The only conservative in Western Massachusetts - Email Eric Lindholm: ealindholm -at- msn -dot- com

 
Of course! - The rationale behind the TSA pat-downs suddenly comes into focus. Rick Moran: "The Conspiracy to make Amtrak profitable."
posted by Eric at 10:06 PM (0) comments

 
Meet the new G.M., same as the old G.M. - Detroit author Paul Clemens notes in the New York Times that today's temporary "win" over General Motors' IPO doesn't make up for the hollowing of a once-proud company in "The Ghosts of Old G.M." (Hat tip: TTAC).
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It's like a flip book, but on toast
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New math - Reason Online: "New Obama administration health care guru: Double counting? What double counting?" Hmmm, the Medicare actuaries and the CBO have a different take.
posted by Eric at 8:12 PM (0) comments

 
The other expensive time-bomb - The Bush tax cuts are set to expire on January 1st but on December 1st, doctors who serve Medicare patients will get hit with a 23% automatic deduction. This is the result of a decade of procrastination as Congress kept ignoring and overriding cost controls in the system. Reason: "Doc fix problem still not fixed."
posted by Eric at 7:46 PM (0) comments

 
Was this trip necessary? - So the ethics committee found Charles Rangel guilty of eleven violations of House rules. He can look forward to a sternly-worded letter and a paltry fine while he serves out his Congressional seat until he expires. Even the U.N. is laughing.
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Stuck at 61 - When are they going to finish re-counting the ballots in the five undecided House races? I have +64 in the election prediction competition.
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In which I agree with Peter Orszag - The former OMB director thinks the Commission on the Federal Debt is (mostly) on the right track with regard to reforming Social Security.
posted by Eric at 8:37 PM (2) comments

 
The hangover

Robert Samuelson looks to Japan's "lost decade" (which continues today) and how uncertainty and deficit-spending are sending us down the same path:

So Japan's economy is trapped: a high yen penalizes exports; low births and sclerotic firms hurt domestic growth. The lesson for us is that massive budget deficits and cheap credit are at best necessary stopgaps. They're narcotics whose effects soon fade. They can't correct underlying economic deficiencies. It's time to move on from the debate over "stimulus."

Economic success ultimately depends on private firms. The American economy is more resilient and flexible than Japan's. But that's a low standard. Neither the White House nor Congress seems to understand that growing regulatory burdens and policy uncertainties undermine business confidence and the willingness to expand. Unless that changes, our mediocre recovery may mimic Japan's.

The rejection of President Obama's policies is the story of the midterm elections, obvious to everybody but Obama and Paul Krugman who wrote his hundredth column today on how the stimulus should have been larger.
posted by Eric at 8:31 PM (6) comments

 
But it feels so right - Somebody slashed the tires of those Westboro Baptist protesters who were disrupting another soldier's funeral. Well that's just terrible to confront free speech with violence.
posted by Eric at 7:40 PM (1) comments

 
Amazing Race update – Chad proposes in Oman

Teams start up in St. Petersburg and need to make their way to Muscat, Oman. Chad and Stephanie – whom I've dubbed "Team Bickering Young Couple" – oversleep by two hours and miss their starting time. No matter: all teams arrive in Oman and they are bunched up at some landmark waiting for it to open. As the dawn breaks, Chad drops to one knee and proposes to Stephanie, who accepts. The Amazing Race changes their description from "Dating" to "Engaged."

Next teams go up a mountain where they need to rappel down 500 feet to a canyon then find a ring among a bunch of "Aladdin lamps." Chad finishes first and they head off to their next clue at some big stack of books. Meanwhile Team Surgeons and Team Kentucky are way lost. Mallory starts praying to Jesus which is probably frowned upon in Oman.

At the stack of books, it's the Detour. Teams must chose between two tasks: Water Table or Wedding Table. Teams must either pump up some water and deliver to a house, or prepare a chicken soup for a wedding meal. Everybody picks the water which seems to be the better choice since there's a driver for the truck and basically the teams just need to direct the truck to the right location. Jill & Thomas finish first and head to the next clue which is just searching around a large bazaar. They complete their task and now it's off to the Al Alam Palace and the Pit Stop.

You can tell by the position of the sun in the sky that Team Kentucky is going to finish in the dark. Meanwhile, at the mat, Jill & Thomas arrive first and they're told they're the "first team to arrive" and not "team #1." It turns out they violated a rule about getting a taxi driver to guide them so they've incurred a half-hour penalty. In the interim, newly engaged Chad & Stephanie arrive and they are dubbed Team #1. Jill & Thomas then check in as Team #2. The Amazing Race producers try some creative editing to suggest the race is close but Team Kentucky arrives in last place and they're eliminated from the Race.

Final standings:

#1 – Team Bickering Young Couple – Chad & Stephanie
#2 – Team Faceless Young Couple – Jill & Thomas
#3 – Team Vegas – Nick & Vicki
#4 – Team QVC – Brook & Claire
#5 – Team Surgeons – Nat & Kat
#6 – Team Kentucky – Gary & Mallory - PHILIMINATED

Next week: Bangladesh.
posted by Eric at 9:03 PM (1) comments

 
America purchases GM's lemon - George Will reviews the wreckage of the government's decision to bail out General Motors with a focus on the Chevy Volt: "The Volt was conceived to appease the automotive engineers in Congress, which knows that people will have to be bribed, with other people's money, to buy this $41,000 car that seats only four people."
posted by Eric at 10:47 PM (0) comments

 
Ecclesiastes 1:2 - Weekly Standard: "American Narcissus."
posted by Eric at 2:18 PM (2) comments

 
That's a skinny house - Via Maggie's Farm, here's an amusing account of spite houses on Wikipedia.
posted by Eric at 8:12 PM (0) comments

 
The deficit commission and Social Security

I'm sure I'm going to be writing about this subject quite a bit as the details unfold, but I think the deficit commission proposals are a step in the right direction with regard to reforming Social Security for the 21st century. Writing for the Atlantic, Clive Crook thinks so too "In praise of Bowles-Simpson":

Some of the proposals probably ought to be bolder. On social security, for instance, the main points are: index the retirement age to longevity in such a way that it would rise from 67 under current law to 69 only by 2075; make the benefit formula more progressive; and tweak the inflation-indexing formula so that it is slightly less generous. The savings add up; the changes would be phased in so gradually as to be imperceptible (except for the elderly poor, who would be better off than under current law). It's mild to a fault. I don't understand why so many Democrats are aghast at this.

In my opinion, it's ridiculous to say that a program formed when people where still using horse-and-buggies as a form of transportation must remain untouched in modern society. (Here I simplify: the FICA tax has marched steadily upward.) The default/do nothing option is to impose a 25% benefit cut starting around 2039. Better to take sensible, incremental steps now to secure long-term solvency than chop off benefits in a couple of decades.

Extra – Also in the Atlantic, Megan Mcardle: "On fixing Social Security, and the budget."

More - From Peter Suderman on Reason and SSA trustee Charles Blahous on Economics 21.
posted by Eric at 7:51 PM (0) comments

 
Obamacare bait and switch

George Will wonders if the health care reform law can be overturned on appeal because the legislation was fundamentally misrepresented in Congress:

Republican gains were partly a result of the "shock-and-awe statism" (Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels's phrase) of the health-care legislation passed in March. Seven months later, a federal judge in Florida, hearing arguments about the constitutionality of penalizing Americans who do not purchase health insurance, was bemused.

Lawyers defending the legislation said that the fee noncompliant Americans would be forced to pay is really just a tax. But during congressional debate on the legislation, Democrats adamantly denied it was a tax. So, in a rehearsal of an argument that will be heard by the Supreme Court, the judge said:

"Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an 'Alice-in-Wonderland' tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check."

Much as I'd like to believe that prevarication is a cause for appeal, I think it's more likely the Supreme Court will take the Democrats' "Animal House" defense:


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A mighty, and lucrative, wind – Reason: "Corporate Welfare Watch: Wind Farm Subsidies"
posted by Eric at 6:14 PM (0) comments

 
What's that now? – Karl Rove quotes Sara Bareilles in "Obama has a listening problem." He listened, and decided 9.6% unemployment was somebody else's fault.
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Harpooning the whale
posted by Eric at 9:07 PM (10) comments

 
Limiting the Commerce Clause - George Mason law professor Ilya Somin believes the Supreme Court could knock down Obamacare's individual mandate: "Mandate challenge could prevail."
posted by Eric at 6:55 PM (6) comments