CCU Unashamed After First Game with NCAA D-I Opponent

CCU's men's basketball team met the Citadel Saturday night, in what we all assume is CCU's first match against an NCAA D-I opponent.

The 70-55 final score indicates that the CCU men comported themselves with competitive dignity. So does their shooting over 70% from the line and over 45% from behind the arc.

Nice job, men! Now, back to class.

Another Positive Bush Retrospective

We affirm the plainspoken and clear-thinking Michael Barone's NRO column noting the notable successes of the Dubya administration. To summarize Barone's good list without elaboration:

• educational accountability
• prescription drug benefits
• elimination of Saddam
• establishment of something resembling a functional democracy in a former dictatorship and terror supporter in the Middle East
• effective programs against AIDS in Africa
• establishment of an alliance with India
• continuing good relations with Japan, Australia, Mexico and Brazil

We'd add shepherding the expansion of NATO to include the new democracies of Eastern Europe.

And Barone's catalog of the land that remains unconquered:

• improvements in China
• getting Russia in line
• NoKo
• nukes in Iran

Still, Barone says, it beats 1941. We say it beats anything in the 1970s or 1980s too.

What we really like is Barone's ignoring of the domestic short term--and Western Europe altogether. His focus is on long-term issues that will affect global living conditions for a generation.

We also note that the non-accomplished issues Barone lists aren't really on the political rader right now. More's the pity.

Another Grim Appointment

Ellen Moran will be Obama's WH Communications Director. Moran currently runs Emily's List, an organization that promotes the election of pro-choice female candidates and the creation of a "progressive America." Mostly they raise and bundle contributions, attempting to do it early enough for their chosen candidates to scare off competition.

We'll assume that this means Obama intends to stay in touch with the left-wing money operation that propelled him to electoral victory. It is not a move that suggests moderation or bipartisanship.

Shape of Things to Come: Unionized, Subsidized Workforce

President-Elect Obama's radio speech today will outline in extremely broad terms his plans for a two-year (egad! even the most pessimistic economists say the recession will be well over in less than two years!) economic stimulus package:

We'll be working out the details in the weeks ahead, but it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We'll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.

We hate to nitpick, but there are too many silly things said here for us to refrain:

• A two-year "jumpstart" has to be the slowest-motion "jumpstart" ever (Michelle: Where have you been for the last two years? Barack: Jump-starting the car.)
  
• "Crumbling roads and bridges" is a phrase used by every Democratic candidate in an election cycle. Yet one is hard pressed to point to roads and bridges on this continent-spanning nation that are both genuinely "crumbling" and without plans for repair or replacement already in motion. Our own Brent Spence Bridge, as an example, is the object of massive planning efforts at present. So what's new in that?
• The answer to our previous question is more money sooner for unionized construction workers and their politically connected contractors. This is political payback to Big Pavement and Big Iron, with "prevailing wage" as the backdrop.
  
• "Moderninzing schools that are failing our children" must refer not to reform of financing or accountability or pedagogy but to construction projects, as it's hard to see how any other education initiative is economic stimulus in the period of two years. So does anyone seriously contend that schools can't educate primarily because they need new buildings, that unready students and unable teachers will be transformed by better bricks and mortar? Call this good money after bad, as revealed by the very way Obama talks about investment in something that's failing (cf. Big Three below). Given that old school buildings are found most often in communities with sharply declining public school enrollment, and one can envision sparkling new, largely empty buildings in which NEA-organized teachers fail their few remaining students.
  
• "Wind farms and solar panels" will require massive investments in an electricity grid to send the power where it's needed, the creation of as-yet nonexistent technologies to store the energy until it's needed, and the devotion of thousands of acres of rural land or wilderness for environment-altering technologies that will leave a bigger mark on the landscape than oil-drilling or coal-mining ever have. Is it not obvious that plants don't grow underneath solar panels*? Get set for the biggest NIMBY reaction ever when Big Wind announces where its turbines are going.
  
• "Fuel-efficient cars" we have already explained: the quasi-nationalization of the Big Three whereby they will manufacture cars to fit government specifications rather than consumer demand. This is payoff to the UAW and a formula for perpetual public subsidy.
  
• "Free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive" works fine as long as oil is at $150 a barrel and up. But now that it's below $50, much closer to the historic price as adjusted for inflation, the numbers don't add up. If the United States commits itself to much more expensive forms of "green" energy (actually not very green), its economy can never be competitive with countries that use more efficient, less expensive "brown" energy.

Missing in that last bit was one obvious way to reduce, if only marginally, dependence on foreign oil: drilling in the United States. Again, we note that such drilling has much less effect on the natural landscape than even a single wind farm of any significant wattage. It takes thousands of wind turbines to equal the energy output of a single productive oil well.

Missing throughout is entrepreneurship. The Obama stimulus will do nothing to put money in the hands of people who innovate to meet consumer demands. It will prop up existing, relatively unproductive areas of the economy represented by big corporations and big unions, enshrining their eclipsed business models under the banner of innovation for the future.

Whatever the price tag of the Obama stimulus, we expect to find ourselves understimulated. But not undertaxed.

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*We noted yesterday that a solar power company with an initial public offering of stock earlier this year is now trading at 11% of the price of the IPO. It's not looking good for alternative energy.

Something That Can End Global Divisions

Surely everyone can agree that these musical performances range from great (Gerald Levert, "Reach Out") to superb (Ben Harper, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg") to epochal (Joan Osbourne, "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted"*). Of course, all are made what they are by the breathtaking grooves of the immortal Funk Brothers.




Gentle readers who have never viewed Standing in the Shadows of Motown in its entirety must do so this weekend.

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*As the horns stab through the pain, Osbourne moans with lonely agony, and we almost wish we could be broken hearted ourselves.

Trash Fee Headed to Dumpster

City Manager Milton Dohoney has proposed that next year's Cincinnati city budget include a monthly fee for trash pickup.

Of course, this "fee" is nothing more than an additional tax, as trash pickup is not a new service. Currently it's funded out of the city's generous property and income tax revenues.

We think that Dohoney is putting this up as a means of leveraging City Council into action to make difficult cuts necessary to balance the budget. The chance of anyone on Council being reelected after voting in a regressive $200-per-household-per-year tax for an existing service is below zero. We note that Dohoney himself said today that in all his years of government employment, he's never presented a budget that his boss didn't modify. His boss is Council.

We predict that this tax will not come close to enactment. If it does, we predict a very different City Council after next November.

Miracle: Dems Demand Profitability

Democrats sent the Big Three's CEOs back to Detroit without a bailout. They have until December 2 to submit plans to return to profitability if they are to get any cash from DC.

Is this a miracle?

It will be if the plans that are submitted in a little over a week are indeed plans that lead to profitability and not just plans to create cars that run on composted soybean hulls and positive cosmic vibrations.

Just the fact that Democrats said "profitability" warms the SWNIDish heart.

Pritzker Turns Down Commerce: Another Dismal Turn

Penny Pritzker, heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, has been an early and effective supporter of Barack Obama. She's also a savvy business operator and classy person.

She will not be Secretary of Commerce.

We don't like how all this is coming down. Obama's efforts are looking directionless and ineffective, except that they tend to reflect his need to placate all segments of his party and his desire to push through health insurance legislation as a first priority. But with Clinton retreads and congressional has-beens, it's not bipartisan or change-oriented, and certainly not moderate.

We think that Obama's lack of experience and shallow political alliances are showing already.

Maybe the Funniest Political Page on the Web

We urge gentle readers wanting a laugh to view this page at The Progressive.

Featured content is whining about how Obama is throwing no cabinet-appointment bones to "progressives," proposing that he name Dennis Kucinich to State and Russ Feingold to Justice.

But the cake is iced with the banner ad at the top. It features famous far-left historian and media talking head Howard Zinn with the following pitch:

The Progressive is one of our most important voices, and yet it is facing an acute cash-flow crisis. I'm hoping you'll make a generous tax-deductible gift right now.

Should Obama relent (and we think that Waxman as chair of Energy and Commerce is plenty for self-styled "progressives"), we anticipate bake sales, 5ks and telethons to fund green energy initiatives and health insurance spending.

Bob Novak Reflects

Townhall.com has an interview with DC press veteran Bob Novak. There's too much to summarize but everything to recommend. Guys with experience who face death often have important things to say. We think Novak does.

Waxman Advances, Hope Fades

Odds of moderation in a Democratic Washington are diminishing. The worst sign so far is that Henry Waxman's challenge to John Dingell's chairmanship of Energy and Commerce is going forward.

Obama does not appear determined to guide his ship to the center. Others have hands on the tiller. They pull left.

Join these tangible political developments with the very public nostalgia for disastrous New Deal policies (is anyone asking what tangible good the New Deal did to ameliorate the Great Depression?) and behind-the-scenes complaints from left-wing Dems about the appointment of Clinton-era veterans (seen as insufficiently liberal merely by virtue of their association with Dogpatch), and one has a prelude to political disaster.

SWNID tends toward buoyant optimism, but these moves make us dread an unnatural combination of FDR-like interventionism plus Carter-like incompetence.

Thankful for a New Political Era

All real Americans should assume their preferred postures of thanksgiving that the old era of divisive partisanship has been replaced by the new era of peace, love, siblinghood and green energy.

Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that leftfully-elected Senator Al Franken insists that the ballot pictured here ought to be challenged as a vote for Norm Coleman and taken as a vote for Al Franken.

Holder a Shoulder to Cry On

The old big story on AG nominee Eric Holder is that he vetted Clinton's eleventh-hour pardon of global confidence man Mark Rich.

The new big story is that AG Janet Reno cried on his shoulder after her courageous move to have youthful Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez removed from his relatives' Miami home at gunpoint.

We don't know what this trip down memory lane says about Holder presently. We do think that everyone who criticized the Bushies for immorality and ineptitude owes them an apology for applying to them a different standard than the one applied to the Clintonistas.

For every Katrina, there was a Waco.

Romney on Detroit's Salvific Chapter 11

Mitt Romney, scion of an automotive family, via the Gray Lady offers a real solution to the Big Three's crisis. We won't quote or embellish, just telegraph that it's not a federal bailout.

Reality Check on Nationalized Health Insurance

Remember when Obama accused McCain of wanting to change America's beloved employer-based health insurance system? Obama was going to enhance it and improve it.

If so, listen to the piece from NPR's Day to Day piece today on the pending nomination of Tom Daschele (listen to audio linked on the page) to Health and Human Services. Ron Elving, NPR's senior Washington editor, states flatly that the problem is employer-based health insurance and says that a single-payer plan is the obviously simple solution. Elving sees Daschele's nomination as an indication that Obama intends to move away from employer-based health insurance and toward a single-payer system, albeit less suddenly than the Clintons tried to.

At no point does Elving even mention Obama's specific health care proposals, as it's clear enough to him that whatever specifics Obama offered were so much campaign window-dressing. The real substance will be in the legislative process, in which every Congressperson will be hang her or his special ornament on the Christmas tree of nationalized health insurance.

We appreciate the frankness of this journalist's analysis. And we wonder only why the President-elect is not being accused of having practiced the politics of fear and deception.

But let's make no mistake: both parties recognize that the employer-based provision of health insurance is problematic. One party wants to encourage market-based solutions by removing tax incentives for employer-based insurance. The other wants a government-based solution.

Reality Check on Auto Bailout

We thank Rep. Barney Frank (D-Harvard Yard) for confirming what SWNID has been saying: the main reason to provide a federal "bailout" of the auto industry versus letting chapter 11 do its work is to protect the privileges of the UAW workforce. Here's what he said on Morning Edition today:

You know, those who say, hey, go bankrupt so you can cut back on what the unions have won — the unions have already made some concessions. But, you know, we've had enough anti-union activity, and enough increase in income inequality in this country. I don't want to set a precedent that bankruptcy now is a way in which you undo what gains unions have been able to hold on to.

So in Frank's view, the right thing to do is to tax nonunion auto workers making Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, BMW, Mercedes, or Hyundais so that UAW workers can continue to cost their employers 50% more to employ.

When would this largesse end? Well, never, unless some genius can figure out a way to overcome the inherent competitive disadvantage of spending $1.50 on labor for every $1 your competition spends. Of course, once you find that means, your competition will imitate it, and you're back at your disadvantage. So the federal money must continue indefinitely as the means of offsetting the expense.

Of course, Frank has more. Uncle Sugar will supply "health care" [sic, read "health insurance"]:

Health care, by the way, is also on the agenda. Health care is a real problem, and we have burdened all American industry with a bad health care system that's tied to your employment. One of the things I very much look forward to is working with the new president so we change the health care system. And going forward, if they have to stay with health care the way it is now, yeah, that's bleak. But what I am hoping is that we will get a change in the health care system that will reduce the burden that we put not just on the American auto industry, where it's more expensive to build a car in America than in Canada because of health care.

Um, Congressman Frank, we're talking about a competitive disadvantage with other plants in the United States, where the workers get employer-provided health insurance. So if you get your nationalized health insurance, the Big Three's costs go down, but so do all the other manufacturers', and they're still at a disadvantage. N.B. that everyone's taxes go up too, but we'll count that as a wash as well.

We also call attention to Frank's insistence that an auto bailout be conditioned on Detroit retooling to make green cars. Never mind that there's no market evidence that Americans want to buy green cars. Having companies that sell cars is clearly not the agenda.

So what Frank envisions is automobile manufacturers receiving perpetual subsidies from taxpayers to employ unionized workers at above-market costs to make environmentally acceptable cars that may never be bought by anyone. We rest our case.

Chapter 11, anyone?

CPS Returns to the Magnet-Signup Circus

Today was magnet signup day for Cincinnati Public Schools. Vigilant parent and Enquirer reporter Jim Plesinger blogged from the line at Fairview-Clifton German Language School. It seems that early campers-in-line got more than a bit testy with latecomers who managed to get forward in the line. But nothing else mattered when the principal came out to announce that the school was adding a kindergarten class for the coming year, and all parents would enroll their children.

CPS has an awful time distributing spaces in its popular magnet programs, even as its other schools continue to struggle. But it has been our experience, not to mention that of other gentle readers, that the confusion of signups is worth it. In the end, a form of sanity generally prevails, and most folks get what they sought.

Or at least we hope they did. Some of our peeps asked us about signup strategies. Our advice, as it is in nearly every situation, was to play it cool. Don't panic, don't prove you're a Parent of Extreme Devotion. Just show up on time, not early.

Plesinger seems to indicate that everyone went home happy. We hope that's really everyone, including the folk who just showed up on time.

Update: One SWNIDish peep reports enrollment success and confirms that some folks got pretty testy about the chaotic process. We await other firsthand reports.

Prepare to Say "I Told You So"

Apart from his lame opening reference to a bygone fashion fad, WSJ's Brett Stephens today puts the left on notice: you've got everything you asked for (a liberal House, Senate and President, all with ideological control of the media and strong public support), so deal the goods or shut up forever.

Since liberalism began, it has operated on the myths that Stephens enumerates and SWNID has constantly reiterated: that genuine liberalism has not yet been tried, that Evil Geniuses of conservatism manage to steal elections and dupe the public, that bad luck (assassinations, poor timing, squandered political resources) have heretofore thwarted liberal efforts.

Meanwhile, in the election just finished, 21% of voters identified themselves as liberal, down from 22% in 2004. Conservatives held steady at 34%. So much for 2008 being a major political shift to the left.

Obama the Second Black President

Obama has named Clintonista Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, seems set for Clintonista Eric Holder as AG, and is famously rumored to be offering State to the Tribal Queen herself.

We thought that the Democrats voted against a return to the Clinton era.

SWNID Unverified

"Acronym Attic" now offers an "unverified" definition of "SWNID" that we find accurate. We are troubled, however, that the definition is unverified. It should not be in doubt.

We urge gentle readers to encourage the verification of the definition by supplying the information to the fine people who maintain this helpful web site.