Is that fat blathering idiot right about something?

rush_limbaughOf course we’re talking about Rush Limbaugh.  In an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal he argues that a stimulus package should satisfy both “supply-siders” and “Keynesians”.  He also makes the argument that Obama didn’t win the election by that much.

I find both arguments unpersuasive.  Let’s start with the last one first.  No matter how you break down the percentages of the presidential election, Obama won.  I don’t recall Mr. Limbaugh making an argument that President Bush should reach out to the Democrats when Al Gore won the election in 2000.  In addition, Republicans had their clocks cleaned in both the House and the Senate.  A sufficient mandate exists that the Republicans will not stop President Obama.  As I’ve previously written, congressional Democrats will be opposition enough.  Limbaugh knows this, which is why he then tries to base his argument on a poll, which says that 59% of Americans think Congress and the president will spend too much.  Whatever.  Nobody ever got thrown out of office for growing the deficit.

But is Mr. Limbaugh correct when he suggests that both supply side and direct government investment in various efforts is the right way to go forward?  Normally, I would view taking both roads as failing the Yogi Berra test: when you come to a fork in a road, take it.  And yet this is often something that politicians can’t do.  They often can’t make a stand.  This is, for instance, why no declaration of war has been made by the Congress since World War II.

The theory behind supply-side economics is that when businesses have lower costs (say through lower taxes), either they will receive more revenue, in which case they will invest it and end up hiring more people, and thus help GDP and jobs, or they will cut their prices, in which case the consumer will spend the money somewhere else and also increase GDP and drive businesses to create more jobs.  This assumes that the obstruction to investment today is somehow related to a lack of cash.  This is not the case, today.

Many companies are sitting on fortunes that they are not spending, and those that would like to spend – generally start-ups, are unable to get credit from banks.  No amount of tax cuts will help a start-up right now.  No amount of tax cuts will cause companies to expand in the current environment.  Everyone is scared that the consumer lacks cash.

And so while under some circumstances it might make sense to play the supply-side game, the more direct approach is to address consumer confidence by seeing that they have have jobs.  The problem with government spending models is that they tend to produce jobs that we as Americans don’t think much of.  When was the last time you worked on a crew that built a road, for instance?

Some of the president’s initiatives go into health care and education.  It is a sure bet that such money will find its way back into the economy.  In fact, nearly all of the programs will bring money to the economy.  But a restructuring seems inevitable.

Sadly Mr. Limbaugh couldn’t get past his own partisan blinders to offer a candidate assessment of the situation.

SCHIPP: More dumb Republican politics

Over the last year, healthcare for poor people took a beating as State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIPP) lapsed, and Congress was unable to override a Bush Administration veto – twice.  A smaller version of the bill was signed, but now President Obama has promised to sign the original bill, expanding coverage for poor children from 7 million to 11 million people.  Here is a lesson in politics: recognize the reality of a situation.  Had Republicans understood the implications of the oncoming beating that Senator McCain was about to receive, perhaps they would have comrpomised with Democrats.

Now Republicans are attempting to stand in the way on new ground: they want children of illegal immigrants not to be covered, even if they are American citizens.  Putting aside the constitutionality of it, the point of SCHIPP and programs like it is to provide for preventative care so that those children can do what they’re supposed to do – learn and grow – instead of becoming a burden on society by ending up in an emergency rooom, where astronomically higher expenses must be absorbed by society.  At the same time those children end up out of school, and their parents (illegal or legal) either become a burden, or at the very least, can contribute less to our economy.

More dumb opposition.  I say, mow ’em over, President Obama.

Guess Who Thinks He’s Running for President

Bureau of EconomicsIt’s January 25th, and President Obama has been in office for only a few days, and it seems as though there is jockeying for the Republican nomination for 2012.  Here is how it works: take one of President Obama’s or Congress’ new and somewhat popular initiatives, and bet against it – heavily – by criticizing it in every which way you can and being an obstacle.  You know you’ll eventually lose the battle that the initiative will go through, but then if it doesn’t work, you can claim “I told you so.”  Doubly down if the initiative the economic stimulous package, because even if it does work, you can claim that the economy would have recovered in spite of it, and now the deficit is larger.

This is precisely the tact currently being taken by Senator John Cornyn of Texas.  And he’s gone further by challenging the appointments of Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State, and Eric Holder to Attorney General.

There are risks with this strategy.  First of all, if they are simply mowed over, and the policies are effective, the Democrats will enjoy popularity for a recovering economy.  if the obstruction works, and the economy doesn’t improve, then the Democrats can weild that failure against the Republicans – again – in 2010.

But I have a simple suggestion for the Democrats regarding the economy: allow those congressmen and senators to who oppose the stimulous to refuse it on behalf of their states and their districts, and let the voters judge them.

Secure SmartPhone? No Such thing

iPhoneToday’s CNN reports that President Barack Obama will supposedly get a secure smartphone that would be similar to his Blackberry.  The Sectera Edge, made by General Dynamics, has already received a seal of approval from the National Security Agency.  There is only one problem: either it’s not that smart or it’s not that secure.  You can have either one, but you can’t have both.  Smartphones are those phones that can provide some form of general purpose computing function.  It is that function that is subject to abuse.  While it is possible to develop and provide a general purpose computing function that is perhaps even provably secure, it will also be provably useless.

Another problem with the Sectera Edge is that it lacks the ecosystem that Mr. Obama may be used to with the Blackberry, or others might be used to with the iPhone.  I imagine that very few applications have actually been written outside of GD.  Looking at the iPhone, only a fraction of the apps for the iPhone are developed by Apple.