fail to materialize, Obamacare touted as the answer to all their health care needs and turn out to be nothing of the sort, pledges of amazing imminent advances in alternative energy, and so on. He seemed to think that reaching out to the Iranians would lead to a change in the regime’s behavior and attitudes. He was surprised to learn that shovel-ready projects were not, in fact, shovel-ready. He was surprised to learn that large-scale investment in infrastructure and clean-energy projects wouldn’t great enormous numbers of new jobs. He’s surprised that his past housing policies haven’t helped struggling homeowners like he promised. He’s surprised that his signature health-care policy has become as controversial as it has. The “recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized.” When a woman says her semiconductor engineer husband can’t find a job, Obama says he’s surprised to hear it, because “he often hears business leaders in that field talk of a scarcity of skilled workers.”

The poor guy. He’s always getting blindsided.

Geraghty recommends this narrative as a winning formula for Republicans in the general election. Most Obama voters are unwilling to believe that they completely misjudged the character of their candidate and will stubbornly vote for him again, but they are willing to vote against incompetence and naivete.

Read the whole thing here.

What Recovery?

Dick Morris on the subject of the Obama Recovery that the MSM is trumpeting:

The economic data that portend recovery are totally and completely inventions of Obama’s political operation. The reality is that no recovery is taking place!


Economist James Fitzgibbon, of the Highlander Fund, explains how cooked the economic statistics on which the president bases his claims of recovery really are.

Begin with “gains” in the stock market. Fitzgibbon explains that they are no indication of changes in the public mood because the public isn’t doing the investing anymore. He notes that HFT (high frequency trade computers) now “account for 80 percent [of the market's] daily business. No one else is left because they lost their money in 2008 and the public has fled the market … Total NYSE volume is 67 percent lower on average than in 2008. Volume is 29 percent lower this year compared to 2011. The prices [have] no serious meaning.”

Have consumers, as alleged, started borrowing again? Not really. Fitzgibbon explains that “credit use has surged only because the Obama administration changed the student loan program to a direct program and those loans are now counted as part of this metric. It is not comparable to anything prior to 2011.” And, he adds ominously, “massive credit card use as measured against actual verifiable sales shows the increase is in borrowed funds to pay for food! Not my idea of a healthy sign.”

How about lower unemployment figures? Fitzgibbon says they are a “joke.” He says that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has “completely changed the … metrics as of January 2012. None of the current percentages are relatable to anything prior to 2012!” He points out that the January unemployment data are heavily adjusted for “seasonal variations.” He notes that “the actual data [show that the economy] lost 2.7 million jobs in January.” And that’s just the numerator. For the denominator — the number of people in the workforce — the data “also shows about 1.2 million people magically left the workforce.” He says one has to go back to the early 1980s to see labor force participation as low as it is now.

Auto sales? He says “auto sales are when the manufacturer dumps cars and trucks on a dealer. Inventory stuffing! It has no relationship to actual sales to a consumer. Thanks to Obama, GM dealers are drowning in product no one wants to buy. It is a meaningless data point. Only dealer-to-consumer data is useful. It is not showing any growth at all.”

Housing? He says positive news in this sector is unreliable. “The raw data we get shows it is worse than last year and in some regions [the] worst ever since the ’60s.”

So it appears that Obama’s reelection strategy hinges on asking people to believe the data he puts before them rather than the evidence of their own eyes. It won’t work.

So who to believe? Morris is not an economist, and the opinions of credentialed economists vary widely. He does, however, know politics and how things are spun. I certainly hope we are in recovery, but like most people I won't take the word of the credentialed experts affiliated with the administration as filtered through a news media that is sympathetic to Obama. I'll have to wait and see.

Obama

Why is everyone so surprised that Obama has outraised Hillary in the funding sweepstakes? Don't they realize that the race card always, repeat always, trumps the gender card? That was the great lesson of the O.J. trial.

Lets get this straight. Obama allows white Americans to fantasize that by supporting him they can at last put the racial animosity of the past half century behind them. They hope that his rise to prominence means that they never have to see Rev. Jackson, Rev. Sharpton, Rev. Farrakhan, or any of the other race hustlers who have made careers out of stirring up racial resentments ever again.

Guys, it ain't gonna happen. Barak Obama is not the "magic negro" who will wash away the past. Nobody is! And voting for him does not make you a "good person" -- it just marks you as a racist fool who can be exploited by racial imagery. And those outrageous "reverends", they aren't going to fade away. Life ain't that easy.

Why did I use the term "racist"? Think about it. Are you responding to the color of Obama's skin or his substantial accomplishments? Since he has damn few accomplishments, it is his skin and his forgiving manner that turns you on, and if you respond to racial cues, you are by definition a racist.

Live with it.

UPDATE: If you ever thought that the race hustlers would ever fade away into the background, look at what happened after Don Imus made that silly remark about the Rutgers basketbabes. The obnoxious "reverends" and the black studies posers were all over the tube.