Pinnochio Discovers Natural Gas

President Obama has returned from yet another vacation determined to convince people that, despite all indications to the contrary, he really is pro-business, pro-middle class and pro-jobs.

You'll recall that last January brought us a missive from his desk vowing to slash unnecessary regulations.  He also hired a new, business friendly chief of staff to replace political animal Rahm Emmanuel who moved on to rule Chicago rather than Congress.

Daly resigned abruptly this month, ostensibly to spend more time with his family.  Uh-huh.

Now, in an election year conversion typical of his Party,  the President appears to have turned 180 degrees in order to embrace the natural gas industry, which his Administration had spurned in favor of renewable energy boondoggles.

A re-election campaign is a terrible thing to waste, and this year's race is already producing miraculous changes at the Obama White House: The latest example of a bear walking on its hind legs is the President's new embrace of . . . natural gas from shale. 

Last week the White House issued its latest report on jobs and it includes a section on "America's Natural Resource Boom." The report avers that a few years ago there were widespread "fears of a looming natural gas shortage," but that "the discovery of new natural gas reserves, such as the Marcellus Shale, and the development of hydraulic fracturing techniques to extract natural gas from these reserves has led to rapidly growing domestic production and relatively low domestic prices for households and downstream industrial users." 

Please pass the smelling salts to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Ms. Jackson was in the news last November for revealing the Obama Administration's actual regulatory approach to energy, in that case, coal.

Psychoanalysis is usually the wrong way to understand politics, but the Obama Administration may be reviving the field with its Freudian slips. The latest to land on the couch is Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson, who gave an unintentionally candid interview this weekend with Thalia Assuras of Energy Now News. 

Ms. Jackson was asked about the EPA's regulatory boom and the resulting mass retirements of coal-fired power plants.

When pressed, Ms. Jackson went on to say that "What EPA's role is to do is to level the playing field so that pollution costs are not exported to the population but rather companies have to look at the pollution potential of any fuel or any process or any plant or any utility when they're making their investment decisions."

In fact, when Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, its goal was clean air, not the industrial planning that Ms. Jackson's comments about "levelling the playing field" reveal... It certainly doesn't contain a roving mandate for Ms. Jackson to guide investment decisions (emphasis added). 

What Ms. Jackson really means is that she is trying to make coal—the workhorse of U.S. electric power—artificially more expensive. This is to serve her anticarbon goals, if not the consumers who will bear the costs and may suffer if the U.S. electric grid is compromised.

Back to natural gas, we can apparently ignore all the fang and claw that the Administration has flashed to gore industry with generally, and the traditional energy industry with specifically.  At least through the election, environmentalist ideology will have to yield to the nation's well being.

Maybe Democracy isn't such a bad system after all.

With respect to natural gas:

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the White House has favorably mentioned the Marcellus Shale, the natural gas reservoir below Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other Northeastern states. And now he's taking credit for this soaring production. 

We checked to see if someone slipped a press release from the Natural Gas Council into the White House report by mistake, but apparently not. 

The catch is that this endorsement runs against every energy policy pursued by the Obama Administration for three years. The Institute for Energy Research reports that royalties from oil and gas drilling have fallen more than 90% since 2008 because of Interior Department permitting delays and rejections.

The EPA recently issued a flawed report on groundwater contamination that could shut down the fracking process the President is now touting as a jobs producer. EPA's political goal is to grab power to supercede state drilling regulation. The industry regards new EPA authority as a real threat to its future.

 Naturally, the reader is free to trust the President's sincerity if  he wishes to.  If you do, Noman is selling a bridge that he'd like to discuss with you.

The Stupidity of Broke

Mark Steyn has written an apocalyptic best-seller that every Conservative wishes didn't need to be written.  

Because scales covered the eyes of the American electorate in 2006 and 2008, it chose a government on the basis of hope and hot air rather than reality and reason.  Consequently, America is racing full throttle over the edge of a cliff.

Steyn makes a number of observations in the prologue that are worth sharing.  The first is about America's moral crisis, and its connection to the Armageddon awaiting us.

When government spends on the scale Washington's got used to, that's not a spending crisis, it's a moral one. The Irish have a useful word for the times--flaithitulacht--which translates to ruinous generosity, invariably with someone else's money. There's nothing virtuous about 'caring' 'compassionate' 'progressives' demonstrating how caring and compassionate and progressive they are by spending money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born. That's what 'fiscal conservatives' often miss: this isn't a green-eye-shade issue. Increasing dependency , disincentivizing self-reliance, absolving the citizenry from responsibility for their actions; the mutlitrillion-dollar debt catastrophe is not the problem but merely the symptom. It's not just about balancing the books, but about balancing the most basic impulses of society. These are structural and, ultimately, moral questions. Credit depends on trust, and trust pre-supposes responsibility. So, if you have a credit boom in an age that has all but abolished personal responsibility, it's not hard to figure how it's going to end (emphases added).

Noman says, amen.  As a nation, we have run up a debt relative to GNP not seen since WW II. As a culture, we have adopted a welfare mentality and embraced libertine impulses.  All of this will be at our progeny's expense.

America has slidden from a ruinous financial crisis caused by too much debt, to an apocalyptic debt burden fueled by too much government borrowing.

President Obama tried to spend America out of its debt crisis by borrowing trillions of dollars more.  That's stupid on its face.  It only adds insult to injury that he spent it on government, politically correct causes and Democratic Party constituencies.  In short, he larded troughs when his role was to unclog machinery.

Having allowed Liberals to live out their fantasies with the public purse, America will be in dire straights when bond market creditors come calling.  And, that won't change by assuming perpetually low interest rates.

The Left's paradigm changed from tax-and-spend to spend-borrow-and-then-tax, which enabled it to splurge while simultaneously provoking the crisis necessary to impose a VAT, and worse. Crippling taxes will come with austerity when America is on its knees again.

It isn't in the President's DNA, or any Liberal's, to spend less.  Imminent Armageddon is the consequence.

Later in the prologue Steyn observes about America's largest creditor:

China is dangerous not (as many argue) because of its strength but because of its weakness.  As I wrote in America Alone, the People's Republic has a crude structural flaw: thanks to its disastrous one-child policy, it will get old before it gets rich, and, unless it's planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, the millions of surplus young men whom the government's One-Child Policy has deprived of female companionship is a recipe either for wrenching social convulsions at home--or for war abroad, the traditional surplus inventory-clearance method of great powers.  That's actual worse news than if China was cruising to uncontested global hegemony--because it means that Beijing's calculations on how the Sino-American relationship evolves are even less likely to align with ours.  China has to maximize its power before demographic decay sets in.  In other words, it has strong incentives to be bold and to push, hard and fast.  And, when it happens, Washington will be taken by surprise by something that was entirely inevitable (emphases added).

Note the connection between the moral issues (in this case contraception and abortion), the fiscal issues (mutually beneficial creditor-debtor relations), and national defense (incentives to war).  Traditional morals, strong families, fiscal responsibility, limited government, and strong national defense all work together.

On the sunny side, Steyn believes that America is exceptional despite President Obama and his Party's insistence to the contrary.

The United States is still different.  In the wake of economic meltdown, the decadent youth of France rioted over the most modest of proposals to increase the retirement age.  Elderly 'students' in Britain attacked the heir to the throne's car over footling attempts to constrain bloated, wasteful, and pointless 'university' costs.  Everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria angry mobs besieged their parliaments demanding the same thing: Why didn't you the government do more for me?  America was the only nation in the developed world where millions of people took to the streets to tell the state: I can do just fine if you control-freak statists would shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multitrillion-dollar porkathons, and just stay the hell out of my life and my pocket (emphasis added).

This last point is worth underscoring: Americans spontaneously took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to demand less government, not more.  The President had to subsidize union protestors and community organizers with borrowed billions in order to answer the tea parties by mimicking the petulant violent in Paris, London, Sophia and Athens.

In the long run, truth will win out.  Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ, and his victory is assured.

But, this is America, not heaven.  The title of Steyn's book, After America, indicates that at least one astute foreign observer doubts that Truth, reason or even sanity will be embraced in time.

Final Score: SF 36 - NO 32

Noman got the score wrong, but not the result!  The San Francisco 49ers scored a touchdown in the final seconds to defeat the New Orleans Saints in a thriller.

Vernon Davis, shown above crying in his coach's arms after making the game winning catch with :09 seconds remaining, was magnificent.  He came to play.  His final line: 7 catches for 180 yards--a single game, post-season record for tight ends--and 2 touchdowns.  And, that doesn't capture how well he performed, especially in the clutch with the game on the line.

Davis's catch and tears of joy reminded 49er fans everywhere of Terrell Owens' catch of Steve Young's pass against the Green Bay Packers in the final seconds of a Wild Card game in 1998.  TO blubbered uncontrollably afterwards, which was the last time anyone saw his endearing, humble side.  After that, it was all braggadocio and self-promotion.  Noman hopes that Davis knows it's better to be loved than to be a pariah.

Today's game was compared afterwards to the NFC title game between the 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys played nearly 30 years ago to the date.  (Noman was there, and lists that contest in his bio as the happiest non-family moment of his non-life.)

In terms of theater, this one was more dramatic because of the back-and-forth lead changes in the final minutes that lasted for two rounds: four lead changes in the final five minutes.  In terms of meaning, however, that one is tough to be beat.  The Saints don't have the history of tormenting the 49ers the way the Cowboys did throughout the 1970's and up until that 1981 season.

Today's winning pass to Davis, however, reminded Noman most of Joe Montana's strike to John Taylor to win Super Bowl XXIII in 1989.  A slicing dart to the post--touchdown!

The enigmatic Alex Smith answered his critics by driving his team down the field in the final minutes of the game when behind not just once, but twice!  He couldn't get much going for most of the game.  But, he did when all the chips were in the pot--a trait he exhibited in several games this season.

The 49ers defense was great.  They hit people hard, covered superlatively for most of the game, and harried the indomitable Drew Brees, who looked uncomfortable all day.

Donte Whitner laid a hit on Pierre Thomas that knocked the Saints second-leading rusher out cold, and caused a fumble near the goal line on New Orleans' opening drive.  It was a bone-rattling tackle that set the tone for the game, and sent a message to the favored team.

In keeping with a season-long trend, he 49ers forced 5 turnovers, and committed only 1.  Its special teams were superb as usual, but not dominant.

The defense eventually succumbed to the relentless Brees, who reminded Noman of nobody more than the Terminator.  He kept coming and coming and coming all game long--throwing 63 passes, 4 of them for touchdowns--shaking off 2 interceptions to throw for his usual 400+ (almost 500) yards.

Thankfully, by then, Smith and the 49er offense were primed for heroics.  

Towards the end, this game reminded Noman of a title bout in which boxers stand toe-to-toe in the ring and trade haymakers that would fell a mere mortal: Ali-Frazier; Ward-Gatti, for instance.

Among the vanquished, Darren Sproles deserves special recognition.  He looked fantastic in the Saints' recent games, but was beaten into submission early in this one.  He seemed gun shy from the punishment he received each time he touched the ball, and even fumbled a punt.  But, he got in synch late in the game, and struck for a scintillating 44 yard touchdown scamper with 4:11 remaining in the game.  After a subsequent touchdown, he hauled in a critical two-point conversion.  Hats off to a competitor.

Surprisingly, Michael Crabtree didn't show up on the 49ers side.  He caught a 4-yard TD pass early in the game, but disappeared thereafter.  Perhaps he was double-temaed, and threw unheralded devastating blocks.  The 49ers could have used his moves and hands, though.  He dropped a couple of catchable passes that hurt the offense, which needed to put a drive together in order to keep the ball away from Brees, and to give the defense a rest.  Without Crabtree, they couldn't, until the glorious end.

Congratulations 49ers, and thanks for the thrill!  It was a game for the ages, especially because the Saints--who routinely win these slugfests, including a Monday night heart-stopper in San Francisco in 2010--were knocked out in the final round by a team that is more boxer than puncher.

Noman's condolences to Saints fans, whose team was spectacular.

Football Mania!

Just for the record, the San Francisco 49ers will defeat the New Orleans Saints today.

The stats and hype indicate a Saints win by a score of 49-28 or some such blowout.  Forget the stats; ignore the hype.

Good defense beats good offense as surely as good pitching beats good hitting.  The 49ers have great defense; the Saints, great offense.  The same principle applies.

San Francisco's special teams are a game changer.  The 49ers can score by reaching the other team's 40 yard line because the field goal kicker is a long-distance machine.  They keep the other team pinned deep in its own territory because the punter is lights out.  They've got a kick returner who can take it to the house.

In a normal 49er game, the Saints would be able to roll up 350 yards without entering the red zone.  And, if they do, they'll discover that the 49er defense steps it up a notch in those situations.

On offense, the 49ers have the inconvenient truth, a pair of dangerous receivers, and an intelligent quarterback who reminds Noman of Bob Griese.  Nothing too flashy; just a guy in command of a great team.

The Saints bombard the opposition with deep passes.  The 49ers force lots of interceptions and turnovers.

Finally, even though New Orleans is a great city, San Francisco is a greater one.

Enough said.  49ers 29 - Saints 23.  Noman wants to say 49ers 19 - Saints 13, but doesn't have the nerve.

In the day's other game, all Noman can say with certainty is that the Broncos will have more people around the globe praying for them than any other team in the history of sports.

Marriage and Religious Freedom

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and leaders of other religions joined together in a statement of support for traditional marriage.  They warn of the threat to religious liberty posed by gay marriage.

The leaders wrote: “We believe the most urgent peril is this: forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations—throughout their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies—to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct.There is no doubt that the many people and groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid same-sex sexual conduct will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state conflicts will result." 

Noman would consider it unjust that a federal law should compel the vast majority of people to repent of, and reverse, ancient beliefs bearing the stamps of wisdom and experience, especially one's regarding so foundational a social institution as marriage.  

In the first place, it would be insane.  In the second, that is what the religion clauses of the 1st Amendment were supposed to prevent.

In return for enshrining the idiosyncratic view of organized activists whose amplified voices are relentlessly and exclusively cannonaded at the public's consciousness by Hollywood and the media, America will lose something much more essential to its nature, liberty and survival than Fred-and-Ted couplings, viz. religious freedom.

“[These conflicts] will arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the civil definition of ‘marriage’ does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once.By a single stroke, every law where rights depend on marital status—such as employment discrimination, employment benefits, adoption, education, healthcare, elder care, housing, property, and taxation—will change so that same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage. That requirement, in turn, will apply to religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their many private or public occupations and ministries—including running schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and counseling services, and many others,” they said.

The diversity of the group, which includes leaders from the Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Lutheran, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities in the United States, signals that this is not just a Catholic issue.

Demonizing the Church might bear fruit for community organizers whose aim is to upset the apple cart of civilization.

But, fair minded observers will know that She is taking a beating--a crucifixion, one might analogize--for venerable principles historically shared by nearly all, as She does for her stands on other sexually-related matters such as abortion.

The letter itself reads as follows:

Marriage is the permanent and faithful union of one man and one woman. As such, marriage is the natural basis of the family. Marriage is an institution fundamental to the well-being of all of society, not just religious communities.

As religious leaders across different faith communities, we join together and affirm our shared commitment to promote and protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman. We honor the unique love between husbands and wives; the indispensible place of fathers and mothers; and the corresponding rights and dignity of all children. 

Marriage thus defined is a great good in itself, and it also serves the good of others and society in innumerable ways. The preservation of the unique meaning of marriage is not a special or limited interest but serves the good of all. Therefore, we invite and encourage all people, both within and beyond our faith communities, to stand with us in promoting and protecting marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Noman is certain that these brave leaders would appreciate your support, and encourages you show it in prayer, donations, letters of support, the organizing of events, and in whatever ways you might devise.

Lend your voice.  Don't let it be ridiculed, muted and dismissed because of a monopolized media that is hell bent on destroying the religious liberty of all for the sexual libertinism of the few.

The Age of Kardashian

The ubiquitous Kim Kardishian is in the news for apparently no longer being newsworthy.

Everything the reality family touches turns absolutely toxic — with party promoters, magazine editors and television execs all scrambling to blacklist them, insiders told The Post. 

Ratings for the family’s reality show have plummeted, sales of magazines with Kim Kardashian’s mug go unsold, and her products are unmarketable, insiders say.

The writer opines that her fall from grace stems from her publicity-stunt marriage to New Jersey Net's forward Kris Humphries, which afforded those who consume celebrity objects only 72 days of vicarious thrills.  The disappointment was simply too much to bear for a public expecting years of virtual wedded bliss in Kim's nuptial bed.  

In consequence, her stock price is cratering.  Noman wonders, however, if there isn't another explanation for this newsless piece of information.  

Last month, William McGurn penned a routinely masterful opinion piece entitled "Taxing Kim Kardashian."

It's not her split from Mr. Humphries only 72 days after their wedding, which raised questions about whether the marriage was simply one big publicity stunt. Nor was it the earlier sex tape that earned her celebrity and riches. Only a prude would object to that. 

No, Ms. Kardashian's sin is this: She pays what she owes in state taxes under California law, instead of the much larger amount that some self-appointed advocacy group thinks she ought to be paying.

The organization is called Courage Campaign and its website reveals it to be a California mélange of activist groups and labor unions. In a video that presents Ms. Kardashian in some of her more conspicuously consumptive moments, Courage Campaign claims that while Ms. Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, she paid only one percentage point more in taxes (10.3%) than a middle-class Californian (9.3%). 

"That's not OK," says Campaign Courage. And in their video, they get right to the point, calling on viewers to "Ask Kim to support the millionaires tax of 2012." 

Ms. Kardashian has become wealthier than a Pharaoh by encouraging the public to lust for her.  And while the public is only too willing to engage in this contemporary form of everyday idolatry, the Left sees depravity only in her greed manifest by her not paying more in taxes.

It doesn't see enough.  Greed is of a piece; it is the glue sealing the bargain between consumers who shower human objects with loot in return for absorbing every last detail of their fleshy lives, and the commodified celebrities who court the bargain to their own detriment.  (Ask Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan.)  

If more people read Aquinas, they would know of the intimate connection between lust and greed, both of which are capital vices.  Both inflame human passions and overwhelm practical reason--deliberation, judgment and choice.  

Prudence flees, conscience is occluded, where lust and/or greed take root.  Consequently, neither lust nor greed are sins that a rational culture encourages to fester, let alone nurtures, in its bosom.

Where you find glossy magazine covers and video screens filled with images of relatively talentless women strutting about as lusty confections to be consumed--like bon-bons on high heels--you necessarily find lust.  

Conversely, you won't necessarily find greed wherever you find wealth--a condition that need not automatically lead to conspicuous consumption.

Ironically, the Left decries wealth, while it forces pornography and sexual corruption onto the culture, and thus onto everyone, under the guise of a right.  The fact that people like Kim Karadashian dominate the public's notice has everything to do with the Left's appropriation of media and legal culture.

With respect to tax lust:  

It's tempting to dismiss this campaign as the work of a bunch of California crazies. The problem is that its assumptions about wealth and taxes extend far beyond the Golden State. Indeed, they have calcified into an orthodoxy that defines the Democratic Party.  

[Believers] will not be swayed because they are not being driven by their economics. They are being driven by their conception of immorality: the idea that millionaires have more than they should—and that any wealth they have is not something they have earned but something the state has allowed them to keep. 

It says much about the progressive Puritanism of our age that what these folks really find most sleazy about Ms. Kardashian is not her sex tape or her marriage, but that she's unembarrassed about making money. 

Many years ago in these pages, Irving Kristol famously wrote that the liberal paradigm "has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie—but only if she is paid the minimum wage." Today, women like Ms. Kardashian make much more money exercising that right. The only question progressives ask is about the size of the government's cut.

A Journal reader in Massachusetts retorts:

If every American had ready access to the basic necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter and health care—no one would justly begrudge a millionaire as rich as Croesus. 

But in reality, thousands of sick, poor and disabled Americans lack such basic sustenance, while a tiny fraction of the population possesses most of the nation's wealth. That, Mr. McGurn, is what is morally repugnant to the liberal conscience.

Noman's conservative conscience also recoils at the specter of thousands of Americans, and millions of people around the world, lacking ready access to the basic necessities of life.  He scoffs, however, at the risible suggestion that increasing taxes in order to pay off Democratic constituencies for their fealty will do one whit to resolve this problem.

If providing succor to the poor, and not Statism, were the true motive of Liberal belief and action, then they would join with Conservatives in cause to strengthen families (procreative ones) and churches.  These institutions protect and fortify the person with love, care and material sustenance necessary to develop habits of self-sufficiency, become sensitized in a practical manner to the needs of others, avoid poverty in the first place, and recover should they fall into it.  

Yet, Liberals routinely attack family and church, arrogate their roles, and enlarge the State's dominion through programs to address the problems created by their intentional diminution.

Liberals would join with conservatives to deter, rather than foment, addictions to sex, drugs and rock & roll--addictions that reduce far too many to a feeble crust, a pathetic semblance of a person.

This genuine solicitude for the poor, for human dignity, would promptly end the political conflicts that roil the nation and prevent its unified advance towards the common good.  Liberals don't want to end the cultural degradation, however, which results in the very poverty they brandish as exhibit A in their hall of self-justification.  

If there were no poor, beholding or dependent, what excuse would Liberals have for raising taxes and creating a massive state that operates according to the rules of patronage rather than the inhospitable ones of performance?  Who would vote for them?  

There is a reason people quip that Liberals love the poor so much that they strive to create more of them.

Finally, Liberals would join cause with Conservatives to strengthen the capitalist system (as opposed to ideology), which produces wealth and provides opportunity for more people to achieve higher standards of living than have ever before been deemed possible.  

They would acknowledge that for the sake of combatting poverty-inducing addictions, not everything should be marketable, e.g., pornography, sex, drugs.  They would desist in proposing high-tax, low-freedom solutions that perpetuate the problems that ostensibly motivate Liberal compassion.

Noman is weary of figments like Kim Kardashian who are thrust onto his consciousness to separate him from his conscience, wits and money.  The endless parade of celebrity vixens served up for public consumption sadly reminds him that consumers and consumed alike are fallen.  

OK, the woman looks good.  Beyond that, is there any other reason to notice her, let alone incessantly?

If McGurn is right, then her toxicity problem can easily be solved.  All she needs is to be photographed and make appearances with Warren Buffet on behalf of higher taxes.  

She can praise the virtues of government compassion, and perhaps adopt a PC cause, like Mark Zuckerberg did with the paradigmatic government boondoggle: Newark's notoriously troubled public schools.  That was sufficient to deflect concerns over Facebook's systemic disregard of privacy concerns.

NGO activists would stop conspiring with media activists and the nasty articles would stop.  If today's goddess of gloss genuflected obeisantly enough to the political correctness that makes and breaks her, she might even get glowing coverage for her humanitarianism.

Aside from her temporary problems, however, people and society should be concerned about the never ending media barrage clutching at the human soul from the grocery store line to one's living room.  

“I’m bored with them,” said Manhattan publicist R. Couri Hay, who organized paid Kardashian visits to clubs in 2008 and 2010. Now, he said, he wouldn’t dream of promoting “Kim Kardashian and her little clunky sisters.”

Noman is bored with them, too.  And, he's never even seen their (or any) TV reality show.  He knows too much about the observer effect, and seen to many women strut their stuff for a spontaneous audience, to think that such a thing is possible. 

Capitol Punishment

Jack Abramoff's political confession, "Capitol Punishment," promises to provide a respite from daily reports of government corruption, civil liberties violations, abuses of power, constitution shredding, mad power grabs, cover-up, phoniness and lies emanating from the current White House. 

He sounds like a one-of-a-kind guy: "a power-lifting, football playing, Orthodox Jewish, right wing Republican opera buff.  You know the type."

It's good to know that his ordeal didn't rob him of his sense of humor.

Abramoff was exhibit A-Z in the museum of corrupt Washington types: homo-lobbyist.  What makes that laughable is the suggestion that any one person sits at the apex of a dung hill.  

Apparently, lobbyists either no longer exist, or are all angels.  If that sounds doubtful, what is certain is that K Street no longer produces shrieking headlines and pharisaical garment rending now that President Obama, rather than President Bush, holds the reigns of power.

Coverage is all see-no-evil... these days, despite trillion dollar giveaways to cronies, pals and constituents.

Noman knows little more about Abramoff than his name, but has gleaned from the Introduction that Senator John McCain figures prominently in his degradation; his dad was a business associate of Arnold Palmer; he got into Brandeis University at the behest of Sugar Ray Robinson; and he got his start in politics as president of its Republican club, which he parlayed into two terms as President of the College Republican National Committee.

In other words, he has family connections, and the heart of a pol.

What everyone knows is that his name was dragged daily through the mud--along with those of Donald Rumsfeld and Congressman Mark Foley--during the 2006 midterm election year.  Noman tuned out the noise, which appeared to be a transparent media campaign to return Democrats to Congressional dominance.

We can thank those media hound dogs for Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and $5 trillion worth of debt.

Whatever sins Abramoff was guilty of, the most grievous of them is likely to be that he was a Republican.  Making a convenient whipping boy is not a sin.

None of this is meant to insinuate that Abramoff's behavior was not eggregious, or wasn't deserving of a come uppence.  Noman just doubts that his exploits were worthy of the wall-to-wall coverage they received, which even turned into a propaganda piece starring Hollywood Lefty, Kevin Spacey.

Jack might chuckle at the irony that his own political demise led to the production of a movie, the watching of which is likely tantamount to capital punishment.

Saint Buffet's Chutzpah

'I'll donate a dollar to pay down the deficit for every dollar that Congressional Republicans donate' taunts Warren Buffet in a Reuters article (n.b. indirect quote).

He must have finished President Obama's copy of "Rules for Radicals" and decided to get on the fun side--the media's side--of the Statist v. Liberty conflict.  Annoying your enemy, especially to the delight of Alinsky's realistic revolutionaries, is a winning tactic according to the handbook for community organizers.

The irony of the quintessential "Have" speaking in the name of the "Have Nots" to persuade the "Have Some, Want Mores" to play in a game that gives him, not them, yet more is rich.

This "Have Some, Wants More" isn't fooled.

In return for his advocacy of Statist governance, Buffet gets the President's private assurances that BankAmerica, for instance, won't be allowed to go bankrupt, and that it is safe for him to invest billions of dollars in it on buccaneer terms.

The person who said that higher risk was necessary to earn higher returns didn't understand crony capitalism.

If Warren Buffet wants to squander the prestige he earned as a capitalist on behalf of Statist politics and governance, that's his business.  We the people are free to ignore him, as we surely must do if only for the sake of self-preservation and that of the our country.

There were a couple of passages in the article, however, that begged a rejoinder.

The jabs over voluntary payments come as higher taxes for the wealthy and extension of payroll tax breaks for middle-class Americans are becoming increasingly contentious issues for the 2012 presidential race. Obama is trying to paint Republicans as only favoring the wealthy, while Republicans are trying to brand the president as relying on tax hikes to fund excessive spending.

While it is certainly the case that each Party is jockeying to paint the other in the least favorable light, someone should point out that the picture Republicans are painting accords with a plausible reading of reality, whereas the one that Democrats are painting does not.

Borrowing a line from the immortal Josh Steiner, Republicans' claims are more a Manet than a Monet; Democrats'  are much more a Munch--they say more about the painter's state of mind than about what they depict.

First, the President's claims that Republicans favor only the wealthy, are pure bloviation.

Unlike Warren Buffet, George Soros, Jon Corzine, Jeff Immelt, George Kaiser and the cadre of deep-pocket donors from Wall Street to Sunset Blvd. that fill the President's war chest to overflowing, Noman is not wealthy.

He knows that what passes for government since Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi took over Congress in 2006, and especially since Barack Obama took over the White House in 2008, favors neither the middle class, no-family nor him.

To benefit from Democrats' favor, one must know somebody rather than something useful, have pressure group connections, join the metastasizing public sector, or generally be willing to lay down, roll over and beg.

Democrats' economic initiatives hinder the nation.  Republicans' initiatives to reduce the scale and scope of government, taxes and regulation help the middle class and Noman by stimulating rather than suffocating private initiative, thereby unleashing rather than shackling the economy.

Republicans' economic initiatives promise hope for those skillful, lucky and blessed enough to seize opportunity.  Democrats promise effortless abundance that exists nowhere but in heaven and in utopian fantasies.

Noman prefers freedom--even if it means the possibility of failure--to servitude and a life dependent upon whom one knows rather than upon what.

On the other hand, the President is relying on tax hikes to fund excessive spending.  He fights like a rabid wolverine--a low-biting one at that--to defend every ounce of pork and patronage in the budget.  He snarls and growls for tax increases through the use of euphemisms like "fairness."

Then he has the audacity to lambast Republicans for not compromising.

Total national debt has levitated by 60%, to over $16 trillion, during his Presidency despite the government's receipt of $2.1 trillion in tax revenues each and every year of it.  How much is enough?

While current annual taxes slightly exceed 2005's amount, today's deficit surpasses that year's by $1.3 trillion. The difference is big government's spending of $3.8 trillion. The facts are plain to see.

That would constitute excessive spending in most people's estimation.  But, for Liberals, the Goldilocks standard applies.  Whatever the amount spent, as long as it increases year-to-year by a higher rate, it is never excessive and always just right (barely).

But, not for baby bear, whose belongings are casually appropriated by somebody else.

Before President Obama arrived in the White House with his notion of fairness, the federal government never spent more than $3 trillion in a single year.  Thanks to his exertions, it will never again spend less, and is projected to spend $4 trillion by 2015.

Any bets on the actual figure reaching $5 trillion as ObamaCare bureaucrats settle into their offices?

Which Party is painting a realistic picture, and which is just doodling?  You be the judge, in November.

The second point regards Saint Buffet's social theory, specifically his confusion of government with society.

Buffett said in the Time interview the United States needed a tax system that favored people who were not born investors. 

"We need a tax system that takes very good care of people who just really aren't as well adapted to the market system, and to capitalism, but are nevertheless just as good citizens, and are doing things that are of use in society," he said.

Noman begs to differ.  We need strong intermediate associations--e.g., family, church, schools; in short, educational, religious, cultural, charitable and other organizations--not a tax system that robs these associations to favor pet groups, and recycle money with strings attached.

In a revealing moment of the New Hampshire debate last Saturday night, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney explained how this operates for good citizens doing useful things for society.

For instance, the Catholic Church was forced to abandon its role as a provider of adoptions in the state of Massachusetts because of its unwillingness to genuflect before Liberals' sexual dogma.  For refusing to serve Baal, Catholic Charities has been denied millions of dollars in federal funding used to help victims of sex trafficking.

Why is this money in the governments' hands to begin with so that it can meddle with the religious beliefs of Catholics, and others?

Buffet apparently doesn't realize that the agency of government is not the only means to assist people that aren't as well adapted to the market system and capitalism as he is.

Yet, he uses his celebrity to debilitate the very system in which he honorably earned it.  By doing so he exposes his ingratitude, as well as ignorance of political economy and life in the middle class--as opposed to among those who deign from the heights to speak for it.

Then again, the government doesn't work as well for most people as it does for him.  He's in a select club of cronies, membership in which makes it worth his while to shill for Statists.

Noman prefers a less contrived game: one in which he and his no-children are free to become the next Warren Buffet, and in which the living legend doesn't labor to ensure that everybody stays in his or her place.

Class Warfare and the Buffett Rule

Noman was delighted to find an Arthur Laffer opinion piece in this morning's paper.  In it, he argues that a millionaire surtax would hurt everyone but the super rich like Warren Buffet.  Noman imagines that Buffet knows this, which is why he feels safe in being so bold as to champion the notion.

Waving Mr. Buffett's op-ed for all to see, Mr. Obama wasted no time in proposing a surtax on millionaires called the "Buffett Rule." Putting aside all the oohing and ahhing over Mr. Buffett's selflessness, his effective tax rate on his true income would hardly budge if this "Buffett Rule" were applied.

Mr. Buffett's net worth rose by $10 billion in 2010 to $47 billion, according to Forbes Magazine. That increase, an unrealized capital gain, is part of his total income by any standard definition, including the one used by the Congressional Budget Office. After also including a $1.6 billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Buffett's true income in 2010 was much closer to $11.6 billion than the $40 million figure cited in his op-ed. Hence his true effective tax rate was only 6/100ths of 1% as opposed to 17.4%. And these are just the additions to his income that we know about.

That untaxed $11.2 billion of income would still not be touched by the Buffett Rule, after application of which his taxes would increase by $7 million. His effective tax rate would rise to .12% from .06%.

Zowie!  Meanwhile, the rest of us would have our growth ceiling, and probability of reaching it, lowered.

One might argue that Buffet's paltry tax relative to his true income only underscores his point, which is that he doesn't pay enough.  But, the real point is that under his own proposal, he still wouldn't.  The rest of us, on the other hand, would have to endure higher rates, higher taxes, a less prosperous economy, fewer routes to upward mobility, and the ignonimy of having to laud Buffet's selflessness.

After laying Mr. Buffet's pretensions to waste, Laffer targets his hypocrisy.

Mr. Buffett's donation to the Gates Foundation goes to the heart of my critique of his public call for higher tax rates on the rich...  [I]f his gift weren't tax sheltered he wouldn't give it. So much for "shared sacrifice."

In a 2007 CNBC interview, when asked why he shelters his money through tax-free strategies rather than writing big checks to Uncle Sam, Mr. Buffett responded: "I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government." 

So Mr. Buffett thinks he and his family can put their money to better use than the government can. I guess he's really not so different from the rest of us after all.

That article of clothing lying about your ankles, Mr. Buffet, is your pants.  Whatever was once holding them up has been plucked off.

Laffer is the foremost advocate of the well-documented and statistically-verified policy argument that if you want the rich to pay more taxes in both absolute and relative terms, then the high end of marginal tax rates should be lowered, not raised.

When it comes to raising tax revenues by raising tax rates on the rich, Mr. Buffett would again appear to be on the wrong side of the argument. Between 1921 and 1928, the top marginal income tax rate fell to 25% from 73%. During this period, tax receipts from the top 1% of income earners rose to 1.1% of GDP from 0.6% of GDP. The top income tax rate dropped to 70% from 91% after the Kennedy tax cuts began in 1964, while tax receipts from the top 1% of earners rose to 1.9% of GDP from 1.3% of GDP in the period 1960 to 1968. By the way, these periods were two of the biggest booms in U.S. history. 

Guess what was the third period of boom? Since 1978, the top earned income tax rate fell to 35% from 50%, the top capital gains tax rate fell to 15% from 39.9%, and the highest dividend tax rate fell to 15% from 70%. After taking office in 1993, President Clinton virtually eliminated the capital gains tax from the sale of owner-occupied homes and cut government spending as a share of GDP by the largest amount ever. 

Meanwhile, the top 1% of earners saw their tax payments climb to 3.3% of GDP in 2007 from 1.5% of GDP in 1978, while the bottom 95% saw their tax payments drop to 3.2% of GDP in 2007 from 5.4% of GDP in 1978. Why would Mr. Buffett want to reverse these numbers? 

Laffer's facts are tough to argue with.  But, that doesn't prevent Statists from trying.

Of course, cynics and die-hard progressives might object to the above evidence on the grounds that it was driven by an explosion of income gains. But that's largely the point.

The evidence suggests that big government Lefties' real attraction to higher taxes is that they leave the vast majority of people worse off, not better.  Widespread poverty, not increased receipts to the government, appears to be the true aim of the "fair share" set.  Anything to reduce the sphere of private decision-making, and increase the dominion of centralized power, eh?

And, that's just fine with Warren Buffet.  He'll cut his own deal with whatever hegemon needs to be placated.

Noman has written about Laffer, and Buffet, and encourages you read the former's "The End of Prosperity" (2008).  It sheds a great deal of light on class warfare as an economic stratagem, and makes one question the morals of those who foment it as a political one.

God Is Great, Tebow Is Good

Nothing makes a secular bigot sputter and vituperate like a Jesus-loving jock.  Secularists across the nation are gnashing their teeth this evening over the latest Mile High miracle.  Tim Tebow, whose apostolic Christianity has been a thumb in the eye of those who prefer that others keep their religion in the closet, had a big night.

The Denver Broncos defeated the defending AFC Champion Pittsburgh Steelers (along with their bad-boy quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger) 29-23 in a first round playoff game, the first overtime game played under new, stricter rules.  It ended on the first play from scrimmage in overtime with an 80 yard touchdown completion from Tebow to Demaryius Thomas.

Tebow finished with 316 yards (204 to Thomas on four receptions) and two touchdowns on 10/21 completions and a QB rating of 125.6.  Not bad for a  quarterback regularly maligned as artless and lousy.

It was a great game.  But that's not the point of the post.

Tebow was a demigod in college at Florida where he won a national championship, and the Heisman Trophy, the first sophomore to win college football's most vaunted prize.  He began his acceptance speech by thanking his Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

The following year he withdrew his name from consideration on Playboy's pre-season all American team.  It wasn't his type of magazine; he was a virgin, and didn't revel at pictures of naked women.

He later made two pro-life commercials for Focus on the Family, which aired during Super Bowl XLIV.  They featured his mother, who had declined to accept MD's advice to abort him.  Mother and son are obviously very close, and happy.  He's her miracle baby; she's the one who chose to protect rather than kill him.  God is the one who preserved his life.

Did Noman mention that he was home schooled as a youngster?

He was drafted by Denver in 2010.  The Broncos were 1-4 under Kyle Orton this season (2011) when the reigns were turned over to Tebow.  The Broncos proceeded to win seven of eight games, three of them in overtime, most of them in hair-raising, last second comebacks.

Tebowing was the talk of the nation, with one Long Island school even banning the practice among students--the week before Christmas.

Skeptics were quick to declare that God loved Tom as well as Tim when Tom Brady and the New England Patriots thumped the Broncos, ending their miraculous streak.  Two more losses including a season finale at home at the hands of Kyle Orton and his new team, the Kansas City Chiefs, put an exclamation point on Tebow's supposed fall from grace.

All that talk seemed to miss the point.  The Broncos failed to clinch their division (the AFC West) with a win.  But, they clinched it nevertheless with an 8-8 record because their chief competitor for the division crown, the Oakland Raiders, also lost.

If critics wished to infer that God (or the non-existent God) didn't bless Tebow because he didn't win every big game, it was fair for admirers to infer that God did indeed bless him with a division crown in his first year as a starter even though he didn't win every big game, or any game with the title on the line.

God blessed Tebow with just enough of what he needed in order to show His divine favor. He didn't bless him with invincibility.  He merely rewarded Tebow's faithfulness with a division crown.  That the Broncos made the playoffs by the skin of their teeth suggests rather than rules out Divine intervention.  

Of course, God's favor doesn't always manifest itself in exceptionless victory and success, as Lot and Jesus himself attest.  The practical test of faith is to see God's benevolent will in apparent failure, even misery.  He doesn't promise to reward faith with perpetual triumph on earth.  But, he does promise to reward it.  The task of the faithful is to see how He rewards it in whatever He does.

Tim Tebow is an exceptional man of faith who plays a boy's game on a big stage. Athletics magnifies his every accomplishment, and failure. Despite living under a microscope, Tebow unashamedly professes his belief in God, and fearlessly champions the causes he believes it obliges. He is a courageous man and extraordinary athlete of indomitable spirit.

Someday when Tebow hangs up his cleats, he'll be in a position to demonstrate his faith on an even bigger stage, the national political one.  If he pays as much attention to his mind as he does to his body, and applies it to current affairs, he'll be ready for the challenges and opportunity that his prowess and celebrity afford him.

Noman knows that God will not abandon him, and suspects that blessings will always be showered on so earnest and charitable a son. Our challenge--those of us who witness his heroics and follow his exploits--will be to see how God sends them regardless of the outcome of elections, or games.

Personally, Noman can't wait to vote for him.

Romney Wins But Takes a Beating

Peggy Noonan makes some interesting observations about Iowa's Republican primary results, and Mitt Romney's bruising victory.

The Iowa results almost perfectly reflect the Republican Party, which, roughly speaking, is split into three parts—libertarians, social conservatives and moderate conservatives, who went for Ron Paul, Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney respectively. The three parts of the party have been held together by agreement on three big issues: spending (which must be cut), taxing (which must be reformed), and President Obama (who must be removed). 

These three issues have force. Taxes and spending are the ties that bind, the top and bottom crust that holds the pie together. They're the reason the party is still the party, and not the splinter groups. The third element, Mr. Obama, is this year equally important. 

That strikes Noman as being both right and wrong.   The interminable string of debates has revealed a party that is very broad minded.  So, it's no surprise that Iowa voters spread their ballots over a number of ideologically distinct candidates.

The three categories--libertarian, social conservative and social liberal (rather than "moderate conservative," a label that masks rather than highlights the actual divide: social issues)--seem fairly to capture large blocs of Republican voters, but even more importantly, aspects of the conservative mind.

Most conservatives at some level want to be left alone by aggrandizing powers, to have as few external demands as possible placed on them so that they can choose their own loyalties, responsibilities, causes and expenses closer to home.  They are leery of impositions that pose as grand social crusades, especially when the benefits redound to select actors and are administered by unaccountable bureaucrats in faraway places.  Libertarianism appeals to this desire.

Most conservatives have a sense of limits, especially moral limits.  They know that they are not God, so they don't claim a right to behave like one, especially in matters of life and death or longstanding moral convention.  They recognize an order to reality, and know that a culture based on disorder is both destructive of the individual, and doomed.  Social conservatism appeals to this self-knowledge.

Most conservatives don't want to be told what to do.  They want the liberty to make sense of the world as they see fit, and don't want to be imposed upon by the particularism of others who see things differently.  They resent having to genuflect to pieties not of their own choosing.  Social liberalism appeals to this impulse.

Despite the results in Iowas, Noman doubts that the Republican Party is split equally between libertarian, social conservative and moderate voters.  He suspects that, much as for the nation as a whole, the majority of Republican voters incline towards social conservatism while the people with Party power and voice incline towards social liberalism.  Republicans in the heartland gravitate toward values, while people in the big cities like the one Peggy Noonan lives in gravitate toward fiscal autonomy.

Both groups have values, and both care about fiscal matters.  But, liberal Republicans identify more with the moral values of liberal Democrats than with those of conservative Republicans.  They seem to resent that someone else's scruples might prevent them from enjoying the fruits of their labor as they see fit.

Social conservatives share the fiscal concerns of nearly all Republicans, who know that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that when you dance to the music, you have to pay the piper.  They are responsible people who know that both personal entertainments and financial dealings are subject to restraint.

Note that compromise on supposedly moderate grounds, by stressing only tax and spending issues, directly satisfies only liberal Republicans' critical concerns.  What keeps social conservatives in the Republican Party despite getting the short end of the compromise is the Democratic Party's frightening devotion to the culture of death.

Were President Obama sensible enough not to have (1) Kevin Jennings queer the nation's schools, (2) Kathleen Sibelius force people morally disgusted by abortion to fund it, (3) Janet Napolitano snoop on returning veterans and pro-lifers, (4) Cass Sunstein nudge the economy and middle class over a cliff, (5) Van Jones green (i.e., communize) federal agencies, and, generally, (6) chip-on-the-shoulder deconstructionists steer the reigns of government, social conservatives might be more inclined to splinter than eat a pie the crust of which appeals but doesn't completely satisfy.

Tuesday's vote didn't evidence a Party split three ways at the soul.  The real story was Rick Santorum's showing, the crucial aspect of which was evangelical support for a Roman Catholic.  At the critical moment, evangelicals inclined towards a Catholic, which, if sustainable throughout the country, would be a rapprochement of historical significance.

Should the divide that separates followers of Christ evaporate in American electoral politics, America's political landscape would be rocked, and its culture reclaimed.