Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Gov. Perry's Right About Social Security
Here's what the 1936 government pamphlet on Social Security said: "After the first 3 years -- that is to say, beginning in 1940 -- you will pay, and your employer will pay, 1.5 cents for each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. ... Beginning in 1943, you will pay 2 cents, and so will your employer, for every dollar you earn for the next 3 years. ... And finally, beginning in 1949, twelve years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year." Here's Congress' lying promise: "That is the most you will ever pay."
Obama's Bizarre Tax Attack
It could almost make your head spin. With an economy on the front end of another recession, President Obama's tax attack on the folks who are most likely to succeed, invest, start new businesses and create jobs is nothing short of staggering. Only liberal-left class-warfare ideology can explain this. In his speech on Monday, Obama laid out $1.5 trillion in tax hikes over 10 years, aimed almost entirely at America's well-to-do. This includes $800 billion from rolling back the top rates in the George W. Bush tax-cut plan, $470 some-odd billion to reduce itemized deductions for upper-bracket payers and -- oh, yes -- a millionaire's tax called the "Buffett Rule."
The Broken Planet Fallacy
When Solyndra went belly up last month, less than a year after it started making solar arrays in Fremont, Calif., an Energy Department spokesman insisted that the $535 million the federal government had loaned the company was well spent. "The project that we supported succeeded," he said. "The facility was producing the product it said it would produce." That rather short-sighted definition of success exemplifies the loopy logic of President Obama's "green jobs" agenda, which justifies subsidies based on good intentions and employment opportunities rather than profitability or cost-effectiveness. This policy is rooted in the broken planet fallacy, which treats global warming not as an environmental threat to be handled as expeditiously as possible but as an economic opportunity to be milked for all the jobs it can provide.
Iran vs. NATO: The Twilight War in Syria
Syria's Arab Spring civil war began as another round in a long struggle between the 10 percent and the 90 percent -- the 10 percent loyal to the Alawite dictatorship of the Assad clan versus everyone else. The civil war has now expanded into a twilight regional war between Iran and NATO, with Turkey as NATO's frontline actor. At one level, Iran and NATO share a common concern: Syrian disintegration. Where they differ -- greatly -- is on who or what prevents disintegration.
Tyranny of the Typical
And now let us recall the "Fable of the Shoes." In his 1973 "Libertarian Manifesto," the late Murray Rothbard argued that the biggest obstacle in the road out of serfdom was "status quo bias." In society, we're accustomed to rapid change. "New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly." Not so with government. When it comes to police or firefighting or sanitation, government must do those things because that's what government has (allegedly) always done.
Exciting Schools
School spending has doubled over the past 30 years. Yet what do we get? More buildings and more assistant principals -- but student learning? No improvement. If you graph the numbers, the spending line slopes steeply, while the lines for reading, math and science scores are as flat as a dead man's EKG. Why no improvement? Because K-12 education is a government monopoly, and monopolies don't improve. And yet I'm happy to announce some good news: Cool things are starting to happen in classrooms.
Four Minutes to Explain All That Is Wrong With America
Very often, I am asked to sum up for politics-minded colleagues just what I think is so terribly wrong with the American economy. It's always difficult to encapsulate all of America's fiscal problems in a few sentences -- everything from devastating crime to rising poverty levels, from inflated real estate values to bank bailouts, comes into play. Barrels of ink have been spilled on this topic, and barrels more will follow them. In short, it's almost impossible to sum up what's wrong with America's economy while standing on one leg.
Double-Dip Learning Curve
In one of the least needed reassurances in modern political history, President Obama's top political man David Plouffe, "told Democrats late last week that the White House would not suffer from overconfidence. 'What I don't want to suggest is that we're sitting around and thinking everything is great,' he said." With the White House's own economists predicting 9 percent or worse unemployment on Election Day, the president at about 39 percent job approval, college grads unable to find jobs, a quarter of American homes under water, no credible White House policy or strategy for changing things -- and with most non-institutionalized Americans convinced we are in a recession that is going to get much worse -- it is surpassing odd that Plouffe was worried that his fellow Democrats might think the president and his men believed everything to be hunky-dory.
Save Asia Bibi, Mr. President
Asia Bibi, a mother of five, hails from one of only two Christian families that lived in the Pakistani village of Ittanwali. In June 2009, she was working with a group of Muslim women, picking berries in a field. She was sent to fill a bucket with drinking water. When she returned, the Muslim women would not drink from it. It was impure, they said, having been touched by a Christian. What Bibi said then is a matter of dispute.
Airing Anti-Palin Bilge at NBC
Twenty years ago, NBC's "Today" devoted three days of interviews to the insufferable Kitty Kelley, who unspooled baseless allegations against Nancy Reagan, like her supposed love affair with Frank Sinatra. That kind of tabloid bilge belched back up the garbage disposal on Sept. 16, when "Today" promoted the new Palin-bashing book "The Rogue," by leftist author Joe McGinniss. NBC doesn't have an evidence standard when its conservatives are being gored. With liberals, it's a different story. NBC didn't give a second to McGinniss after liberals roundly condemned him in 1993 for his Ted Kennedy book "The Last Brother." In 1996, after the Clinton White House complained, "Dateline NBC" canceled an interview with author and former Secret Service agent Gary Aldrich on his anti-Clinton book "Unlimited Access."
Why Young Americans Can't Think Morally
Last week, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Below are some excerpts from Brooks' summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. (It was led by "the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith.") "Smith and company asked about the young people's moral lives, and the results are depressing ... "When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn't answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all ...
Parents: Don't Let Kids Drink the Kool-Aid
Kool-Aid. It conjures up contradictory images. On the one hand, it brings to mind thirsty gulps, drink-stained lips, and happy children. On the other, it suggests the shadow of the Jonestown massacre, where a cult leader killed his followers, including children, by spiking their sugary drinks with poison. It tasted good going down but led to inevitable death. These days, too many of our children are drinking spiked Kool-Aid. And it's being served to them by unwitting educators, dysfunctional celebrities, government leaders, and the whole of pop culture.
The Lecturer in Chief Has Forfeited His Moral Authority
As predictable and repetitive as Obama's economic speeches are, his capacity for audacity shows ever increasing signs of creativity. Do you suppose he has any ability to feel shame for what he's doing to this country and embarrassment for blaming everyone but himself? His latest deficit plan involves further punishing millionaires and billionaires (which means all those making $200,000 or more), continuing to spend like there's no tomorrow (which there won't be if he continues doing it), phony unspecified reductions in waste, more stonewalling on real entitlement reform, and demonizing anyone who dares to get in his way. You'll be outraged if you look at the mammoth new administrative bureaucracy he wants to create in his latest stimulus monstrosity.
If Israel Disappears
The world -- or at least the large part of it that hates Israel and wishes it would go away -- moves a step nearer that goal this week when the United Nations votes on whether to recognize a Palestinian state. The vote violates the Declaration of Principles signed by the PLO in 1993, which committed the terrorist group and precursor to the Palestinian Authority to direct negotiations with Israel over a future state. This violation is further evidence the Palestinian side cannot be trusted to live up to signed agreements and promises. Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick rightly calls the prospective UN vote "diplomatic aggression."
I'm for the Rich
President Obama and the Democrats are finally happy. Liberated from thoughts of compromise with Republicans, they can fully indulge their most lascivious pleasure -- trashing rich people. "We simply cannot afford these special lower rates for the wealthy," President Obama declared in his Rose Garden message Monday. "Give 'em hell, Barry," cheered Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker. Hertzberg was chipper. Not so of Paul Krugman from The New York Times, the Democratic Party's choleric scold: "The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office," he glowered. ". . .And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: It's their money, and they have the right to keep it." Imagine.
A 'Fair Share' of an Anemic Economy
"None of the changes I'm proposing are easy or politically convenient," President Obama noted from the Rose Garden on Monday. I've never seen a president less in a hurry to get things done -- or as quick to display his deep reservoir of self-pity. Consider: Obama's jobs proposal promises payroll tax cuts for most workers and tax increases on millionaires only. That's about as easy and convenient as politics gets. Yet, somehow, the president speaks as if his proposal is courageous. He even tells voters that he's making them share the deficit-reduction burden.
The 'Ponzi' Sound Bite
Many in the media and in politics have gone ballistic over the fact that Texas Governor Rick Perry called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme." Although many act shocked, shocked, as if Rick Perry had said something unthinkable, Governor Perry is not even among the first thousand people to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Not only conservatives, but even some liberals, have been calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme for decades.
The States and Their Powers
The fashion, one of them anyway, since Gov. Rick Perry entered the presidential lists is to bash him as a drooling neo-Confederate, pining for the good ol' days of states' rights. Yessuh, them Yankees tellin' us what to do all the time, why it's just unconstitutional, and we needs to see-seed! That's a pretty fair representation of the media trash-talk directed not just at Perry, but at the idea that the United States is constructed as something more than a drill team, kicking and stamping in unison, wheeling this way or that as the leader's baton moves about.
As President, Obama Acts as Shop Steward in Chief
Barack Obama has been at pains to convince voters that he cares about jobs. It seems to be a hard sell.
Allah Be Appraised!
Although I have never claimed to be as politically correct as, say, the N.Y. Times, I like to think of myself as a reasonably open-minded fellow where people who are different from me are concerned. And, inasmuch as most people are very different from me -- and glad of it -- I get a lot of practice. Furthermore, I have always contended that bigots are just plain lazy, and that if you just take the trouble to know people as individuals, almost invariably you will discover better reasons to despise them other than their race, religion or bizarre sexual proclivities.