The coming Greek referendum on acceptance of the European Union’s latest bailout plan is an omen of doom for ‘Europe.” Just a few years ago, the European Union was being touted as the next superpower, an economic colossus to rival America—see this book, for example. But now? The Euro, the common currency that was supposed to foster unification by integrating the economies of the continent, is looking more like a fiscal suicide pact.

Thanks to the Euro, Europe’s advanced economies are being held hostage by profligate spenders like Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. The PIGS, as they’re called, are flat broke. Worse still, they’ve borrowed far more than they can ever hope to repay. Greece, for example, spent the last couple of decades constructing a lavish welfare state with borrowed money. Meanwhile the Greek economy was allowed to languish. To put it simply, Greece itself cannot possibly afford to fund the welfare state out of its own resources. Moreover, Greece can never hope to pay off its gargantuan national debt. The Greek bonds held by European banks are now toxic assets that threaten the stability of the whole European financial system.

In the good old days when it had its own currency, Greece could have skated out of its financial difficulties by devaluing the drachma. Paying off one’s debts with inflated money is one of the oldest tricks in the book. But now the Euro is Greece’s currency, and the Euro is controlled by Brussels. This gives the EU leverage over the Greeks. In return for a bailout Greece will have to accept stern austerity measures, mostly by pruning back entitlement programs. The dread prospect of being thrown off the government gravy train explains why the Greek people are rioting in the streets.

In Germany, people are discontented as well. The hard-pressed German taxpayer does not see why he should have his pocket picked to bail out the feckless and lazy Greeks. Each new proposal to save the PIGS from the consequences of their irresponsibility further diminishes the credibility of the EU in the eyes of Germans. Not incidentally, it also inflicts more political damage on the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Even in Europe, leaders cannot govern against the will of the people indefinitely. The European Union was created by the European elites, with scant regard for the views of the average citizen. Now the Greeks are going to have their say in a national referendum. It’s almost certain that they’ll vote down the EU bailout proposal by a wide margin, whereupon the Greek government will almost certainly ditch the Euro and return to the drachma.

Euroskeptics long predicted that the common currency would eventually drive Europe up a blind alley where the productive and thrifty (Germany, France) would be mugged by the PIGS. Because the Euro made no sense, they argued, it followed that the European Union made no sense. How right they have proved to be.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:42 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

President Obama has cited the majestic Hoover Dam as the kind of project that’s too massive to be left to private enterprise. Only the government, he and his claque insist, is big enough and smart enough to create such wonders of the world. Thus do they justify their itch to spend trillions on “infrastructure,” “green jobs,” “high-speed rail,” etc.

It’s a good line with only one flaw: There’s not a word of truth in it. As Arthur Herman points out in this story for NRO, the Hoover Dam was actually built by a consortium of six private firms. As he notes:

They and their workers and engineers built not only the dam, but also all the roads, railways, and other infrastructure necessary to bring in their equipment and materials. Kaiser and his partners even built an entire town (today’s Boulder City) to house their 5,200-strong work force.

And the New Deal-era federal government wasn’t particularly helpful:

Interior Secretary Harold Ickes had seen the dam as essentially a federal make-work project for the unemployed. Kaiser and his colleagues had to point out that they needed men with genuine skills, not just people willing to turn up for a paycheck. Ickes wanted the door open to union organizing; the builders convinced him the key to happy workers was paying them well, not giving them a union card. Ickes wanted every federal health and safety regulation to be rigorously enforced, and counted no fewer than 70,000 violations of the letter of the contract. They patiently showed him that applying those standards would mean the dam would never be finished on time, let alone on budget.

In the end, the job was finished ahead of schedule and $4 million under budget. Even if you knew nothing else about the Hoover Dam, that fact alone would suffice to prove that the federal government had nothing to do with its construction.

Posted by tmg110 at 11:38 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

If we don’t pay off their student loans, we’ll be sorry:

A day of demonstrations in Oakland that began as a significant step toward expanding the political and economic influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement, ended with police in riot gear arresting dozens of protesters who had marched through downtown to break into a vacant building, shattering windows, spraying graffiti and setting fires along the way.

Not exactly the Paris Commune, but still hard to square with the claim that Occupy Wall Street represents “the 99%,” i.e. you and me.

Incidentally, the headline over the story quoted above (from AP) reads: “Peaceful Occupy protests degenerate into chaos.” Yeah, sure, very peaceful. That is what’s know as putting lipstick on a pig.

Posted by tmg110 at 11:18 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

President Obama today (in a speech touting his moribund jobs bill) :"You have legislation reaffirming that In God We Trust is our motto. That's not putting people back to work. I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work."

Why are you raising your eyebrows? If the Messiah doesn't know what God wants to see, well, who would?

Posted by tmg110 at 6:07 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Though there are plenty of people on the conservative side who regard Herman Cain with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, one thing that I hope we can all agree on is that he’s the victim of a glaring and offensive double standard.

The charge of sexual harassment—or was it merely “inappropriate behavior”?—has touched off a media feeding frenzy. The rules of the game, you say? The price of playing politics at the presidential level? Let’s test that thesis.

When it was learned that presidential candidate Barack Obama had for twenty years been attending a “church” run by a racist, Jew-bashing, hate-spewing, America-damning “pastor,” the media reaction was…silence. When it emerged that he was good friends with a pair of Sixties-era New Left terrorists, the media reaction was…more silence. The media regarded Barry as America’s savior and besides, it would have been so very politically incorrect to question the integrity of the first serious black presidential candidate in the nation’s history.

Now comes another presidential candidate who, like Obama happens to be black, but he’s not the kind of black person of whom the media can possibly approve. Herman Cain is a conservative, for heaven’s sake, and, as is well known, a conservative black is little better than a race traitor. So the media reasons to its collective self, with the result that Cain, like Clarence Thomas before him, is being treated to a high-tech lynching.

If sexual harassment charges had ever been leveled against Barack Obama, the media would have crucified the woman in the case. Journalistic ethics? It’s an oxymoron.

Posted by tmg110 at 5:20 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

OK, how weird is this? A bird just few straight into the front room window and bounced off. Alfred Hitchcock, call your office!

Posted by tmg110 at 10:17 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Just the other day, some pundit remarked on TV that things were looking up for Barack Obama. The Euro debt crisis has been solved, the stock market was rising and—wonder of wonders!—the government reported that the nation's doesn't represent a brilliant performance, but it beats a finger in the eye.)

And this morning? The End Times are upon us again. "Global stock markets dropped sharply as investors sold off shares after Greece's shock decision to hold a referendum on its eurozone bail-out package thratened to intensify the region's debt crisis."

Perhaps if the "do-nothing Congress" will just "pass this bill right now," all will be well. Right, Barry?

Posted by tmg110 at 10:08 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

If you’re going to opine on politics and current events, it helps to have some actual knowledge of the subject. This thought—no doubt heretical in the minds of many pundits—occurred to me recently. As the Obama Administration’s Iraq policy began to show signs of collapse, I thought I’d post about it. But Tom, I asked myself rhetorically, what do you really know about Iraq? The answer, which boiled down to “nothing much,” led me to a soon-to-close-forever Borders outlet, where I purchased a copy of Charles Tripp’s A History of Iraq at a knock-down price.

Tripp is Professor of Politics in the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. His survey history of Iraq spans more than 200 years, from the period of Ottoman rule to the fall of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of the current parliamentary republic. For anyone who might still be sanguine about the prospects for stable democracy in Iraq, it’s a sobering read.

I learned from Professor Tripp’s book that Iraq is a country utterly without experience of democratic governance. From the foundation of the state in the 1920s to the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq has always been ruled by a despotic government of elites, whether civilian or military, with no real power devolved to the people. Moreover, changes of regime have typically been effected by violence. When the monarchy was overthrown by a cabal of army officers in 1958, King Faisal II and several members of his family were shot dead outside the royal palace after their surrender. The coup leader, General Abd al-Karim Qasim, became prime minister of the new Republic of Iraq until he too was deposed and summarily executed in 1963. Qasim’s bullet-riddled body was displayed on Iraqi TV.

None of this is to say that the desire for freedom is absent in Iraq. Clearly it exists. But the sad truth is that neither Iraq’s current rulers nor the people of that unfortunate country really understand how to make freedom workable within the framework of a representative government.

Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divisions make the emergence of a stable democratic government seem even less likely. One of the most interesting aspects of Professor Tripp’s book is its discussion of the Kurdish issue. Decades of oppression by the Arab-dominated governments of Baghdad have permanently estranged the Kurds from Iraq. Having achieved substantial autonomy in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s fall, the Kurds have no intention of giving it up now and are clearly determined to achieve full independence. These aspirations run in the opposite direction from Iraqi nationalism—if such a thing can really be said to exist.

Of course, it’s possible that Iraq will beat the odds by fashioning itself into a decently governed country. But considering its troubled history, its deep internal divisions, the ill will of its neighbors and its lack of a democratic tradition, this seems unlikely. Now that the United States has, thanks to the near-criminal ineptitude of the Obama Administration, abandoned Iraq to its fate, the country’s future appears grim indeed.

A History of Iraq helped me to understand how difficult a task America assumed when it tried to implant democracy in Mesopotamia. Perhaps, in fact, that task was impossible. Or maybe we just gave up too soon. Read Professor Tripp’s excellent, accessible book and judge for yourself.

Posted by tmg110 at 2:27 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Few things in Muammar Qaddafi’s life became him as well as his manner of leaving it. The tyrant’s gruesome end was clear evidence that the hand of cosmic justice definitely does intervene in human affairs from time to time. Yes, yes, I understand the arguments in favor of keeping Qaddafi alive and putting him on trial—but in revolutionary times, atavistic passions rule. The man who subjects his political enemies to summary execution really cannot complain when he himself meets the same fate.

But of course, our transnational leftie elites cannot quite accept the outcome in Libya. “The UN human rights office spokesperson said that he expects the UN commission already investigating potential human rights abuse in Libya would look into the case,” according to the Wikipedia page dealing with the dictator’s death. But of course.

Well, Saddam Hussein did get a trial, and the usual suspects including Amnesty International still complained about “human rights abuses.” And they were shocked—shocked—when Saddam’s executioners reviled him on the scaffold. The hand-wringers behaved as if as if the numberless crimes of the Iraqi tyrant had been erased from the ledger of history. It’s understandable, I suppose. Few people in the West—including human rights activists—have direct experience of tyranny, terror and murder on the scale practiced by such creatures as Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein. The passions associated with such things are totally beyond their comprehension.

Posted by tmg110 at 10:25 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Reflecting on the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, I’ve concluded that among its amorphous goals is a yearning to escape into the past.

Many observers and commentators sympathetic to the movement have bemoaned the fact that its goals are so amorphous. If only OWS could get its act together, they sigh, it might shape itself into a political force to rival the Tea Party. What these observers don’t understand—or perfer to overlook—is that OWS exists to meet the psychological rather than the financial or economic needs of its rank and file. Barring the usual far-Left suspects, who flock in the direction of such street demonstrations like flies to rotting meat, most of the OWS protesters really have no idea why they’re there. But being there makes them feel good, so they wave their signs and chant.

As I noted before, the OWS movement embodies some legitimate gripes, e.g. the cost of a college education and the burden of student loans. That’s all they are, though—gripes. Somebody should do something about the plight of a twenty-four-year-old woman who borrowed $50,000 to obtain a degree in eco-feminism, cannot find a good job, and is now living with her parents while waitressing at the Olive Garden. But who should do something and what, precisely should be done? “They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right,” runs one of the charges in the “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,” billed as “the first official, collective statement of the protesters in Zuccotti Park.” Who are “they”? Never mind. Education is a “human right,” you see, which means that “society” needs to pony up the $50,000 to bail out that bachelor of eco-feminism. OWS demonstrators seem oblivious to the fact that “they” in this case are the very universities they attended, whose sky-high tuition and fees necessitated those large student loans.

But it feels good to protest, and when one’s target is some large, abstract entity—“Wall Street,” “capitalism,” “the one percent,” etc.—it’s easy to strike a pose of moral righteousness. And striking that pose, preening for the TV cameras, is an act of escapism. Escape to where? To the Sixties—where else?

False memories of that low, dishonest decade continue to pollute America’s collective consciousness. The responsibility for this rests primarily with the baby boomers, who have thoroughly romanticized the Sixties, airbrushing out its ugly blemishes: the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the drugs, the dirt, the squalor, the wasted lives and above all, the systematic promulgation of a great lie about the evil of America. Echoes of that lie reverberate in the chants and demands of the OWS protesters. And, perhaps subconsciously, they understand what they're doing. The Occupy Wall Street movement forges a connection between its participants and a moment in history. Never mind that it’s a false history based on nostalgia and doublethink—it feels good.

Posted by tmg110 at 10:15 AM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 26 October 2011 10:23 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink