RUTHFULLY YOURS

Maybe you didn’t believe me earlier this month when I issued a warning that the U.S. was “getting ready to go full Venezuela” on economic policy. After Biden’s speech a couple of nights ago, are you starting to get the picture?

All constraints are now lifted. All limits no longer apply. The federal government is now fully unleashed to solve all human problems and bring about perfect fairness and equity in human affairs. And to do so immediately if not sooner. All through the magic of a few trillion additional dollars (per year!) of federal spending. And while we’re at it, we’ll also solve the “climate emergency.” That will cost just another few incremental annual trillion. In the context of our new superpowers, that’s a rounding error.

The flood of proposed new programs and spending is so enormous as to make critiques of any individual items completely pointless. Is there a single one of these proposals that makes sense, or that actually might enhance the well-being of the American people? If so it’s such a small portion as to be insignificant.

Instead, I’ll address what I consider to be the elephant in the room, the obvious thing that somehow never gets mentioned. That is, why haven’t the vast numbers of already-existing federal social service programs and spending already succeeded in solving the problems they were created and funded to solve?

At the end of this post I have included a list of some 83 categories of federal “need based” spending programs. The list comes from a 2018 report by John Early written for the Cato Institute, but he took it from a document put together by the Congressional Research Service in 2013. In other words, I’m sure that there are plenty more of these things since this list was compiled. Note also that this is far, far, far from a complete list of federal income and in-kind distribution and benefit programs, since it specifically only includes those that are “need based.” Thus the list doesn’t even include the single largest federal income distribution program of all, which is Social Security. Aficionados of this subject will also recognize that large numbers of food and nutrition programs and job training programs are also missing, undoubtedly because they are not “need based.” (In this post back in 2014 I found a study that identified some 47 federal job training programs alone.).

Note that the Early list is broken down into two categories, those programs that figure “at least partially in CBO estimates” and those that are “not in CBO estimates.” The “estimates” referred to are estimates of income. The list of what CBO includes in “income” for its purposes differs from what is included by Census. The Census numbers, rather than those of CBO, are the source of things like our statistics on “poverty” and “income inequality.” Unlike CBO, Census does not include 5 of those first 7 categories in “income” in its measures. The excluded 5 are the EITC, SNAP, Medicaid, CHIP and the School Breakfast Program. If you wonder how the spending of a trillion dollars plus per year never seems to improve poverty or income inequality, this is how. The spending is simply excluded when the things we are trying to improve are measured.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-left-continues-to-destroy-itself?token=

The leading progressive Democratic candidate in New York City’s mayoral race, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, has had his chances for victory along with his reputation utterly destroyed over the last week. That happened due to allegations from a political consultant, Jean Kim, that Stringer groped her eighteen years ago, in 2003.

Despite no evidence presented that any of this happened, and despite this being the only assault accusation ever voiced about Stringer during his decades in public life, and despite Kim never having once claimed any of this even when she was working for a rival candidate who was ultimately defeated in 2013 by Stringer, and despite the sudden emergence of this accusation as Stringer’s mayoral campaign was surging, and despite evidence showing that Kim was highly misleading in several of her statements, and despite Stringer’s claims that Kim had been his girlfriend for several months accompanied by vehement denials of wrongdoing, numerous leftist groups and politicians who had endorsed him repudiated his candidacy within days of the emergence of these, issuing statements which treat Kim’s claims as proven truth and depict Stringer as a vile sexual predator.

That is because, as has been seen repeatedly, the prevailing mentality in left-liberal politics is that even grave life-destroying accusations are to be treated as true without the need for any evidence. They casually and with apparent glee ruin people’s reputations and lives without batting an eye the second someone utters an allegation of sexual misconduct. And one is required to mindlessly accept such accusations as truth — never ask for evidence if it is true — if one wishes to remain in good standing in those circles and to avoid being smeared oneself as an apologist for sexual misconduct.

To understand what is being done to Stringer, look at the identical smear campaign that Democrats launched in Massachusetts in August, 2020. Congressman Richie Neal (D-MA) is a walking embodiment of everything sleazy and slimy in U.S. politics. First elected to the House back when Ronald Reagan was still President, the Massachusetts Democrat, 72, is now in his 16th House term, and occupies the all-powerful position of Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which controls legislation governing revenue, taxes, social programs, and tariffs.

Neal’s entire career has been funded by large corporations, insurance companies and banks, and that is who he dutifully serves. He has used his immense power to block virtually every piece of legislation that his corporatist funders oppose but which left-wing populists favor. If you’re on the left, and you actually think the political goals you claim are important, there would be few priorities more pressing than removing Congressman Neal from power.

In 2020, the left was presented with precisely that opportunity. Over the past sixteen years, Neal has had no credible challengers in his Democrat-heavy district. But last year, 31-year-old Alex Morse — a dynamic and gay five-term Mayor of Holyoke — announced he would challenge Neal in the Democratic primary. Progressive groups lined up behind Morse with endorsements and donations, and polls began showing him closing in on Neal. This appeared to be one of the best opportunities in years to remove one of the sleaziest corporatists from power.

But then the left sabotaged it. The College Democrats of Massachusetts released a perfectly timed letter accusing Morse of predatory behavior: namely, that he had sought sex with and dated young adults, and had consensual sex with several of them, including students at Amherst where he taught a class as an outside lecturer (such relationships are not banned by university guidelines). When launching these accusations, the College Democrats group also dramatically announced that they had banned Morse from attending any of their events, as if he were some sort of menace. There were no “victims” claiming he had coerced let alone assaulted anyone. But no matter.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/79573-bidens-one-hundred-days-of-hubris-2021-05-01

President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress underscored this administration’s left turn. The speech was a laundry list of progressive priorities in domestic, foreign, and social policy with a price tag, when you add in the American Rescue Plan, of some $6 trillion. Biden’s delivery, heavy with improvisation, only slightly enlivened a prosaic and unoriginal text. Biden repeated lines from both Bill “the power of our example” Clinton and Barack “the arc of the moral universe” Obama. But it wasn’t just the words themselves that made me think of Biden’s most recent Democratic predecessors. The scope of his plans, increasing government’s role in just about every aspect of American life, also brought to mind the Democrats who tried to govern as liberals after campaigning as moderates.

I’m old enough to recall the last president who vanquished Reaganism. Obama spoke of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” and came to Washington in 2009 with the aim of changing the trajectory of the country just as Ronald Reagan had done three decades earlier. Shortly before his one hundredth day in office, he delivered a speech at Georgetown University where he promised to lay a “new foundation” for the country. His friends in the media hailed him as the second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “Barack Obama is bringing back the era of big government,” historian Matthew Dallek and journalist Samuel Loewenberg announced in the New York Daily News.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/01/americans-unite/

Teachers, friends, and colleagues of mine from the Claremont-Hillsdale school (or “CHS,” after where most of us were trained, and many now teach) have spent years making a concerted effort to find common ground with fellow travelers on the Right who may be broadly understood as paleoconservatives. 

I’m happy to say that, to a large extent, the effort has borne fruit. Many paleoconservatives have been published in the Claremont Review of Books and American Greatness, while many Claremont and Hillsdale scholars (myself included) have written for Modern Age and The American Conservative. There is more cross-pollination and friendly dealing today between the two groups than ever, with each side attending and speaking at the others’ conferences and so on. I think we’ve even learned from each other. I know I have. Exposure to paleo ideas has influenced my thinking on trade, immigration, and foreign policy, among other subjects. 

My commitment, however, to the core tenets of the Claremont-Hillsdale school—which I consider to be nothing more (or less) than an attempt to understand Americanism, without any alterations or admixtures—has never shaken. That’s not to deny that I’ve become increasingly dismayed at the way this understanding of Americanism is often deployed, especially by what Charles Haywood of the excellent book review blog The Worthy House calls “the catamite right.” My own preferred term is “Cracker Jack Claremontism,” after the tiny comics that used to come inside the boxes of caramel corn. Too small for anything but a few pictures and words, and meant for little children, they had to convey a simplistic story very briefly. 

Over time, a fake, pulpy, distorted, thumbnail version of Claremontism took over large parts of the Right. Kids, and many grown-ups, who never even struggled through Federalist 1, 10, or 51—much less the vast numbers of other essential founding texts—confidently assumed they could summarize the whole thing in a few words and phrases. “Equality,” “liberty, “proposition,” “America is an idea,” “Constitution,” “nation of immigrants”—these were all you needed to know to understand not merely the founding but the whole country. 

To the extent that my school (or myself) had anything to do with propagating this garbage—and that extent is not zero—I sincerely apologize. Some of us have been trying to make amends by telling a fuller account of the story, emphasizing those points left out of the Cracker Jack comic, correcting old errors, and making new friends.