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February 10, 2009 |
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Story #1: Dingy Harry Brags Over Porkulus Passage
RUSH: We were just watching Dingy Harry. Dingy Harry Reid, the Senate leader came out. He's busting buttons in pride here over passing the pork bill in the Senate, and he said, "Doing nothing is not an option." Doing nothing would be better than what we are doing now. But the option is not doing nothing or doing only what the Senate and House Porkulus bills are. There is no sense. There is no intelligence whatsoever. This is strictly a bill that's designed to entrench and enhance the power of Democrats. It's not about job creation. It's not about any of these things. It's just so sad to see this in the United States of America.
Story #2: Duke's Mike Munger on Politicians and the Economy
 RUSH: There's a great piece here, by the way, at PopeCenter.org. It is a website. And, you know, Obama's been running around saying there's a "consensus of economists" that think this is a great thing and it's gotta pass and so forth. There is not. There are hundreds of economists who oppose this and who have signed a big ad in national newspapers suggesting they don't support it, and that it's not any good. One of them is a guy named Munger, Michael Munger. He is at Duke University, and what I found here -- by the way, it's The Cato Institute that took out the newspaper ad that was signed by several hundred economists who said that they disagreed with the stimulus-Porkulus approach of Obama. So he was interviewed by somebody at this website, George Leef at PopeCenter.org.
And some of the answers that Michael Munger gave just... I want to share them with you. One of the questions was... "You signed the Cato Institute's ad that takes issue with President Obama's assertion that everyone agrees that the federal government needs to spend much more money to help the economy out of recession. Why don't you go along with his idea of stimulating the economy through increased federal spending?" Munger: "I am willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt. He probably actually believes that there is a consensus. But there isn't -- not even close! There are two problems here. The first is the problem of what Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman called 'long and variable lags.' It's like steering a huge ship with an old rubber band for a steering cable. The cable stretches and gets hung up, and so you may turn the wheel really far in one direction…..AND NOTHING HAPPENS. So you turn some more, and some more. And then finally the ship starts to turn. When it finally reaches the heading you want, you straighten the wheel. BUT THE BOAT KEEPS TURNING! Long after you have straightened the wheel, the previous turn keeps affecting the boat's direction.
"So, we are going to see nothing for a long time, and then when the economy does start to recover we are going to see a sharp burst of inflation. As we have seen in the past, most recently in the early 1980s, inflation is expensive to cure and hard to combat. I just don't think we know enough to steer the ship. Second, even if you think we CAN steer the ship with fiscal stimulus (I disagree, but suppose), then most of the projects and spending being packed into this bill are NOT STIMULUS. 'Shovel ready' projects have already gone through three years or more of NEPA review, and planning. The money is already allocated. And the social spending, on pet projects like contraception planning and health care….those may be good projects, on the merits (though, again, I think they are not). But the point is that there is NO STIMULUS in this bill, or in the Congressional plan."
The next question for Michael Munger: "Is it your view that the 'stimulus' package just won't work very well, or that it will actually make matters worse?" Munger: "Both. It won't work in the sense that it will provide no stimulus. And it will do harm in the sense that we are all grabbing our children by the ankles, and shaking them upside down to get the change out of their pockets. Our children will be paying for this mistake, in terms of the increased deficit and consequent reduced discretionary budget, for the rest of their lives." Leef: "President Obama and his circle of advisers are all well-educated people, yet they support economic policies that seem to be deeply flawed. Would you say that they simply haven't read the right books and taken the right courses to comprehend what's going on, or is the problem that politicians sometimes pursue objectives other than long-run prosperity for the general public?" Munger: " ... The problem is this: It's hard to claim credit for the vitality of the market. Politicians claim credit for DOING things."
There is no way a politician is going to sit by and let the economy fix itself. He can't claim any credit. So they have to get involved so that they can claim credit. Politicians want as many people as possible to think that government can level playing fields that, that government can pick winners and losers, that government can fix markets, when they can't. "Imagine you had a six-year-old daughter, and that she has a high fever. It's 1820, and we don't understand germs or fevers very well. You call the doctor, and the doctor comes to the house. 'Please, do something. DO SOMETHING, and help my daughter,' you say. The doctor takes out a lancet, and makes a small incision in your daughter's wrist. The theory was that the fever was in the blood itself, and 'bleeding' was the only treatment that people in 1820 knew. It doesn't work. Your daughter's fever is still very high.
"So, you tell the doctor, 'DO SOMETHING! You are the doctor.' The doctor bleeds her some more. And she dies. And the next day you blame the doctor for not bleeding her MORE and SOONER. But bleeding was the wrong thing to do," in the first place. "This stimulus is the wrong thing to do. The fact that the first round didn't work leads me to think we need to stop! But all the desperate economic parents out there say, DO IT MORE! DO IT LONGER! DO IT FAST! I don't blame the President," Munger says. "I blame voters, who have the naive idea that government is responsible for the economy." Next question: "If had a few minutes with President Obama to explain why the economy has gotten into so much trouble, what would you say?" Munger: "I would need at least an hour, and maybe two hours. There is no one factor, though in two hours I could explain how we got here. If I had two minutes, I'd say, 'Mr. President: Do no harm. Resist the temptation to panic, and act just for the sake of appearing to act. Don't expand the deficit any more for this pointless "stimulus."'" Michael Munger, Duke University, economist, one of many who signed the ad, the full-page newspaper ad run by the Cato Institute saying that he and the rest of the economists who signed do not support this plan. This was to counter Obama's notion that there's a "consensus" of economists who do.
Story #3: Lib-on-Lib Crime: Suing Each Other in California
RUSH: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sued the state's Democratic controller Monday, trying to force furloughs for 15,000 more government workers to address California's $42 billion deficit. The Republican governor already ordered more than 200,000 state government workers to take two days off each month without pay and projected it would save $1.3 billion through June 2010. The first furlough day was last Friday." Gotta give Arnold credit for one thing here: when he furloughs his workers they don't get paid for staying home. Other places, they do get paid for staying home. What do California and the United Auto Workers have in common? You could have that question about this story. You could call this liberal-on-liberal crime. Their unsustainable perks led to layoffs and furloughs, and now they're suing each other in California over this 'cause everybody just assumes that the money will never dry up; it will never stop; it will always be there.
Story #4: Inmates Literally Run Asylum in California
RUSH: I have a story here from the Los Angeles Times. I read this. It's hilarious and it's funny, but then it's not. "A panel of three federal judges..." It's the Ninth Circus. "A panel of three federal judges, saying overcrowding in state prisons has deprived inmates of their right to adequate healthcare, tentatively ruled Monday that the state must reduce the population in those lockups by as many as 57,000 people." Now, that's Drive-By wording. What's going to happen here if this holds is that 57,000 crooks -- 57,000 rapists, murderers, and whoever knows whatever else -- will be let go from California prisons, all in the name of health care! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the crowding is violating their right to health care. The sitcom continues.
"The judges issued the decision after a trial in two long-running cases brought by inmates to protest the state of medical and mental healthcare in the prisons. Although their order is not final, US District Court Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton and 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt effectively told the state that it had lost the trial and would have to make dramatic changes in its prisons unless it could reach a settlement with inmates' lawyers." So the inmates are running the asylum, they really are, out in California. Fifty-seven thousand prisoners will be let go because of inadequate health care. Their rights to health care are being deprived because there are too many prisoners. It's overcrowded -- and of course, three federal judges come right along and say, "Hell, yes! This makes perfect sense to us."
Story #5: Tennessee GOP Dumps New House Speaker
RUSH: This is a great story, a great object lesson here. "Tennessee Republicans ousted the new House speaker from their party Monday." Tennessee Republicans got rid of the new House speaker from their party Monday. They did this while "giving up their first chance in 150 years to control the entire Legislature, instead choosing to punish him for banding with Democrats to win his seat." Tennessee Republicans got rid of their House speaker. That means they got rid of the first majority controlled in 150 years because their House speaker was acting like a Democrat. That is amazing.
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