Reason.tv presents the Bud Bowl of a new generation!

Two drinks, one field, and numerous mixtures of alcohol and caffeine that “cause” young people to engage in risky behavior.

It’s The Battle of the Binge: Buzz Bowl I

Who will come out on top? Four Loko? Joose? Or will it be Senator Schumer (D-NY) and the FDA?

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Old school.

OBAMA:  Serendipity.   Egypt couldn’t have blown up at a better time.  Judge Vinson’s ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act got just a paragraph on A18.

ROBERT GIBBS:  Damn the Times!  It was supposed to be two sentences on B37.  Well, the distraction won’t last forever, sir.  It’ll be big news when the courts finally kill the PPACA. We need to deflect responsibility for the fiasco from you.

OBAMA:  Agreed.  Bob, at your next briefing, blast Republicans for goading me into signing the bill before I was able to study it.  Consigliere?

BILL DALEY:  Won’t do, sir.  Let’s get ahead of the wave.  Order Holder to join Virginia in seeking an expedited review of the health-care overhaul before the Supremes.  We take our medicine, lose 5-4, and walk away.

JOE BIDEN: Bad idea. We’d still be twisting in the wind for months. I say, throw your weight behind immediate Congressional repeal, Boss.  Cauterize the wound.  Start over fresh.

VALERIE JARRETT:  But . . . without the House, we can’t pass legislation covering the 145 million uninsured Americans and proto-citizens with preexisting conditions.

BIDEN:  Who’s sayin’ we wanna actually pass another bill?  The whole shebang blew up in our faces only after the Big Guy signed the original into law.

OBAMA:  Hmm.  So, when the act’s repealed, Democrats initiate another health-care debate and fight the good fight with no hope of a second devastating success in a divided Congress.  Stalemate.

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The January employment report was a complete snow job. Abominable winter blizzards across the country caused 886,000 workers to report “not at work due to bad weather,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is 600,000 more than the normal 300,000 not at work for the average January of the past decade.

So the bad weather has distorted the numbers. The actual 36,000 increase in nonfarm payrolls and the 50,000 gain in private payrolls really don’t have a snowball’s chance at being accurate. The 1 million people in January who wanted a job but didn’t look for one because of “other” reasons hints again at the bad-weather distortion. So does the 4.9 million jump in the part-time workforce.

As for the 9 percent unemployment rate, it’s not likely to last as more people are recorded reentering the labor force in the months ahead. The household employment survey (on which the unemployment rate is based) increased 117,000 in January, following a near 300,000 gain in December.

On the plus side (if anything can be believed in these numbers), average hourly earnings increased by four-tenths of 1 percent — a much bigger gain than in recent months. Over the past year, wages are rising 1.9 percent.

But here’s a key point: Manufacturing jobs in January rose by nearly 50,000. That’s consistent with the blowout ISM manufacturing report for January published a few days ago. Manufacturing has been the biggest surprise in the recovery. Additionally, the ISM non-manufacturing services report was also gangbusters for January.

These reports are more accurate and more significant than today’s jobs calculation. And if you piece them together with record-breaking profits, which are the mother’s milk for stocks, business, and the whole economy, it’s hard not to conclude that the pace of recovery is actually picking up steam — despite the lackluster jobs performance.

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Former American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker made teachers’ unions what they are today.  He was hard-nosed defender of teachers’ rights, but he also came clean about public school performance.

In the making of “Kids Aren’t Cars,” I unearthed a 25-year old PBS interview with Shanker. His indictment of the public education system was stunning.

“You could do things that are absolutely wrong, you can have huge dropout rates, you can have kids who are leaving without knowing how to read, write, count or anything else and what do you do next year?  Do the same as you did this year and the following year and the following year…”

And when Shanker – again, 25 years ago – rattled off achievement statistics, the host challenged him:

Shanker: When it comes to the highest levels of reading, writing, mathematics or science – that just means being able to read editorials in the New York Times…or write an essay of a few pages…or do a mathematical equation, not calculus…the number of kids who are about to graduate who are able to function at that level, depending on whether you’re talking about reading, writing, math science – 3 percent, 4 percent…

Host: Oh, come on!

Shanker: No! 5 percent. That’s it.

Does anyone honestly believe our education system – which has had billions of dollars more each year dumped into – is better now than it was in 1986?

Anyone??

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Sometimes it’s the questions you don’t ask that are telling. Case in point: the New York Times account of our event with Governor Palin last night.

Young America’s Foundation hosted Governor Sarah Palin for the keynote address at the opening banquet of our Reagan 100 weekend. This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Celebrations are taking place across the country, but this is a particularly significant weekend for our organization—since the spring of 1998 we’ve been preserving Ronald Reagan’s beloved Ranch home in the mountains north of Santa Barbara, Rancho del Cielo. Today Ronald Reagan’s Western White House is a place where young people come to be inspired by the life, the ideas, the character of Ronald Reagan.

Photo credit: (c) Jensen Sutta

And Governor Palin visited the Ranch for exactly the same reason.

The Governor gave a powerful speech at our banquet last night, before an enthusiastic overflow audience. She eloquently and gracefully paid tribute to one of the most significant speeches in American history, Ronald Reagan’s “Time for Choosing” address—while at the same time outlining a vision for America that builds upon President Reagan’s.

The speech was universally well received by our audience of all ages. But the New York Times chose to focus on some of the logistics of the event in their account:

Presidential contenders, regardless of their celebrity, are put through a gauntlet of rituals that require a delicate air of patience as they deal with their admirers. Prospective candidates, particularly if they are courting supporters, routinely sit through dinners and mingle with guests. But in her case, Ms. Palin entered the room only for her speech and left immediately after.

The appearance here was marked by tight security and rigid rules, with guests admonished to stay in their seats when she arrived. (“We’d all like to jump up and give her a high-five, but please stay at your tables,” Kate Obenshain, vice president of the foundation, announced from the dais. “There will be no book signings or autographs.”)

Governor Palin has a remarkable effect on people. For many conservatives, she’s a rock star. When the Governor walks into a room, normally even-keeled and good-natured people tend to forget their surroundings and rush towards her—to give her hug, to tell her how grateful they are for her courage, to tell her specifically how she has touched their lives. Event planning requires adherence to a basic schedule. At a minimum, you have to make it possible for your speaker to take the stage, in the “friendly confines” of tightly-packed and small room. Not an easy task with a superstar like Sarah Palin but our team sought to make the event run smoothly. (more…)

Once again, the World is witness to the revolutionary aspirations of a people long suppressed. Today it is Egypt. Yesterday it was Tunisia and decades before that Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Iran.  The Russians endured their own revolution in the early 1900’s and the French in the 1800’s.  We had our own in the century before and there have been others in between.

So what will become of Egypt?   Will true democratic reform follow? Or will their aspirations be hijacked in an exchange of rulers more interested in their power than others freedom?  While the courses of revolutions are rather unpredictable, the answer likely lies with the nature of Egyptian society.

Some transitions, whether catalyzed by an internal revolution or outside regime change, succeed and are witness to an enlightened new rule; others fail and either relapse into prior existences or merely exchange one set of rulers for what the French philosopher Voltaire would say were others, only less refined.

Another 18^th Century French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was more stark when he wrote that

“People accustomed to masters will not let mastery cease … Mistaking liberty for unchained license, they are delivered by their revolutions into the hands of seducers who will only aggravate their chains …”

So why do some transitions succeed where others fail?  The answer lies in the political and economic maturity of those who would rule and the disbursement of economic power. The French Revolution, which began the year after Rousseau’s death, featured great economic disparity between the rulings classes and an underclass that mistook their inspired but sudden liberty for unchained license.   Unaccustomed to governing and with a limited commercial underpinning, the property they destroyed was not their own.

In the end, the divergence between their aspiration to govern and their ability to govern left them vulnerable to seducers.  The chaos, which included the Reign of Terror and the deaths of thousands at the hands of “reformers,” was finally quelled by the order of another master in the form of Napoleon – thereby fulfilling Rousseau’s warning.  The Russian Revolution followed a not dissimilar pattern and featured a similar, scarce middle/commercial class for whom self-governance was a stranger.

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I was in Navy bootcamp in Orlando, about 3 weeks in, when we got the news. We were on the tarmac doing drills. And the Senior Chief came by and said “guys, let’s stop. I have something to tell you all…. the President has been shot.” We gathered around in a circle and held hands, brawly male recruits all holding hands. And we prayed for the President, with our Senior Chief leading the prayer.

I was a Libertarian all the way back in 1980. But I never liked the Libertarian Party’s non-interventionist stance. I was always pro-defense. Reagan meant pro-military, pro-strength and anti-communism to me.

I joined the military as a direct result of Carter’s weakness in the face of Islamo-Fascism with the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979.

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100 years ago today, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born.

Yesterday at the National Press Club, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a lengthy sermon justifying his grand strategy for the US economic recovery.  In his discourse, the Chairman made it abundantly clear that, in his view, it was unfair to label Fed monetary policy as the cause of global increases in commodities prices, an issue some market pundits have speculated as of late.

Attacks on the Fed have been quite peculiar–some have even gone so far as to suggest US monetary policy played a role in the government collapse of Egypt.   Three decades of oppression would seem a more likely explanation.  But Bernanke’s statement was also peculiar:

It’s entirely unfair to attribute excess demand issues in emerging markets to US monetary policy.

“Entirely unfair?”  One would expect the Chairman to say to his critics that it is ‘entirely inaccurate’ or ‘misleading’.  But it does not seem entirely unfair to, at a minimum, examine a linkage between record high commodity prices and the Fed’s controversial, and highly unconventional, monetary policy.  This early in the game, it simply cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor.  Then again, that is the very problem- it’s too early in the game.

To provide a sensible explanation for his critics, Bernanke puts in plain words how the role of supply and demand accounts for price increases:

On the inflation front, we have recently seen significant increases in some highly visible prices, notably for gasoline. Indeed, prices of many commodities have risen lately, largely as a result of the very strong demand from fast-growing emerging market economies, coupled, in some cases, with constraints on supply.

During the question and answer period, Bernanke was keener on separating the Fed’s liability:

There’s a lot going on there …When you talk about food prices… you talk about supply and demand …The fed monetary policy is aimed at the US economy….We are using policy to address stability in the United States.

Let us use the crisis in Egypt as a way of applying his methodology.  While under political turmoil, Egypt is also the world’s largest importer of wheat.   Yesterday wheat prices surged on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange to levels past $10 a bushel, as demand in Egypt is likely to increase partly based on the following speculation: political disorder will interrupt routine commercial activity, thus more wheat will be needed to supply Egyptian natives.

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While the world focuses its attention on the revolt against the dictator in Egypt, we’ve got an American president exhibiting his own dictatorial tendencies.

Over the past week, Obama’s signature “achievement,” the monstrous ObamaCare, was ruled unconstitutional by a second federal judge. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson stated that his declaratory judgment that the entire law be voided was a de facto injunction. In other words, without an administration request for a stay, Judge Vinson’s ruling stands. The federal and state governments should thus cease and desist. The current status of ObamaCare is that it’s been declared unconstitutional and all implementation must stop.

Obama’s reaction? “What? Did someone say something?”

As The Wall Street Journal reported this week, “The Obama administration said it has no plans to halt implementation of the law.” A senior administration official said, “We will continue to operate as we have previously.”

In other words: Up yours, judicial branch!

In another stunning example of the executive running roughshod over the judiciary, another federal judge, Martin Feldman in New Orleans, ruled this week that the Obama administration was in contempt for blowing off his ruling lifting the deepwater drilling moratorium. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, Obama halted offshore drilling. Feldman struck down the moratorium. Obama’s Interior Department went ahead with another moratorium, which was rescinded in October, but replaced with onerous new drilling safety rules. Feldman struck those down as well.

This week, the judge found that the Interior Department acted with “determined disregard” for his ruling when it deliberately reinstituted policies that restricted offshore drilling. “Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in the ruling. “Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt,” Feldman said.

“The government’s contempt.” Wow.

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Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s legacy and a legal miscalculation by leftist environmentalists, this week a California judge stopped the implementation of California’s Cap and Trade law: better known as Cap and Tax. This is the same type of carbon trading that Al Gore has hawked for years, but failed to get through the most radical Democrat Congress in generations. That’s how bad it was. Of course, that didn’t stop whacked out California from passing a Draconian version of the same job killing scheme.

To add insult to injury, the so called “republican” Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law in 2006. It was opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and most sane taxpayers (admittedly, CA doesn’t have enough of those). The opponents claimed that the law would drive out business to other states and dramatically increase the cost of energy. Energy costs would, of course, be passed on, driving up the cost of everything else-in the midst of the nation’s worst recession.

The voters of California even had an opportunity last year to put the brakes on it at the ballot box with Proposition 23, but the environmental left spent millions fighting the proposition. It wouldn’t even have scrapped the whole law, but only would have suspended the Cap and Tax until state unemployment dropped below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters. The proposition was defeated overwhelmingly. Considering our unemployment rate is well over 12% here, the California voters essentially supported assisted economic-suicide of their own state.

It took two forces working together to finally defeat Cap and Tax: a group of radical Lefties and Ronald Reagan to put the brakes on this law.

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As evidenced by two recent reports, a chasm exists between the ways state government officials nationwide view federal control of education and health care:

On Feb. 2, the Heritage Foundation published an article in which they highlighted the fact that the majority of states (see graphic at right) have succumbed to pressure to adopt national academic standards; and

Two days earlier, a federal judge sided with attorneys general representing 26 states who had filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., “ObamaCare”).

According to a Wall Street Journal article published today, several polls show the majority of Americans believe ObamaCare should be repealed. That sentiment, I believe, stems from the widely-held belief that a person’s doctor is better equipped to make health care-related decisions than some federal government bureaucrat.

Without feeling the need to locate poll results to back it up my contention, I think most parents of school-age children in this country would agree that people closest to their children are better equipped to meet their education needs than some distant, unelected Department of Education bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.

In his Jan. 31 ruling on ObamaCare, which I wrote about here, Judge Roger Vinson wrote, “…this case is not about whether the Act is wise or unwise legislation. It is about the Constitutional role of the federal government.”

Conversely, Heritage outlines the unconstitutional pitfalls associated with federal control of education in the video, “The Dangers of National Standards in Education.” The video includes interviews with Governors Rick Perry (R-Texas) and Nikki Haley (R-S.C.), Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), Missouri education activist Gretchen Logue and others who spoke to Heritage about the dangerous consequences of Race to the Top-style programs.

In short, we must restore federalism (i.e., allowing states to set education standards and determine how funds are spent) to our system of public education.

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We, like many others, hoped for more from the State of the Union Address.  We thought that, just maybe, President Obama might lead for a change, and signal a Clintonian tack to the center, with a strong pro-growth message and a pledge that the White House was ready to work with the Congress on top-to-bottom entitlement reform.  He simply didn’t. In fact, he largely gutted his own Debt and Deficit Reduction Commission’s recommendations.

Last week’s essay anticipated that this might be the case by noting that the President had only “talked-the-talk” on deficit spending and debt reduction but had not yet “walked-the-walk”.  The State of the Union address made it clear that he has barely taken the first step on what will be a very long walk.

We received many emails and comments regarding last week’s essay, “The End of the Era of Tax, Overspend, Then Borrow The Difference.”  Some lamented that political rhetoric about reducing spending is just that… rhetoric. One commenter chided the new Congress (and, perhaps, us too) writing:

“We do need draconian cuts in all areas of spending. Let’s start with Defense. Correct me if I missed something but so far, the new congress has done little but mouth platitudes and the same general babble about “big guvmnt” without offering one specific. I watched Eric Cantor from Virginia on meet the press and he was an embarrassment in his responses when asked to offer some concrete proposals. He kept repeating that “everything is on the table” yet refused to be pinned down as to what the remedies for our fiscal bad health might be. 
 O.K. the Republicans have the chance. Tell the President what they think we need to do. We are all listening.”

While we do not take issue with Representative Cantor’s comment that “everything is on the table,” we strongly agree with the commenter that the time for generalities is over and that the time to get down to specifics is now upon us. Time will, soon enough, tell whether “platitudes and general babble” will be the currency of the new Congress.  But let’s not, as the commenter suggests, start our cutting with Defense (we’ll get there soon enough). Let’s start cutting with the “A’s” (Administration for Children and Families is the first alphabetically itemized agency) and then work our way through the rest of the alphabet. Let’s go all the way through the W’s (“Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars – the last funded program in the alphabetical listing of federal agencies and departments).

All in all, we count about 750 agencies and departments, and when we consider the various offices and programs within these agencies that feed at the public trough, the list of funded entities runs into the thousands.  So, as Representative Cantor said, let’s put everything on the table.

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Tomorrow is the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan. In several months, we’ll be embroiled in the 2012 Presidential Campaign. We’re sorry, but there isn’t one possible GOP candidate who excites us. Worse, most depress us. Obama may win my default.

The Egyptian government may have blocked Egyptians’ access to the Internet, but it couldn’t block the Internet itself. Thanks to the likes of John Scott-Railton, voices of countless Egyptian protesters continue to wend through the web.

Once the government imposed muzzling began, the 27-year-old UCLA graduate student reached out to friends in Egypt by telephone, gathered updates, and posted them to his Twitter account @Jan25voices, named after the day the protests began.

Nearly 700 tweets later, Scott-Railton (who up until last week was a Twitter newbie) soon found himself in the midst of the Middle East revolt. In one week he has attracted 6,700 followers and counting and his audio clips of Egyptian voices have been played more than 3.5 million times.

Reason.tv caught up with Scott-Railton at his UCLA office.
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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the legacy of President Ronald Reagan in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Revelry for Ronald Reagan on Eve of Centennial
Mr. Reagan Goes to Washington
Ronald Reagan’s Most Memorable Moments
GE: Celebrating the Ronald Reagan Centennial
Back to the Future: Ronald Reagan
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