Go For It: usgovernmentspending.com!

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S a great story of rags to riches.

First it was an idea.  Then it was an article on roadtothemiddleclass.com.

Last Thursday it was up on a website completely modern with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).  On Friday night it was propagated worldwide as usgovernmentspending.com.

On Saturday we sent a sitemap to Google.  On Monday night we  unfold 

UAW Says It's Full of Fight

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU’VE gotta hand it to the UAW.  They’re not ready to roll over and play dead.  Why, the whole idea of bankruptcy is absurd, a management trick, as Tom Krisher reports from the UAW bargaining convention.

(By the way, Tom does not tell his readers whether he is a union member.  It is the official position of us here at Road to the Middle Class that all journalists should disclose their union membership status when writing about  unfold 

Politics Has Always Been Risky Business

by Christopher Chantrill

THE RECENT Scooter Libby case moves columnist John Podhoretz to mourn that anyone taking a top government job ought to have his head examined. 

If you were interviewing a candidate for such a job, he writes, you would have to tell the candidate that the chance of

having to hire a lawyer at some point during your employment with us around 40 percent.

Barone on Gore's Secular Faith

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S AN inexhaustible topic, the solipsism of the baby-boom generation, the idea that the world revolves around the wonderful evolved people who came to consciousness in the 1960s.

And that goes for Al Gore, baby-boomer almost, and his global-warming belief system, writes Michael Barone.

Gore and his followers seem to assume that the ideal climate was the one they got used to when they were growing up.

We’re told in  unfold 

Welcome to usgovernmentspending.com!

by Christopher Chantrill

HERE AT the Road to the Middle Class we are frequently disturbed by the lack of comprehensive data on government spending.  We want to know important facts like:

• How much do we spend on education?
• How much do we spend on welfare?
• How much do we spend on government pensions, from Social Security to federal pensions to state and local pensions?

It is difficult to get information like this, because most of it is split up between federal and state-and-local programs.  unfold 

Britain's Labour Proposes Tax Cuts

by Christopher Chantrill

IN BRITAIN this week they had a Nixon Goes to China Moment.  The Labour Party finance minister Gordon Brown proposed marginal tax rate cuts.

He cut two percent from corporation tax, from 30 percent to 28 percent, and he cut two percent from the “basic rate” of individual income tax, from 22 percent to 20 percent.

For conservative commentators like Simon Heffer it was the last straw.  For months they have been  unfold 

Plain Old Patronage: A Theory of Government

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THE EXCELLENT TCSDaily, Arnold Kling proposes a theory of government.  He calls his idea “The Arbiter With The Golden Scepter.” 

People get into disputes, he writes. 

In order to resolve these disputes peacefully, people must submit disputes to an Arbiter, who makes impartial decisions in light of common law.

But of course, it is one thing for an Arbiter to issue a decision. The problem is to enforce it.  unfold 

Good Old-fashioned Democratic Politics

by Christopher Chantrill

IF YOU ARE a Republican the worst fear about Democrats taking over Congress was that they might have changed.  They might have given up their old ways of badgering businessmen and solving every problem with government spending.  What would Republicans do then?

But not to fear.  The Democrats running Capitol Hill are the Old Democrats of spending, subsidy, privilege, and micro-managing regulation.

Democrats are trying to add $24 billion in pork to President Bush’s $95 billion request for Iraq, reports  unfold 

Globalizing Health Care

by Christopher Chantrill

HERE AT the Road to the Middle Class we are not so sure about the 15 percent of GDP spent on health care.  When it comes to improving life expectancy, expensive bio-medicine isn’t exactly outperforming sanitation and baisc OB-GYN care  to keep infant mortality down.

And then there’s the regulation and the licensure and the special interests, not to mention the herioc end-of-life care that doesn’t relieve suffering and doesn’t extend life.

So it’s good  unfold 

Forget Racial Profiling, Now It's Political Profiling!

by Christopher Chantrill

WHO was not outraged by the shocking practice of law enforcement officials racially profiling minorities.  Why, they were picking up blacks all over the place, way disproportionate to their actual representation in the community.

(Of course, blacks have tended to commit crimes at up to ten times the rate of other races, but that doesn’t count.)

But now a new front has been opened in the fight against profiling.  In a breathless  unfold 

President Bush Draws a Line

by Christopher Chantrill

REPUBLICANS are fit to be tied about pusillanimous Republicans that won’t fight back against Democratic attacks.

As David Limbaugh sees it:

From the war on Iraq, to Gitmo, to the NSA surveillance program, to the Wilson-Plame fiasco, to global warming, to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, deceitful Democrats engage in relentless warfare against Republicans, and Republicans — way too often — roll over without even returning fire.

Who Do You Believe?

by Christopher Chantrill

WHO DO YOU believe in the recent Atlanta shooting?  A National Guard soldier, Spc. Craig Perkins, claims he was taunted by young Muslim men and was pursued by them to his girl-friend’s apartment.  The young Muslims said they:

were simply out for a walk with two women when they passed through Perkins’ apartment complex. [They] told police Perkins came out of his apartment and confronted them for allegedly looking at him or his girlfriend.

That’s according to    unfold 

The Other "Creationism"

by Christopher Chantrill

ONE of the great tasks to which our liberal friends are called is to champion the cause of “science.”  They mean by that witnessing for Darwinian explanations of reality against Christian “fundamentalism.” Yet while busily plucking the speck of dust out of the eyes of the creationists and the Intelligent Design activists, David Horowitz explains, they are letting the nation’s universities truckle to a different band of  unfold 

Tom DeLay on Rush

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE has forgotten about Tom DeLay, who was “gotcha-ed” last year by the Democrats in the run up to the mid-term elections.

But now Tom Delay has a book out, No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight, and Rush Limbaugh interviewed him on Friday.  Major take-away from the interview is DeLay’s appreciation of the Clinton machine.

You cannot discount, Rush, the massive,  unfold 

The Ancien Regime of the Good Old USA

by Christopher Chantrill

OK I ADMIT it.  When I read Jacob Aronson’s article Conserving and Consolidating the Progressive Liberal Tradition in TCSDaily, I blew a gasket.  Writes Aronson:

One of the core challenges now facing the Party is the collapse of the New Deal coalition and adaptation to the underlying economic realities that brought it about. Bill Clinton’s rallying cry to "end government as we know it" was an attempt to  unfold 

When Multiculturalism Hits the Wall

by Christopher Chantrill

WE should all avoid ethnocentrism and phallocentrism and logocentrism.  That is to say, we should recognize that our own viewpoint on the world is not the only one.

That’s easy to say, easy to demand on a talking head show, easy to write in a blog.  But what about when cultures actually clash in the real world, as in Asian forced marriages in Britain?

Theodore Dalrymple (and it’s high time he was appointed an RMC  unfold 

Now There's an Inconvenient Truth About Africa

by Christopher Chantrill

WHO would have thunk it?  The government of Canada has issued a report on foreign aid to Africa, according to Jeremiah Norris, and the news is not good.  The Standing Senate Committee of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has issued a report and concluded that:

"Development assistance has been a holding pattern for Africa at best, and a direct facilitator of poor governance and economic mismanagement at worst."

 In numbers,  unfold 

Michael Novak on President Bush

by Christopher Chantrill

THE TWO hits on President Bus, writes RMC Chappie Michael Novak, is that he has lost the war and that his administration is incompetent.

Certainly, he has made mistakes on the war.  But

the president has now changed strategy, as well as the generals charged with pursuing it. He now has commanders who believe in victory and who, in fact, designed the way to get to it.

You can argue that the president’s strategy to keep as low a  unfold 

Earning the MSM's Trust

by Christopher Chantrill

THE mainstream media may be liberal, but you can still get a fair shake from them writes Bruce Bartlett.

More than that, “Major newspapers like The Post and New York Times are now pretty even handed in their news coverage” compared to the good old days back in the 1970s.  Of course the reporters are still liberal and the editorial pages decidedly so.  That goes without saying.

Years ago, Bartlett relates, when he was a young Capitol  unfold 

Gross? As $300 million?

by Christopher Chantrill

WE red-blooded American males have been suffering for years.  Denied our all-American heroes in the movies we have had lefty anti-heroes rammed down our throats for over a generation.  Our anti-hero way of rage against the Man and the machine or the highway, said Hollywood’s creative finest.

Or, to paraphrase a famous American: Anti-heroes yesterday, Anti-heroes today, Anti-heroes forever.

When the United States was savagely attacked by rich Saudi Muslims, we were taught to worry about “why they hate  unfold 

Romney bets on tax cuts to win

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT WILL it take to win the Republican nomination for president in 2008?  Mitt Romney seems to be placing a bet on tax cuts, reports Donald Lambro.  He recently addressed the Detroit Economic Club. 

"What is the better course for America? A European model of high taxes and regulations, or low taxes and free trade, the Ronald Reagan model? That’s the choice the next president is going to make," he said, adding ominously that the  unfold 

The New "Time": Big and Brawny?

by Christopher Chantrill

FOR many of us, it is years since we subscribed to Time magazine.  Maybe decades.  Why?  Is it the reflexive media liberalism?  Is it the dumbed-down punchiness, the emphasis on graphics?  Or is it the fundamental unseriousness?  Who knows?

But this week, Time is redesigning into four basic sections: “Briefing, The Well, Ideas and Arts,”according to Keith J. Kelly at the  unfold 

Japanese Day Traders Try "Carry" Trade

by Christopher Chantrill

REMEMBER 1999-2000?  THAT was the heyday of the day traders, amateurs trying their hand at making money in the stock market during their coffee breaks at work.  It was an early warning of the NASDAQ meltdown: when the little guy gets in, it’s time to head for the exits.

It’s happened before.  In 1929 Joe Kennedy (yes that Joe Kennedy) reckoned it was time to get out of the market when his shoe-shine boy started giving him stock tips.

It’s deja vu all over again.  In  unfold 

The Case of Hillary and the Vanity Mirror

by Christopher Chantrill

NOW we know why our Democratic friends hate Karl Rove with a passion.  Read what he did, back at the beginning of the Bush administration, as reported by Kane Webb.

Of course, this is Rove’s version of events.  You know what that means.

Karl Rove tells the story that he inherited Hillary Clinton’s old office at the White House.  That, according to Rove, “irritated her.”

Now prepare for the dread  unfold 

At the Center of the Health Care Mess

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE agrees that the health care system is a mess.  But that is where agreement ends.  Democrats believe that the solution to the mess is universal health care, maybe a single-payer system like Canada.

Republicans think that the problem is rather different.  It is that few people actually know what they are paying for health care.  What is needed is a true market in health care so that the price system can do its magic, just like it does in houses, in automobiles, and in movie tickets.

As  unfold 

School Choice--On the Front Lines

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT do you think about this 16 year old kid, Rontrell Matthews, in Johns Island, South Carolina?  He turned up last summer at the doors of Capers Preparatory Christian Academy with $32.86 earned from his job at Subway.  He wanted to buy his way out of his failing public school, as Brendan Miniter reports.

Founded in 2003 by Faye Brown, a 55-year-old retired public school teacher, Capers is one of a handful of "independent  unfold 

Bush: Chavez's Economic Model Leads to Poverty

by Christopher Chantrill

IT SHOULDN’T need to be said, of course.  It ought to be the common knowledge of every street urchin in the Third World.  Government control of the economy leads to poverty.

Here’s what Bush actually said on his Latin American tour, according to AFP:

"I strongly believe that government-run industry is inefficient and will lead to more poverty," Bush replied to a question on Chavez’s economic model, which includes  unfold 

How About An Apology For "Fraudulent Education?"

by Christopher Chantrill

THE two legislative chambers of the Commonwealth of Virginia have recently passed an apology for slavery, “after 400 years,”writes the British Guardian.

“Isn’t that nice,”writes Walter Williams, a descendant of slaves.  Now that we are in the apology business how about apologies for the millions killed by the Soviet Union, by Mao’s China, and so on?

And more to the point, how  unfold 

Newt's Ideas at Cooper Union

by Christopher Chantrill

YEARS AGO in the 1990s a political cartoonist drew a memorable line of filing cabinets, each drawer marked "Newt’s Ideas."  Way out on the end was a drawer marked "Newt’s Good Ideas."  At least the good ideas were on the right end of the filing cabinets.

But of course, anyone with good ideas will be found to have generated plenty of ordinary ideas.  It’s like the salespeople say: Each No is one step closer to Yes.

Former House Speker Newt Gingrich’s latest idea is one-on-one debates between presidential  unfold 

Michael Novak on the Recent Atheist Books

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT are we to think about the recent apologia for atheism?  We mean Richard Dawkins’  The God Delusion, Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, and Daniel C. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell.  How does a believer deal with these withering critiques of religion? Michael Novak, RMC Chappie, has crack at answering them in National Review. 

He uses his daughter to make his  unfold 

Democrats and Social Security -- And Americans

by Christopher Chantrill

SPEAKER Pelosi made much of her grandchildren at the opening of the new Congress: “We’re here for the children,” she said.

That is appropriate, for as Carrie Lukas writes, the big government programs are a kind of compact between Americans and their grandchildren.  “Policymakers should evaluate policies based on how they affect future generations.”

Yet politicians — Pelosi herself chief among them — have  unfold 

MSM Soft-pedals ACLU Child Porn Suspect

by Christopher Chantrill

CHILD porn is a pretty disgusting subject.  It involves the depiction of the rape of children.  But the American Civil Liberties Union has been active in opposing the installation of porn filters in public library filters.  Good for them.

So much for the First Amendment.  But Bill O’Reilly asks:

How many of you have heard of Charles Rust-Tierney?

 You haven’t?  Well maybe you remember this, as quoted  unfold 

New Hope for Climate Deniers

by Christopher Chantrill

WE holocaust, er sorry, global warming deniers are having a rough time these days, as super energy hog Al Gore gets an Oscar for his Inconvenient Truth. And girl columnists like Maureen Dowd call us names.  So it gives us a warm fuzzy feeling to know that this week on TV in Britland they’ll be showing The Great Global Warming Swindle.  Now that’s more like it!  The film  unfold 

Lefty Lifestyles of the Rich and Cheap

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU assume that lefty writer Barbara Ehrenreich is, what the Forsytes would call, a warm woman.  Her best-selling travelogue of working with the minimum-wage set, Nickeled and Dimed, has made her more than nickels and dimes.  It is said to be required reading in freshman orientation at several colleges. So when her son Ben Ehrenreich decides that “we” can’t afford the cost of fixing a  unfold 

Giuliani The Details Man

by Christopher Chantrill

FUNNY how things work.  We’ve had months of fainting and gushing by the MSM over Democratic Senator Barack Obama. 

But on the Republican side, under the radar, suddenly Rudy Giuliani emerges as the frontrunner.  No media orgasm, not huge publicity campaign.  How does it work?

Never mind.  The question is: What kind of a man is Giuliani. David Frum, taking Fred Siegel’s  unfold 

The Virtue of Debates

by Christopher Chantrill

NEWT Gingrish and Mario Cuomo met recently to give speeches at Cooper Union in New York, reports Stephen Spruiell.  The idea was to revive the memory of Abraham Lincoln’s speech there in 1860, and to use it as an inspiration for the 2008 campaign.

Gingrich proposed that the 2008 candidates agree to a series of debates and discussions in the spirit of Lincoln’s devotion to “language, ideas, and reasoned thought.”

Aiming for Hegemon

by Christopher Chantrill

WONDER WHAT the Chicoms are doing and why?  It’s not to hard to figure out, according to William Hawkins.  It’s the simple “divide and conquer” strategy that goes all the way back to the Qin dynasty.  If you recall the Qin were the chaps who unified China in 221 BCE at the end of the Warring States period.  Qin Shi Huang, the chappie buried at the terra-cotta soldiers burial complex  unfold