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The Liberal Media Display Their Childish, Boorish Side on the Secret JournoList
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2009 Comment (10)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Last week, Mickey Kaus exposed some postings on JournoList, the by-invitation-only website for certain young left-wing political writers. I'm glad I haven't gotten an invitation. Many of these writers produce thoughtful and intelligent pieces in print and in online venues available to the general public. But the pieces Kaus presents are childish and boorish. These guys would make better use of their time writing for everyone rather than trying to bully and badmouth each other into taking a party line on issues, which seems to be JournoList's purpose. Not all new ideas are good ones.
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Republicans Are Normal, Democrats Are Not
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2009 Comment (46)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
My U.S. News column this week is on the roadblocks the Obama administration is encountering to its expansive budget and economic policies. Ours is not a parliamentary democracy like Britain's, where the majority party can push its program through the legislature without much trouble. Members of Congress are, to a considerable extent, independent operators, beholden not to the president but to their own constituents, and act accordingly. Obama's big plans on energy and taxes affect different states and congressional districts in different ways, ways that cut across party lines. So he's encountering roadblocks, and it's not clear whether he'll get around them.
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Obama Cap-and-Trade Will Meet Coal-Fired Energy Political Opposition
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2009 Comment (17)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Bill Galston at the New Republic's blog provides some clear thinking on the prospects for the Obama administration's cap-and-trade legislation. His conclusion: ain't gonna happen. Galston notes that national polls show that on the question of balancing economic against environmental considerations, voters have switched and are now more concerned about the economy—as in holding down utility costs—and less concerned about the environment.
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A Nuclear Iran and Wise Words on the Middle East Dilemma
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2009 Comment (9)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
At the risk of being accused of browning up the boss, let me link to Mort Zuckerman's column from the U.S. News Weekly on Iran. What can we do about Iran's nuclear weapons program, short of military action? Mort has a list:
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The Geithner Paradox: Unregulated Institutions Bailing Out Regulated Ones
Tweet Share on Facebook March 24, 2009 Comment (19)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I haven't commented on Timothy Geithner's plan, the one promised for February 10 and delivered on March 23, to clear out the toxic waste assets from the banks and other financial institutions that hold them. I hope it works, and I fear that it won't. But this isn't my area of expertise and I'm not confident enough to make any predictions. I note with interest that it's being attacked, and being defended, by people on the left and people on the right.
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Investing Without Political Risk
Tweet Share on Facebook March 23, 2009 Comment (7)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I don't give investment advice, but for those who want to avoid political risk, a portfolio manager named Eric Singer has created Congressional Effect Management, a mutual fund that trades only when Congress is out of session. Singer says that his fund has outperformed the market this year and last. Warning: outperformed the market this year and last means losing less than the market has.
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The Fall of Democratic Political Consultant Hank Morris
Tweet Share on Facebook March 23, 2009 Comment (1)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I had lost track of Democratic political consultant Hank Morris some time ago; I knew him as a Democratic campaign consultant in the 1970s and 1980s, and one who always seemed reasonably honest and candid. So I was shocked to see this. Morris's lawyer says he's innocent. I find that hard to believe, but I also find it hard to believe that Morris would be involved in a scam like this. Though $30 million is a lot of money. What could have been going on in his mind?
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Republicans Aren't Doing Better--Democrats Are Doing Worse
Tweet Share on Facebook March 23, 2009 Comment (45)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Last Wednesday, I noted that Republicans are now running even or slightly ahead in the generic vote for Congress in two respected national polls. On Friday, Charlie Cook noted the same results. He pointed out that the NPR survey shows Independents favoring Republicans 38-24 percent and that Republican pollster Glen Bolger says this is the first time Independents have favored Republicans since 2004.
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A Correction to My Blog Post On Young Downscale Voters
Tweet Share on Facebook March 20, 2009 Comment (6)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In looking at the 2008 exit poll today, I noticed a material error (since corrected) in this recent blog post. There I said that voters under-30 were 10 percent of the electorate; the actual percentage in the 2008 exit poll was 18 percent. I must have been looking at the percentage of those 19-24, which was 10 percent. There's still a difference between the 18 percent of the electorate that was under-30 and the 22 percent of the over-18 population which is under-30. And there's no significant difference between the under-30's share of the electorate in the 2008 exit poll (18 percent) and the 2004 exit poll (17 percent). Which means, I think, that the point I was trying to make—that young downscale whites didn't vote at high levels—is still true. But the numbers I mistakenly used overstated the point substantially. Sorry.
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The AIG Bonus Tax Stench: The House Made It Harder to Fix the Financial System
Tweet Share on Facebook March 20, 2009 Comment (16)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This Washington Post editorial gets it right. "The House had the feel of a mob scene," when it passed a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid by AIG and other firms which have received more than $5 billion in TARP money. This was a moment of panic for House Democrats. Almost all of them, and not a single House Republican, had voted for the stimulus package which specifically authorized such bonus payments. A bill that no one was given the opportunity to actually read. You don't have to be a political genius to see what peril that poses for just about every Democratic incumbent and the opportunity it presents for every Republican candidate. But they evidently felt they couldn't just pass a confiscatory tax on the bonuses only at AIG, since that would violate the Constitution's prohibition of bills of attainder—not to mention notions of basic fairness, as Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel noted when they were first asked about proposals for a 100 percent tax on AIG bonuses. So now this will apply to other firms, including those like JPMorganChase which took TARP money though it didn't want it, because Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that otherwise there would be a stigma on those firms which did take TARP money.
This confiscatory tax has the smell of something that will not finally make it into law. But in the meantime the stench is pretty strong. The House has just made it a lot harder to repair the financial system, as Charles Krauthammer demonstrates. Appalling.
