Truth Commission

I initially recoiled at the idea of establishing a "truth commission" to investigate supposed crimes of the Bush administration. It lumps this president and his team in the same category as dictators and military regimes. This categorization is only at home in the fevered imaginings of Bush Derangement Syndrome patients.

This article by Stuart Taylor has made me reconsider. We know that Abu Graib style abuses have happened. Were these rogue operations, or were they authorized, tacitly or otherwise, by government officials? Did torture happen? To what extent? What did we do wrong? What did we do right? As a society that upholds high democratic ideals, we have a responsibility to ourselves and the world to get to the bottom of whatever happened, document it, and report the results for all the world to see.

We need to get the facts out in the open, if for no other reason than to knock down the nuttiest speculations and to exonerate anyone who may have been unfairly smeared.

...the U.S. needs to take serious steps to show reasonable critics at home and abroad that we are not going to sweep the evidence of Bush administration torture under the rug. This is not necessarily to suggest that Bush, his appointees, or other U.S. officials should be prosecuted. Most or all would have a valid defense of good-faith reliance on then-authoritative -- although erroneous and now-repudiated -- legal advice from the Justice Department.

Who could conduct such an investigation and prevent it from becoming a political circus? Only a respected Republican of "unquestioned stature" who is...

"known for courage and for independence from both Bush and Obama -- and for personal knowledge of the horrors of torture. His name John McCain."

I still hate the idea of all this, but the Bush administration's failure to construct a coherent legal framework to deal with jihadis scooped up from GWOT battlefields has led us here. Iron clad proof would not pacify the Bush haters, but a thorough review would at least establish a record of findings that reasonable people could analyze, debate, and learn from.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090404_6094.php

It's Out of Our Hands

Do the disappearing 401Ks discredit personal retirement accounts?

Mark Steyn reports that the two big accomplishments of the G20 Summit were to close global tax loopholes and to impose impose European-style regulation on the global economy. This will spread sclerotic, European-style (non) growth across the globe, guaranteeing inadequate returns on private retirement fund in perpetuity.

He then wrote about why so many people have become investors:

Let it be said that in recent years in America, the United Kingdom, and certain other countries the “financial sector” grew too big. In The Atlantic, Simon Johnson points out that, between 1973 and 1985, it was responsible for about 16 percent of U.S. corporate profits. By this decade, it was up to 41 percent.

That’s higher than healthy, but it wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near that high if government didn’t annex so much of your wealth — through everything from income tax to small-business regulation — that it’s become increasingly difficult to improve your lot by working hard, making stuff, and selling it. Instead, in order to fund a more comfortable retirement and much else, large numbers of people became “investors” — albeit not as the term is traditionally understood:

Instead, you work for some company and they put some money on your behalf in some sort of account that somebody on the 12th floor pools together with all the others and gives to somebody else in New York to disperse among various corporations hither and yon. You’ve no idea what you’re “investing” in, but it keeps going up, so why do you care?

Yes! I thought. I heard some guy on the radio talking about how 401K's have turned into 1K's, leaving many boomers with a quarter of what they expected for retirement. "That's a real kick in the pants," I thought impassively. I'm still to far away from retirement to be worrying over this stuff.

Mark provides the answer to the man who rightly laments over the sorrowful state of so many nest eggs: Confiscatory government policies drove us to this point.

Our Grandparents Knew Better

How did my grandparents, who were not rich at all, end up with money in the bank when they hit their 60's? Working class people didn't have exotic financial instruments that earned 15% per year back then. Ordinary people stuck their money in a bank or in US Savings Bonds, and earned 3.5% interest per annum.

According to Dinkytown's Saving Calculator, here's how Grandma and Grandpa ended up with a little over $100,000 at age 60: By putting $100 per month in a bank account over 40 years accruing 3.5% interest. $50 per month over the same period yields just over $50,000. They also may have bought a piece of property along the way.

Steyn's argument in a nutshell is that when government takes less from you, you are better able to care for yourself, and in turn you don't need the government as much. Yes, people were not rampant consumers back then, and there weren't so many McMansions and electronic goodies to temp them, but who's putting a gun to your head now?

Our grandparents understood the value of frugality, and government understood its limits, but that's all out the window now.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTNlZjcxOGZmMjA0YjU2OTE5ZjJmN2FkNmYyYzI3MjQ=&w=MQ==

Should Michael Vick be allowed to play NFL football again? Read on...

Slouching Towards Socialism, European Style

Europe is not the Liberal Democratic paradise we imagine it to be. Two articles explain why. Both have human nature at their root

European free speech has been devoured by fear of angry Muslims. Initiative? Quashed by statist policies. Freedom of mobility? It's trapped in a 600 square foot apartment the average European family lives in. Even if the occupants could escape, the lawnmower with doors they call a car is either upside down burning or it's tank is empty because petrol is four times as expensive as in the States.

Charles Murray identifies the factors that separate us from the Europeans:

First, the problem with the European model, namely: It drains too much of the life from life.

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

When government does everything, it robs humans of the happiness derived from a sense of satisfaction with the fruits of their own efforts.

If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith.

...the goal of social policy is to ensure that those institutions are robust and vital. And that’s what’s wrong with the European model. It doesn’t do that. It enfeebles every single one of them.

Think about it: Government has replaced fathers with monthly checks and social workers. It's policies discourage parents from picking up hammers and paint to repair the neighborhood school and instead conditions them to look to Washington. President Obama mentioned this in his speech to Congress, with the First Lady hugging the little girl from South Carolina who went straight to Washington because her school needed some work.

Government largess has crowded out or co-opted faith-based charities. It has forced churches to water down their faith if they want to collect government money and avoid government censure. Public moralities like environmentalism and political correctness trump private conscience.

Euro-Socialism: High Taxes, Cramped Quarters, and Crappy Service

Michael Totten, indy war correspondent extraordinaire, writes about possibly the worst battle he's ever been involved in: The Alitalia baggage handler's strike in Italy. This is a long but highly entertaining read. Those who have actually lived in socialized Western Europe will be nodding their heads and grinning ruefully as the memories come flooding back.

This is also instructive for Americans cherishing the thought of 100% unionization, free health care for all, and guaranteed job security only European style soft socialism can provide. An up front encounter with the real Europe will disabuse any normal person from fantasies they may have entertained. Just like a person or a family, a society can appear serene on the surface, but when adversity strikes, the true colors fly.

Totten and the other stranded passengers were alternately shouted at, ignored and lied to by cowardly workers who knew they were getting paid regardless of what happened. The moral of the story is that people who are guaranteed a job tend to do it half-assed, and those given no responsibility for the success of their company will shamelessly avoid seizing it when the company's reputation is at stake.

Anybody who wants to see this go on in the United States is crazy.

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/03/the-worst-airli.php
http://american.com/archive/2009/march-2009/the-europe-syndrome-and-the-challenge-to-american-exceptionalism

The TARP Trap

TARP is a trap, built by a private entity (The Federal Reserve), implemented by President Bush's Dirty Hank Gang, and now used by Obama administration tax cheats to control the banking industry. It's all about the power, according to Stuart Varney at WSJ Online.

He actually says it more tastefully than I do, but not by much:

The banks are at the core of the administration's thrust: By managing the money, government can steer the whole economy even more firmly down the left fork in the road.

If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash -- which was often forced on them in the first place -- the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That's what's happening right now.

Varney tells a story of a big bank, which shall be left nameless to protect the innocent and guilty, that wants to give the TARP money back but can't because the government won't allow it.

But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.

Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can't a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can't special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit -- until now.

Uncle Sam, why do you have such a big TARP? All the better to smother you with, my dear.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123879833094588163.html

American Messiah

America Needs a Political Messiah

Barack Obama may command the oceans to recede and inspire unquestioning fanaticism in his disciples, but he is no messiah.

We need a real political messiah, whose zeal for the founding fathers' house consumes him.

We need a messiah who will make a whip of cords and drive the moneychangers from the US Capitol, which they have turned into a "den of robbers."

We need a messiah who will call the politicians what they are: A brood of vipers, hypocrites! who bind up laws to burden good citizens, while they exempt themselves.

These political pharisees strain out a gnat when circumscribing citizens' rights, but swallow the camel for personal and partisan political gain and the millions that it brings them.

Their cup is clean on the outside, but on the inside it is full of greed and self-indulgence.

Our government institutions are "beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." This leads We The People to view those in power with suspicion: "In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

Yes, we need a messiah, but President Obama ain't it.

Matthew 23
John 2

Why is Europe, that Social-Democratic Valhalla, suffering even worse financial and social ructions than the wild west US?