The Age of Obama, at its core.
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
The Age of Obama
Nearly five years after the crash of '08 employment still hasn't returned to pre-recession levels, yet the president's legislative focus, as is becoming typical to his presidency, is on something other than the economy. In his first term it was Cap & Trade and Obamacare, now it is the old stalking horse of "comprehensive immigration reform." It has passed the Senate, probably will not pass the House, and either way it will not fix the immigration problem (it will probably exacerbate it long-term) and it certainly will not help the economy (we do not suffer from a paucity of cheap labor). Nothing continues to be done to encourage economic growth and job creation -- or to address the reasons both are so negligible -- and the economy continues to limp along on the "new normal" of stagnation and malaise.
Friday, March 15, 2013
"Modernizing" the Church
I am no Catholic, but I could not help but get petulant when, in the context of the recent papal conclave, commentators throughout American media waxed sanctimoniously of the Catholic Church's need to "modernize".
The task now before the Church -- the Holy, (small "C") catholic church -- is the same one that has been before it since the Ascension: to preserve and promote truth, specifically that essential Truth that determines and gives meaning to human existence -- the Grace and Salvation provided by Christ's Death and Resurrection.
This Truth is not true in one period and untrue the next. It stands outside past, present, and future; outside antiquity, modernity, and futurity; outside of every temporal consideration altogether. It is transcendent. The Church was instituted by Christ to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Outside of this the Church is without purpose. It is nothing.
It makes no logical sense then to say that an institution must change with the times when that institution's sole reason for being is to connect each passing life to the one Thing that stands outside of time and creation. Those who speak of the Church's need to "modernize" speak as if it is some brand that must continuously shift its meaning to gain a larger market share.
The Church is emphatically not this. It is the communion of saints, the promoting vehicle of the Gospel here on earth, the entity responsible for calling us from the finite to the infinite -- from this world to the "world without end."
No, the Church should not "modernize". It can't. The modern soon becomes the arcane. Always has, always will. Truth -- the Gospel -- stays the same. It is to the Church to seek, uphold, and promote It. It must do this in our present "modern" age and in all the modern ages to come.
The task now before the Church -- the Holy, (small "C") catholic church -- is the same one that has been before it since the Ascension: to preserve and promote truth, specifically that essential Truth that determines and gives meaning to human existence -- the Grace and Salvation provided by Christ's Death and Resurrection.
This Truth is not true in one period and untrue the next. It stands outside past, present, and future; outside antiquity, modernity, and futurity; outside of every temporal consideration altogether. It is transcendent. The Church was instituted by Christ to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Outside of this the Church is without purpose. It is nothing.
It makes no logical sense then to say that an institution must change with the times when that institution's sole reason for being is to connect each passing life to the one Thing that stands outside of time and creation. Those who speak of the Church's need to "modernize" speak as if it is some brand that must continuously shift its meaning to gain a larger market share.
The Church is emphatically not this. It is the communion of saints, the promoting vehicle of the Gospel here on earth, the entity responsible for calling us from the finite to the infinite -- from this world to the "world without end."
No, the Church should not "modernize". It can't. The modern soon becomes the arcane. Always has, always will. Truth -- the Gospel -- stays the same. It is to the Church to seek, uphold, and promote It. It must do this in our present "modern" age and in all the modern ages to come.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Post-Sequester
The safe assumption is that the sequester will happen March 1st. Even if Speaker Boehner were inclined to accede to more tax hikes, his rank-and-file would bludgeon him with his own gavel were he to even suggest it.
It is not like it matters anyway. Far from engaging leaders of Congress as is necessary, the president is running around the country attempting to politically shame Republicans into bending to his will again. The campaigning never ends and the governing never begins.
Yes, the sequester will happen, and when it does the president and his friends may come to regret their predictions of cataclysm. For a country that runs annual deficits north of a trillion dollars with over $16 trillion in debt, the sequester is but a drop in the bucket. Those it will touch are in the Beltway. For those of us outside the Beltway the sun will rise the next day and life will go forward unchanged.
Having proven to be a false prophet of doom once, how credible will the president then be when he beats his breast and gnashes his teeth over the next looming budgetary crisis -- contrived budgetary crises being his preferred method of (demagogically) operating? What will be left for him to stand on when there is a precedent that government spending can indeed be cut without entailing a national disaster?
Post-sequester disaster is not what has to worry the president. Post-sequester normalcy should. If government can be cut without the sky falling down on us all the president will be shown to have no clothes.
It is not like it matters anyway. Far from engaging leaders of Congress as is necessary, the president is running around the country attempting to politically shame Republicans into bending to his will again. The campaigning never ends and the governing never begins.
Yes, the sequester will happen, and when it does the president and his friends may come to regret their predictions of cataclysm. For a country that runs annual deficits north of a trillion dollars with over $16 trillion in debt, the sequester is but a drop in the bucket. Those it will touch are in the Beltway. For those of us outside the Beltway the sun will rise the next day and life will go forward unchanged.
Having proven to be a false prophet of doom once, how credible will the president then be when he beats his breast and gnashes his teeth over the next looming budgetary crisis -- contrived budgetary crises being his preferred method of (demagogically) operating? What will be left for him to stand on when there is a precedent that government spending can indeed be cut without entailing a national disaster?
Post-sequester disaster is not what has to worry the president. Post-sequester normalcy should. If government can be cut without the sky falling down on us all the president will be shown to have no clothes.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
The Sequester
The looming sequester threatens to hoist the president by two of his own petards.
As Republicans are all too happy to remind him, he proposed the sequester during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. Assured that Republicans would never be able to swallow defense cuts, he was undoubtedly convinced that the impending threat of them would give him leverage in future budget/spending battles with Congress.
The $1.2 trillion in cuts also provide a ready-made rebuttal to his own counter-proposal of cuts mixed with tax increases. He has always called for a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction. Taxes were raised by hundreds of billions of dollars -- with no attendant spending reductions -- to avoid the fiscal cliff. Proportionality then dictates that the revenue hikes from last time be balanced with expenditure reduction this time.
As Republicans are all too happy to remind him, he proposed the sequester during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. Assured that Republicans would never be able to swallow defense cuts, he was undoubtedly convinced that the impending threat of them would give him leverage in future budget/spending battles with Congress.
The $1.2 trillion in cuts also provide a ready-made rebuttal to his own counter-proposal of cuts mixed with tax increases. He has always called for a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction. Taxes were raised by hundreds of billions of dollars -- with no attendant spending reductions -- to avoid the fiscal cliff. Proportionality then dictates that the revenue hikes from last time be balanced with expenditure reduction this time.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Liberalism, Conservatism & the Coming Fiscal Crisis
The import of American liberalism from the New Deal to Obamacare has been the creation, expansion and preservation of the welfare state. It is this state that has put us over $16 trillion in debt and counting. Such GDP-surpassing levels of obligation are unsustainable and will precipitate an economic crisis. Witness Europe.
Liberalism will not be able to respond to this fiscal-based crisis because its entire programs is the creation of the welfare state whose unaffordability is the genesis of said crisis. Liberalism has created this crisis, they have no response to it other than to ignore it altogether. When ignoring it is no longer an option they will be left sputtering.
Witness Europe again. Even as Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and (less directly) France teeter on the edge of economic collapse and the destruction of the entire European project, there are no real efforts at meaningful reform, only feeble requests for perpetual bailouts and debt integration.
When the contagion crosses the pond the Left, unable to respond to a catastrophe of their own making, will meltdown in exact concurrence with the economy.
It will then be to the Right to redress what the Left hath wrought.
Liberalism will not be able to respond to this fiscal-based crisis because its entire programs is the creation of the welfare state whose unaffordability is the genesis of said crisis. Liberalism has created this crisis, they have no response to it other than to ignore it altogether. When ignoring it is no longer an option they will be left sputtering.
Witness Europe again. Even as Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and (less directly) France teeter on the edge of economic collapse and the destruction of the entire European project, there are no real efforts at meaningful reform, only feeble requests for perpetual bailouts and debt integration.
When the contagion crosses the pond the Left, unable to respond to a catastrophe of their own making, will meltdown in exact concurrence with the economy.
It will then be to the Right to redress what the Left hath wrought.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
2nd Term Expectations
As President Obama officially begins his second term, it's important for his loyal opposition to have appropriate expectations.
The republic's present debt combined with its unfunded liabilities spell out national ruin. The level of taxation necessary to bridge that gap would bring the same result. Comprehensive reform of the entitlement leviathan -- the conductor of our red ink train -- is the solution, the only solution.
Someday -- probably when both our treasury and credit are depleted -- this conclusion will be inescapable.
That day will not be in the next four years.
If it was not already, the president's thinly-veiled paean to the welfare state on Monday made clear that any notion of reform beyond sophistic lip-service is dead-on-arrival. President Obama views himself as a White Knight of sorts, the figure that will not only consolidate the New Deal and Great Society but transform the American republic into a European-esque social democracy.
That we could become this is possible. That we could remain this for very long is delusional.
As one European state after another teeters on the edge of fiscal abyss, the upshot of emulating the European model is evident, or at least it should be. If facts are "stubborn things", as John Adams once said, then simple math is more stubborn still. It is inescapable: you cannot spend more than you take in forever, especially not at the yawning levels that we've begun to. You can only borrow so much. As a wise Iron Lady once said, "eventually you run out of other people's money."
As the self-regarded heir of FDR, President Obama denies this -- and he always will. Seeking to duplicate the New Deal, he cannot escape from the fact that he doesn't enjoy the post-war (often illusory) surpluses his progressive predecessors did. (Ironically, in vainly trying to recreate what progressives of yesteryear did, the new progressive prince is himself quite reactionary.) The man and the moment are not one and the same.
With the force of a Democratic senate and his own presidential veto, he can and will enjoin the country in this delusion for the next four years.
Republicans cannot change this. For the next quadrennium America will continue full speed ahead towards the cliff and into oblivion.
What they can do is make the argument. Convince a country that needs convincing that there is a better way. The GOP can position themselves so that when the next opportunity comes -- when President Obama has returned to Chicago and is writing about himself again -- the crisis can be averted and the futures of current generations and generations to come can be restored.
The task then Republicans can commend themselves to is not a quixotic quest to reform with Barack Obama, but to try and seize the broom needed to clean the Augean Stables he will leave in his wake.
The republic's present debt combined with its unfunded liabilities spell out national ruin. The level of taxation necessary to bridge that gap would bring the same result. Comprehensive reform of the entitlement leviathan -- the conductor of our red ink train -- is the solution, the only solution.
Someday -- probably when both our treasury and credit are depleted -- this conclusion will be inescapable.
That day will not be in the next four years.
If it was not already, the president's thinly-veiled paean to the welfare state on Monday made clear that any notion of reform beyond sophistic lip-service is dead-on-arrival. President Obama views himself as a White Knight of sorts, the figure that will not only consolidate the New Deal and Great Society but transform the American republic into a European-esque social democracy.
That we could become this is possible. That we could remain this for very long is delusional.
As one European state after another teeters on the edge of fiscal abyss, the upshot of emulating the European model is evident, or at least it should be. If facts are "stubborn things", as John Adams once said, then simple math is more stubborn still. It is inescapable: you cannot spend more than you take in forever, especially not at the yawning levels that we've begun to. You can only borrow so much. As a wise Iron Lady once said, "eventually you run out of other people's money."
As the self-regarded heir of FDR, President Obama denies this -- and he always will. Seeking to duplicate the New Deal, he cannot escape from the fact that he doesn't enjoy the post-war (often illusory) surpluses his progressive predecessors did. (Ironically, in vainly trying to recreate what progressives of yesteryear did, the new progressive prince is himself quite reactionary.) The man and the moment are not one and the same.
With the force of a Democratic senate and his own presidential veto, he can and will enjoin the country in this delusion for the next four years.
Republicans cannot change this. For the next quadrennium America will continue full speed ahead towards the cliff and into oblivion.
What they can do is make the argument. Convince a country that needs convincing that there is a better way. The GOP can position themselves so that when the next opportunity comes -- when President Obama has returned to Chicago and is writing about himself again -- the crisis can be averted and the futures of current generations and generations to come can be restored.
The task then Republicans can commend themselves to is not a quixotic quest to reform with Barack Obama, but to try and seize the broom needed to clean the Augean Stables he will leave in his wake.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Civilization & the State
Civilization is replete with problems. The state can solve very few of them. It can be and is the source of a great deal more.
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