Who is John Galt?

unemployment steady - steadily climbing, that is

Despite claims that unemployment is holding steady, seasonally adjusted "U6" unemployment, which includes "discouraged" workers, has risen from 16.5% to 16.8%.  Last month's raw (unadjusted) U6 was in fact a record high.  Since the adjustments change, I'm still looking for the raw figure from this latest report.

Actual unemployment is not getting better -- chronically unemployed people are just falling off the chart.

paying people to not work

As government prepares to subsidize unemployment past 99 weeks, joblessness soars.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

mccotter: boycott the summit

Found via BigGovernment.com, on RedState.  Thaddeus McCotter explains the "trap" of Obama's healthcare summit:

The summit’s goal is to persuade the public that the Republican minority is “forcing” the Democrats’ heavy-handed tactics to foist this abominable bill upon Americans.

clever

Hat tip to Donald Luskin.

ultimatum and compromise

Democrats are threatening to use reconciliation to amend and pass healthcare reform if Republicans do not play ball at the upcoming "bipartisan summit."  I will explain why this is a bluff.

Quite simply, any inputs from Republicans will be seen by Dems as "worsening" the bill.  Democrats don't actually want anything Republicans might add to the legislation.

This leaves the Democrats with two choices: Pass the existing legislation using reconciliation, or pass even worse legislation that may ultimately require reconciliation as well.  Given those two options, why would Democrats work with Republicans?

The answer is: Because the bill doesn't have enough Democrat votes to pass via reconciliation.  If it did, they would have already passed it.  By introducing Republican ideas, Dems hope to either hope to win some Republican votes, or to convince some Democrat holdouts that only reconciliation will pass the bill.

Without Republicans, reconciliation is just too high a hurdle for the House.  The original House bill, in November, was passed with 220 votes -- all the liberals, around 15 "Blue Dogs," and one Republican.  Over 35 Blue Dogs voted against it.  Since then, Murtha and Wexler are gone, and Cao (the Republican) is unlikely to vote for it again.

Meanwhile, the bill has gotten significantly more unpopular, abortion restrictions have been gutted, and the tax provisions have changed.  Furthermore, Republicans are climbing on the generic ballot and Scott Brown has taken Ted Kennedy's bluest seat in the Senate.

With a sense in red and purple states that Democrats are trying to ram their healthcare reform through, Pelosi probably does not have all of her original Blue Dogs.  Getting back to 218 votes is already an uphill battle.  She probably can't get 218 votes in favor of the bill, and she certainly doesn't have that many now.

Besides, if the Dems could pass it without making Republican concessions, they would.  Democrats don't have the votes in the House for reconciliation, and I think Republicans recognize this.

exactly what they should do

This is exactly how I'd hoped Republicans would deal with Obama's "invitation" to discuss healthcare before the cameras.  John Boehner makes public the House minority's written response.

Since then, the President has given dozens of speeches on health care reform, operating under the premise that the more the American people learn about his plan, the more they will come to like it.  Just the opposite has occurred: a majority of Americans oppose the House and Senate health care bills and want them scrapped so we can start over with a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses.

The letter then lists a series of questions probing the sincerity of the president's offer.

It's a good political response to a clearly political move.  I wonder if the White House will even reply.

"seasonally adjusted unemployment"

"Real" (U6) unemployment is at a record 18%.  Today's supposedly lower figure, 16.5%, relies on a seasonal adjustment.

Accepting the "seasonal adjustment" is another way of saying record 18% unemployment is less bad than it seems because unemployment's always higher in January.

But if unemployment was always this high at this time of year, then 18% wouldn't be a record, would it?

watch the premise

Obama could have repeated it a dozen times, and I wouldn't have noticed it -- and I do pay attention to premises.  But this one was, well, such a given that we've all stopped noticing it.  Well, all of us except Rush Limbaugh, anyway:

We've gotta make sure that our party understands that, like it or not, we have to have a financial system that is healthy and functioning.
 --Barack Obama

"Like it or not."  As in: We have a leading political party -- a majority party -- that resents a healthy, functioning financial system.

And of course they have no problem with this.  Hell, look who had to notice it first on our side!

Democrats will say some pretty surprising things if you can get them to tell you what they're really thinking.

I *am* an ideologue

Addressing Congressional Republicans, Obama said that he is not an ideologue.

In politics, ideology is about advancing specific solutions.  And an ideologue is someone who's more interested in his solution than in solving the problem itself.  An ideologue likes his solution even if it makes a problem worse.  What you call a problem, to an ideologue, is just an excuse to implement his solution.  Conversely, what troubles ideologues most is good reasons not to use their solutions.

Think of healthcare.  What liberals want is universal healthcare, and their biggest selling point is 47 million uninsured people.  If they truly wanted to solve this -- if they wanted to help those 47 million -- they'd pass the policies that the most politicians could agree on.

But if the 47 million uninsured are just an excuse for passing universal healthcare, then Democrats will do something else -- two other things, actually.  First, whatever they pass must constitute or facilitate universal healthcare, whether it's "the public option," a trigger, or an individual mandate.  The individual mandate is fine if it doesn't cover all 47 million, because after all it's the mandate, and not the uninsured, which Democrats serve.

And second, whatever Democrats pass that is not universal healthcare -- whatever it is, it must not reduce the 47 million.  To universal healthcare ideologues, those 47 million are not a problem: They are leverage for their particular solution -- hostages, really.  No changes can be permitted that will lessen that number, or reduce that leverage.  Except for universal healthcare, what liberals want is more millions of uninsureds for whom they can demand universal healthcare.  Make no mistake about it: Liberals are perpetuating their healthcare "crisis."

There would be no greater wound to the universal healthcare movement than passing a bill without universal healthcare that actually put a dent in the uninsured.  No such legislation will ever receive the votes of liberals, and in recent years several such Republican ideas have been rejected by libs.  Simple solutions -- like insurance portability, so you don't have to rely on your employer for healthcare.  Or guaranteeing the sale of health insurance across state lines like other products.

I too am an ideologue.  I don't want government "solving" anything because I am beholden to a specific solution -- liberty.  Not just markets, but free markets.

But what about government, and its duty to provide solutions?  Well, constitutionally, what the government's supposed to be protecting -- from the very first sentence -- is "the Blessings of Liberty."  In capital letters.

Those Blessings of Liberty -- think of them as golden eggs.  One of them is the solution to healthcare, and the Constitution tells us to look to those golden eggs for all of our solutions.

Think of liberals -- and Barack Obama -- as ideologues with an axe in one hand, and the neck of the goose in the other.

arrogance

Interviewing with ABC News's Diane Sawyer, Barack Obama said,

I would rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.

My first thought was to question the premise:  What's Obama trying to do that's "really good"?  Why does it sound like the better Obama does, the less likely he is to get re-elected?  Somewhere in all this is the implication that whatever Obama's trying to do, voters aren't going to like it.

I've always thought the majority of voters on both sides want the same things.  Jobs, opportunity, prosperity.  Security, justice.  To me, the difference has always come down to a disagreement over policy:  Liberals believe policies like the minimum wage reduce poverty, while conservatives believe such policies cost jobs. 

On most any matter, liberals and conservatives could argue over whether a given policy would create the proper incentives to reach a common goal.  Both sides both want prosperity and an employed, well-paid workforce, we just disagree over how to achieve them.  But it's the policy and the incentives that divide us -- not the goal.

With that in mind, Obama should be insisting that his policies will solve any number of social injustices that we all want solved, with the disagreement centered on what those policies will really accomplish.  He should be pleading with us to pass his policies, reasoning that we will like the results when we finally see them.

But what Obama's telling Sawyer is that we're not going to like the results.  We're no longer unified in a desire for prosperity and an employed, well-paid workforce -- benchmarks that would get any president re-elected.  Obama wants something else.

We no longer disagree about whether Obama's best policies will get him tossed out by a miserable electorate -- he's just implied that they will.  Obama agrees that we're not going to like the results.  Is that the kind of change you were hoping for?  Because I believe it's exactly the sort of agenda Limbaugh would like to see fail.

Last night, from the Associated Press:

In a remark underscoring the political sensitivities Democrats have about their two top issues, Rangel said, "The major things we're talking about now are, one, don't let health care even look like it's not on the front burner. And don't forget that the priority of people in their districts is jobs."

These are not Democrats' two top issues.  One is the politicians' top issue, and the other is the people's top issue.  In fact, they are conflicting priorities.  The healthcare situation is made worse by unemployment, and the Dems' idea of healthcare "reform" is a jobs killer.  As is Cap and Trade.

At this point, I'm confident the electorate understands that what the Democrats want is not what Americans want.  I just wonder if they've figured it out in time.

And I'm pretty sure of one other thing: It will be a long, long time before we see such a big Democrat majority in Congress again.