bin Laden Dead --- Thank Bush

Credit Where Credit Is Also Due

 Posted 05/02/2011 06:44 PM ET

National Security: The decidedly non-multilateral killing of Osama bin Laden came after a long hunt. President Obama took credit, but it was George W. Bush's detainment and interrogation policies that provided the big break.

The courier was the key. He goes into the history books with the prothonotary warbler, the rare bird that exposed Alger Hiss as a communist spy.

And with Iraq's Tikriti tribe, the source of the breakthrough that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein.

And with David Kaczynski, the brother of the Unabomber, whose tip led the FBI to a remote Montana cabin where the convicted mass murderer had a live bomb ready to mail to another unsuspecting victim.

It was in 2007 during the Bush presidency that the U.S. discovered the real name of bin Laden's secret courier. We originally knew of him from captured terrorists held in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, who told U.S. interrogators his nom de guerre earlier in Bush's term.

Interrogations revealed the courier to be a protege of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Indeed, it might be that KSM himself, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was the source of the information — perhaps after being waterboarded.

What was Barack Obama doing in 2007? He was complaining in campaign speeches that the Bush administration had failed "to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005."

As it turns out, the Bush administration in 2007 was gathering information that would be used less than four years later to eliminate bin Laden during the Obama presidency.

Then-Sen. Obama promised that "if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and (then-Pakistani) President Musharraf won't act, we will."

But it was Bush's policies that facilitated the gathering of the actionable intelligence President Obama used.

Gitmo — which candidate Obama vowed to close within a year of taking office — came in pretty handy. So have the much-condemned interrogation methods authorized during the Bush administration — methods for which Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, was all set to prosecute U.S. personnel.

Bush used an executive order to allow broad legal boundaries for tough interrogations; Obama on his first day in office revoked that order and restricted interrogators to outdated Army Field Manual procedures.

Bush suspended terrorist detainees' habeas corpus rights; the Obama administration read the Christmas Day underwear bomber his Miranda rights.

Turning to the spectacular Navy SEALs operation itself, Obama administration officials made a point of saying that the U.S. didn't share intelligence with any other country, and alerted the Pakistani government only after the operation was completed — no multilateralism here.

Candidate Obama might have promised in his much-celebrated 2007 Foreign Affairs magazine article that "I will join with our allies in insisting — not simply requesting — that Pakistan crack down on the Taliban, pursue Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and end its relationship with all terrorist groups."

But getting bin Laden ended up having nothing to do with cooperation with Pakistan and everything to do with the U.S. doing things its own way, and alone — from the Gitmo interrogation condemned by much of the world to unleashing the SEALs and letting them work unilaterally, and without interference.

Democrats, Obama chief among them, for years blasted Bush for not bagging bin Laden.

"We cannot finish the fight in Afghanistan and focus on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida's core leadership unless we end this war that should've never been authorized," candidate Obama said.

But the Bush administration was conducting the surge in Iraq at the time the bin Laden courier's identity was discovered. So much for that theory.

As well as uncovering the information that led to bin Laden's capture, Bush presided over two-thirds of al-Qaida's leaders being captured or killed within three years after 9/11. Just as winning World War II didn't entail capturing or killing Hitler or Tojo, winning the global war on terrorism hasn't been accomplished by the killing of a man who for years has functioned as a seldom-seen figurehead.

In announcing bin Laden's demise — in which he inexcusably failed to thank Bush — Obama said "America can do whatever we set our mind to."

This great victory for U.S. military and intelligence personnel happened because we let them set their minds to it. We let them do their jobs over the course of years — without other countries or Justice Department lawyers interfering.

In other words, America did it Bush's way.

Impact of Unions on the Economy and Country

Unions and the Economy

1. Unions function as labor cartels, restricting the number of workers in a company or industry to drive up the remaining workers’ wages just as OPEC attempts to cut the supply of oil to raise its price.

2. Unions benefit their members but hurt consumers generally, and especially workers who are denied job opportunities.

3. Unions decrease the number of jobs available in the economy. The vast majority of manufacturing jobs lost over the past three decades have been among union members; nonunion manufacturing employment has risen.

4. On balance, unionizing raises wages between 0 percent and 10 percent, but at a steep economic cost. Unions have the same effect on business investment as does a 33 percentage point corporate income tax increase.

5. Congress should remember that union cartels retard economic growth and delay recovery when considering legislation, such as EFCA, that would force workers to join unions.

6. See following link for details: Union Impact on the Economy

1. Unions function as labor cartels, restricting the number of workers in a company or industry to drive up the remaining workers’ wages just as OPEC attempts to cut the supply of oil to raise its price.
2. 2Unions benefit their members but hurt consumers generally, and especially workers who are denied job opportunities.
3. 3Unions decrease the number of jobs available in the economy. The vast majority of manufacturing jobs lost over the past three decades have been among union members; nonunion manufacturing employment has risen.
4. 4On balance, unionizing raises wages between 0 percent and 10 percent, but at a steep economic cost. Unions have the same effect on business investment as does a 33 percentage point corporate income tax increase.
5. 5Congress should remember that union cartels retard economic growth and delay recovery when considering legislation, such as EFCA, that would force workers to join unions.

Massive U.S. Government Waste

Government Waste By the Numbers: Report Identifies Dozens of Overlapping Programs

The federal government hosts 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap. It runs 80 programs for the "transportation disadvantaged." 

Another 82 programs spread across 10 separate agencies endeavor to improve teacher quality -- something hundreds of local school districts are already focused on. 

These are just a few of the findings in a blockbuster report on government waste and inefficiencies released by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. The report identifies billions of dollars in potential savings if Congress just had the will to streamline initiatives that target politically popular causes. 

Though lawmakers in both parties have long struggled to eliminate the common culprits of waste, fraud and abuse, they seized on the findings Tuesday. House Republican Leader Eric Cantor vowed to "get our fiscal house in order" in light of the report. 

"Now again, we have said enough is enough. Our Congress is about delivering results," Cantor said. 

"This report confirms what most Americans assume about their government. We are spending trillions of dollars every year and nobody knows what we are doing. The executive branch doesn't know. The congressional branch doesn't know. Nobody knows," Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said in a statement Tuesday morning. "This report also shows we could save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every year without cutting services."

The well-timed release comes as Republicans and Democrats fight over how much to cut from the rest of this year's budget, not to mention next year's $3.73 trillion spending plan. Democrats have so far balked at GOP plans to cut $61 billion from the 2010 fiscal year budget. But while both parties are squabbling over a relatively small slice of the budget pie -- discretionary spending -- the GAO report suggests Congress could keep cutting and leave the operation of government intact. 

"Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap or fragmentation could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services," the report said. 

The study found 33 areas with "overlap and fragmentation" in the federal government. Among them, it found: 

-- Fifty-six programs across 20 agencies dealing with financial literacy. 

-- More than 2,100 data centers -- up from 432 a little more than a decade ago -- across 24 federal agencies. GAO estimated the government could save up to $200 billion over the next decade by consolidating them. 

-- Twenty programs across seven agencies dealing with homelessness. The report found $2.9 billion spent on the programs in 2009. "Congress is often to blame" for fragmentation, GAO wrote in this section, explaining that the duplicative programs in multiple agencies cause access problems for potential participants. 

-- Eighty-two "distinct" teacher-quality programs across 10 agencies. Many of them have "duplicate sub-goals," GAO said. Nine of them address teacher quality in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. 

-- Fifteen agencies administering 30 food-related laws. "Some of the oversight doesn't make any sense," the report stated bluntly. 

-- Eighty economic development programs. 

In some cases, the programs in question struggled to account for what they did. Take, for instance, domestic food assistance initiatives. According to GAO, 18 such programs are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services -- with GAO estimating $62.5 billion spent on them. 

But "little is known about the effectiveness" of 11 of those programs, the report states. 

Similarly, of the 47 job-training programs run out of the federal government, only five could provide an "impact study" since 2004 looking at "outcomes." About half of them provided no performance review at all since 2004.

The report quickly became a political football Tuesday for lawmakers arguing over proposed cuts. 

"Given the size and scope of the problem, there is likely much more duplication and fragmentation left to find," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. 

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said the report offered an opportunity to make "smart cuts, instead of reckless cuts." 

"Today's GAO report shows us a path forward to responsibly, effectively reduce the deficit without slashing investment in our economy, cutting private sector job growth, or endangering the most vulnerable members of our society. We must eliminate outdated and unnecessary programs, as I have proposed before and as the GAO suggests here," she said. 

The lengthy GAO report was mandated by Congress the last time it raised the debt limit in January 2010. Coburn said the report makes lawmakers look like "jackasses." 

"We don't know what we're doing," Coburn said. 

The Defense Department takes a number of hits in the report. The GAO found many instances of duplication in the sprawling agency. The use of "urgent need" funds have been expanded, GAO found, with "multiple places for a warfighter to submit" such requests. 

GAO found that the Pentagon has "no tracking mechanism" for these funds, resulting in an estimated $77 billion spent since 2005 on communication and computer technologies, counter-measures for improvised explosive devices and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tools. 

Congress asked GAO to look specifically at "federal programs, agencies, offices and initiatives with duplicative goals and activities, to estimate the cost of such duplication and to make recommendations to Congress for consolidation and elimination of such duplication." 

Fox News' Trish Turner contributed to this report.

Government Steals Your Wealth

Editorial: When Inflation Comes, Blame Big Government

 Posted 04/01/2011 07:39 PM ET

Economy: Amid the good news of a rebounding stock market and better job growth comes a warning: Inflation may flare up soon. If it does, don’t blame business.

Maybe you think it's crazy to worry about inflation when the consumer price index is rising at a modest 1.5% year over year. That's a valid point. It's also true that many of the items that make up inflation in our daily lives are climbing fast.

Raw food commodity indexes, for example, have hit all-time highs. And the broader CRB Commodity Index, including food, energy and industrial commodities, has run up 32% the past 12 months.

As anyone who owns a car or truck knows, oil prices have jumped 29% in the past year to more than $108 a barrel. This has pushed gasoline prices over $3.60 a gallon nationally, twice what they were when President Obama entered office.

As for that weak CPI, there are good reasons to question the government's benign official readings. Bill Simon is one of them. When the CEO of Wal-Mart's U.S. arm talks, we listen. And last week he told consumers to get ready for a burst of "serious" inflation.

Toyota Motor Co. is another. Americans typically ignore the impact of a weaker dollar. But the biggest carmaker in the world has announced price hikes across the board for all of its vehicles, in large part due to the weaker U.S. currency.

Monetary officials, including the presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond, Minneapolis and Dallas, have also weighed in. They too see inflation ahead and suggest the Fed may start raising rates soon.

John Williams, of the useful and iconoclastic Shadow Government Statistics website, measures prices the old-fashioned way. He employs the methodology used before 1992, when Labor Department changes started producing milder readings.

By his measure, inflation is close to 10%, tracking price increases for commodities, energy, food, precious metals and health care, among other items. Once this is recognized, expect business to get the blame and Congress to convene hearings on "price gouging," as it's done dozens of times (without finding any).

It's really government that causes inflation with actions such as:

• The $2 trillion in money created by the Fed under "quantitative easing" since 2008, an unprecedented shot of liquidity pumped straight into the economy.

• The $5.5 trillion in new debt added by our government in just three years — nearly a 60% rise.

• The Environmental Protection Agency's move to regulate all stationary producers of carbon dioxide, which has led businesses to put off large investments.

• The surge in regulation at all levels of government, which has added to small-business uncertainty and reduced hiring.

• The record 29% jump in federal spending in President Obama's first three years, which has crowded out private spending and business investment.

• Spending on TARP and "stimulus," which could total nearly $2 trillion when all is said and done.

The list goes on. The point is, don't blame companies like Wal-Mart, a proven price cutter, when inflation hits home.

Blame the federal government, which seems dead set on repeating the same errors it made in the stagflationary 1970s.

Big Government Solution

The Ryan Plan: Bold, Reckless, Suicidal, Superb

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Posted 04/07/2011 05:20 PM ET

 View Enlarged Image

In 1983, the British Labor Party under the hard-left Michael Foot issued a 700-page manifesto so radical that one colleague called it "the longest suicide note in history."

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has just released a recklessly bold, 73-page, 10-year budget plan. At 37 footnotes, it might be the most annotated suicide note in history.

That depends on whether (a) President Obama counters with a deficit-reduction plan of equal seriousness, rather than just demagoguing the Ryan plan till next Election Day, (b) there are any Republicans beyond the measured, superwonky Ryan who can explain and defend a plan of such daunting scope and complexity, and (c) Americans are serious people.

My guesses: No. Not really. And I hope so. (We will find out definitively in November 2012.)

The conventional line of attack on Ryan's plan is already taking shape: It cuts poverty programs and "privatizes" Medicare in order to cut taxes for the rich. Major demagoguery on all three counts:

(1) The reforms of the poverty programs are meant to change an incentive structure that today perversely encourages states to inflate the number of dependents (because the states then get more "free" federal matching money) and also encourages individuals to stay on the dole.

The 1996 welfare reform was similarly designed to reverse that entitlement's powerful incentives to dependency. Ryan's idea is to extend the same logic of rewarding work to the noncash parts of the poverty program — from food stamps to public housing.

When you hear this being denounced as throwing the poor in the snow, remember these same charges were hurled with equal fury in 1996. President Clinton's own assistant health and human services secretary, Peter Edelman, resigned in protest, predicting that abolishing welfare would throw a million children into poverty.

On the contrary. Within five years child poverty declined by more than 2.5 million — one of the reasons the 1996 welfare reform is considered one of the social policy successes of our time.

(2) Critics are describing Ryan's Medicare reform as privatization, a deliberately loaded term designed to instantly discredit the idea. Yet the idea is essentially to apply to all of Medicare the system under which Medicare Part D has been such a success: a guaranteed insurance subsidy.

Thus instead of paying the health provider directly (fee-for-service), Medicare would give seniors about $15,000 of "premium support," letting the recipient choose among a menu of approved health insurance plans.

Call this privatization if you like, but then would you call the Part D prescription benefit "privatized"? If so, there's a lot to be said for it. Part D is both popular and successful. It actually beat its cost projections — a near miraculous exception to just about every health care program known to man.

Under Ryan's plan, everyone 55 and over is unaffected. Younger workers get the insurance subsidy starting in 2022. By eventually ending the current fee-for-service system that drives up demand and therefore prices, this reform is far more likely to ensure the survival of Medicare than the current near-insolvent system.

(3) The final charge — cutting taxes for the rich — is the most scurrilous. That would be the same as calling the Reagan-Bradley 1986 reform "cutting taxes for the rich." In fact, it was designed for revenue neutrality.

It cut rates — and for everyone — by eliminating loopholes, including corrupt exemptions and economically counterproductive tax expenditures, to yield what is generally considered by left and right an extraordinarily successful piece of economic legislation.

Ryan's plan is classic tax reform — which even Obama says the country needs: It broadens the tax base by eliminating loopholes that, in turn, provide the revenues for reducing rates.

Tax reform is one of those rare policies that produce social fairness and economic efficiency at the same time. For both corporate and personal taxes, Ryan's plan performs the desperately needed task of cleaning out the many accumulated cutouts and loopholes that have choked the tax code since 1986.

Ryan's overall plan tilts at every windmill imaginable, including corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. The only thing left out is Social Security. Which proves only that Ryan is not completely suicidal.

But the blueprint is brave and profoundly forward-looking. It seeks nothing less than to adapt the currently unsustainable welfare state to the demographic realities of the 21st century. Will it survive the inevitable barrage of mindless, election-driven, 30-second attack ads (see above)? Alternate question: Does Obama have half of Ryan's courage?

I think not (on both counts). But let's hope so.

Liberals Love Government Waste - And Wasting Your Tax Dollars!

Morning Bell: Why Liberals Love Government Waste

Posted By Conn Carroll On March 2, 2011 @ 9:35 am 

Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a 345-page report ^[1] detailing 34 major areas of wasteful government spending that Sen. Tom Coburn (R–OK) says ^[2] could save the federal government $100 billion or more every year. Conservatives jumped on the news, with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R–VA) office releasing a statement: ^[3]“That is why House Republicans are hard at work cutting spending and getting our fiscal house in order – we need to prevent taxpayer dollars from being wasted and put Washington on a budget so we begin to live within our means and get people back to work”

Liberals, however, greeted the report with polite applause ^[4] but then predicted nothing would come of it ^[5]. Why is the left so uninterested in eliminating wasteful government spending? Why can’t progressive politicians agree to cut programs that even the GAO identifies as duplicative or ineffective? The answer can be found in the left’s reaction to two reports issued in the last weeks, one by bailed-out Goldman Sachs and the other by failed stimulus architect Mark Zandi.

On February 23, Goldman Sachs released a report ^[6] purporting to show that the $61 billion in cuts in the House fiscal year 2011 spending bill would reduce economic spending by up to 2 percent this year. Not to be out done, Zandi released a report ^[7] on February 28 purporting to show that the same $61 billion in cuts would cost 700,000 jobs through 2012. In stark contrast to the GAO report on wasteful government spending, liberals on Capitol Hill broadly promoted the findings of these two studies as proof that the House budget would harm the economic recovery.

But wait: How can the Zandi and Goldman studies claim that the spending cuts in the House budget will harm the economy if they came out before the GAO study identifying wasteful government spending? What if all, half, or just some of the spending cuts in the House budget are simply cuts to government waste? Surely these facts would change the outcome of Goldman’s and Zandi’s computer simulations, right? Wrong. The Goldman and Zandi reports have absolutely zero relationship to the real world. They both assume that all government spending, no matter how wasteful or duplicative, not only helps the economy grow but does so by large multipliers. This is the exact same thinking that led the Obama Administration to claim that their $1 trillion stimulus would keep unemployment below 8 percent when in fact unemployment rose to 10.1 percent ^[8]. The Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl explains ^[9] why government spending does not stimulate economic growth:

Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed. Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another.
Congress cannot create new purchasing power out of thin air. If it funds new spending with taxes, it is simply redistributing existing purchasing power (while decreasing incentives to produce income and output). If Congress instead borrows the money from domestic investors, those investors will have that much less to invest or to spend in the private economy. If they borrow the money from foreigners, the balance of payments will adjust by equally raising net imports, leaving total demand and output unchanged. Every dollar Congress spends must first come from somewhere else.

Conservatives believe that the federal government should have limited powers and that—beyond providing for the common defense and enforcing contracts— government should stay out of economic affairs as much as possible. Conservatives believe most federal spending is suspect and should be cut if it has not proven to be effective (such as on programs like COPS, FEMA fire grants, and Head Start). Progressives, on the other hand, see the federal government as a giant jobs program so that any cut to any federal program, no matter how ineffective or wasteful, would be a harm to the economy. If we are ever going to tackle our nation’s true budgetary problems—spending on the entitlement programs Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—we must first defeat the misguided idea that all government spending cuts are bad for the economy.


Quick Hits:

• The House approved a two-week spending bill that cuts spending by $4 billion ^[10] Tuesday.
• Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified Tuesday that the House FY 2011 budget bill that cuts spending by $61 billion ^[11] would not harm economic growth.
• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) proposed a two-year budget yesterday that would cut state spending ^[12] by nearly 7 percent.
• United States Attorney General Eric Holder testified to the House of Representatives yesterday that he believed investigations into how his office handled the New Black Panther Party case demeans “my people.” ^[13]
• Chinese police are preventing reporters and photographers from covering ^[14] any potential public protests.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post attributed a quote to Cantor’s office that was actually from Sen. Coburn. The quote from Cantor’s office is now correct.