Learned Hand 1872-1961

Judge Learned Hand: Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.

-Helvering v. Gregory, 69 F.2d 809, 810-11 (2d Cir. 1934)

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Hat tip to John Brewer.

Charles Krauthammer argues that George W. Bush is like Truman, a president whose virtues and accomplishments will be better regarded by History than they were by his contemporary countrymen.

When I asked the president about his one unambiguous achievement, keeping us safe for seven years—about 6 1/2 years longer than anybody thought possible at the time of 9/11—he was quick to credit both the soldiers keeping the enemy at bay abroad and the posse of law enforcement and intelligence officials hardening our defenses at home.

But he alluded also to some of the measures he had undertaken, including “listening in on the enemy” and “asking hardened killers about their plans.” The CIA has already told us that interrogation of high-value terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed yielded more valuable intelligence than any other source. In talking about these measures, the president mentioned neither this testimony as to their efficacy nor the campaign of vilification against him that these measures occasioned. More equanimity still.

What the president did note with some pride, however, is that beyond preventing a second attack, he is bequeathing to his successor the kinds of powers and institutions the next president will need to prevent further attack and successfully prosecute the long war. And indeed, he does leave behind a Department of Homeland Security, reorganized intelligence services with newly developed capacities to share information, and a revised FISA regime that grants broader and modernized wiretapping authority.

In this respect, Bush is much like Truman, who developed the sinews of war for a new era (the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad, and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea)—also absent an attack on the U.S.—that proved highly unpopular.

So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged and highly out of favor. History has revised that verdict. I have little doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.

I agree that Bush shares Truman’s modesty, courage, and absence of pretension, but I think following the Truman model of limited war, featuring burdens and sacrifices borne by few, absence of public involvement, lack of identification of the terms of victory, and wholesale failure to rebuke or even deter domestic treason, ought to be understood by now to represent a less than morally ideal gamble in real politik, one wagering the lives of patriotic Americans in the hope of attaining a low cost resolution of a security crisis.

The editor has been off-line for a day due to illness.

Virginia Shanahan, writing at MacsMind, has a longer memory than most of us, and cites a NY Times article from 2003 recalling that the Bush administration actually foresaw problems, and tried reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but his efforts were blocked. By whom? The same democrats who now possess a Congressional majority. With current Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Massachusetts’ own Barney Frank playing a leading role.

I doubt many of the readers recall this article from the New York Times five years ago.

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

We can see now that the Bush administration had accurately diagnosed the problem in the lending market and had a plan to address it. Reluctantly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac supported the plan. However, Democrats objected.

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Panopticon explains the tale of Asset-Backed Securities (ABS), tranches of risk, Collateralised Debt Obligations (low tranche ABS) repackaged and marketed at higher ratings, Adjustable-Rate Mortgages, and No Documentation Loans. Making mortgage loans was really profitable, the federal government wanted home ownership made more accessible, and real estate prices only go up, after all. What could possibly go wrong?
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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Original NY Post story.

Washington Prowler:

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January.

The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari to confirm the conversation, and there was concern that there were enough aggressive reporters based in Baghdad with the sources to confirm the conversation that to deny the comments would create a bigger problem.

Instead, Obama’s national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi told reporters that Obama told the Iraqis that they should not rush through what she termed a “Strategic Framework Agreement” governing the future of U.S. forces until after President Bush left office. In other words, the Iraqis should not negotiate an American troop withdrawal.

According to a Senate staffer working for Sen. Joseph Biden, Biden himself got involved in the shaping of the statement. “The whole reason he’s on the ticket is the foreign policy insight,” explained the staffer.

Bradley Burston, winner of the the Eliav-Sartawi award for Middle East journalism

Bradley Burston, award-winning member of the chin-stroking International liberal commentariat, provides a very striking illustration of the truth of the old rustic apothegm in his What is truly frightening about Sarah Palin editorial.

It was in the taxicab this morning that it finally struck me about Sarah Palin.

I get it. I get that millions of Americans have a crying need for someone to stand up and say the things that Sarah Palin has been telling them.

I get that many, many Americans are fed up with big government and shame in patriotism and energy dependence and media condescension. I recognize that there are many on the right who are galvanized by a woman addressing the nation in condemnation of gun control and abortions. It’s clear that many in the heartland and even on the Blue State coasts have been waiting years to hear someone take a take-no-prisoners verbal lash to Beltway waste and liberal political correctness and, by implication, to cultural pluralism and tree hugging and the very mention of the word Washington.

But it wasn’t until I got into the taxicab this morning, that I realized what the American voter truly faces this November.

The radio was playing a clip from her ABC News interview, the one in which she was asked about the Bush Doctrine.

The problem was not that she was unacquainted with the doctrine. Millions of Americans are unacquainted with it.

The problem is that Sarah Palin was also asking those millions of Americans to put her first in line for the most important position in humankind. ...

Asked during the interview if she had the ability and the experience to serve as president of the United States, she replied without hesitation, without reservation, without contemplation – and without knowing, on a profound level, what that would, in fact, entail. “I’m ready.”

Here is the answer that is truly frightening. It lets us know that the nation may be in danger of electing another leader bearing the most profound of George Bush’s shortcomings: blindness to one’s own shortcomings.

Blindness, that is, to the breadth and depth and height and shape of what one does not know. Say what you will about Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary knew an unknown unknown when he saw one. Sarah Palin, for whom appearance is understandably significant, has one in her mirror.

But what about Bradley Buston’s blindness to his own shortcomings: his unjustified certitude, his complacency, his arrogance, and his misinformedness?

First of all, George W. Bush never identified any proposition as the “Bush Doctrine.”

That there is a Bush Doctrine at all is a pure journalistic invention, and wide-spread disagreement exists as to which of several formulations represents the alleged Bush Doctrine. Even how many alternative Bush Doctrines have been referred to is uncertain.

Charles Krauthammer, who claims to have been the first to use the phrase, identifies four versions of the Bush Doctrine.

Michael Abramowitz, in the Washington Post, quotes Paul D. Feaver, a member of the National Security Council, as having identified seven versions. Wikipedia used to agree, stating, as of September 13th:

The Bush Doctrine is a journalistic term used to describe some foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush, enunciated in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Scholars identify seven different “Bush Doctrines.”

But this inconvenient portion of the discussion has been edited away and the entry locked to prohibit further alterations. The old text is presently visible in Google.

This little case of journalistic malpractice could serve beautifully as a metonymy for the numberless cases of factual error, false interpretation, and complete misstatement served up by the establishment journalistic community as Truth and Wisdom during the Bush Administration’s years in office.

Russ Smith feels the time has come to start discussing the unthinkable.

It’s three a.m. on Oct. 31 and a frantic broker awakens you. He’s advising making substantial investments that day in the stocks of Lilly, Pfizer and other manufacturers of anti-depressants, as well as high-end booze, say Grey Goose vodka and Hillary Clinton’s whiskey of choice, Chivas Regal. The calculations buzzing through your head are not insignificant. Barack Obama holds a two-point lead over John McCain in the Gallup poll for the Nov. 4 presidential election, and that slender margin suggests—given the undeniable factor of racism when Americans retreat to the privacy of the ballot booth—that for the third straight time a Democratic candidate will be defeated. Your own preference in the contest is irrelevant: there’s money lying on the table and only a fool would ignore the market’s indications.

A month ago, as any honest Democrat will tell you, this scenario was nearly inconceivable. The Republicans had nominated an elderly and inarticulate candidate in McCain, who was marred not only by his association with George Bush, but distrusted by the critical conservative base as well. ..

In mid-September the GOP resurrection is a simple reality, and though I dislike the cliché “a month in politics is a lifetime,” no one has any idea of how Americans will vote on Election Day. But the fear expressed by a “major Democratic fundraiser” in Politico last week—“I’m so depressed. It’s happening again. It’s a nightmare.”—isn’t isolated and won’t subside unless Obama, to quote a Matt Drudge headline, “gets his groove back.”

I have no clue if or when that could happen, but I do have an opinion of what will follow in this country if McCain pulls off what so recently seemed the miraculous feat of becoming the country’s 44th president. Voter fraud, conspiracy, “sleazevertisements” (the preferred term of many left-wing bloggers), disenfranchised voters, the return of redneck chic; those will be the immediate cries of Democrats who thought the election was in the bag. Once again, scores of celebrities will claim they’re moving abroad (and inevitably won’t). And then the depression will kick in hard.

New York magazine columnist Kurt Andersen, one of the few Beltway-Boston pundits who bashed Hillary Clinton a year ago, when her nomination appeared inevitable, was unstinting in his speculation of the fallout should Obama lose. He emailed me: “Even without post-November 4th rumors of rigged voting machines and the like, an Obama loss will be a deeply, traumatically depressing event for Democrats and other Obama enthusiasts. (Whereas if McCain loses, who will be seriously bummed outside of the McCain household?) There will be so many facets of potential unhappiness. That an eloquent, inspiring, intelligent, subtle black candidate lost—and if it’s close, it’ll be true that racism beat him… That the rest of the world will be reaffirmed in their belief that America is the land of nincompoops (or worse). That a war with Iran looks a lot likelier… That Sarah Palin won it for the Republicans, and gives a bad name to feminism and (terrifyingly) has a one-in-six (Russian roulette!) chance of becoming president before 2013.”

Tom Bevan, co-founder of Real Clear Politics, was succinct: “Two words: Hari Kari. The base of the [Democratic] party is so vested in its nominee…that to lose in November would be one of the most demoralizingin the modern era.”

Read the whole thing.

Peter Hannaford reports in the American Spectator.

Months had passed since we last talked with Ms. Henny-Penny, whose famous declaration—“the sky is falling!”—electrified the world. At the time, her barnyard colleagues quickly fell into line with her, save one, Chicken Little, who demurred. When last Ms. H-P and I talked, she scoffed at her former friend as a “denier.”

So, the other day I called her to see how she was doing as the recording secretary of what was now the Holy Order of the Sky is Falling, the Hon. Al Gore, pontiff.

“I’m fine,” she said, “but more importantly, Mr. Gore pontificated at a recent gathering in Washington and it was thrilling. He said we could switch all of the nation’s electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources within 10 years.” Does he have any experts to back up that assertion, I asked. “Oh yes,” she said. “Just the other day Nancy Pelosi at a news conference said the very same thing.”

“Hmm,” I replied. “Solar power now provides one-tenth of one percent of our electricity, with wind not much more. How do you propose to accomplish this feat?” “That’s easy,” she said, “Everyone will follow our motto: a windmill on every automobile and a solar panel on every roof.”

I reminded her that experts have estimated it would take about $100,000 to make the average house capable of getting 100 percent of its electricity from solar panels and that wind technology for automobiles was a gleam in her eye. How would she pay for all this?

“That’s not so hard as it sounds,” she said with a chuckle (or cluckle). Once President Obama is in office, Pontiff Gore will simply ask him to increase the windfall profits tax on oil production, the corporation taxes, the Social Security taxes and the income tax rates beyond what he’s already said he would do. As for wind-driven car, we’ll just ask Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to pass bills requiring it. American ingenuity will do the rest.”

Read the whole thing.

The Sun reported about the character of the cult:

Devil worshippers believe in putting themselves first and their core values include pride, indulgence, ambition and meeting sexual desires.

“How exactly would that make them different from our own liberals?” My wife wondered aloud, reading the story linked by Drudge.

The Hindustan Times says Rusty Shackleford and Aaron Weissburd did it.

They both say they didn’t, and also that they wouldn’t tell you if they did.

Rasmussen reports that 52% of voters polled think Sarah Palin is not ready to president.

But while 63% say John McCain is ready to be president, only 44% think Obama has the necessary experience. Do the math.

According to a former co-worker, in his Autobiography, Barack Obama seriously inflated the status of the company he worked for many years ago, and the scope of his responsibilities.

It’s a fairly trivial issue, of course. Most people remember this sort of life episode in a manner advantageous to their own egos. But it does remind us all of the necessity of taking Barack Obama’s testimony about his life and accomplishments with a grain of salt.

Steve Gilbert found all this published way back in 2005.

Like I said, I’m a fan. His famous keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention moved me to tears. The Democrats – not to mention America – need a mixed-race spokesperson who can connect to both urban blacks and rural whites, who has the credibility to challenge the status quo on issues ranging from misogynistic rap to unfair school funding.

And yet I’m disappointed. Barack’s story may be true, but many of the facts are not. His larger narrative purpose requires him to embellish his role. I don’t buy it. Just as I can’t be inspired by Steve Jobs now that I know how dishonest he is, I can’t listen uncritically to Barack Obama now that I know he’s willing to bend the facts to his purpose.

Once, when I applied for a marketing job at a big accounting firm, my then-supervisor called HR to say that I had exaggerated something on my resume. I didn’t agree, but I also didn’t get the job. But when Barack Obama invents facts in a book ranked No. 8 on the NY Times nonfiction list, it not only fails to be noticed but it helps elevate him into the national political pantheon.

Is there any sight more ridiculous than some aging baby boomer peddling away in his spandex outfit and insectoid helmet on a bicycle? Bicycles are alright for small boys to use on paper routes or to get to the park to play baseball, but their use as a fitness tool by aging hippies is unseemly and undignified and only results in inconvenience to motorists and unnecessary accidents.

Not even the bears in the Rocky Mountain West are safe these days.

Last Thursday, UPI reports:

A 57-year-old man in Missoula, Mont., says he is lucky to be alive after accidentally crashing his bicycle into the side of a wild bear.

Middle school teacher Jim Litz said while he is no stranger to seeing bears during his daily commute along an area dirt road, this week he didn’t’ have time to avoid one of the wild animals that had wandered into his way, The (Missoula, Mont.) Missoulian said Thursday.

“I didn’t have time to respond. I never even hit my brakes,” Litz said of Monday’s accident.

The teacher said after the impact flipped him off his bike, the bear began clawing at him apparently in confusion and anger. That attack left Litz with scratches and bruises along most of his body.

While Litz admits to being sore and a bit clawed up following the unexpected crash, he says he is lucky to have survived the incident and holds no ill will toward the animal.

“I was lucky. I was truly lucky, because I accosted the bear and he let me live,” he told the Missoulian. “I truly respect them. They’re beautiful creatures.”

That bear may be “a beautiful creature,” but a spindle-shanked, potbellied goofball in day-glo spandex certainly is not.
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Last June, there was another incident of the same kind in Colorado, as the Rocky Mountain News reports:

A cyclist in Boulder County was injured after a run-in, literally, with a bear.

Tim Egan, 53, was riding on Old Stage Road Tuesday afternoon when suddenly a bear appeared in front of him. Egan hit the bear and ended up skidding across the road.

“This bear looked at me with a look of terror on his face and sort of made a noise,” said Egan. “I looked at him with a look of terror and we went, ‘aaaahhhhh.’”

He cracked some ribs, suffered cuts on his head and had road rash. Egan said he and the bike flipped and flew over the bear, hitting the pavement hard.

The bear ran away after the accident when a deer appeared.

Egan’s nephew ran to help the injured cyclist.

“When I tell people, they say ‘Right, are you kidding me, who hits a bear?’”

Egan estimated he was going about 45 miles per hour at impact. He said the bear was about 6 feet tall and probably weighed 500 pounds.

When are these bears going to wise up? A fully-digested bicyclist is a safe bicyclist, I always say.
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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Donald Luskin, in yesterday’s Washington Post, points out that politicians and reporters have a personal interest in exaggerating the scope and dimensions of current economic woes.

Do a Google News search for “since the Great Depression,” and you come up with more than 4,500 examples of the phrase’s use in just the past month.

But that doesn’t make any of it true. Things today just aren’t that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression—or exaggerated Depression comparisons.

Overall, the pessimists are up against an insurmountable reality: In the last reported quarter, the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.3 percent, adjusted for inflation. That’s virtually the same as the 3.4 percent average growth rate since—yes—the Great Depression.

Why, then, does the public appear to agree with the media? A recent Zogby poll shows that 66 percent of likely voters believe that “the entire world is either now locked in a global economic recession or soon will be.” Actually, that’s a major clue to what started this thought-contagion about everything being the worst it has been “since the Great Depression”: Politics.

Patient zero in this epidemic is the Democratic candidate for president. As it would be for any challenger, it’s in his interest to portray the incumbent party’s economic performance in the grimmest possible terms. Barack Obama has frequently used the Depression exaggeration, including during a campaign speech in June, when he said that the “percentage of homes in foreclosure and late mortgage payments is the highest since the Great Depression.” At best, this statement is a good guess. To be really true, it would have to be heavily qualified with words such as “maybe” or “probably.” According to economist David C. Wheelock of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, who has studied the history of mortgage markets for the Fed, “there are no consistent data on foreclosure or delinquency going all the way back to the Depression.”

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) database, which allows rigorous apples-to-apples comparisons, only goes back to 1979. It shows that today’s delinquency rate is only a little higher than the level seen in 1985. As to the foreclosure rate, it was setting records for the day—the highest since the Great Depression, one supposes—in 1999, at the peak of the Clinton-era prosperity that Obama celebrated in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention late last month. I don’t recall hearing any Democratic politicians complaining back then.

Even if Obama is right that the foreclosure rate is the worst since the Great Depression, it’s spurious to evoke memories of that great national calamity when talking about today—it’s akin to equating a sore throat with stomach cancer. According to the MBA, 6.4 percent of mortgages are delinquent to some extent, and 2.75 percent are in foreclosure. During the Great Depression, according to Wheelock’s research, more than 50 percent of home loans were in default.

Moreover, MBA data show that today’s foreclosures are concentrated in that small fraction of U.S. homes financed by subprime mortgages. Such homes make up only 12 percent of all mortgages, yet account for 52 percent of foreclosures. This suggests that today’s mortgage difficulties are probably a side effect of the otherwise happy fact that, over the past several years, millions of Americans of modest means have come to own their own homes for the first time.

Read the whole thing.