Obama's Foreign Policy

Commanding the flags be flown at half staff for Mandela while giving no such honor to Margaret Thatcher is disgraceful. Again, Obama shows that his ideology is the most important thing to him. Now, I don't want to diminish Mandela's legacy. Post-imprisonment Mandela was probably one of the best human beings who lived (yes, better than Thatcher). To adopt a philosophy of forgiveness and love while suffering degrading and dehumanizing treatment shows indescribable character.

If you had to name the US's closest ally over the past century, whom would you name? I'd have to say England. England's longest serving peace-time prime minister, the first female prime minister of the UK, Thatcher helped restore England's economy and usher in the end of communism. She was a great friend to the US and we to her. The flags should have been lowered to honor her.

This is just another blemish on Obama's foreign policy. He's had one, potentially two foreign policy success--being commander in chief when Bin Laden was captured, and possibly presiding over the end of chemical weapons in Syria. The latter of course, he didn't organize but rather lent his support to others' ideas.

The most damning fact of Obama's foreign policy, does the US have better relations with any country now than we did when he took office? Especially with our allies (the UK, Eastern Europe, Egypt, Israel), the answer must be no. Even the nations where our relations were awful (Russia, Iran, Syria) are no better now than they were.

The Left is More Convincing

This is the video of Harry Reid criticizing Republicans about doing away with the filibuster. Here is a series of clips with many Democrats doing the same. Now, I'm not going to talk about the hypocrisy here; that's already been discussed, and as many people have mentioned, it usually goes both ways.

What I want to point out is that the Democrats in these clips made compelling arguments. They sound sincere in their defense of the rules as they stood, the importance of minority rights. They employ several powerful arguments and phrases. This is not the only example of them using powerful rhetoric. What's interesting to me is that the Democrats are so much better at this than Republicans. Clearly, the Democrats didn't really believe what they were saying, but they could fake it.

It's very hard to go up against people who sound sincere when arguing for principles.

Hurricane Katrina Analogy

The left is up in arms about the media comparing the health care debacle to Katrina. Ezra Klein Matt Yglesias.

Yes, Katrina was a colossal tragedy and many died while the botched role out hasn't claimed anyone's life. The effects are not comparable. But these two are missing the point. What is analogous are the President's reactions and the possible political ramifications. Bush's reaction to Katrina basically ended his presidency (he should have just ignored federal law and done whatever it took to aid Louisiana; of course, though they give President Obama a pass for flouting the law, I'm confident they would have brought impeachment charges against Bush). Like Bush, Obama's mishandling of the healthcare rollout could effectively end his presidency as well.

Another difference is that Bush did not cause Hurricane Katrina, and I'm not sure how much his administration was at fault compared to the leadership of Louisiana. In the healthcare fiasco, President Obama signed it into law, defended it, misrepresented it, and ran the administration tasked with enacting it.

Though Klein makes an argument that Obamacare is more like Medicare Part D, and he points out articles and offers quotes that back up his story, some of these quotes sound like square quotes from people already opposed to Bush. The "hideous complexity", "tears of bewildered frustration". I have a hard time with this, because honestly, I don't remember reading about the problems at the time. Looking at these quotes now, they're hard to believe because Medicare Part D has been a big success. Maybe the ACA will end up the same (but I doubt it considering the ACA does much, much more than Medicare Part D did).

I especially like this from Paul Krugman "We are ruled by bunglers. Every major venture by the Bush administration, from the occupation of Iraq to the Medicare drug program, has turned into an epic saga of incompetence." I believe President Obama has shown a lot of incompetence himself, but I doubt Paul Krugman would ever admit it.

Redefinitions

In my last post, I mentioned how the left is always trying to redefine words and concepts. One example is subsidy.

In this post, Bill Gardner argues that Ted Cruz's health insurance is subsidized. In the pre-redefinition world, a subsidy was when the government gave you someone else's money to promote a certain activity. This is the opposite of a tax which is when the government takes money from you. The best way to describe the treatment of the health insurance exemption is that it is a different tax rate on different types of income. Direct wage income is taxed at the normal rate, while income paid out as a benefit is not taxed at all. Note, it is not subsidized. You could only call it subsidized if you believe the government has first claim to that money because it taxes wage income at a higher rate.

Here's a challenge. If the government taxed in-kind benefits at a higher rate than the marginal rate, would anyone say that wage income was subsidized? It's exactly the same situation.

I wish I could find it now, but several years back, there was an article that claimed that by keeping the gasoline tax low, the government subsidized SUVs and other low mileage vehicles. That may have been the first time I realized they were trying to warp definitions.

A few points:

Just because I don't believe it's technically a subsidy, doesn't mean I agree with it. I think we'd probably be better off if health insurance benefits were taxed at the same rate as wage income and there was no mortgage interest deduction.

The Battle over the Definition of Insurance

As the left is apt to do, they are trying to redefine insurance. Actually, "trying" is probably the wrong word, as they've mostly done it. As John Goodman has said often on his blog and Mankiw alludes to here, in the past insurance was designed so that each participant paid his expected costs. This means that if I had a 50/50 chance of a $10,000 health condition, I paid $5,000 over the long-run. Presumably, someone else would do the same (or many, many people). On average, the insurance company would just about break even (not quite), and the half of the insured who had the bad coin flip weren't bankrupted by chance.

In this design, the lucky subsidize the unlucky, but everyone pays his expected costs. This is still how most insurance works-automobile, life, travel, shipping, everything but health.

In the past decade (which is about as far back as I can remember for this debate), the left has argued that insurance is meant for the healthy to subsidize the unhealthy, which just isn't true. That's no longer insurance.

John Cohn says men should subsidize women and E.J. Dionne says pro-lifers should be happy to subsidize women's higher insurance.

I strongly recommend reading Mankiw's post. I heartily agree. I still don't know how to handle the genetic issues that are out of anyone's control, but we should all be able to agree that we shouldn't subsidize choices that increase total costs. If someone makes decisions that increase their own personal costs, they should be responsible for them, they shouldn't be spread across society.

We should be very wary of liberals re-defining words. They're very adamant about it--subsidies, insurance, fair are all examples.

Anti-Science Left

I've posted before about how the left often criticizes the right for being anti-science. There are a few areas where the left consistently ignores scientific research and results. One of them is Genetically modified foods. It's likely because they're against big business, big ag, and think everything that isn't all natural, open range, organic, pesticide free, herbicide free, and grown in your own back yard is bad for you.

Even Liberals Don't get Obamacare

You may have seen this clip where Jon Stewart asks Kathleen Sebelius about the health care law. Jon Stewart earns his bread by pointing out the foolishness of politics (mainly Republicans) and mildly advocates liberal agenda items. Him having issues with Obamacare reveals how poor a job the administration has done selling this law. (You could say it's because Obamacare is a disaster, but Stewart doesn't even understand it, as I'm sure most Democrats do.)  Basically, my theory is that most Democrat voters approve of Obamacare because it expands coverage, and that's all they care about. They don't care about the details of how it's done, or all the other rules that have been put in place to regulate the market.  More people will be insured, therefore, it's a great law.

Secondly, I don't understand how Kathleen Sebelius could be so bad at answering these questions. If I had Sebelius's job, I would say that, while we could delay the individual mandate, it would dismantle the rest of the health care law. By doing this, X million people wouldn't get coverage in the first year of implementation, insurance companies would decide not to participate after next year (they're already locked in for 2014). It would be a huge disaster (for the healthcare law).

All they have to do is convince people who are already inclined to support Obamacare, and they can't do that!