Obama will sign spending bill despite earmarks

Classical liberalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1], laissez-faire liberalism[2], and market liberalism[3] or, outside the United States and Britain, sometimes simply liberalism is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

As such, it is the fusion of economic liberalism with political liberalism of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that laissez-faire economics will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society, though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of some basic public goods with what constitutes public goods being seen as very limited. The qualification classical was applied retroactively to distinguish it from more recent, 20th-century conceptions of liberalism and its related movements, such as social liberalism Classical liberals are suspicious of all but the most minimal government and object to the welfare state.

Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, are credited with influencing a revival of classical liberalism in the twentieth century after it fell out of favor beginning in the late nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century. In relation to economic issues, this revival is sometimes referred to, mainly by its opponents, as "neoliberalism". The German "ordoliberalism" has a whole different meaning, since the likes of Alexander Rüüüüstow and Wilhelm Rööööpke have advocated a more interventionist state, as opposed to laissez-faire liberals. Classical liberalism has many aspects in common with modern libertarianism, with the terms being used almost interchangeably by those who support limited government.

Stage of Fools
MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 3, 2009
WASHINGTON

If only Shakespeare had known how to Twitter.

There was a bit of King Lear in the scene on the Senate floor, a stormy, solitary John McCain on “this great stage of fools,” as the Bard wrote, railing against both parties and the president in fiery speeches and rapid-fire tweets.

“He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath,” the Fool told Lear.

And he’s truly mad that trusts in the promise of a presidential candidate to quell earmarks.

The 72-year-old senator who seemed hopelessly 20th century when he confessed during the campaign that he didn’t know how to use a computer or send an e-mail has now mastered the latest technology fad, twittering up a twizzard to tweak his former rival.

Before the Senate resoundingly defeated a McCain amendment on Tuesday that would have shorn 9,000 earmarks worth $7.7 billion from the $410 billion spending bill, the Arizona senator twittered lists of offensive bipartisan pork, including:

• $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. “quick peel me a grape,” McCain twittered.

• $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, Tex.

• $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.

• $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. “Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?” McCain tweeted.

• $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama.

• $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi.

• $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. (McCain, a devotee of Vegas and gambling, must really be against earmarks if he doesn’t want to “sustain” Vegas.)

• $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, “because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy.”

• $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles. “Hopefully for a Back in the Saddle Again exhibit,” McCain tweeted sarcastically.

• $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. “During these tough economic times with Americans out of work,” McCain twittered.

• $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. “REALLY?” McCain twittered.

• $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia.

“When do we turn off the spigots?” Senator McCain said in his cri de coeur on the Senate floor. “Haven’t we learned anything? Bills like this jeopardize our future.”

In one of his disturbing spells of passivity, President Obama decided not to fight Congress and live up to his own no-earmark pledge from the campaign.

He’s been lecturing us on the need to prune away frills while the economy fizzles. He was slated to make a speech on “wasteful spending” on Wednesday.

“You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation,” he said recently about the “hard choices” we must make. Yet he did not ask Congress to sacrifice and make hard choices; he let it do a lot of frivolous redecorating in its budget.

He reckons he’ll need Congress for more ambitious projects, like health care, and when he goes back to wheedle more bailout billions, given that A.I.G. and G.M. and our other corporate protectorates are burning through our money faster than we can print it and borrow it from the ever-more-alarmed Chinese.

Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that “the status quo is not acceptable,” even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork.

Obama spinners insist it was “a leftover budget.” But Iraq was leftover, too, and the president’s trying to end that. This is the first pork-filled budget from a new president who promised to go through the budget “line by line” and cut pork.

On “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, dismissed the bill as “last year’s business,” because most of it was written last year.

But given how angry Americans are, watching their future go up in smoke, the bloated bill counts as this year’s business.

It includes $38.4 million of earmarks sponsored or co-sponsored by President Obama’s labor secretary, Hilda Solis; $109 million Hillary Clinton signed on to; and $31.2 million in earmarks sought by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood with colleagues.

(Even Barack Obama was listed as one of the co-sponsors of a $7.7 million pet project for Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions until he got his name taken off last week.)

And then there are the 16 earmarks worth $8.5 million that Emanuel put into the bill when he was a congressman, including money for streets in Chicago suburbs and a Chicago planetarium.

Blame it on the stars, Rahm, or on old business. But as Shakespeare wrote in “Lear”: “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune " often the surfeits of our own behavior " we make guilty of our own disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/opinion/04dowd.html?_r=1

OMAHA, Neb. " Billionaire Warren Buffett said unemployment will likely climb a lot higher depending upon how effective the nation's policies are, but he remains optimistic over the long term.

Buffett said the nation's leaders need to support President Barack Obama's efforts to repair the economy because fear is dominating Americans' behavior and the economy has basically followed the worst-case scenario he envisioned.

"It's fallen off a cliff," Buffett said Monday during a live appearance on CNBC. "Not only has the economy slowed down a lot, but people have really changed their habits like I haven't seen."

Buffett said the changes are reflected in the results of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s subsidiaries. He said Berkshire's jewelry companies have suffered, but more people have been willing to switch to Geico to save money on car insurance.

He predicted that unemployment will likely climb a lot higher before the recession is done, but he also reiterated his optimistic long-term view: "Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that's ever been created."

Fear and confusion have been driving consumer and investor behavior in recent months, Buffett said.

The nation's leaders need to clear up the confusion before anyone will become more confident, and he said all 535 members of Congress should stop the partisan bickering about solutions.

Buffett said he believes patriotic Republicans and Democrats will realize the nation is engaged in an economic war.

"What is required is a commander in chief that's looked at like a commander in chief in a time of war," Buffett said.

Whatever the government does to help the economy will likely benefit some people who made poor financial decisions, but Buffett said Americans should realize that everyone is in the same boat.

"The people that behaved well are no doubt going to find themselves taking care of the people who didn't behave well," Buffett said.

A little over a week ago, Buffett released his annual letter to shareholders describing the worst of his 44 years at the helm of Berkshire. The Omaha, Neb.-based company reported sharply lower profit because of its largely unrealized $7.5 billion investment and derivative losses.

Overall, Berkshire's 2008 profit of $4.99 billion, or $3,224 per Class A share, was down 62 percent from $13.21 billion, or $8,548 per share, in 2007.

Berkshire's fourth-quarter numbers were even worse. Buffett's company reported net income of $117 million, or $76 per share, down 96 percent from $2.95 billion, or $1,904 per share, a year earlier.

Buffett said he doesn't regret writing an editorial last fall encouraging people to buy U.S. stocks, but he joked that in hindsight he wishes he'd waited a few months to publish the piece. Since that editorial appeared on Oct. 17, the Dow Jones industrial average has fallen from 8,852.22 to close at 6,626.94 on Friday.

Buffett stands by his overall advice that over time owning stocks will be better than so-called safe investments.

"Overall, equities are going to do far better than U.S. government bonds at these prices," he said.

Buffett said he doesn't regret investing $8 billion of Berkshire's money in investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and conglomerate General Electric Co. last fall. Both companies gave Berkshire preferred shares paying 10 percent interest that Buffett said he doesn't think he could get now.

Berkshire owns a diverse mix of more than 60 companies, including insurance, furniture, carpet, jewelry, restaurants and utility businesses. And it has major investments in such companies as Wells Fargo & Co. and Coca-Cola Co.

Obama’s high marks
In the survey, 68 percent have a favorable opinion of the president, including 47 percent whose opinion is "very positive" " both all-time highs for Obama in the poll. Moreover, 67 percent say they feel more hopeful about his leadership and 60 percent approve of his job in the White House.

Yet the percentage of Americans who are confident that Obama has the right goals and policies for the country " 54 percent " is slightly smaller, suggesting that the president is more popular than his policies are. An example: 57 percent tend to support the stimulus, compared with 34 percent who tend to oppose it.

I imagine he is an embarrassment for you. However, it seems the majority of the country disagrees.