The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Althouse on the Cain Train?

Posted on | October 16, 2011 | 72 Comments

“I thought David Gregory really lost his cool early on, as he was questioning Cain about 9-9-9. If you watch the video, you can see he’s agitated and grimacing in a way that really lacks the usual polished journalist quality.”
— Ann Althouse, “Herman Cain Nailed Meet the Press”

This is an unexpected but really quite welcome development. Professor Althouse has been critical of Cain previously and (like most in academia) is not generally a fan of the populist style. From the transcript of Meet the Press, she excerpts these examples of David Gregory’s visible frustration:

The reality of the plan is that some people pay more, some people pay less…. You’re saying [prices] actually go down?… This isn’t about behavior, Mr. Cain, this is about whether you pay–if you don’t pay taxes now, and you now have income tax and a sales tax, you pay more in taxes…. Mr. Cain, we talked to independent analysts ourselves…. We’re not just reading newspaper clips here… They tell us, they’ve looked at this, based on what’s available of the plan, and it’s incontrovertible.

I hadn’t really spotted that, but she’s right: Cain stood his ground, and one of the points that flustered David Gregory was this:

MR. GREGORY: The wealthiest Americans would pay less, the poorest Americans and middle class would pay more. You don’t dispute that.
MR. CAIN: I do dispute that. You are making — you and others are making assumptions about what wealthy Americans would do with their money, and you’re making assumptions about what the middle class and the poor. You can’t predict the behavior. If wealthy Americans…
MR. GREGORY: This isn’t about behavior, Mr. Cain, this is about whether you pay — if you don’t pay taxes now, and you now have income tax and a sales tax, you pay more in taxes.
MR. CAIN: More people will pay less in taxes. More people will pay less in taxes when you consider all the taxes.

What Cain was saying is that every system of taxation involves hidden economic incentives, and incentives influence behavior. Cain was correctly saying that the sales tax element of “9-9-9,” which Gregory and others assume would impose higher taxes on the poor, would only cause them to pay more taxes if they do not respond to the incentives, namely to spend less — or buy more secondhand merchandise, which isn’t taxed under his plan.

Cain is likewise correct in saying that “you can’t predict behavior” — i.e., The Law of Unintended Consequences. While this is as good an argument against “9-9-9” as it is in favor of it, Cain is correct that we cannot make easy assumptions about how such a radical alteration of the federal tax system would impact the economic behavior and financial well-being of various classes of people.

We can agree that a flat tax will generally be of most benefit to the wealthy (who pay a much higher percentage of their income under the existing progressive system) without assuming, willy-nilly, that others will be impoverished as a result. And the point of “9-9-9” is not to achieve “social justice,” but rather to unleash capital investment to spur economic growth. It is a supply-side solution to our current economic woes, and as such has been praised by the Club for Growth and by Art Laffer.

Would a man rather be unemployed and paying no taxes, or would he rather have a job and pay taxes? That’s the real choice, and yet David Gregory can’t seem to understand it.

We could update an old joke Ronald Reagan used to tell: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. And a recovery is when David Gregory loses his job.”

PREVIOUSLY: Remember When David Gregory Raked Obama Over the Coals on ‘Meet the Press’?

Category: Ann Althouse, Economics, Election 2012, Herman Cain, NBC, Taxes

I Got AutoMotivated

Posted on | October 16, 2011 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Pole position on The Week in AutoMotivators. And it motivates me to do more of same. I can’t figure out if TrogloPundit’s new sweetheart photo is more or less disturbing than the last.

Category: humor

Noise Like This Makes Me Glad I Spent That Time In Afghanistan Trying To Help Them Become Like Us

Posted on | October 16, 2011 | 34 Comments

by Smitty

Via Insty, there is a story about fix a speeding ticket for the offspring of a deputy.

Hey, that’s just how things work in Afghanistan: you know people, you pay them, you buy the desired outcome.

Other than going after these people hammer and tongs, I can’t think of ways to reverse a culture of corruption. Suggestions?

Category: Scandal

462 Days Until Jan. 20, 2013

Posted on | October 16, 2011 | 36 Comments

Inauguration Day, when four long years of endless misery known as the Obama presidency come to an end. And I’m counting the days.

It’s 79 days until Jan. 3: The Iowa GOP caucuses.

And it’s 107 days until the Jan. 31 Florida primary.

To give you a sense of proportion, it’s been 72 days since I departed from Reagan National Airport — where I set up the National Affairs Desk in the airport lounge —  for my 10-day trip to Iowa leading up to the Aug. 11 Fox News debate and the Aug. 13 Ames Straw Poll.

Yesterday I talked to Dan Collins, who gave me the name of his Rumanian friend who lives in Iowa City, about 30 miles from Cedar Rapids. A one-way ticket from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to Cedar Rapids departing the day after Christmas — Dec. 26, which is 71 days from today — would be $281 if I booked it now. So I’d have a full week in Iowa before the caucuses on Jan. 3.

And a flight departing Jan. 4 from Des Moines to Boston’s Logan International Airport would be $145 if I booked it now. Read more

Category: Debates, Election 2012, Fear and Smitty in Vegas, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Shoe Leather Fund, South Carolina

Remember When David Gregory Raked Obama Over the Coals on ‘Meet the Press’?

Posted on | October 16, 2011 | 35 Comments

Yeah. Me neither.

When Democrats go on Meet the Press, it’s like Justin Bieber sitting down for a hard-hitting interview with Tiger Beat. (“Do you like puppies?”) When conservatives go on Meet the Press, it’s like Hans Frank on trial at Nuremberg, except without benefit of a defense lawyer.

David Gregory just got through interrogating Herman Cain and grilled him relentlessly until, as Alex Pappas reports at The Daily Caller, the guilty perp finally confessed his crime:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain admitted Sunday that “some people” would pay more in taxes every year under his “9-9-9” tax reform plan.
“That’s right. Some people will pay more,” Cain told David Gregory of NBC’s Meet the Press. “But most people will pay less, that’s my argument.”

Gregory, like all other critics of 9-9-9, seemed obsessed with the sales tax component. A 9% sales tax would be an incentive to saving and a disincentive to consumer spending, and you can argue about that as an economic effect. But as to the “who would pay more” question — a fetish of class-warfare liberals — Herman Cain is correct that this is dependent in large measure on individual choices, to wit:

Asked by Gregory who will pay more, Cain said, “The people who spend more money on new goods. The sales tax only applies to people who buy new goods, not used goods. That’s a big difference that doesn’t come out.”

UPDATE: After the Cain interrogation, Gregory then went to a panel discussion about the GOP campaign with Chuck Todd, Katty Kay and Joe Klein (none of whom would ever vote Republican under any circumstance) and followed that with a weird segment: a debate between Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (as proxy for Rick Perry) and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (proxy for Mitt Romney). It was as if Gregory meant to say: “OK, now that we’ve dismissed Herman Cain as a complete joke, let’s talk about the real contenders.”

UPDATE II: The media’s Nuremberg tribunal continues:

Long Ties to Koch Brothers Key to Cain’s Campaign

You can see the gallows from the courtroom window.

UPDATE III: Of course, the liberal media were salivating in anticipation of Gregory’s MTP assault on Cain, as Salon news editor Steve Kornacki wrote Friday:

“Herman Cain is about to get his time in the bright lights and he’s got 20 days to show he can handle it,” Scott Reed, a GOP strategist told Politico for a story that ran this morning. Actually, Cain may have a lot less than 20 days, because a look at this weekend’s Sunday show lineup finds that he’s scheduled to appear on “Meet the Press.” . . .
As for Cain, it’s often seemed like he’s winging it as a candidate, tirelessly preaching the “boldness” of his 9-9-9 tax plan and trying to handle everything else on instinct. Does he know what he’s getting himself into on Sunday?

Thanks to Joe in the comments for the catch. It’s important to note that Herman Cain is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Only if Gregory’s interview hurt Cain with GOP primary voters would it have any negative impact on his campaign. And from that perspective, I didn’t see any damage. Maybe others saw it differently — and I’m sure the usual suspects will show up in the comments to tell us all about how catastrophic MTP was for Cain.

UPDATE III: Quick rundown of the headline reaction:

Herman Cain: ‘I’m Not Familiar With
The Neoconservative Movement’
— Huffington Post

Cain Says His Deadly Fence Plan Was ‘a Joke’
— New York Times

 Cain foreign policy would lean on experts
 — Politico

Cain: People Will Demand 999
Even Though It Raises Their Taxes
— Think Progress

Cain says his rise in polls is for real
— Associated Press

GOP presidential candidate
Cain defends ‘9-9-9’
— Washington Times

UPDATE IV: Thanks to The Lonely Conservative for the video:

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain, NBC, Taxes

#OccupyWallStreet Weenies Get No Love From Schlichter

Posted on | October 16, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Your rant of the day comes from Kurt Schlichter. A sample:

The mainstream media’s cameras can’t get enough of these pierced protesters, with their crudely written signs proclaiming their unfocused discontent and general anger at society’s selfishness in failing to satisfy their every want and desire.
Of course, those cameras discreetly turn away when the placards demanding socialist revolution and blaming the Jews come out. The protesters’ function is to demonstrate inchoate outrage simply by being there. When they start talking, they start alienating the normals.
These are Potemkin protesters, community organized by government worker unions to allow liberal Democrats a way to triangulate to the center next year. Only the rebel media outfits will actually stick a mic in the protesters’ dirty faces and let them talk.

Kurt’s spleen dump recalls an old Smith family saying: “If you’re looking for sympathy, it’s in the dictionary between s**t and syphillis.”

Category: Blogging

OK, It’s $1,179 One-Way to Auckland …

Posted on | October 15, 2011 | 33 Comments

. . . if I book now for an early February departure from Dulles International, and the connection via Air New Zealand to Bauerfield International Airport in Porta Vila, Vanuatu, would be another $400, so that my basic cost to get there would be roughly $1,600. Expedia offers a low rate of $147 a night at the Grand Hotel and Casino in Porta Vila.

We’ll worry about my return flight later. The key thing is that I must get to Vanuatu as soon as the Jan. 31 Florida primary is over and conduct my research mission, as I explained to Charles G. Hill at Dustbury:

Dear Mr. Hill:
Your interest in U.S. relations with Vanuatu is sincerely appreciated by the Cain administration, and the Shadow Secretary of State asked me to thank you for reminding us of the lack of an embassy in Porta Vila. Rest assured that remedying this “serious foreign policy failure” (to quote the Shadow Secretary) will be a top priority for President Cain.
Meanwhile, in order to further our diplomatic efforts, I am currently researching air travel arrangements to lead a delegation to investigate possible embassy sites in Porta Vila. It is not yet possible to provide a final estimate of airfare (via Brisbane) to Bauerfield International Airport, as the Cain foreign policy team must decide whether to schedule our “fact-finding mission” to depart in early February (i.e., following Mr. Cain’s victory in the crucial Florida primary), in June (i.e., after the primaries are complete), or in September (i.e., after the drunken bacchanalia at the GOP convention in Tampa). Nevertheless, your assistance in this matter is most welcome, and we have provided a special Web site for those wishing to help with the Vanuatu Project.
Thanks again for all you do.

Patriotically Yours,

Robert Stacy McCain
Future Ambassador to Vanuatu

* * * * *

Once I get to Porta Vila — immediately after the rainy season ends in February — I’ll be able to estimate how long this fact-finding mission will take. Choosing a site for the U.S. Embassy is a very serious business and not until that mission is complete will we worry about the return flight. Your help with the Vanuatu Project is profoundly appreciated.
 





 
And, of course, our delegation must have the proper supplies:


 

 
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! It’s always good to have the endorsement of the future Attorney General. And as to the professor’s question about “what could go wrong” . . . .

Well, define “wrong.” I mean, we just sent Special Forces to Uganda. They’re still fighting in Libya and Qaddafi is still at large. The Obama administration has established a new threshold for what’s considered “success” in foreign policy, and it’s low enough that nothing that might result from my ambassadorship to Vanuatu could possibly be called “failure.”

UPDATE II: Linked by Don Surber — thanks! So far, I haven’t had much success with the #OccupyVanuatu Twitter hashtag, but I’m sure it will catch on any day now . . .

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Category: Cargo Cult of the Blog Gods, Dustbury, Vanuatu

Art That Cannot Find A Market Is Art That Can Find A Landfill

Posted on | October 15, 2011 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

via Gateway Pundit

Category: Uncategorized
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