What's next, of course, is your house, your car, and any other form of energy use that can be portrayed as "excessive." The full reach of these regulations is contained in the denial given by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in her confirmation hearings: it will affect "cows, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Huts, your lawnmower, and baby bottles," i.e., everything.
What's worse is that these regulations will be foisted upon us, not by Congress nor even by the executive branch, but through lawsuits filed by environmentalist zealots. Congress, the EPA, and the courts have created the precedent and pseudo-legal structure that will enable these activists to push the global warming hysteria to its logical conclusion: ecological totalitarianism.
"EPA Nominee Suggests New CO2 Rules May Expose Small Emitters," Ian Talley, Wall Street Journal, May 6
New federal greenhouse gas emission regulation could expose a raft of smaller emitters to litigation, a nominee for a key post in the Environmental Protection Agency told lawmakers Thursday.The potential for smaller emitters to be regulated under the Clean Air Act is one reason why business groups warn that EPA regulation of greenhouse gases could create a cascade of legal and regulatory challenges across a much broader array of sectors. The Obama administration has said that isn't their intent.
Regina McCarthy, nominated to be EPA's Director of Air and Radiation, told lawmakers that even while the government has flexibility in setting the threshold of emitting facilities to be regulated, she acknowledges the risk of lawsuits to challenge those levels for smaller emitters. Ms. McCarthy's office is responsible for drafting federal emission rules….
Many legal experts say that based on clear Clean Air Act statutes,…regulations could be applied to any facility that emits more than 100-250 tons a year, including hospitals, schools, and farms. Taken in aggregate, farm animals are major greenhouse gas sources because of methane and nitrous oxide emissions from flatulence, belching, and manure. Buildings often emit greenhouse gases from internal heating or cooling units.
"It is a myth…EPA will regulate cows, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Huts, your lawnmower and baby bottles," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said earlier this year, dismissing concerns raised by groups such as the Chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers.
But in responses to a senator's questioning, Ms. McCarthy acknowledged that legal suits could be brought against small emitters….
Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, says her group is prepared to sue for regulation of smaller emitters if the EPA stops at simply large emitters.
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2. The Obama Onslaught: Cutting Off the "Private Option"
The great danger of Obama's first year in office is that the left is moving forward on so many fronts that we will be hard pressed to fight and win every battle—and losing even one of them means losing an enormous amount of our liberty.
Thus, while we are trying to fight off total control of the economy in the name of environmentalism, the Democrats are also attempting to make us dependent on the state in another crucial area of human life: medical care.
The Wall Street Journal editorial below describes the means by which government-controlled medicine is about to be forced upon us. Democrats have proposed a "public option," which allows individuals who meet certain criteria to "choose" government-provided, government-subsidized health insurance.
But as the Journal points out, once this "option" is established, it will expand until it crowds out private insurance, cutting off any "private option"—and making us all dependent on the state.
So here is the future proposed by President Obama: when you get a job, you will be pressured to join a labor union backed by the government; if you want to take a mortgage to buy a house, you will borrow from a bank backed and controlled by the government; you will send your kids to a public school and finance their college education with student loans provided by the government; and when you get sick, you will rely on government funding and be treated at government-funded, government controlled facilities.
Comprehensively, in one aspect of life after another, government is taking over and the "private option" is being eliminated.
"Republicans and the 'Public Option'," Wall Street Journal, May 11
This new entitlement—like Medicare but open to all ages and all incomes—would quickly crowd out private insurance as people gravitated to heavily subsidized policies, eventually leading to a single-payer system. So Democrats are trying to seduce diffident Republicans with a Potemkin compromise. A "soft" public option would limit enrollment only to the uninsured or those employed by small businesses, or include promises that the plan will pay market rates….The truth is Democrats know that any policy guardrails built this year can be dismantled once the basic public option architecture is in place. The White House strategy is to dilute it just enough to win over credulous Republicans. That is what has always happened with government health programs.
When Medicare was created in 1965, benefits were relatively limited and retirees paid a substantial percentage of the costs of their own care. But the clout of retirees has always led to expanding benefits for seniors while raising taxes on younger workers….
Any new federal health plan will inevitably follow the same trajectory, no matter how much Republican Senators might claim they've guaranteed otherwise. The Lewin Group consultants estimate that 119 million people who now have private insurance could potentially be captured by the government under the Obama public option. This is on top of the 90 million already in Medicare or Medicaid. This would guarantee a spending explosion that would over time lift federal outlays as a share of GDP into the upper 20% range or higher. Republicans would spend the rest of their days deciding whether to vote for tax increases to finance this, or stand accused of denying health care to the middle class….
This health-care debate isn't like the "stimulus" bill, which was largely about short-term spending and deficits. This one is about whether to turn 17% of the U.S. economy entirely and permanently into the arms of the government. For Republicans, this is about whether they still stand for anything at all.
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3. The Obama Onslaught: The Antitrust Culture of Corruption
I recently saw an article—sorry, I haven't been able to track down the link yet—arguing that the precedent for the Chrysler deal, with its looting of private bondholders, was set late in the previous administration, when Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson orchestrated the mergers and buyouts of failing financial firms at prices that wiped out the value that might have been recouped by shareholders and bondholders.
I won't argue against that. Under President Bush, Paulson unleashed the lawless government that the Obama administration has gleefully taken over for its own purposes. But the Obama administration has taken it further, and here is one area in which that change in stark and unambiguous: antitrust.
As the report linked to below points out, the Bush administration essentially let antitrust laws wither on the vine, refusing to initiate any major new prosecutions and issuing relatively restrictive guidelines regarding the government's position on antitrust lawsuits initiated by envious competitors.
The Obama administration is now explicitly disavowing and reversing that policy, declaring the trustbusters back in business and actively encouraging businesses to call in the government to kneecap their more successful competitors. A war on business success—that's just what we need in the middle of a recession.
But this is totally consistent with the Obama economic policy, because antitrust is an excellent means for giving the president a broad and arbitrary authority to intervene in the economy on behalf of politically favored groups and against politically unfavored groups. And that—a culture of favoritism and political corruption—is the Obama style.
For example, David Frum draws our attention to another story about Obama's intervention on behalf of his administration's most-favored group, the unions.
The state of California faces a desperate fiscal situation. California now has the worst credit rating of any American state. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic majority legislature have struggled to balance the books, as they are constitutionally obliged to do. They have raised taxes dramatically, but they have also cut some programs. Among the cuts: a $2-an-hour cut in the wages of home health-care workers.Those workers were unionized, and their union—the Service Employees International Union—carries clout in Obama's Washington. On Thursday, California state officials told the Los Angeles Times that they had received a warning: the federal government would deny California $6.8 billion in stimulus funds unless the wage cut was rescinded. Since the wage cut will save only about $74 million, the state will have little choice but to surrender.
Frum summarizes the message, which is being sent both to the states and to private employers: "no pay cuts for unionized workers will be tolerated by Obama's Washington."
And what kind of person will be doling out these favors? In the process of gathering facts about the Chrysler deal, I came across this tidbit about the previous career of Obama's "car czar" Steven Rattner—the man accused of issuing government threats against Chrysler's creditors.
It seems that Rattner's most recent private business venture was as part of an investment group that bought out three magazines oriented to young men, Maxim, Blender, and Stuff. The group has since closed two of the magazines and defaulted on its debts after profits from the magazines collapsed under the new management.
Alpha Media was formed when Quadrangle Media, headed by Steven Rattner and Peter Ezersky, bought Maxim, Blender, and Stuff from Felix Dennis in August 2007 for about $245 million.Kent Brownridge, the former No. 2 executive at Wenner Media, was brought into Quadrangle as the new CEO and immediately shut down Stuff, ousted many of the longtime editors and publishers, and restaffed with his own people.
But things did not go according to plan. By the fall of 2008, Quadrangle had defaulted on loans when the company's profit dropped from $28 million in 2007 to under $8 million last year.
And here's the kicker:
In the midst of all this, Rattner abruptly resigned from Quadrangle, where its media holdings were winding down, to serve as a special adviser on the auto industry to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, heading a task force guiding the White House on how to restructure the US auto industry.
This sounds like something straight out of an Ayn Rand novel. (See Mouch, Wesley.)
Now imagine what power will be given to this type of person by the vague and unpredictable antitrust laws, which will allow administration officials to decide at whim which businesses have engaged in "fair" competition and are protected, and which have engaged in "unfair" competition and must be fined or dismembered.
"Administration Plans to Strengthen Antitrust Rules," Stephen Labaton, New York Times, May 11
President Obama's top antitrust official this week plans to restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share.The new enforcement policy would reverse the Bush administration's approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It would restore a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s.
The head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, Christine A. Varney, is…expected to say that the administration rejects the impulse to go easy on antitrust enforcement during weak economic times. She will assert instead that severe recessions can provide dangerous incentives for large and dominating companies to engage in predatory behavior that harms consumers and weakens competition. The announcement is aimed at making sure that no court or party to a lawsuit can cite the Bush administration policy as the government's official view in any pending cases.
In the speeches, Ms. Varney is expected to explicitly warn judges and litigants in antitrust lawsuits not involving the government to ignore the Bush administration's policies, which were formally outlined in a report by the Justice Department last year. The report applied legal standards that made it difficult to bring new cases involving monopoly and predatory practices.
As a result of the Bush administration's interpretation of antitrust laws, the enforcement pipeline for major monopoly cases—which can take years for prosecutors to develop—is thin. During the Bush administration, the Justice Department did not file a single case against a dominant firm for violating the antimonopoly law.
Many smaller companies complaining of abusive practices by their larger rivals were so frustrated by the Bush administration's antitrust policy that they went to the European Commission and to Asian authorities….
While Ms. Varney is not expected to mention any specific companies or industries vulnerable under the new policy, those who have talked to her about the speech say she is aiming at agriculture, energy, health care, technology and telecommunications companies. She may also be reviewing the conduct of some in the financial services industry, which is now undergoing a wave of consolidation as a result of the financial crisis.
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4. Modern Art and Statism
The only goods news about the current lurch toward statism is that it will encourage the rise of a few new advocates of liberty and free markets—and it will bring out the best in many established commentators. I thought the column below by George Will was particularly interesting and creative, particularly for its apt comparison between the insolent nonsense of modern art and the insolent nonsense of statist economics.
"Upside-Down Economy," George Will, Washington Post via RealClearPolitics, May 10
From Oct. 18 to Dec. 3, 1961, 116,000 people visited New York's Museum of Modern Art before anyone noticed that Henri Matisse's painting "Le Bateau" had been hung upside down. Modernity is supposed to "transgress" standards of the traditional, which is why Paul Hindemith, while rehearsing one of his dissonant orchestral compositions, said to the musicians, "No, no gentlemen—even though it sounds wrong, it's still not right."Proponents of today's world-turned-upside-down economic policies say the policies might seem wrong but really are boldly modern in their rejection of markets in favor of pervasive government intervention in economic life. Hence New York, which until eight months ago was the financial capital of the world, is no longer even the financial capital of the United States. Washington is….
Bremmer says, correctly, that state capitalism "has introduced massive inefficiencies into global markets and injected populist politics into economic decision-making," that "deeper state intervention in an economy means that bureaucratic waste, inefficiency and corruption are more likely to hold back growth," and that politicians tend to develop stimulus packages with their constituencies, not economic efficiencies, in mind. Therefore, he says, the state must eventually retreat. He probably is wrong because he underestimates the pleasure politicians derive from using their nation's wealth as a slush fund for purchasing political advantage….
In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville anticipated people being governed by "an immense, tutelary power" determined to take "sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate." It would be a power "absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident and gentle," aiming for our happiness but wanting "to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness." It would, Tocqueville said, provide people security, anticipate their needs, direct their industries and divide their inheritances. It would envelop society in "a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute and uniform." But softly: "It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them" until people resemble "a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
So what today seems as modern as Matisse once seemed was actually foreseen 17 decades ago. Like Hindemith's music, what is happening seems wrong. And it is.
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5. "Ignorant Cavemen Masquerading as Fighters of Islam"
I put a link to this article in yesterday's TIA Daily because it was relevant to Jack Wakeland's description of Pakistan's war between modernity (in the good sense) and Islam. But this article is important enough that it deserves a little more attention. I have excerpted some of the most interesting material below, but it's definitely worth following the link to read the whole thing.
In part, this is a story about the reason why al-Qaeda and the Taliban tend to be rejected by any semi-civilized person. They initially gain public support among fellow Muslims by claiming to be defenders of virtuous religious purity. Once they gain power, however, they are exposed as "ignorant cavemen" enforcing a monstrous code of murder and terror. This is how al-Qaeda lost its support in Iraq.
At the same time, though, the government's recent capitulation to the Islamists, American apologies and signs of weakness, and the fact that the Taliban really does represent the consistent implementation of Islam—including its atrocities—all of this combines to give the Islamists a certain cultural momentum, producing self-censorship and a "Talibanization of the mind."
"Taliban-Style Justice Stirs Growing Anger," Pamela Constable, Washington Post, May 10
Today, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Swat and Pakistani troops launching an offensive to drive out the Taliban forces, the pendulum of public opinion has swung dramatically. The threat of "Talibanization" is being denounced in Parliament and on opinion pages, and the original defenders of an agreement that authorized sharia in Swat are in sheepish retreat.The refugees are the "victims of ignorant cavemen masquerading as fighters of Islam," columnist Shafqat Mahmood charged in the News International newspaper Friday….
Such widely expressed views make a clear and careful distinction between the Taliban version of Islam—often described as narrow-minded, intolerant and punitive—and what might be called the mainstream Pakistani version of Islam, which is generally described as moderate and flexible….
"Islam is our identity and our system of life, but variety and choice are part of it. People should dress modestly, but women don't have to cover their faces and men don't have to grow long beards," said Khurshid Ahmad, an Islamic scholar and national legislator. "The Koran is very clear that there should be no coercion in religion. You cannot cram it down people's throats. This is where the Taliban destroyed their own case."…
And yet some observers have noticed a subtler, more insidious trend. It is not only the fire-breathing sermons by radical mullahs calling for a "sharia nation" or the rantings of Taliban leaders who accuse the entire Muslim government of being "infidel."
These observers describe a creeping social and intellectual chill that several have called "the Talibanization of the mind."
It is a growing tendency for women to cover their faces, for hosts to cancel musical events, for journalists to use phrases that do not offend powerful Islamist groups, for strangers to demand that shopkeepers turn off their radios.
"With each passing month a deeper silence prevails," columnist Kamila Hyat recently wrote in a widely circulated article. The public is afraid, uncertain and retreating into religion because the country's leaders are failing to address its problems. "Just as we fight to regain territory" from the Taliban, Hyat wrote, "we must struggle to regain the liberties we are losing."
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6. Religion in the 21st Century
It is by contrast to places like Pakistan that one can appreciate the status of religion in 21st-century America, where it continues its slow loss of influence and makes more concessions to the secular trends—both good and bad—in the modern culture around it.
To be sure, there are trends moving in the opposite direction. Showing that academic skeptics are ultimately enablers of religious dogmatism and not its enemies, famous "Post-Modernist" professor Stanley Fish makes an odd case for religion in a book review where he approvingly quotes the author describing the secular "dream of untrammeled human progress" as a "bright-eyed superstition." What is interesting is that Fish presents a case for religion based on philosophical skepticism and leftist anti-capitalism.
But more typical of the fate of religion in America is the continued unraveling of the Catholic Church. The latest? The delightfully named "Father Cutié"—a handsome young priest who has become a minor celebrity as the Church's spokesman on issues of love and sexuality—has been caught canoodling with a young lady on a beach in Miami.
He has been quoted as supporting a change in Church rules that would allow priests to marry—and he has now indicated that he may quit the priesthood in order to make an honest woman of the young lady in question.
That, in a nutshell, sums up the fate of American Catholicism, and ultimately of any American creed that tries to make war on worldly success, enjoyment, and happiness.
"Father Cutié's Indulgences," David Waters, Washington Post, May 8
A few days before he was caught indulging himself with an attractive woman on a South Florida beach, the now-dismissed Rev. Albert Cutié told a TV interviewer that he thinks all Catholic priests should have the option to marry. "If they want to discipline me, let them discipline me, but I think the option would be better and healthier."…Should Roman Catholic priests be held to a higher (or at least different) ministry standard? Is it time for the Church to drop chastity from a priest's ordination vows? Should priests be allowed to marry?...
Celibacy isn't the only reason the Catholic Church in America is short on priests, but it's one of the more obvious ones. So it's not surprising that fans of female-friendly Father Cutié (actually pronounced koo-tee-ay) are rallying to his defense by raising the issue of priestly celibacy. A day after Cutié was removed from his parish position, dozens of his supporters rallied outside his church waving signs:
"Celibacy no! Choice yes! 21st century," read the signs of dozens of Cutié's supporters who rallied outside his church last week.
"I think this is the precise moment for the church to recognize that priests are flesh and blood," sign-waver Violeta Ascue told the Miami Herald. "They should marry, too. I'm sure they'd still be exemplary people."…
Padre Alberto's supporters aren't the first to suggest that the 900-year-old celibacy requirement should be reviewed. Just two months ago, a radio interviewer asked retiring New York Cardinal Edward Egan if the Church would sooner or later consider allowing priests to marry. "I think that it's going to be discussed; it's a perfectly legitimate discussion," Egan said. "I think it has to be looked at." Back in 2003, 163 priests in the Milwaukee Archdiocese petitioned the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to open discussion on making celibacy optional. "The primary motive for our urging this change is our pastoral concern that the Catholic Church needs more candidates for the priesthood," the priests said.
The Apostle Peter, the first Pope, was married, as were seven other popes (and 11 other popes were the sons of Catholic clergy). So were most priests and bishops in the first Millenium.
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