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The $1.2 Tril Gap: Obama's Subpar Recovery Continues 1.27.12Episode Description
Economy: The latest economic data make it clear that President Obama's policies aren't helping the country get stronger. Rather, they're smothering what should have been a solid recovery.
Real GDP climbed a less-than-expected 2.8% in final quarter of 2011, and just 1.7% for the entire year, down from 3% in 2010. The trend of subpar growth under Obama continues.
To get a better sense of how bad Obama's recovery is, consider this: Under Obama, real GDP has climbed a total of just 6% in the two-and-a-half years since the recession ended in June 2009.
By comparison, real GDP had grown 16% by this point in the Reagan recovery, after the very deep and painful 1981-82 recession.
Had Obama's recovery been as powerful as Reagan's, the economic pie would be $1.2 trillion bigger today.
And had job growth under Obama kept pace with job growth during the Reagan recovery, there would be 10 million ? yes 10 million ? more people with jobs today.
So what explains the difference between these two recoveries? Obama and his legion of liberal defenders claim the last recession was so deep that we're just now getting back on our feet.
by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com
Investor's Business Daily | Sat Jan, 28 | Share     
Democrats Vs. Republicans: Who's The Most Greedy? 1.27.12Episode Description
Greed: Rich businessman Mitt Romney gave more than 16% of his income to charity last year. A few years back, Barack and Michelle Obama gave less than 1% of theirs. Aren't Republicans supposed to be the heartless ones?
According to their tax returns, the Obamas gave to charitable causes just $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004. In 2005 and 2006, they boosted their giving a bit to 5%.
How about Vice President Joe Biden? Surely he could top the Obamas and save some face for the party that purports to be all about helping the poor. But no.
Biden and his wife gave an average of $369 a year to charity for the decade preceding his vice presidency, according to USA Today. That amounted to 0.3% of their income. They haven't been much more generous since Biden became veep. In 2010, they gave $5,350, or roughly 1.4%.
Maybe the Clintons, the last Democrats to hold the White House before the Obamas, can save the party's reputation. From 2000 to 2006, their donations averaged 8.26% of income, from a low of 1.21% in 2002 to a high of 12.57% two years later, says the Tax Foundation.
Better, but not exactly Romney territory. The former Massachusetts governor gave 13.73% of his income to charity in 2010 and an estimated 19.14% last year.
by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com
Investor's Business Daily | Sat Jan, 28 | Share Yet Another Obama-Favored Green Company Goes Bankrupt 1.27.12Episode Description
Energy: In yet another "Solyndra," a car battery maker that got $118 million in stimulus funds has declared bankruptcy. Once again, when this administration picks corporate winners, the taxpayers become losers.
A year ago, Vice President Joe Biden toured the Ener1 Inc. battery factory in Greenfield, Ind., and viewed a "THINK City" electric car that uses Ener1 batteries.
Ener1's employees "will surely benefit from the three-part plan that Vice President Biden announced today," the White House promised. That plan includes rebates, research and development and the promotion of public charging stations, and seeks by 2015 to put on the road roughly 1 million "advanced technology vehicles" ? a cooler-sounding name for the electric geekmobiles no one wants to drive.
The White House boasted that the facility Biden visited "would not exist if not for a $118.5 million grant from the Department of Energy ... part of a $2.4 billion Recovery Act investment in electric vehicles."
The Obama administration a year ago said "the future looks bright" for Ener1 and promised that the firm would employ 1,400 workers by next year.
by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com
Investor's Business Daily | Thu Jan, 26 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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On Bullying: It Takes One To Know One 7.26.10Episode Description
President Obama was apparently moved enough by a letter from a Philadelphia fifth-grader about bullying that he wrote back and encouraged his correspondent to continue her quest to end bullying. Oh, how rich the irony!
Barack Obama is nothing if not a bully. There, I said it, and I believe it's true, no matter how politically incorrect and inconsistent with the mainstream media's narrative it is.
Before getting to some examples, let me direct your attention to the White House's comments on the exchange and the reaction of Obama's fifth-grade correspondent, Zina Stokes.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
David Limbaugh | Mon Jul, 26 | Share Russia Spies; America Apologizes 7.26.10Episode Description
Arriving at a biker's convention in Ukraine on his Harley Davidson trike, Vladimir Putin offered a few observations on his recent celebratory meeting with the 10 Russian sleeper agents deported from the United States. "They had a very difficult fate," the former KGB colonel noted sympathetically. "They had to carry out a task to benefit their motherland's interests for many, many years without a diplomatic cover, risking themselves and those close to them."
The reunion was heartwarming. They sang patriotic songs and "talked of life." Putin assured them, reports the Associated Press, that they would have good jobs and a "bright" future.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Mona Charen | Mon Jul, 26 | Share The Left Hates Conservatives 7.26.10Episode Description
Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives. That they would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. But what is jolting is the hatred of conservatives, as exemplified by the e-mail from an NPR reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death -- and the apparent absence of any objection from the other liberal journalists.
Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous extreme comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs -- such things exist on the right as well -- but to mainstream elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the left's hatred of conservative individuals. Would mainstream conservative journalists e-mail one another wishes to be present while Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or Michael Moore dies slowly and painfully of a heart attack?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Dennis Prager | Mon Jul, 26 | Share Some Welcome Signs of Life From Private Sector 7.23.10Episode Description
Grass somehow manages to grow up through small cracks in the sidewalk. Similarly, the American private sector somehow seems to be exerting itself despite the vast expansion of government by the Barack Obama administration and congressional Democrats.
Case in point: the announcement last week by four oil companies -- Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell -- that they are setting up a $1 billion joint venture to design, build and operate a rapid-response system to contain offshore oil spills as deep as and deeper than BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Their goal is a system that can start mobilizing within 24 hours of an oil spill. They hope to have it up and running within 18 months.
I suppose one might ask why oil companies didn't do this before. But it seems a vivid contrast with the apparently hapless performance of the Mineral Management Service, recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which seems to have sat on out-of-date response plans for years and which was not able to call in equipment and personnel to respond to the April 20 BP spill for weeks or months.
Journalists tend to assume that effective regulation of potentially hazardous products can come only from government. But industry-generated organizations can provide it, as well.
Consider Underwriters Laboratories, founded in 1894, whose UL stickers come attached to regulator products. Or the Society of Automotive Engineers, founded in 1905, which sets standards for the automobile and other industries.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Michael Barone | Fri Jul, 23 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants 1.26.12Episode Description
So, it turns out that the cool cat billed as "No Drama Obama" by his sycophants is actually quite the drama queen. While the White House publicly pretends to ignore conservative detractors of his administration, Chief Touchy-Touchy seems to be personally consumed by our critiques. Yes, mine included.
On Wednesday, the president had himself a mini-"Toddlers and Tiaras"-style meltdown with Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer after landing in Phoenix for a post-State of the Union dog-and-pony show. As Brewer told pool reporters on the scene, Obama took umbrage at Brewer's recent memoir. She minced no words on the cover: "Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border."
And she minced no words describing her impressions of Obama as they sparred over her state's tough immigration enforcement law, which is now the subject of a Justice Department witch-hunt. Brewer called Obama "patronizing" and "condescending." I'd say she was excruciatingly polite.
According to Brewer, "He was a little disturbed about my book. ... I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read (an) excerpt." In the shadow of Air Force One, Obama complained that Brewer hadn't "treated him cordially" and then stalked off while she was responding mid-sentence.
Photogs captured the fracas on film. The civility police gasped at Brewer's "disrespectful" finger-pointing. On cue, one progressive commentator insinuated the gesture was a "racist" jab tantamount to lynching..
Michelle Malkin | Thu Jan, 26 | Share For Gingrich, Amnesty no Impediment to Nomination 1.26.12Episode Description
One thing was missed in Newt Gingrich's victory in the South Carolina primary: Conservatives embraced a pro-amnesty candidate without batting an eyelash. This should come as a wake-up call to those who've been pushing a hard-line anti-illegal immigrant position in the Republican Party.
Granted, Gingrich didn't spend a lot of time discussing his position, which favors amnesty for those illegal immigrants who have been here for a long time, have deep family and community ties, and have paid taxes and avoided breaking other laws. But that's the point. He didn't have to spend a lot of time defending his position because so few conservatives cared.
Now Gingrich seems poised to win another Southern primary: Florida. The latest polls show him within a few percentage points of beating Mitt Romney again (and at least one poll shows him up by 5 points). Whether or not a Gingrich win is a good thing for Republican prospects in the fall, it could help lay the groundwork for future Republican victories by defusing an issue that is guaranteed to alienate the fastest-growing segment of the voting population.
Like other voters, most Hispanics care a lot more about jobs than they do about immigration. Still, they are turned off by candidates who portray illegal immigrants as criminal invaders who want a handout from U.S. taxpayers. Republicans have damaged their ability to woo an important constituency by insisting on a punitive approach to illegal immigration. In this election alone, it could cost Republicans key states critical to winning the presidency: Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.
Linda Chavez | Thu Jan, 26 | Share Obama's Misstatements on the Union 1.26.12Episode Description
Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation.
Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space.
Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record.
He said, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more." But everyone knows he's had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, "Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse."
Obama said, "I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors." Well, that's mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the "programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors" is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan's plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.
David Limbaugh | Thu Jan, 26 | Share Romney Should be Proud 1.26.12Episode Description
It's as predictable as vultures at a carcass. When a wealthy Republican is running for office, the press will make his wealth a handicap. Recall that when George H. W. Bush was running in 1988, he was derided as a "preppy." George W. Bush was the undeserving scion of the ruling class. We were told never mind that he had succeeded in business on his own. Though John McCain had been a fixture on the national stage since 1980, no one had paid much attention to his wealth until he was the Republican nominee, at which point his many houses suddenly became a matter of profound national importance.
Democrats, of course, are permitted to be rich without fear of undue scrutiny. John F. Kennedy was wealthier than Mitt Romney, or would have been had he lived to collect his inheritance. Lyndon B. Johnson was born poor and died very rich. He didn't earn his money in the private sector. He used political influence to first purchase and then maintain monopolistic radio licenses in his wife's name.
There wasn't much fuss about John Kerry's great wealth in 2004. Kerry didn't earn his fortune either but secured it through two advantageous marriages. Teresa Heinz Kerry is rumored to be in the billionaires' club. Good for her. Though, she didn't earn it either, but rather married the heir of the ketchup fortune. John Kerry was an advocate of raising taxes on the rich, but he, like Warren Buffett, declined to contribute more than required to Uncle Sam. In fact, he was caught mooring his yacht in Rhode Island so as to avoid Massachusetts' taxes. Oh, and before he married Teresa Heinz, there were a number of years when Sen. Kerry donated nothing at all to charity.
Mona Charen | Thu Jan, 26 | Share Is Anybody Serious? 1.25.12Episode Description
The Republican candidates' circular firing squad now seems to be using machine guns. Whoever the eventual "last man standing" turns out to be, he may not be standing very tall or very steadily on his feet -- and he may be a pushover for Barack Obama in the general election, thanks to fellow Republicans.
Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, this is a very serious and historically crucial time for the United States of America. What Mitt Romney did or did not do when he was with Bain Capital, or what Newt Gingrich did or did not say to his ex-wife, are things that should be left for the tabloids.
With the economy still faltering and Iran on its way to getting nuclear bombs, surely we can get serious about the issues facing this nation. Or can we?
Mitt Romney's boasts about what he did at Bain Capital are as irrelevant as Newt Gingrich's demagogic attacks on Romney's role there. Romney is not running to become head of Bain Capital.
While Gingrich backed away from his demagoguery about Bain Capital, Romney is continuing to press ahead with his charges that Gingrich was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac. As someone who has been a consultant, but never a lobbyist, I know the difference.
As a consultant, I have offered advice to people in government and in private organizations, both businesses and non-profit organizations. But I have never gone to a government official to urge that official to make a decision favorable to those who were paying me, or to those for whom I did free consulting.
Thomas Sowell | Thu Jan, 26 | Share Unlike Obama, GOP Candidates Talk Seriously About Governing 1.25.12Episode Description
You know politicians are serious when they move from campaigning to governing. Something like that may be happening on the Republican campaign trail -- but, unfortunately, not at the Obama White House.
Campaigning clearly carried the day for Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, where he beat Mitt Romney by a 40 percent to 28 percent margin. It's generally agreed that Gingrich clinched the race when he reacted angrily to questions by Fox News's Juan Williams and CNN's John King.
Both times Gingrich got standing ovations. But not for how he'd govern. His platform can be summed up in a bumper sticker a Washington lawyer printed to buck up George H.W. Bush's hapless 1992 campaign: "Annoy the media -- vote for Bush." It was fun but didn't win many votes.
South Carolina Republicans got a charge out of imagining how Gingrich would rebuke Barack Obama in the Lincoln-Douglas debates he's been proposing. Except of course Obama would never agree to that format.
In the Monday debate at Tampa, Fla., Romney came back hard at Gingrich, saying that he had been ousted as speaker by his own party and that he had to resign "in disgrace." Gingrich complained afterward about the ban on applause and said he might not show up for later debates with a similar ban (although it is imposed in the fall debates).
What's important here is that Romney went after Gingrich for the way he governed. Gingrich cites, with a little exaggeration, significant things he achieved as speaker -- welfare reform, holding spending down, tax cuts.
Michael Barone | Thu Jan, 26 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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The Humiliation of Britain 10.27.10Episode Description
At the end of 2008, as the financial crisis hit with full force, the countries of the world divided into two groups: those whose leaders decided to muddle through, and China. Only the Chinese took seriously Milton Friedman?s and John Maynard Keynes?s argument that, when faced with the possibility of a depression, the first thing to do is use the government to intervene strategically in product and financial markets to maintain the flow of aggregate demand.
Then, at the start of 2010, the countries that had been muddling through divided into two groups: those where government credit was unimpaired continued to muddle through, while countries like Greece and Ireland, where government credit was impaired, had no choice but to pursue austerity and try to restore fiscal confidence.
Today, another split is occurring, this time between those countries that are continuing to muddle through and Great Britain. Even though the British government?s credit is still solid gold, Prime Minister David Cameron?s administration is about to embark on what may be the largest sustained fiscal contraction ever: a plan to shrink the government budget deficit by 9% of GDP over the next four years.
So far, China is doing the best in dealing with the financial crisis. The mudding-through countries lag behind. And those where confidence in the government?s liabilities has cracked, forcing the government into austerity, are doing worst.
Now the question is: will Britain ? where confidence in the government has not cracked and where austerity is not forced but chosen ? join the others at the bottom and serve as a horrible warning?
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Bradford DeLong | Thu Oct, 28 | Share The French Reactionary Revolution 10.26.10Episode Description
The expression ?the French exception? applies not only to culinary matters, but to social and economic issues as well. A majority of today?s French recognize that raising the retirement age is necessary to ensure the survival of the pension system. Yet, according to all public-opinion polls, close to 70% of the French support the demonstrators who are taking to the streets to block the very modest reforms introduced by President Nicolas Sarkozy?s government.
?The French exception? is the product of an encounter between a peculiar political and intellectual history and the rejection of the elites currently in power. To the dismay of their European neighbors, and in front of a bemused global public, the French are once again demonstrating their bizarre tradition of using revolutionary means to express extreme conservative leanings.
Unlike their predecessors in May 1968, today?s demonstrators are not in the streets to defend a different and better future. They are out there in significant numbers to protect the status quo, and to express their nostalgia for the past and their fear of the future.
And yet the reactionary/revolutionary movement of the type that we are witnessing ? a backlash against the inevitable consequences of globalization ? remains unmistakably French. It is driven by the extreme Cartesian rationality, verging on the absurd, of a country whose citizens continue to view their state in the same way that adolescents view their parents.
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Dominique Moisi | Thu Oct, 28 | Share The Scaremongers of the Roundtable 10.20.10Episode Description
How often do you see capitalists screaming and even going to court to defend the principle that legitimate owners cannot exercise any control over their property? It is not happening in Latin America or in socialist Sweden, but in the United States of America.
The capitalists in question are nothing short of the upper echelon of corporate America: the Business Roundtable, a powerful group composed of the CEOs of major US corporations, which promotes pro-business public policies. The object of their contention is the much-debated ?shareholders? access to proxy? rule, adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August to address the fundamental lack of accountability of corporate boards.
In the current system, corporate boards are self-perpetuating entities. To be elected, a board member needs to be nominated by the current board, where executives have considerable influence. As a result, board members owe their loyalty to the managers who directly or indirectly appoint them ? and thus have little incentive to dissent, lest they be punished with exclusion.
Even independent directors, often acclaimed as the solution to all problems, are subject to the same pressure. To change this state of affairs, institutional investors must be allowed to propose their own slate of directors. The possibility of being rejected in a real election would naturally make board members accountable to shareholders, indirectly making the executives accountable as well.
The SEC rule was an attempt to grant institutional investors this right. It did it in a very mild format. Companies with a public share worth less than $75 million were exempted, and shareholders who want to propose a slate must hold at least 3% of voting power of the company?s securities and have held it continuously for at least three years.
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Luigi Zingales | Thu Oct, 28 | Share Health Care?s Frequent Flyers 10.20.10Episode Description
For those of you who have seen the (American) movie ?Up in the Air,? think of the scene where George Clooney meets Vera Farmiga. He?s an outsourced human-resources executive who flies around the country firing people on behalf of timid managers; she?s a counterpart female road warrior. Their courtship ritual revolves around loyalty cards: he pulls out his American Airlines Executive Platinum card; she matches. Next, his Diamond VIP Hilton HHonors card; she calmly slaps hers on the rickety table where they are sharing drinks.
The unspoken message: points make you sexy. Airlines and hotels have known this for a long time. Dean Margolis, who long ago consulted for major airlines and is now applying the same techniques to healthy behavior, recalls wondering how to get executives to fly just a little more. It?s not by offering discounts, which benefit an executive?s company rather than the executive. Margolis asks: ?When the boss says ?Who wants to come to Philadelphia with me??, what?s going to get two people instead of one to say yes? To abandon their families, stand in line, and perhaps take a middle seat...?
Points, of course, will do the trick. The promise of being recognized at the airline counter, ushered to the front of the line, and, yes, looking like a big shot at the airport bar.
Margolis?s new company, MedRewards, plans to give people points for healthy behavior ? everything from taking their medications regularly to signing in at the gym more than five times a week. As in the airline business, the actual customers won?t be the users, but rather the vendors who want to influence users? behavior: pharmaceutical companies who want patients to buy their drugs, along with insurers and employers who want to lower long-term costs. (Employers, bless them, even have an interest in keeping people healthy!)
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Esther Dyson | Thu Oct, 28 | Share Obama at Halftime 10.12.10Episode Description
In September 2008, the global economy and financial system was hit by an earthquake, whose epicenter was in the United States. It was the end of the Bush administration. The presidential election was two months away. The timing, from the point of view of crisis management, could not have been worse.
The level of uncertainty about asset values, solvency, and the connectedness of balance sheets that prevailed at the time was extraordinarily high. Uncertainty bred fear, causing banks, businesses, and households to hoard cash. Consumption plummeted, taking down retail sales with it, and, after a short lag, employment and investment as well. Individually rational choices were giving rise to collectively irrational results.
These conditions had all the makings of a depression scenario, with credit rationing destroying businesses indiscriminately, and thus required fast, aggressive, and unconventional action by the US government and the Federal Reserve. The response, mounted by the Bush administration and taken over by the Obama administration, was all of the above. A combination of financial-sector recapitalization and rapid expansion of the Fed?s balance sheet prevented a complete credit lockup.
Policies sometimes missed their target and had to be modified. For example, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) originally targeted the purchase of complex securitized assets that had lost value and stopped trading, but had to be partly altered to direct infusions of capital into banks.
Financial support for Wall Street villains infuriated many, but no one proposed a better alternative at the time ? or has since. The Bush and Obama administrations both understood that wise policymaking in crisis circumstances requires selecting the least bad option, accepting the inevitable anger and criticism, and implementing the decision quickly. The first priority, after all, was to stabilize a highly dangerous situation.
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Michael Spence | Thu Oct, 28 | Share The Wars of Austerity 10.12.10Episode Description
I have become increasingly less hopeful about prospects for a rapid recovery from the global recession. Coordinated fiscal expansion ($5 trillion) by the world?s leading governments arrested the downward slide, but failed to produce a healthy rebound. The current frustration is summed up by The Economist?s recent cover headline: ?Grow, dammit, grow.?
There are two reasons to be pessimistic. The first reason is the premature withdrawal of the ?stimulus? measures agreed upon by the G-20 in London in April 2009. All the main countries are now committed to slashing their budget deficits.
The second reason is that nothing has been done to address the problem of current-account imbalances. Indeed, the talk nowadays of currency wars leading to trade wars is reminiscent of the disastrous experience of the 1930?s.
The problem of current-account imbalances is closely linked to the existence of a world savings glut. One part of the world, led by China, earns more than it spends, whereas another part, notably the United States, spends more than it earns. Provided the surplus countries invest in the deficit countries, these imbalances pose no macroeconomic problem.
Indeed, this was the nineteenth-century pattern. A system of foreign investment, pivoting on London, channeled the savings of rich (or surplus) countries to the poor (or deficit) countries. Despite many financial crises and defaults, this creditor-debtor relationship worked, on the whole, to the benefit of both sides. Rich-country investors earned a higher rate of return than they would at home, and poor-country recipients raised the development finance they needed. There was no persistent tendency to deflation.
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Robert Skidelsky | Thu Oct, 28 | Share Only the Weak Survive 10.12.10Episode Description
The risk of global currency and trade wars is rising, with most economies now engaged in competitive devaluations. All are playing a game that some must lose.
Today?s tensions are rooted in paralysis on global rebalancing. Over-spending countries ? such as the United States and other ?Anglo-Saxon? economies ? that were over-leveraged and running current-account deficits now must save more and spend less on domestic demand. To maintain growth, they need a nominal and real depreciation of their currency to reduce their trade deficits. But over-saving countries ? such as China, Japan, and Germany ? that were running current-account surpluses are resisting their currencies? nominal appreciation. A higher exchange rate would reduce their current-account surpluses, because they are unable or unwilling to reduce their savings and sustain growth through higher spending on domestic consumption.
Within the eurozone, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that Germany, with its large surpluses, can live with a stronger euro, whereas the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) cannot. On the contrary, with their large external deficits, the PIIGS need a sharp depreciation to restore growth as they implement painful fiscal and other structural reforms.
A world where over-spending countries need to reduce domestic demand and boost net exports, while over-saving countries are unwilling to reduce their reliance on export-led growth, is a world where currency tensions must inevitably come to a boil. Aside from the eurozone, the US, Japan, and the United Kingdom all need a weaker currency. Even Switzerland is intervening to weaken the franc.
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Nouriel Roubini | Thu Oct, 28 | Share
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Netanyahu Is Not the Problem 11.10.11Episode Description
At the G20 Summit last week in Cannes, Nicolas Sarkozy held only four private meetings. One was with Barack Obama and a second was with Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India. (It?s not clear whether Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, met alone with the French president or whether his country was a fully deserved separate topic on the agenda, perhaps as a ?disaster in the process.?) The other two privileged to have Sarkozy alone face-to-face were Hu Jintao, president of the People?s Republic of China, and William Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, literally the only people in attendance representing enterprises that are financially solvent. Take a look at these primarily optimistic documents and try to assess the honesty of the reports. Actually, this is the measure of our politics: deception, self-deception, duplicity, hypocrisy, pretense.
It was at this jamboree of whoppers that Sarkozy chose to confide to President Obama that he ?can?t stand Netanyahu anymore. He is a liar.? And the president responded, sort of in kind: ?You?re fed up with him. But I have to deal with him every day.? Of course, this was one of those moments that journalists dream about. The microphone was on when it was supposed to be off. Now, Sarkozy is not exactly known for his verisimilitude and neither is Obama, whose foreign policy, in particular, is based on the silliest improvisations of history. He has certainly made up his narratives on Muslim culture, in general, and on American-Arab relations, in particular. This accumulated flim-flam has made U.S. policy in the orbit of the crescent a laughing-stock for, well, everyone.
Martin Peretz | Fri Nov, 11 | Share How Congress?s Showdown With China Puts Obama in a Serious Bind 10.06.11Episode Description
While all of Washington fastened its gaze on Chris Christie, the most important issue of the week?maybe of the year?was playing out on the floor of the Senate. By a margin of 79 to 19, senators agreed to consider a measure that would allow the United States to impose tariffs on another country if the Treasury found its currency to be ?misaligned.? As the Wall Street Journal points out, this is a less demanding standard than current law, which ?requires a finding of intentional manipulation.? If this newfound bipartisan comity in Congress over the issue of confronting China culminates in a bill that passes both houses, it will put Obama in a serious bind: either adopt a similarly hawkish stance and risk a trade war, or issue a veto that would expose him to attack from the Republican nominee and provoke a populist backlash from workers and communities throughout America?s hard-pressed manufacturing sector.
The huge bipartisan majority on the procedural question this week virtually guarantees that the bill will make it through the Senate, and it illuminates the changing contours of the China trade issue. Nearly every Democrat voted to proceed; Washington?s Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and (intriguingly) Claire McCaskill of Missouri were the only dissidents. And fully 31 of the 47 Senate Republicans supported the motion as well, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, Policy Committee Chairman John Thune, and John Cornyn, who heads the committee responsible for electing more Republicans to the Senate in 2012. Among the party?s leadership, John Kyl stood alone in opposition.
William Galston | Thu Oct, 6 | Share How Ahmadinejad?s Regime Tried - and Failed - to Break One Protester's Spirit 9.22.11Episode Description
As the world grants an audience to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, we would be better served to look upon Samiye Tohidlou. Samiye is a child of the Iranian revolution, born in 1979, when the current regime came to power. She comes from a family of educators; her father was a teacher who declared, after the arrest of his daughter, that he had been a staunch supporter of the revolution. Samiye was herself a doctoral student in sociology at Tehran University?the country?s oldest and most venerable institution?and an active member of the Islamic Student Association.
And she was a volunteer for Mir Hussein Mousavi?s presidential campaign in 2009. When the regime announced Ahmadinejad the winner even before the polls closed, in Tehran alone three million people took to the streets to protest what they considered to be an electoral putsch. Samiye had a brilliant and elegantly simple idea. She suggested that protesters create an uninterrupted chain of humanity, from Tehran?s rich, northern neighborhoods to the south?s poorest ghettoes. The only connective thread of this long chain was a green ribbon, symbolizing the movement that had emerged in opposition to the electoral coup.
Abbas Milani | Thu Sep, 22 | Share Texas Dispatch: How Ron Paul Sparked a Movement - Only to Lose his District 9.22.11Episode Description
Ron Paul doesn?t like Rick Perry. And if Thursday?s debate is anything like the last two, you?ll hear about it tonight. At the first GOP debate to feature Perry, Paul pointed to the governor?s past as a Democrat and cited his support for Clinton-era efforts at healthcare reform. In an ad earlier this month, Paul?s campaign dredged up Perry?s 1988 support for Al Gore. ?America must decide who to trust,? a voice in the ad proclaims, ?Al Gore?s Texas cheerleader or the one who stood with Reagan.? And in an open letter to Perry, Paul?s campaign chair spelled out the line of criticism once more: ?We don?t think the fact that you used to be a Democrat is the big problem here. The real problem is that, too often, you still act like one.?
For all Paul?s efforts, however, the criticism just hasn?t stuck. Indeed, if anything, Perry has garnered attention, both negative and positive, for the ways in which his criticisms of Medicare and Social Security?stated most clearly in his 2010 book Fed Up!?mirror those of his cranky rival from the right. And, in an ironic twist of fate, while Perry is reaping the benefits of such radical stances, Paul, their longtime proponent, is struggling to stay relevant. Despite his third place standing in most polls, Paul gets hardly any media attention. He has almost no friends in the GOP establishment. And when he ends his quixotic presidential bid, he plans to retire from Congress rather than run in his newly redrawn district, which state GOP legislators recently made much more difficult for him to hold onto. As Jason Stanford, a longtime Democratic campaign consultant in the state, puts it: ?The paradox of Ron Paul is that he?s never been more influential or less popular in Texas.? What happened?
Abby Rapoport | Thu Sep, 22 | Share Hillary Clinton?s Embarrassing, Disingenuous Equivocating on the Crisis in Sudan 5.23.11Episode Description
In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post about the independence of South Sudan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a conspicuous example of the Obama administration?s policy of equivocation when it comes to the world?s newest nation and the country it split from last weekend. Namely, the op-ed disingenuously equated the Khartoum regime with its adversaries in South Sudan, in the embattled regions of South Kordofan and Abyei, and in Darfur.
The evident logic of such false equivalence is that it?s necessary to keep Khartoum engaged in negotiations: If ?both sides,? as Clinton refers to them repeatedly, are equally responsible for violence and for the failure to resolve outstanding issues like the North-Southborder delineation, then diplomacy will be able to exert pressure to compromise. Never mind that compromise?indeed, many compromises?have already been made by the South; the real problem here is that President Omar Al Bashir?s regime has refused to live up to the agreements.
Eric Reeves | Thu Jul, 14 | Share The Hawk 5.23.11Episode Description
When America traded George W. Bush for Barack Obama, few thought the result would be an escalation in the American war on terror. Swathes of U.S. conservatives (but also some liberals) were ready to dismiss President Obama as too naïve and idealistic to be president in the face of a heightened terrorist threat. Moderates did not believe that a campaign based on hope and change would cause Al Qaeda terrorists to fear this president more than the previous one. In Europe, meanwhile, Obama was seen as someone who would roll back the vulgarities of the war and make Europe feel good again about its more police-driven approach to terrorism.
Today, however, the handful of dissenters from this line of thinking looks prescient. Following the death of Osama bin Laden, it is clear Obama won?t be outflanked by the right on counterterrorism. Sending a team of operatives into Pakistan without that country?s knowledge because we believed (correctly) that bin Laden was there is not the work of a softie. Yet that decision is only one achievement in Obama?s well-established, hawkish approach to the war on terror?an approach that, whatever one thinks of its ethical merits, will serve him well in his reelection campaign.
Robin Simcox | Tue May, 24 | Share After Osama bin Laden 5.2.11Episode Description
Al Qaeda has been on the run and in deterioration, unable to launch a spectacular attack like that of September 11 for quite some time now. With the death of Osama bin Laden, this demise will continue?and perhaps be expedited. Still, the threat of jihadist terrorism remains, namely in the short-term, and the American counter-terrorism community would be well-advised to maintain its vigilance in the coming months. The immediate reaction of Al Qaeda and its sympathizers to bin Laden?s death is sure to be one of shock and dismay, but it?s only a matter of time before those emotions give way to anger. And the irate have a tendency to lash out.
Al Qaeda was depreciating before bin Laden?s death. For nearly a decade, U.S. military operations have had its senior leadership in disarray. As drone strikes escalated under the Obama administration, the core of the Al Qaeda seemed to be more concerned about surviving the night than seizing the day. This, in part, explains why the organization was never able to re-group after September 11 to launch another major attack against the U.S. Even when Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, were able to release messages, they increasingly fell flat.
Louis Klarevas | Mon May, 2 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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Should We Knock Down Romney?s Fence? 01.20.12Episode Description
?There exists . . . a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road.? So wrote G. K. Chesterton in a 1929 piece recently excerpted in The Wall Street Journal. ?The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ?I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.? To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ?If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.? ?
This brings us to Mitt Romney?s tax returns.
Romney says he pays about 15 percent in federal taxes. Received opinion suggests we all ought to be just horrified by this. After all, even billionaire investor Warren Buffett professes to be dismayed that because (like Romney) he makes a lot of money in the stock market, and the tax rate on capital gains is lower than the tax rate on ordinary income, he pays a smaller slice of his income in taxes than employees who make much less.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
A. Barton Hinkle | Sun Jan, 22 | Share Don't Trust Your Instincts 01.19.12Episode Description
Simple answers are so satisfying: Green jobs will fix the economy. Stimulus will create jobs. Charity helps people more than commerce. Everyone should vote.
Well, all those instinctive solutions are wrong. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out in The Fatal Conceit, it's a problem that in our complex, extended economy, we rely on instincts developed during our ancestors' existence in small bands. In those old days, everyone knew everyone else, so affairs could be micromanaged. Today, we live in a global economy where strangers deal with each other. The rules need to be different.
Hayek said: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
John Stossel | Fri Jan, 20 | Share End of the Line for the Bullet Train 01.19.12Episode Description
The way high-speed rail projects have been collapsing around the world, you?d think they were corrupt, outrageously expensive, fiscally ruinous, poorly planned government efforts to build a 19th century means of transportation for which there?s no demand.
The Obama Administration?s bullet-train dream is dead. Florida Gov. Rick Scott last year rejected $2 billion in federal funds rather than commit the Sunshine State to such an expensive project. California?s high-speed rail effort is in turmoil, recently suffered a purge of top management, and is unlikely to meet its September deadline to break ground on a federally mandated leg universally termed the ?train to nowhere.?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Tim Cavanaugh | Fri Jan, 20 | Share Space on Earth 01.17.12Episode Description
The sight is a wickedly thin line of shimmering and vibrant pale green. The sensation is a warm pulse. The sound is muffled to insensibility by high-grade ear protection. On my tape recorder later, however, I hear it: a sharp-edged roaring whoosh that strains my speakers to the breaking point.
It?s an honest-to-goodness rocket engine, designed to shift a spaceship floating in weightless suborbit in order to give a passenger a different viewpoint, or to position the craft for safe re-entry to Earth?s atmosphere and gravity well. It?s burning a proprietary, nontoxic fuel mixture.
I?m at the Mojave Spaceport?the private general aviation airfield where SpaceShipOne, the first private vehicle to zip twice between space and back, first took off in 2004. That?s the same year that Mojave became certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the nation?s first private ?spaceport,? certified to send vehicles and people out of this world. Seven years later, more than a handful of commercial space companies operate out of this sprawling complex of runways, hangars, and airplane bits, and it?s no longer the only private spaceport in America.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Brian Doherty | Thu Jan, 19 | Share Cancel the War and Fix the Wounded 01.17.12Episode Description
Never let anybody tell you Americans like to get drunk. That is not accurate. The truth is that Americans like to get not just a little giddy, not just mildly intoxicated, but draaauuuwwwwwnk. Loud, slobbery, try-to-sit-down-and-miss-the-couch drunk.
So reports the Centers for Disease Control, which says one in six Americans go on a binge at least once a month. This is 2 percentage points higher than the CDC found the last time. Even so, the new figure is probably a ?substantial underestimate,? says the head of the CDC?s alcohol program, Robert Brewer (!), because people tend to under-report their own misbehavior. (No word on whether the study is weighted to account for those poor sots so hung over they couldn?t even pick up the phone.)
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
A. Barton Hinkle | Thu Jan, 19 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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April - Reasserting Federalism in Defense of Liberty - Ken CuccinelliEpisode Description
SOME FAVORITE VIRGINIANS OF MINE who inspired and crafted our federal Constitution?Mason, Madison, Jefferson, and Henry?also drafted the Constitution of Virginia. And in the latter, they included a critical statement that said, ?No free government, nor the blessings of liberty, can be preserved . . . but by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.?
Our founders well understood that our liberty could not be preserved without frequently referring back to first principles. But while they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to defend those principles, we have often taken them for granted, as we have become complacent in thinking that government will take care of every problem.
We have asked government to do more for us, and all the government asks for in return is a little bit more of our liberty. Over the decades, we kept asking. And because the courts and the politicians were all too happy to oblige, regardless of what the Constitution said, we no longer have a federal government of limited powers. We have an overreaching central government?a government that seeks to plan and control virtually every aspect of our lives and our economy, from health care, to energy, to automobile manufacturing, to banking and insurance.
Thankfully, though, in the last several years, people have woken up and are pushing back. With this pushback, we are seeing the idea of federalism reemerge. People want to return to a government of limited, enumerated powers, and an arrangement in which states serve as a check when the federal government oversteps its constitutional bounds.
In the current lawsuits brought by the states over health care and against the EPA, state governments are pushing back and reasserting federalism as the Founders intended them to do. Indeed, I am not aware of a time in history when this many states have sued the federal government to rein in its power: Today, more than half are parties to lawsuits against the new health care act and its individual health insurance mandate.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Thu Apr, 28 | Share March - The Not So Dismal Science: Humanitarians v. Economists - William McGurnEpisode Description
THIS EVENING I PROPOSE to take on one of the greatest libels in the English language: the description of economics as ?the dismal science.? I hold a different view?that when it comes to seeing the potential in even the most desperate citizens of this earth, our economists, business leaders, and champions of a commercial republic are often far ahead of our progressives, artists, and humanitarians. And therein lies my tale.
Hillsdale College is very much a part of this drama. For ?dismal science? was born as an epithet meant to dismiss those arguing that slaves deserved their freedom. In fact, the first recorded mention of the phrase ?dismal science? occurs in 1849?just five years after Hillsdale was founded. As the dates suggest, both Hillsdale?s founding and the caricature ?dismal science? were not unrelated to a great debate in England that in our nation would be resolved by civil war.
Tonight I hope to persuade you that to call economics the ?dismal science? has it exactly backwards?that it is the economists and businessmen who hold the hopeful view of life, and that far from being fundamentally opposed, the admirers of Adam Smith have more in common with the followers of the Good Book than we might suppose.
The Anti-Slavery Divide
Let?s start with ?dismal science? itself. Even those who know nothing about economics have heard the term. A few might even know that it was Thomas Carlyle who came up with it.
Very few know the salient point: Carlyle deployed the term in a magazine polemic entitled ?An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question.? In that essay, Carlyle savaged the two groups who were leading the British fight against slavery: economists and evangelicals. The latter were sometimes abbreviated to ?Exeter Hall??a reference to the London building that served as the center of British evangelism and philanthropy.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Thu Mar, 31 | Share January - It's Never Just the Economy, Stupid - Brian T. KennedyEpisode Description
WE ARE OFTEN TOLD that we possess the most powerful military in the world and that we will face no serious threat for some time to come. We are comforted with three reassurances aimed at deflecting any serious discussion of national security: (1) that Islam is a religion of peace; (2) that we will never go to war with China because our economic interests are intertwined; and (3) that America won the Cold War and Russia is no longer our enemy. But these reassurances are myths, propagated on the right and left alike. We believe them at our peril, because serious threats are already upon us.
Let me begin with Islam. We were assured that it was a religion of peace immediately following September 11. President Bush, a good man, believed or was persuaded that true Islam was not that different from Judaism or Christianity. He said in a speech in October 2001, just a month after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: ?Islam is a vibrant faith. . . . We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn?t follow the great traditions of Islam. They?ve hijacked a great religion.? But unfortunately, Mr. Bush was trying to understand Islam as we would like it to be rather than how countless devout Muslims understand it.
Organizationally, Islam is built around a belief in God or Allah, but it is equally a political ideology organized around the Koran and the teachings of its founder Muhammad. Whereas Christianity teaches that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar?s and unto God what is God?s?allowing for a non-theocratic political tradition to develop in the West, culminating in the principles of civil and religious liberty in the American founding?Islam teaches that to disagree with or even reinterpret the Koran?s 6000 odd verses, organized into 114 chapters or Suras and dealing as fully with law and politics as with matters of faith, is punishable by death.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Tue Feb, 15 | Share October - The Presidency and the Constitution - Mike PenceEpisode Description
THE PRESIDENCY is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people. Its powers are vast and consequential, its requirements impossible for mortals to fulfill without humility and insistent attention to its purpose as set forth in the Constitution of the United States.
Isn?t it amazing, given the great and momentous nature of the office, that those who seek it seldom pause to consider what they are seeking? Rather, unconstrained by principle or reflection, there is a mad rush toward something that, once its powers are seized, the new president can wield as an instrument with which to transform the nation and the people according to his highest aspirations.
But, other than in a crisis of the house divided, the presidency is neither fit nor intended to be such an instrument. When it is made that, the country sustains a wound, and cries out justly and indignantly. And what the nation says is the theme of this address. What it says?informed by its long history, impelled by the laws of nature and nature?s God?is that we as a people are not to be ruled and not to be commanded. It says that the president should never forget this; that he has not risen above us, but is merely one of us, chosen by ballot, dismissed after his term, tasked not to transform and work his will upon us, but to bear the weight of decision and to carry out faithfully the design laid down in the Constitution in accordance with the Declaration of Independence.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Sat Oct, 23 | Share July/Aug - The Tea Parties and the Future of Liberty - Stephen F. HayesEpisode Description
Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Within a month he signed a $787 billion ?stimulus package? with virtually no Republican support. It was necessary, we were told, to keep unemployment under eight percent. Overnight, the federal government had, as one of its highest priorities, weatherizing government buildings and housing projects. Streets and highways in no need of repair would be broken up and repaved. The Department of Transportation and other government agencies would spend millions on signs advertising the supposed benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I saw one of them on Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C. It boasted that the federal park would be receiving a generous grant to facilitate the involvement of local youth in the removal of ?non-indigenous plants.? In other words, kids would be weeding. We need a sign to announce that? And this was going to save the economy?
Then there was American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project number 1R01AA01658001A, a study entitled: ?Malt Liquor and Marijuana: Factors in their Concurrent Versus Separate Use.? I?m not making this up. This is a $400,000 project being directed by a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The following is from the official abstract: ?We appreciate the opportunity to refocus this application to achieve a single important aim related to our understanding of young adults? use of male [sic] liquor (ML), other alcoholic beverages, and marijuana (MJ), all of which confer high risks for experiencing negative consequences, including addiction. As we have noted, reviews of this grant application have noted numerous strength [sic], which are summarized below.?
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Wed Sep, 1 | Share May/June - The New New Deal - Charles R. KeslerEpisode Description
In President Obama, conservatives face the most formidable liberal politician in at least a generation. In 2008, he won the presidency with a majority of the popular vote?something a Democrat had not done since Jimmy Carter?s squeaker in 1976?and handily increased the Democrats? control of both houses of Congress. Measured against roughly two centuries worth of presidential victories by Democratic non-incumbents, his win as a percentage of the popular vote comes in third behind FDR?s in 1932 and Andrew Jackson?s in 1828.
More importantly, Obama won election not as a status quo liberal, but as an ambitious reformer. Far from being content with incremental gains, he set his sights on major systemic change in health care, energy and environmental policy, taxation, financial regulation, education, and even immigration, all pursued as elements of a grand strategy to ?remake America.? In other words, he longs to be another FDR, building a New New Deal for the 21st century, dictating the politics of his age, and enshrining the Democrats as the new majority party for several decades to come. Suddenly, the era of big government being over is over; and tax-and-spend liberalism is back with a vengeance. We face a $1.4 trillion federal deficit this fiscal year alone and $10-12 trillion in total debt over the coming decade.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Wed Jun, 16 | Share April - The Coming Constitutional Debate - Stephen MarkmanEpisode Description
AS ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL under President Ronald Reagan, I prepared a report for Attorney General Edwin Meese entitled ?The Constitution in the Year 2000: Choices Ahead.? This report sought to identify a range of areas in which significant constitutional controversy could be expected over the next 20 years. As critical as I believe those controversies were, they pale in significance before the controversies that will arise over the next several decades. The resolution of these emerging controversies will determine whether the Constitution of 2030 bears any resemblance to the Constitution of 1787?the Framers? Constitution that has guided this nation for most of its first two centuries and has rendered it the freest, most prosperous, and most creative nation in the history of the world.
Proponents of a ?21st century constitution? or ?living constitution? aim to transform our nation?s supreme law beyond recognition?and with a minimum of public attention and debate. Indeed, if there is an overarching theme to what they wish to achieve, it is the diminishment of the democratic and representative processes of American government. It is the replacement of a system of republican government, in which the constitution is largely focused upon the architecture of government in order to minimize the likelihood of abuse of power, with a system of judicial government, in which substantive policy outcomes are increasingly determined by federal judges. Rather than merely defining broad rules of the game for the legislative and executive branches of government, the new constitution would compel specific outcomes.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Tue Apr, 27 | Share More » Go to our Imprimis Page.
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