"Immelt Wants Obama to 'Sell Hard' When in Indonesia" is the headline of a Bloomberg News article on comments by General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt. The article reports: "Immelt faulted the U.S. government for being too 'timid' on selling exports. He urged Obama to push the company's freight locomotives, telling him to 'sell hard.'"
Besides confirming my earlierposts that the "G" in GE stands for Government, this raises some questions. Isn't it a little demeaning to the office of president of the United States to have it transformed into a kind of traveling salesman? And shouldn't GE want its freight locomotives to be so good that customers will want them strictly on the basis of a comparison on the basis of price and quality, without having the decision skewed by political pressure?
The test scores for students in a United Federation of Teachers-run charter school in New York City have been obtained by a blogger, and the results are disappointing. Some might ask what the teachers union is doing running a charter school when it already has a lot of influence, through its contract, on the rest of the public schools in New York City. At the New York Sun, we had defended the idea of allowing the UFT to run a charter school while also reporting on some of the school's problems early on. The results: "in 2007-2008, the UFT Charter School received a raw Progress Report score that put it in the bottom 15% of all schools in New York City. In 2008-2009, despite the fact that the school's grade rose from a C to a B, its raw Progress Report Score actually put it in the bottom 6% of schools citywide."
Governor Butch Otter of Idaho has signed the Idaho health Freedom Act, directing the state's attorney general to sue if mandatory insurance becomes federal law, the Idaho Statesman reports. "Every person within the state of Idaho is and shall be free to choose or decline to choose any mode of securing health care services without penalty or threat of penalty by the federal government of the United States of America," the law says. The Statesman reports 36 states are considering similar legislation. Link via the Washington Examiner's "Morning Must Reads" column.
The state treasurer of Massachusetts, Tim Cahill, was interviewed last night for about 15 minutes on Boston public television about how the Bay State's attempt at universal coverage is working out. Mr. Cahill: "It's become an albatross around our necks." One "problem" seems to be that all those people who actually were already qualified to recieve free or subsidized health care coverage under Medicaid are now signing up for the coverage and using the services, which cost money to provide.
President Obama, in his Fox News interview yesterday, defended the "Louisiana Purchase" of including extra money in the health care overhaul bill for the state of on-the-fence Senator Mary Landrieu by saying, "Something that was called a special deal was for Louisiana. It was said that there were billions — millions of dollars going to Louisiana, this was a special deal. Well, in fact, that provision, which I think should remain in, said that if a state has been affected by a natural catastrophe, that has created a special health care emergency in that state, they should get help. Louisiana, obviously, went through Katrina, and they're still trying to deal with the enormous challenges that were faced because of that. That also — I'm giving you an example of one that I consider important. It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake. So that's not just a Louisiana provision. That is a provision that affects every state that is going through a natural catastrophe."
A solicitation letter recently arrived in the mail from The Authors League Fund, which provides "open-ended, interest-free, no-strings-attached loans" to writers. The letter says, "Most of those we help suffer severe health problems but have inadequate or no insurance," and it quotes one loan recipient as saying, "Your loan made it possible for me to continue my health insurance for August and September."
One one level, it's an argument for ObamaCare: In a relatively rich country like America, why should anyone be put in the position of needing this sort of assistance? On another level, it's an argument against ObamaCare: there are potential non-governmental solutions to the problems of people who are having trouble affording health insurance.
One theme we've been exploring here lately -- and a timely one as Congress debates imposing new rules on the health care industry and on financial institutions -- is the concept of private regulation. We highlighted an op-ed piece by Emily Schaefer comparing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (government) and Consumers Union (private). And in response to a reader comment arguing that government regulation is needed because most people can't really be expected to become experts and "understand much of what is in the fine print of a credit card, mortgage or health insurance policy," we replied that:
To those objections can be added those raised by David Rivkin Jr. and Lee Casey and by this FoxNews.com article, which might be taken more seriously if some adult had edited out the phrase "getting their legal briefs in a bunch."
And to all of those can be added a new set of constitutional concerns related not to substance but to the process by which Congress apparently plans to pass the bill, which, as Tony Blankley writes, may violate the presentment clause of the Constitution. You don't have to be a former Newt Gingrich spokesman like Mr. Blankley to be concerned about this; even leftish Constitutional lawyer Alan Morrison tells Politico, "don't do it." This presentment clause is no small matter, and lest anyone think that my own concern for it is motivated by partisan opposition to President Obama or to ObamaCare, let the record show the March 7, 2006 editorial of the New York Sun arguing that President Bush's call for a line item veto was unconstitutional on the basis of that clause.
My own view on the Constitution and ObamaCare is as stated in January: While it's certainly true that the country might benefit from a forceful judicial reminder of the limits of the commerce clause, the meaning of the takings clause, and, generally, the idea that the Constitution gives the federal government certain enumerated powers, there's a competing and in my view weightier concern that if the Supreme Court struck down ObamaCare, it might leave proponents of ObamaCare feeling a bit like anti-abortion advocates after Roe v. Wade: feeling as if an issue had been plucked out of the political process where it belonged and decided instead by a highly educated, unelected elite.
An Amazon.com customer review by John Galt of Karl Rove's book Courage and Consequence complains of polarization under Amazon.com's ranking system of one star (worst) through five star (best): "The reviews here are almost all fives (like mine, but I did read it!), or ones. People are just voting their politics." Indeed, of the 49 Amazon customer reviews up this morning, there were 23 five-star reviews and 17 one-star reviews.
You'd expect such polarization in reviews of a book by a political aide. But in reviews of a children's book about a fish with sparkly scales? Check out the Amazon.com reviews for Marcus Pfister's children's book The Rainbow Fish, about a fish with special shiny scales who decides to give them away to the other fish. "His most prized possessions had been given away, yet he was very happy," according to the book's conclusion. Of the 217 Amazon.com reviews of The Rainbow Fish, 79 are five-star, and 79 are one-star. For a flavor of the one-star reviews, one is titled, "Great for the young communist and socialist."
If you can make it past all the breathless references to Watergate and "White House Felonies," (admittedly a big "if"), this American Spectator article on what it calls "Jobsgate" is actually pretty intriguing. It's about how the Obama administration offered a Pennsylvania congressman, Joe Sestak, and a Colorado politician, Andrew Romanoff, government jobs if they would not pursue their primary challenges to incumbent Democratic senators. The article also discusses how the administration has subsequently resisted queries about what happened in each case.
Given the grief I have previously directed at both President Obama and Thomas Friedman for throwing around the term "fat cat" as a way to abuse people in the financial industry trying to make profits for their shareholders and themselves, it is worth mentioning that Tuesday in Washington the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley of Iowa, was orating on the Senate floor: "That sounds like a great deal for the fat cats on Wall Street, but how about the taxpayers from Main Street who have to pick up the tab?"
Regular readers of FutureOfCapitalism.com know we're certainly not averse to criticizing the banks or even certain bankers or ex-bankers. But we'd also submit it would be a good thing for the level of discourse and clarity of public understanding if the term "fat cat" were retired. It just demonizes successful capitalists.
she was writing a morality tale. Early on she sets up Mark Brickell, of J.P. Morgan, as the fall guy, a Hayek-quoting free-market extremist who asserts that "markets can correct excess better than any government." He becomes head of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, successfully lobbies against regulation, and as late as the spring of 2008 is seen to be arguing that "market discipline has guided the derivatives business better than regulation has steered housing finance."
It's always the Hayek-quoting that gives away the free market extremists, isn't it? Ms. Tett is to be the new managing editor of the Financial Times's U.S. edition.
Former Bear Stearns chief economist and Reagan administration Treasury official David Malpass now has a rudimentary campaign Web site up and running for his U.S. Senate bid as a Republican from New York. He appeared on CNBC this morning and was asked if he planned to buy a pickup truck like now-Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts. In the CNBC appearance, Mr. Malpass kept the message pretty general: "We need jobs and growth...We need Washington to stop the tax and spend policies....I'm all in favor of jobs, but they aren't created by Washington, they are created by the private sector...stop the spending machine."
The New York Times has assembled an august panel of experts to debate: "Will It Pass? The Odds on Health Care." It might be nice to know what is in the bill before betting on whether it will, or should, pass. Though, as Speaker Pelosi says, "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." The Intrade odds put it at 72% that an ObamaCare health reform will become law before midnight June 30, and since those odds involve crowds of people betting real money, they probably have a better chance of getting the outcome right than the experts do.
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