I live in the high desert northeast of Los Angeles, an area known as the Antelope Valley. We have several small towns and two principal cities, Palmdale and Lancaster. Our major industry is defense and aircraft; Edwards AFB stretches from Mojave (about 35 miles to the north) to the near north end of Palmdale. If you remember “The Right Stuff” you know something of our area from the introductory scenes of Chuck Yeager and the other early flyboys partying in a bar in the desert. That bar was The Happy Bottom Riding Club, owned and operated by a barnstorming aviatrix named Pancho Barnes. It was burned to the ground in the mid-1950s because the Air Force wanted to expand AFB and her land stood in the way.

We are also home to a California State Prison, the Challenger Youth Camps and the Mira Loma Detention Facility for federal prisoners, principally those awaiting deportation. They are all within walking distance of each other, and the County of Los Angeles is launching a program to build a solar facility in a large field between the facilities to provide power to the prison and Challenger. It’s a $24M project which if it has not been approved by the Board of Supervisors already will be approved within the next few days, and its contours have triggered some thoughts about government spending, job creation and “growing” the economy (LA County has a 5-member Board of Supervisors; our Supervisor is a Republican named Michael Antonovich and he says it will be a “stimulus” to our economy).

Our economy can certainly use some stimulating. Official employment in each of the two cities (they abut each other; the only way you know  you have crossed from one to the other is because a street sign tells you so) is at 16 to 17% (Mojave, home to the space shuttle and the Rutan brothers is at just over 13%). You don’t know anything about the crash in the housing market until you drive the residential areas up here; houses bought 5  years ago for $600K are selling for $250K and the prices are still dropping. Nobody up here would begrudge a little actual stimulating, whatever the source.

The solar project is close-ended. It is projected to last one year and conclude when the construction is done. The plan is for the project to employ Antelope Valley residents, giving priority to people who live within the two Lancaster zip codes. I don’t know how many are actually to be employed. I am not aware that the project will bring ongoing employment after construction is complete. And so the question: is it a stimulus?

Consider the basic capitalist “model”. Widgets, Inc. produces widgets that it sells to Gewgaws R Us, a company that produces gewgaws, which in turn are sold to the public. The public pays Gewgaws R Us, which in turn pays Widgets Inc., and the cycle repeats and grows as Widgets Inc. uses its profits to buy more raw materials and hire more workers, as does Gewgaws R Us. The basic idea is that the system is open-ended; it is self-regenerating and expands organically.

If I put money into Widgets Inc. I do so anticipating profit. I invest $10 to earn $15. If Widgets Inc is successful my investment pays off; if gewgaws don’t sell and Widgets loses its main customer, my investment fails. That’s what investment is: putting capital at risk in anticipation of gain.

By contrast, this solar project is close-ended. The government is going to spend a defined sum of money to accomplish a defined project within a defined period of time. And then it will be over. The solar facility will not produce any marketable product; at best it will reduce the cost of supplying power to the prison and youth camps. But it will not produce power to be used by any private businesses in the area.

Nor is there any guarantee that it will provide a market for locally-produced raw materials. I don’t know where the steel, concrete and panels will come from, but there are no such production facilities here. So to that extent the money spent on raw materials will go elsewhere. There is at least one solar company here, but I don’t know what benefit if any that company will derive.

Yes, there will be some positive jolt in employment, and as I say we can certainly use it. But that too is close-ended; the employment will end when the project is done. Some of the hirees may get the benefit of hooking up with contractors who will hire them for other projects, but that is impossible to define or anticipate. Still, a year of working is better than a year of not working.

The workers will most likely spend what they earn, which will give some boost to local businesses and raise sales tax revenues. But again, the project is close-ended; retailers will have no particular reason to expect that the consumer market created by working on the project will continue past one year, much less expand. This is the exact opposite of the basic capitalist model which as I indicated is based on the premise that production, employment and markets will tend to grow in repeating cycles.

So what, then, does the project represent? It will provide a short-term employment and retail benefit. At the end it will save the state and county some money in providing power to the prison and youth facility, but no saleable surplus. So is it a “stimulus”? Only in the short term. Will it open the door to lowering unemployment over the long term? There is unfortunately no reason to think so. Will it produce profit that will in turn make future such projects possible? No. If other solar facilities are to be built they will be financed by public means, either through issuing debt instruments or taxes.

And herein lies the real difference between government spending and investment: investment aims to achieve an increase in value; government spending of this type aims to accomplish a project: build a bridge, repave a road, build a solar facility. These projects accomplish some public good no doubt, but they are not investments except in some cosmic sense of investing in the public good. There is no anticipation of real economic return.

And yes, this kind of government spending creates jobs but those jobs are time-limited by the nature of the project involved. The project itself does not generate capital for ensuing projects. As I said above, those projects will only happen if new debt instruments issue or new taxes are imposed (hence Obama referring to “job-killing tax cuts”).

All of which is why, for whatever short-term benefits such projects may provide, they do not “grow the economy” in any long-term sense. On the one hand, the project does not generate any organic growth; no new business or expansion of existing business really ensues. And on the other hand, since the project depends on public funding, to that extent capital is taken out of the private sector and rerouted into economic dead-end roads.

The project may end up doing what it is supposed to do, and if it does that it may be a something worth doing. But it is not “stimulus”, it is not a path to “job creation” in any meaningful sense, and it will not “grow the economy.” All the worse then that it is touted on these grounds by a politician on the Board of Supervisors who presents himself as a conservative Republican.

Mr Obama has freed up his inner brat with the circulation of the “Made in the USA” (no, it doesn’t say “Born in the USA”) t-shirt complete with a copy of the “birth certificate” on the back. The lapdog media says he is just having fun, but that’s not it.

Obama faces a foundering economy and hawks a Middle East policy that will lead to disaster abroad and the loss of significant electoral support at home. The last thing he wants is for the GOP and conservatives generally to be able to concentrate their fire on real issues. So, having condemned the birth certificate controversy as “silliness” promulgated by “sideshow barkers” and having tried to “put it to rest” so we all could focus on real issues such as the economy, he now revives it.

A simple rule in poker: figure out what your opponent wants you to do, then do the opposite. Based on that, a simple request: let us not take the bait.

At the risk of sounding like some kind of conspiracy nut, given the killing of Bin Laden, all that has happened around the killing and all that has been said about what has happened, I think it’s worth a stab at trying to connect the dots, acknowledging all the while that this is not a matter of some grand plan from the beginning but the kind of thing that happens once the action starts and new stories have to be told. So here goes.

(1) It was a “kill” order from the beginning. This is pretty much self-evident from the fact that the administration was considering a missile strike that would have vaporized the compound. “Vaporization” and “arrest” are pretty much mutually exclusive.

(2) Deciding against the missile strike was not a matter of preserving evidence that Bin Laden was indeed dead. That’s pretty much proven by Obama’s “now you see it, now you don’t” handling of the picture (I believe Bin Laden is dead and I honestly don’t care if I ever see the picture or not). Yes, this could be just typical Obama dithering, but it is equally likely that the “we wanted to prove the death” was a post-facto rationalization and Obama just didn’t think it through to realizing that if the SEAL incursion was done in order to (a) kill  Bin Laden and (b) have irrefutable proof of his death, he would have to show the picture. (As is often the case, Obama is his own worst enemy in coming up with a rationalization for sending in the “kill” team and then backing away from it.)

(3) The incursion was intended to be covert all the way with no post-op huzzahs beyond the general announcement that Bin Laden was dead and (somehow) justice is served. This was one more reason not to go with the missile strike, since it would be obvious where it came from. In this scenario nobody could really assign actual blame although everyone would suspect a US op. Pakistan could say “who in their right mind would conduct a military raid into a town as militarized as Abbottabad?” The US could say “we could not do such a thing without the consent of the Pakistani government and we know they would never have consented”, so the US could keep the raid at arms’ length and Pakistan would have plausible deniability. This of course literally went up in smoke when the helicopter went down.

(4) Once the raid became undeniable the narrative had to make it look good, so the story was put out that Bin Laden put up armed resistance and hid behind a human (female) shield making killing him unavoidable. Those stories have evaporated, including with the revelation now that Bin Laden stuck his head out around a door and the SEALs shot at him and missed, so now we are left with the fact that it was always a “kill” order.

(5) (This is speculative but I’m afraid the only realistic outcome) The narrative is going to change once more. There has already been some blowback both at home and abroad, and there will be more. Obama cannot stand up to the world and say “we sent the SEALs in to kill”. He doesn’t really have the spine to take and hold that stance; it won’t play well either at home or with his Muslim friends abroad, and it would open too many legalistic doors for others (including Eric Holder?) to attack us and our role here. He might even have to give up his Nobel Peace Prize. So I think that sometime within the next few days we are going to get this: “We sent the SEALs in with a ‘capture or kill’ order, and something went terribly wrong.” The raid stays “good” because its aims were proper, the SEALs encountered an exigent situation and overreacted, no we’re not going to prosecute them because it’s “you know, fortunes and fog of war”. Pakistan can stay at arms’ length, and Obama can posture as a well-intentioned man undone by the exigencies of the moment, all the while being happy that the man is dead.

I hope Obama has whatever it takes to stand up before the world and say “We intended to kill him, we killed him, and we’re proud of it.” Somehow I doubt it. And if he can’t sustain that stance then he has to find a way to back off of responsibility while still finding a way to take credit. Yes, it would take some amount of forgetting today what he said yesterday, but if Obama knows nothing else he knows that the odds of the MSM backing his play are pretty good.

I hope I’m wrong about all of this. I’m afraid that I’m not.

OK, I’m officially confused by what Walker and the Republicans are (and are not) doing in Wisconsin. It doesn’t square with the battle that they launched, and seems to suggest a deal in the works.

Gov Walker pushed the budget repair bill through in a late-night session called on barely two hours’ notice. At the time I didn’t see any real reason to do it this way; even had Walker given 24 hours’ notice as may (or may not) have been required under the statutes the bill would have passed even if the Democrats had shown up (and if any of them did show up he could have pushed the fiscal measures as well). It seemed oddly hasty for a man who has proceeded carefully throughout.

Liberal Democrat LaFolette postpones publication of the law until 3/25, and Walker is placatory. Then liberal Democrat judge Maryann Sumi issues a restraining order, and in the midst of doing so tells the Republicans that they can go ahead and pass the bill, just to do it the right way. This means that they could give 24 hours’ notice at any time and get the do-over. The Republicans decline and say they intend to pursue the legal strategies, which will of course take time and is a lose-lose strategy (more below).

In the meantime, the coalition of unions, leftists, students and whoever else is mobilizing to recall everyone they can think of while terrorizing Republicans circulating recall petitions against Democrats. So far as I can tell, the GOP remains silent and inert.

And finally, while the budget repair bill languishes the public employee unions throughout Wisconsin are pushing ahead with getting contracts that would not be possible under the bill. And again, so far as I can tell the GOP remains silent and inert.

So what is going on here? I’ve been around long enough to know that politicians are calculating people and rarely if ever do anything without some sort of plan. So what is the plan here? The budget repair bill was urgent, so Walker said. The best explanation I heard for the late-night session was that time was of the essence (though given how long Walker waited before performing the maneuver even that was suspect). But if time is of the essence, why the dithering now?

Why did Walker not challenge LaFollette to publish the bill immediately? Why did he agree to have the matter heard by a judge who told everyone she would be going out of town for a week or so after the hearing? Why is he opting to pursue legal remedies when he could very easily do another end run and get the bill passed? Why, if he is pursuing legal remedies, hasn’t he sought a writ against Sumi’s ruling? And above all, why is he playing a waiting game when the public employee unions are undercutting the effect of the bill with their rush to get the new contracts?

None of this squares with the urgency Walker attached to the legislation in the first place, and it’s very odd behavior for a man who is supposed to be the next GOP “rock star”.

So now, looking at things from the point of view of “there must be a strategy, so what is it?” I am left with only one inference: Walker is angling for a deal with the Democrats and the unions. For that matter, the deal may already be in place. I won’t be surprised to see a “do-over” that trims the budget, maintains the new contributions to health care and pensions (though the amounts may go down and even that may well be irrelevant to many in light of the new contracts), but scales back the diminution in the role of public employee unions, compromising on the scope of collective bargaining and eliminating the requirement of yearly recertification. I’m not sure what he’d get from the Democrats in return other than their agreement on fiscal issues (preventing another mobilization) and perhaps an agreement to abandon the recalls (assuming things have not gone too far already).

To be clear, I was never wild about the union issues to begin with. That isn’t my point. My point is that Walker picked a fight, won, and now seems to be backing off. I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, but it’s hard for me to come up with any other explanation.

This last weekend, while Qadaffi was crushing the rebels in Libya and Japan was enduring an unimaginable catastrophe, Obama did two things. On Saturday, he played golf. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/03/just-warm-enough-for-golf-obama-back-on-the-course.html And then he finally got his chance to speak at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association spring dinner at the DC Gridiron Club, and channeled Henny Youngman. Club. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2011/03/obama_gets_laughs_at_first_gri.html. The full transcript of Obama’s routine can be found here http://escapetyranny.com/2011/03/13/transcript-of-obamas-funny-speech-last-night-at-the-gridiron-club/.

Obama mentions the Middle East once, using it as an opportunity to throw a couple of pies at Hillary. And he devotes exactly one sentence to the disaster in Japan. I can only infer that he even went this far just so he could remind everyone that he is, in fact, the President.

Now, I get it at one level. This is the Washington Press Corps’ annual dinner, and it’s a night for everyone to pretend that love is in the air and for old fat guys to dress up in drag, kind of a postgraduate Hasty Pudding. But as Youngman himself might have said, “seriously folks”. With the economy stagnant, the dictator Qadaffi about to reaffirm his stranglehold on Libya (remember, he no longer has legitimacy!), the Middle East still in turmoil and the price of gas heading toward $5 a gallon, is this really the time to go Mummer on us? For that matter, is it really the time for Mitch Daniels to get into the act as well?

I’ve said that I don’t want a white President, I don’t want a black President, I don’t want a male President, I don’t want a female President. I want a President. I want someone who has clear perception of the problems that confront us, is willing to put programs forward and take the heat when necessary. In short, I want a leader. I don’t want the class clown.

From the time of our founding there has always been a disconnect between what we as a nation understand fundamental freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion to be and how other nations and governments see them. In today’s world that disconnect presents in sharp relief in what the Obama administration has to say about the situation in Egypt.

In his speech of January 28, 2011 Obama said: “The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.” http://nation.foxnews.com/barack-obama/2011/01/28/obama-makes-egypt-about-himself-when-i-was-cairo-shortly-after-i-was-elected So at a moment in history when the real nature of basic political rights as we (are at least supposed to) understand them is on the table, Obama takes refuge in meaningless and ahistorical platitudes. I understand there are more or less valid diplomatic reasons for taking this approach, but it is absolutely wrong in a moment of international crisis and confrontation to do anything other than draw clear lines of principle. In the modern parlance, this is a “teachable moment”.

Obama has abdicated the opportunity. His failure to assert anything like real leadership on this issue is not accidental; it reflects his misbegotten notions of the source of these rights and their true significance. This may seem arcane, but at a time when Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee urges that Americans have a constitutional right to health care under the 5th and 14th amendments (http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2011/01/sheila-jackson-lee-health-care-law-repeal-unconstitutional-based-on-5th-and-14th-amendments/) it is more than current.

The simple fact of the matter is that Egypt (a Muslim nation under military dictatorship) is not going to embrace the notion that those freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights, and particularly the First Amendment, are “universal” and therefore must be recognized there. This is partly because Egypt is a dictatorship, and if history teaches us nothing it teaches us that dictators are loath to recognize that the citizens of their countries have any rights at all. That’s what makes them dictators.

So if only for this reason alone it is wrong as a factual matter to assert that these rights are “universal”. If they were, the United States would not be exceptional, and our unique respect for these rights would be merely mundane.

The concept of “universal rights” (or “human rights”) applying everywhere around the world is a great “feel good” notion, but it is wrong for a more fundamental reason: we Americans have a unique attitude toward these rights because of the core political philosophy of our nation. Any nation that does not share that philosophy will never in fact regard these rights as “universal”, much less “inalienable”.

Our Declaration of Independence broadly identifies “certain inalienable rights” with which “all men (people) are endowed by their Creator”. Simply put, these rights cannot be surrendered, taken away or infringed not because they are “universal”, nor even because our Constitution chose to acknowledge them, but because they are given to us by God.

This is reflected in turn in the language of the First Amendment to the Constitution. It does not say “Americans have the right to freedom of the press, speech, assembly and religion.” It says “Congress shall make no law” respecting these freedoms. In other words, the First Amendment does not give Americans these rights, it inoculates these “natural” rights from governmental usurpation. They are “inalienable” – they can not be given away or taken away – because they are endowed upon us by God, not granted by legislation.

Compare the language of our First Amendment with the language of Article 19 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom . . . to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. (Emphasis added)” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/28/AR2011012806250.html

This is the language of granting rights, not the language of inoculating rights from governmental invasion (Article 19 does not read “no government shall make any law respecting freedom of speech …”) The Declaration expresses a pious wish but does not assert these rights as inalienable. And it is perhaps too obvious to mention that the countries in which these rights are disregarded at best and prohibited at worst far outnumber those in which they are respected as fundamental and inalienable.

When Obama calls on Egypt to recognize these rights, he too is speaking the language of rights by legislative grant, not rights as inalienable gifts from God. This is understandable enough given Obama’s repeated refusals to recite the words “by their Creator” as they appear in the Declaration of Independence.

But if these rights are not endowed upon us by our Creator (and hence “inalienable”), what then is their source? Why should a Muslim military dictatorship that rejects the Judeo-Christian God regard these rights in the same way that our country does? The short answer is that no such shared source exists. Absent such a source the rights become not natural but manufactured, not inalienable but expedient. That which a government gives, a government can take away. That is why our Constitutional treatment of these rights makes us exceptional.

It is of course a good thing to assert core democratic rights in response to oppressive measures. Nobody can argue with a good thing. But it is more than a good thing to stand tall and assert before the world whence those rights really arise and what it means in fact to protect them. Fuzzy references to “universal rights” and “human rights” obscure rather than clarify that message.

The sad reality is that Obama is simply congenitally incapable of standing up in that way. He rejects the Judeo-Christian underpinning of those rights just as he rejects the notion that America is exceptional in our Constitutional jurisprudence. And insofar as this has anything to do with our attitude toward Islamic government, he will never be able to draw any sort of clear line between their manner of government and our own, if only because he does not want to acknowledge the fundament of those differences.

Dana Milbank, a columnist in the WaPo, writes that he is proclaiming February a “Palin-free” month, meaning he intends not to talk about her for 28 days. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/20/AR2011012004349.html?nav=hcmodule. That’s fine, but I have to wonder: why wait until February? My grandmother always said “never put off until tomorrow what you can do today”, so Dana: shut up now! Of course, if he were to do that we wouldn’t be treated to 10 more days of listening to him talk about what he is not going to be talking about.

I am a conservator for a 66-year-old woman who has been disabled for 20 years following a burst cerebral aneurysm. She spends her life in a board-and-care facility that keeps her there notwithstanding the fact that all of her reserves have been spent and they receive only what SSI pays her, which is about $400 less than what they would ordinarily charge.

Here’s the problem: SSI pays her $1,086 per month, and this amount has not gone up in two years. I just got a letter entitled “Explanation of Benefits” from SSI, which advises that the payment amount will not go up in 2012 because increases are tied to increases in the Consumer Price Index, and “The CPI has not risen since the last cost-of-living adjustment was determined in 2008.”

This is a flat out lie. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI publication of November 17, 2010, the CPI has increased about 3.5% in the last year (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf).

Granted, a $30 increase in my lady’s benefits won’t mean much to her or the board-and-care where she stays. But this same letter has gone out to every SSI recipient in the country. The Social Security Administration under Obama is using disinformation to cover its refusal to increase benefits at all to people who are quite simply incapable of organizing to be heard, much less vote. And perhaps therein lies the real explanation: in the land of the lobbyist, the truly disenfranchised are truly expendable. It is a disgrace.