The New Ledger » Features

Negative Interest Rates, Fed Audits, and Geithner in the Dock

Francis Cianfrocca — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:43:10 +0000

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Negative interest rates finally materialize, Tim Geithner falls on his face at Congress, and the House moves forward with their policy of gutting the Federal Reserve. That’s three big stories to talk about on today’s Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Reid’s Massive Health Care Mess

Francis Cianfrocca — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:56:24 +0000

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has finally brought out the health care bill he’s fashioned behind closed doors over the past several weeks, and it ain’t pretty. The Budget Committee fully implemented 10 year score of the bill is $2.5 trillion. The CBO score, which is really just a six year measure, says taxes will go up $493.6 billion, while Medicare will be cut $464.6 billion. It’s a massive piece of legislation, but will it actually solve any of America’s health care problems? We’ll discuss the bill on today’s Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Jobs: An Economic Problem or a Political Problem?

Francis Cianfrocca — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:58:25 +0000

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The Democrat leadership in Washington is terrified that people will start blaming them for historically high unemployment levels, despite their best efforts to create or save jobs in Texas District 85 and elsewhere. We’ll talk about how the markets perceive their possible solutions — and why none of them are likely to work — on today’s Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Nine Reasons Why the New York City Terror Trials are a Bad Idea

Dan McLaughlin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:10:46 +0000

Here in New York City, the Obama Administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda terrorists in the civilian justice system in downtown Manhattan has garnered plenty of well-earned criticism, including from New York’s leading anti-terrorism experts like Rudy Giuliani, Michael Mukasey (who handled the blind sheikh trial as a district judge before becoming President Bush’s third Attorney General) and Andrew McCarthy (who was one of the prosecutors), and Long Island Congressman Peter King. And not just from the Right; even arch-liberals like Daily News sportswriter Mike Lupica have weighed in against the decision. Now the people are being heard from, and while the polls as usual show some diversity of opinion, the public is deeply skeptical of this enterprise even before it gets underway, let alone after what promises to be many months of grandstanding by the terrorists, gridlock in lower Manhattan, possible setbacks in the prosecution and the hemmhoraging of scarce resources on the trial(s) (as my retired-NYPD dad put it: “there’s going to be plenty of overtime for the cops.”).

The critics’ bases for opposing a trial are numerous, and several of them are reviewed here. And the polls now show those criticisms are shared by a majority of the nation’s voters and a significant minority even in liberal New York City, with the rest uncertain.

To quickly summarize the case against the trials:

1. The trials are wholly unnecessary; the Administration is holding some enemy combatants without trial and trying others through the military commission system, thus conceding that it has alternatives. As a result, any risks, expenses or other downsides of the trials are being undertaken solely for the purpose of empty symbolism.

2. The trials risk disclosure of sensitive intelligence information and sources. This is the most significant objection of all.

3. The trials create a heightened risk or incentive for a terrorist attack/jailbreak effort in Manhattan.

4. The additional security required to guard against #3 will cost the federal and city governments a fortune, interfere with the administration of justice in a busy federal district and busy federal prison, add to the traffic and delays already extant in lower Manhattan, and place a great burden on the jurors, judge, and prosecutors.

5. The detainees, as they have shown in the past, are especially dangerous to guards, a problem that’s more acute when in transit or in civilian prisons than in a facility like Guantanamo that’s designed to house them.

6. The trials will give these extremists the opportunity to grandstand.

7. There is, inherent in civilian criminal trials and given the likelihood that the defense will seek to play politics with the trial, some risk of one or more acquittals or hung juries that would give a propaganda victory to the terrorists and destroy what little symbolic value the trials have if the defendants are remanded to custody after being acquitted.

8. There is a risk that, to guard against #7, rules and precedents governing criminal procedure will be distorted in ways that have lingering effects on the regular justice system.

9. Trying terrorists in civilian courts perversely rewards their war crimes; they have not earned the rights of either American citizens nor lawful combatants under international law, and should not be granted them.

Well, the polls are in, and the news should not be encouraging to the Administration. First, the Rasmussen poll, conducted nationally:

Fifty-one percent (51%) of U.S. voters oppose the Obama administration’s decision to try the confessed chief planner of the 9/11 attacks and other suspected terrorists in a civilian court in New York City.A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 29% of voters favor the president’s decision not to try the suspects by military tribunal at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba where they are now imprisoned. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure whether it was the right decision or not.

Only 30% of Americans said suspected terrorists should have access to U.S. courts…

As Rasmussen notes from prior polls, “Most voters have consistently opposed moving any of the Guantanamo prisoners to prisons in the United States out of safety concerns.” And public awareness is high:

Seventy-five percent (75%) of all voters say they have followed news stories about the decision to try the suspected terrorists in a civilian court at least somewhat closely. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say they have been following very closely. Only six percent (6%) are not following the news about the decision at all.

Locally, the Marist poll of New York City residents (H/T) finds a small plurality of the overwhelmingly Democratic City in favor of the trials - but a significant group opposed, and a larger minority among New Yorkers than nationally who are concerned about the elevated security risks:

45% of residents think it’s a good idea to have the trial in New York City while 41% believe it’s a bad one. 14% just aren’t sure.What about the risk of future terrorist attacks? Although 47% say the location of the trial will not affect the likelihood of another terrorist attack occurring in New York City, a significant proportion are concerned the trial will put a bull’s eye on the city. In fact, 40% believe having the trial in New York City will increase the possibility of another terrorist attack in the area. 7% think it will be less of a target, and another 6% are unsure about the implications of the trial for the city’s security.

The left-wing response to the criticisms of the trials has been to focus only on point #3 above and essentially throw a tantrum, accusing anyone concerned with the risk of an attack of either cowardice or fear-mongering. As I have explained at some length before, this is shtick, not argument, and especially ridiculous given some of the people making it. Thus, we have people like left-wing activist Greg Sargent getting so wrapped up in their own shtick that they try to spin the Rasmussen poll as a victory, even in the face of the public being against them on the bottom line:

[P]ublic opposition is not a response to all the lurid fearmongering we’ve heard from Rudy Giuliani and other diehard anti-terror warriors. It’s more rooted in a sense that the justice system isn’t a proper venue to prosecute terrorism, because it places suspected terrorists - symbolically, perhaps more than legally - on an equal footing with your run-of-the-mill suspected murderers….While a majority does oppose the trial, it appears that most Americans aren’t quite as fearful of it as Rep. Shadegg is.

Sargent further notes of the Marist poll: “Opposition to trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators in a New York court is almost entirely driven by old, white, and Republican voters.” Well, good thing none of those groups is a significant voting bloc, eh?

A few more such victories, as Pyrrhus said, and Obama and his fans are finished.

Dan McLaughlin blogs at Baseball Crank.

Is America Becoming More Like China?

Francis Cianfrocca — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:32:30 +0000

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Is America becoming more like China under President Obama? Or should we be upset that it isn’t? We’ll talk about the President’s jarring diplomatic trip to Asia and how the markets responded to Ben Bernanke’s New York speech on today’s Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Retail, Ben Bernanke, and Auditing the Fed

Francis Cianfrocca — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:32:26 +0000

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It’s another day with the Federal Reserve at the center of discussion as Ben Bernanke heads to New York City to give some significant remarks. Should the Fed be more transparent? Should it be audited? We’ll talk about that and how the markets respond to the latest retail report on the latest Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Obamacare vs. the American Entrepreneur

Francis Cianfrocca — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:54:06 +0000

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Welcome to Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca. Today we’d like to welcome first-time listeners at our new sponsor, BigGovernment.com. You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. For our Friday, November 13th edition, we’ll be talking about health care, and how President Obama’s policies could actually hurt the American entrepreneur. We hope you enjoy the show.

FindLaw: Health Care and Small Business - the Three Bills Explained

Time: Why Small Business is Opposing the Health Care Bills

The Losing Side

Benjamin Kerstein — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:30:16 +0000

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A short time before his sadly premature death, George Orwell said of his new novel, 1984, “I do not say that such a thing will happen. Only that it could happen…. The moral of this tale is: don’t let it happen. It’s up to you.” If there is anything we should be celebrating on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should be celebrating this: We didn’t let it happen. The totalitarian world that Orwell envisioned, and which, lest we forget, was a very real possibility at the halfway mark of the last century, was successfully deterred. And is was not deterred by impersonal, determinative forces of history or economics, but by the concerted and often despairing efforts of many people, often in the face of brutal and determined opposition. If this anniversary is anything, it is the anniversary of their victory. This anniversary, this triumph, this vindication, does not belong to all of us. It belongs to the anti-communists of all countries and all parties who fought for it, sometimes at great cost to reputation, family, friendship, sanity, and often life and limb.

It is easy to look back now and lie to ourselves that the whole thing was inevitable: the contradictions of communism would eventually out, its incapacity for economic growth would rot the system from within, the Soviet empire was too large and diverse to be sustained, etc. etc. We have the benefit now of deciding that history simply took its slow but steady course, and left us with its natural outcome of good triumphing over evil, and freedom over oppression.

Fifty years ago, however, it did not look that way at all. It may seem strange now, but for most of the twentieth century, the rise of communism was seen—for good or ill—as the wave of the future, the contradictions of capitalism and democracy were believed to be a cancer that would destroy the organism over time, and the Russian revolution was held to be the defining moment of the century, if not of all human history. Even those like Arthur Koestler and Whittaker Chambers who had once been enamored of this particular church, and had left it with a hatred just as passionate, were quietly convinced that they were engaged in a futile endeavor, whose only recompense would be an honorable death. Chambers’s remark that in fleeing communism he had joined “the losing side,” or William F. Buckley’s claim that he and his movement were “standing astride history yelling ‘stop!’” were not atypical of the era. Even Orwell, in his darker moments, seemed to be fighting more out of despair than hope, and his fierce determination to finish 1984 even in the face of his terminal illness was likely born out of the desperate belief that his novel might, just might, make a difference.

It did, of course, just as Chambers’s Witness, Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, and especially Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago all made a difference. Today, we look back on these works as masterpieces of anti-totalitarian literature. Back then, we should not forget, they were often words lost in a maelstrom. Orwell toiled for years without a publisher, Koestler was a marginalized eccentric to most right-thinking people, and Solzhenitsyn had to memorize his vast work and secrete copies of it in the hopes of smuggling it to the West.

And these were merely literary and intellectual humiliations. In the realm of raw politics, the battle was even more bitterly fought. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the case of Chambers, who faced a campaign of slander, vilification, and hatred rarely seen in the United States, all because he had chosen to tell the truth about a prominent man’s—and, it should be noted, also his own—acts of treason. Nor was Chambers’s case unusual. To the true believers, and to the anti-anti-communists of all parties, those who told the truth about totalitarianism, whoever and wherever they were, amounted to little more than collaborators with oppression and injustice. They were traitors to history itself. This loathing, with its constant accusations of heresy and proclamations of excommunication, often reached farcical proportions. Richard Wright, whose contribution to The God That Failed is one of the most eloquent statements of disillusionment in the English language, gave devastating voice to this in one of his works, in which a young black party member is upbraided by his white comrade for being insufficiently radical, until finally the young man can only respond by asking if his interrogator received his blackness by injection or osmosis.

This was to be the lot of many anti-communists over the course of half a century. Some, like Camus, were merely ostracized. Others, like Buckley, had to put up with being called things like “crypto-Nazi” on various occasions. When the New Left hit, and its opposition to the Cold War took hold over the zeitgeist of the 1960s, many of the old left, who had learned their anti-communism the hard way, had to watch as the movement they had struggled to save fell piece by piece to apologists for totalitarianism. They were first astonished, then horrified, then excommunicated. It was a soft purge, perhaps, but a purge nonetheless.

All of this, however, was nothing compared to the lot of those actually living under communist rule. Often, they were simply slaughtered. Some, like Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, and many, many others, had to face prison, expulsion, harassment, and the constant threat of death in order to make their plight known to the world. And when they did, there were many prepared to dismiss them as heretics, traitors, and most often liars.

Still worse was the lot of the nations and peoples who resisted communism. In 1956, Hungary faced its auto-da-fe, and its modest attempt to cast off Soviet domination was crushed under the boots of the Red Army. In Czechoslovakia, the only genuine revolution of 1968 suffered a similar fate. These uprisings had to languish as aberrations, ignored as the march of history supposedly passed them by on the way toward its revolutionary future, until the wall came down, and even the most dedicated apologists had to admit that the Czechs, the Hungarians, and their supporters had been the wave of the future all along.

The apologists, it should be noted, have not gone away. Even in the immediate aftermath of the wall’s collapse, they were toiling busily in search of some way to claim that it never happened. Witness the palsied old Stalinist Eric Howbsbawm’s attempt in his Age of Extremes to deify Mikhail Gorbachev as the hero of the hour; or Noam Chomsky’s pathetic claim that the Soviet Union had happily allowed its imperial domains to go free out of altruistic, almost paternal love.

They are not alone. We heard, hear, and will continue to hear from those who would rather it hadn’t happened, and would prefer that it didn’t mean what it does mean. They will point to Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Franco, and other disreputable members of the anti-communist camp, as though Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin had not committed vastly more heinous and bloody crimes. They will note the economic malaise of much of Eastern Europe, as though the trepidations of freedom were inferior to those of slavery. They will note the brutal wars in the former Yugoslavia, as if these ancient and long-festering hatreds would never have erupted had it not been for the fall of a totalitarianism they long predated and will long outlive. Worst of all, however, they will claim, as they do claim, that it was all inevitable, and nothing anyone did or said made any difference.

The truth is far more sobering. The truth is that the wall fell, and with it tyranny, only because good men fought to bring it down. Their victory teaches us that the struggle for what Orwell called “common decency” is not something we can complacently leave to the machinations of history. The discontents of civilization will go on. People will continue to seek ways to escape the brutal realities of life through fantasies of unification, solidarity, and violence. The great lesson of the anti-communists, both left and right, is that nothing—good or bad—is inevitable; that the totalitarian temptation will always be there; that each generation will have to relearn this lesson; and that each generation will also have to choose whether or not to let it happen. It’s up to us.

Benjamin Kerstein is a Senior Writer for The New Ledger.

China, Prosperity, and the Berlin Wall

Francis Cianfrocca — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:03:45 +0000

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President Obama heads to China this weekend for a four day trip at a key juncture for the global economy. What are the US’s goals there? And what are some of the lessons we’ve learned about prosperity and capitalism in the twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell? We answer these questions and more on the latest edition of Coffee & Markets, a series of daily morning podcasts on politics and the marketplace, brought to you by The New Ledger.

Links:

LA Times: China, the US and Taiwan

Obama’s visit highlights Asia’s importance

CCTV: Obama - China is a Vital Partner

Prosperity and Capitalism After the Berlin Wall

Roger Bate — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:44:57 +0000

The fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago this week sparked the beginning of Eastern Europe’s move towards myriad different forms of capitalism. Some of the experiments in democratic capitalism, open markets, limited democracy and the rule of law worked very well (Czech Republic, Poland and Estonia) others have done less well (Bulgaria and Romania). Further to the east, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus have improved to be sure but have done even less well than their western neighbors. It’s surprising how quickly the next generation has forgotten the depths of communism, and for many of these countries, it’s incredible to see how far they’ve come in twenty years.

Simple measures of economic improvements do not explain whether these locations have become more prosperous. Hence the Legatum Institute’s recently released 2009 Prosperity Index tells us far more of the story. The Index evaluates 104 nations — 90 percent of the world’s population — along nine major criteria including economic fundamentals, friendliness to entrepreneurial activities, democratic institutions and governance, health, education, social capital, personal freedom and safety and security. Experts from the world’s leading Universities like Oxford and Harvard used objective data and subjective survey responses to score 79 different variables considered to be the foundations of true prosperity, which formed the nine major criteria. The aim of the Index is to assess what makes people around the world truly prosperous — both wealthy and happy.

The inevitable conclusion of the Index is that those countries that dumped the shackles of communism for a system of freedom and political transparency are much more likely to be prosperous.

Slovenia, once part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now earns an overall rank of 20th worldwide — outperforming western nations such as Italy, Portugal and Greece.

Indeed, many of the top forty nations include former communist nations. In order they are the Czech Republic (25th), Hungary (28th), Poland (29th), Estonia (31st), Slovakia (34th), Croatia (35th), and Latvia (37th).

The economic liberalization that swept through many of these countries in 1990 made them far more prosperous. Poland for example is one of the fastest growing economies in Central Europe. Prior to the current economic downturn, the country’s unemployment rate was falling faster than the EU average. And even today, Poland’s GDP continues to grow at a steady rate.

Unfortunately further to the East those countries which have shed only parts of communism in reality, even if rhetorically they claim otherwise, have done less well. Russia has embraced some economic reforms but has failed to allow democratic institutions to flourish, with rigged elections and assassinations of critics of Prime Minister Putin. Overall it lacks personal freedom, safety and decent health. As a result it lies in 69th place.

Ukraine scores badly on social capital and personal freedom too – but does better on other indicators and at least beats its former Soviet ruler, it lies 62nd. Belarus however, ranks a lowly 85th. Surrounded in the Index by corrupt and poverty stricken nations like Bangladesh and Senegal. Belarus’s communist government controls prices and prevents businesses from functioning properly let alone flourishing.

Of course even Slovenia has a long way to go before it can assail the top of the pile. The Index finds that the small Nordic and Scandinavian countries dominated the top of the rankings, while large countries of the anglosphere such as Australia, Canada, and the United States landed in the top 10, UK in 12th, because of their combination of free-market capitalism and transparent democracy.

Germany comes in 14th overall, and is a wonderful reminder for those in the Eastern part of the country of how far they have come and how right they were to try to escape their country and then to have torn down the wall that symbolized their suppression.

In only one sub-index did the former Eastern bloc states rank badly overall — social capital, which measures community activity, trust of friends and neighbors and charitable support. Building such trust will be vital for the regions further improvement. But with memories of the Stasi and other secret police still very much alive it is understandable that this will take time. Once trust is built, many nations in the former Eastern bloc will move even further up the rankings, perhaps one day one will make the top ten.

Roger Bate is the Legatum Fellow in Global Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute.