Team Obama- "Race to the Bottom"

Team Obama may have found their new campaign slogan. Gene Sperling, Director of the White House National Economic Council, is pushing for a new source of revenue: a global tax. Just on what and on who isn't clear yet, because what Director Sperling calls the "gory details" have yet to be worked out. National Review included a clipof Rep. Ryan discussing Obama's 2013 budget; it includes calls for nearly $1.5 Trillion in new entitlement spending and nearly $2 Trillion in taxes, so you can be sure the details will be gory. And you can be certain you will feel the most pain if you are a wage earner, and not that staple of the Democrat voter base, the entitlement bought-and-paid-for Liberal.

At any rate, Director Sperling thinks the problem of capital flight can be addressed with (surprise!) more taxes, saying, “We need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually subsidize and facilitate people moving their funds to tax havens.”

America is already having a problem with the wealthy leaving the country because they view the tax burden as onerous and disproportionate. And we are talking about the real 1% here, the 1% that actually has wealth, not the top wage earners who are typically substituted by verbal sleight of hand when the Administration, Occupy Welfare Services, and media folks weigh in with their "fairness" talk. 

Yet that isn't the really interesting part of the quote. Class warfare, massive government regulation and spending coupled with economy-crushing taxation has always been de rigueur for Obama; it is part of the Obama prescription for all the "little people." Probably along with an Obamacare prescription for 1984's mind-numbing drug, Soma.

No, what is interesting is Sperling's comment that nobody should escape their fair share of the "race to the bottom." It seems to be a fundamental attitude, a core belief, to Team Obama that America must be reduced to third-world status. And Obama is in a hurry to win this "race to the bottom." He has always sought to drive up the price of motor fuels to European levels, and look at the price of gasoline since he took over. It has nearly doubled, but the media doesn't seem to notice, and it certainly isn't Obama's "fault." If it's anyone's "fault," it is obviously and always former President Bush's. Obama has also worked to shut down electrical generation plants, and has quietly instituted burdensome and expensive regulations toward this end. And the EPA is working to regulate the average American's carbon footprint to pre-industrial levels.

The goals of Obama and his liberal supporters, particularly those seeking to move America down into Quadrants III or IV (the socialist quadrants, as explained elsewhere on this site), demands that the average American live a virtually pre-industrial lifestyle. Obama's only shortcoming, in the view of his socialist cadres, is that he isn't moving fast enough toward these goals. For Obama and his cronies, it truly is a "race to the bottom," not for them, of course, but for everyone else. Everyone else needs to pay higher taxes, everyone else needs to be tightly regulated, everyone else needs to do without so that the climate can be saved- for the benefit of Obama and his fellow elites.

For Team Obama, "Race to the Bottom" would probably the most accurate campaign slogan that could be applied to the Obama 2012 campaign. Who knows, maybe it can replace his current slogan, "It's not my fault."

Obama- SAD instead of MAD?

In the decades following the Second World War, America has employed the MAD doctrine to provide a reasonable level of protection in a nuclear world. MAD, of course, stands for Mutually Assured Destruction; the premise being that no nation with nuclear weapons could attack another nuclear-armed nation without expecting that both nations would be destroyed in the resulting nuclear exchange. In that case, no nation could gain from attacking another nation, and so, they don't.

Pacifists and liberals have for all those same decades called the MAD doctrine simply mad. No conflict, they say, is worth destroying the world for. They also argue that there is no need for an arsenal capable of destroying the world several times over. The oft-heard slogan is "let's give peace a chance" (which would be fine if we could convince everyone else to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with us.) So from the liberal point of view, MAD has been a terrible failure; the world proceeds along balanced on a razor's edge, with obliteration just one political miscalculation away.

Yet from the conservative point of view, MAD has been a spectacular success. Consider that the First World War ended in 1918, and by 1931 Japan had invaded China to begin the long road that led to the Second World War in 1939. Twelve years or maybe as long as twenty years elapsed between World Wars, and on that schedule, another one might have been expected by 1965. Didn't happen, but there was a pretty active "cold war." Conservatives prefer the posturing and politics to the death and destruction; liberals just want to pretend it can't happen.

So the Obama Administration, firmly in the utopianist liberal camp (which conservatives refer to by its short name, "la-la land,") is apparently pondering a substantial reduction in America's nuclear arsenal. From some 8,000 warheads to as little as 300, which is fewer than China is believed to have, and many fewer than Russia's well over 11,000.  And we are apparently talking about a unilateral reduction here.

Now the point of MAD is that a counter-strike would have sufficient clout to ensure destruction of the attacker. With only 300 warheads available for an American counter-strike, an attacker might conclude they have good odds of surviving, and the deterrent effect is simply lost. In that case, Obama is giving us SAD (that's Singly Assured Destruction- of America) instead of MAD.

Of course, there may be another possibility. Perhaps this will be as successful as Obama and Hillary's other foreign policy initiatives, like the "Arab Spring" successfully bringing democracy (or is that "Islamists") to the Middle East! Or perhaps Obama's Stimulus in ensuring that unemployment never reaches 8 percent? The Solyndra success? With Obama's track record, we'd be safer if we buy umbrellas and wear sunglasses- does anyone know the words to "Kumbaya?"

Waive Bye-Bye

 For decades, the American Judiciary has referred to the United States Constitution as a "living and breathing" document, which judges can freely interpret to support whatever public policy the Courts may choose to impose. Arguably, this view of the Constitution, which was judicially fabricated and is not found in the Constitution, effectively destroyed the Constitution as a limit on government powers, as it places the Judges over not only all other governmental functions but over the people as well, since it allows the judges to place themselves over the people's elected representatives.

Even during the explosion of cases since the 1960's seeking the use of this Judicial Review as a policy weapon, the various branches of the government continued at least as a pretext that the government adhered to the Constitution, if only as a guideline.

During the present administration, however, there has been a sea change. Mr. Obama promised that he would bring change to America, and he has. His Stimulus didn't do it; that has been a colossal failure. He promised that America wouldn't see 8% unemployment, and that is only true if he meant unemployment would never be that low while he was President. In each of his years as President, Obama has added over $1 Trillion in debt, but that's just an acceleration of Federal borrowing- an exponential acceleration, to be sure, but that's all, and it hasn't really changed anything.

Nonetheless, Obama and his administration, and the Democrat Senate, have made one major change in America. They have discarded all but the pretense of Constitutional governance. The Democrat-controlled Senate has not passed a budget since Obama came into office. Harry Reid and his cohorts refuse to take up or debate any of the dozens of bills passed to them from the House, and then have the temerity to complain about the do-nothing Congress to a complicit media. With this bunch, government according to the Constitution's plan just can't happen.

What the Senate has done is nothing compared to the Executive branch, however. For example, early in Obama's tenure, lobbyists came to the White House. When FOIA requests were made to find out the names of the visitors, the "most transparent administration" strenuously resisted. They lost. So after that, administration operatives go elsewhere to meet the lobbyists; when doing backroom Chicago-style deals which might be perceived as shady, you can't have publicity.

Then there is Obamacare. First, it imposes a requirement to buy a product. Not everyone wants it, but the government says everyone must because it's good public policy. They say they will "help" with the cost, and good luck with that. But "good" public policy and financial "assistance" (or dependency) does not impute the Constitutional power to the government to enact this. Second, there is the matter of waivers. Ms. Pelosi, then Speaker, pushed the bill through, and there was a provision for waivers in the application of the bill. Madame Pelosi's district, surprisingly(?), was granted a large percentage of the waivers, while waiver requests from more conservative districts seem somehow not to have met the requirements. Third is the IPAB, a commission purportedly beyond the reach of Congress or the Courts, with power to set policies affecting the lives (and deaths) of all citizens, which raises the question of Congressional authority to set up such an agency.

And this administration is taking the concept of "waivers" to a new extreme. Obama is now granting waivers to ten states from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind law. Like so many Federal efforts to fix a problem, that law created a multitude of new and more complex problems. Many states want out, and that's fine; Congress is working on changing that law, but it's still law. Obama, however, has a better plan. Rather than let Congress legislate, he'll do it, with a myriad of new regulations. If a state chooses to give his administration obeisance by adopting his new regulations, they can have a waiver from the law. 

Illegal aliens benefit from this waiver process, too. Long-established Federal law says illegal immigrants are to be deported; Obama simply passes new rules. He even works on granting "waivers" to illegals to work in the U.S.  Protecting America's borders is one of the very few duties affirmatively imposed on the Federal government; Obama plans to waive it. 

And then there is the new birth-control requirement issued by his administration. The administration says there is an objection for religious organizations, but it is so narrow that practically nobody qualifies. As a result, religious organizations are complaining that their Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion is being assaulted. Obama's solution? You guessed it; a waiver program. He won't agree to change the law, but he will grant "waivers" so they don't have to (immediately) comply. When the waivers expire, it'll be too late to complain, but it will buy their silence and shut them up during the upcoming elections.

What you are seeing in the Obama Administration is a wholesale disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law. When the President wants to reward political cronies, he grants them a waiver; if he wants to silence critics, he grants a waiver. If the GOP, and particularly the conservatives don't call him on this lawless behavior, America can "waive" bye-bye to representative Constitutional government.

The GoldenEye of Persia

Remember "GoldenEye?" It was a typical James Bond action movie. The premise is fairly simple: Russia invents and puts in orbit a weapon capable of causing an ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP) which can damage or shut down cars, computers, electrical grids and all sorts of electrical devices. In the movie, it is a directed energy weapon which dramatically shoots a beam of energy from space, but that isn't the way EMP weapons are expected to work. The concept of the EMP weapon was derived from high-altitude nuclear burst tests in the early years of nuclear weapon development. EMP weapon research has developed many differentvariations of both conventional and nuclear bombs.

Pundits have long been concerned that Iran, which is the modern name for Persia, has been developing nuclear weapons for both strike weapons and for EMP purposes. Iran has undertaken in the past few months several efforts to confront U.S. warships and otherwise threaten attacks against America, including recent proclamations that some great event is going to occur.

While Iran has long claimed to be the enemy of America, military strategists have not been terribly concerned with Iran's ability to directly attack American soil, due to the distances between the two countries. Iran has, however, beeninvolved in building rockets capable of launching satellites.  Such rockets might well have the range to function as ICBM launch platforms for directly attacking the U.S. An attempt to launch even a handful of ICBMs against the U.S. is a tremendously expensive and involved undertaking. Also, since the inception of the cold war, the U.S. has kept a watchful eye on the world for such launches, and the U.S. may well have sufficient defensive capability to deal with a direct attack.

The United States, among others, is developing small missiles which can be launched fromcontainers.  Such missiles are not only difficult for military intelligence and counter-terrorist agencies to find, but can also carry nuclear and EMP weapons.  Some have suggested that Iran is also seeking this capability. This raises the frightening specter of a missile suddenly erupting from a seemingly innocuous container on a container ship somewhere, for example, in American waters. On the other hand, such a scenario demands a missile system capable of operating on demand without maintenance or upkeep for several months, as well as some kind of communication system to control the launch timing and targeting of the missile.

There is another way, and one wonders whether Iran is not already on that path. If the EMP weapon were loaded into a satellite and placed in earth orbit, it would be virtually ready to use. As a weapon of surprise, it would be difficult to detect; after all, communication with a satellite is expected, as is a modest propulsion system to allow station-keeping control of a satellite. The satellite could be de-orbited with little warning from low-earth-orbit to high-altitude detonation point; there would be no ICBM give-away launch, just a satellite dropping altitude. It doesn't require particularly elaborate guidance, since the area covered by an EMP blast can be quite large. And Iran has already launched satellites.

Hopefully the "GoldenEye of Persia" is just an exercise of the imagination, a silly impractical idea. Hopefully, on the other hand, someone in the military is keeping an eye on Iran's satellites. Iran would like to strike America; America does not need to give it the chance.

Home ownership and culture

Homeowners in the United States are watching prices continue to go down. At the same time, the percentage of Americans owning homes is also falling; it has dropped to 66 percent nationwide. Both these conditions have been evident since the real estate bubble burst in 2008.

One of the factors driving down home prices is the difficulty of obtaining financing; after the collapse, the rules were tightened and financing became more difficult to obtain. Financing is an obvious driver in the housing market, shrinking the pool of qualified buyers. Some analysts and Realtors, it seems, are expecting home prices to reach a bottom sometime after 2012, as the supply of qualified buyers, home supply, and home prices reaches equilibrium.

Financing is only one driver in the housing equation, however. Aside from the supply of homes not yet on the market from the wave of foreclosures, there is an underlying culture shift which doesn't seem to be recognized and may depress home sales for separate reasons.

In the traditional home market, it is assumed that families will want to buy homes in which to raise children and to build equity and stability for the family. Such an assumption may not hold true for an ever increasing segment of the population. Many Americans now live in "non-traditional" families, and many people are committed to the single lifestyle rather than a familial style. No small number of people have chosen to forego the commitment of marriage; avoiding a 30-year mortgage commitment might seem preferable to them as well. Furthermore, many of these people will either never qualify to buy a home, or will choose to rent even if they could buy. In other words, the pool of buyers shrinks. Single moms, for example, who might desire the larger space of a home, are traditionally the poorest population group, making it difficult to qualify as a buyer. For many people, renting assures that someone else is responsible for time and money consuming maintenance and repair work. In modern America, rental of home furnishings is big business, and it's probably a sign of the times.

As people become increasingly accustomed to renting furnishings and cars, the short-term commitment of housing rental may be their preferred option. Of course, the counter argument is that everyone needs housing, so those homeowners who choose to sell will be able to find rental agencies to buy those homes. If true, that will serve to depress housing prices further, since a small pool of large business entities seldom have to bargain entirely "at arms length" with individual sellers.

The upshot of this is not that "the sky is falling," because a home is still more than an investment; families do need a place to live. On the other hand, this does suggest that the housing market may continue in a downward trend, and not just for 2012.