Victor Davis Hanson -- The Rise and Fall of Current Western Civilization

Victor Davis Hanson is a rarity among contemporary commenters because he comes at punditry from the perspective of a credentialed scholar.  He has written many books, many if not most about wars and battles that changed or altered the course of history in a major way.  His most recent one "A War Like No Other" describes how and why the Spartans and Athenians fought each other for so many years (maybe almost 100?) during what has been called by historians The Peloponnesian War.  In addition to his scholarly efforts, Davis is, I believe it's now the third generation farmer in Central California. He also writes for many conservative publications (and probably a few of the other persuasion occasionally).  In short, he's kinda unusual -- a scholar, a for profit farmer, a commenter on current affairs, and a conservative through and through.  He has written a column recently for PJ Media entitled ""Why Did Rome Fall -- and Why Does It Matter Now" which displays all of his talents described above and provides some interesting fodder for thought.  The article is here and almost as interesting as the article itself are some of the comments that follow it.

Obama's Budget and Deficit Spending

This article by a Cato Institute analyst is quite revealing.  The author asserts that the budget deficit scheme was essentially put in place by Bush in the waning days of his administration and that Obama is mosty simply carrying on with Bush policies that caused the huge increase in debt levels.  The Cato Institute is libertarian and therefore much more conservative than liberal in its politics and policies, so there is no obvious blame-everything-on- Obama thing going on here.  What he does say is that Obama promised change, "go through the budget line by line", get the fiscal house in order, etc, but in reality is simply building on the profligate Bush budget of 2009 which he inherited.  Basically this article underscores why so many conservatives were disappointed in the Bush administration which never really seriously attacked government overspending and runaway entitlement programs.  One may chalk this lack of resolve by Bush to 9/11 and the need to pander to the liberal big spenders in Congress in order to gain support for the WOT efforts.  On the other hand Bush was never a real Reagan conservative, any more than his father was, and while he believed in free markets, et al, let's remember he never vetoed any of those outrageous spending bills served up to him year after year.  Obama is a weak, ridiculous excuse for a CIC, however a lot of his problems were served up during the Bush years.  Bush is a good man and acted like a CIC should in the aftermath of 9/11, but his commitment to true conservative principles was always suspect.

Unions - Necessary Evils or Just Evil

Michael Barone tackles this subject in the context of public service and private industry unions and concludes what anyone with an I.Q. of over 50 long ago figured out:  Unions are bad news for consumers, taxpayers, and the long term survival of corporations.  His example is Detroit where unions, with the help of some lame corporate management, managed to bankrupt two major car companies and left the third one limping along.  What unions do best, besides feathering the nest of the union leaders, is protect the jobs that already exist at any given company.  They do this by limiting the company's ability to innovate, eliminate wasteful jobs and create flexible, efficient workplaces.  A case can be made that unions many years ago did help introduce some safety measures in mining and manufacturing that improved working conditions, but that was long ago and probably of limited value in any case.  As for the public service unions there is no argument for these entities to exist.  They have destroyed the state governments in every blue state with their excessive pay and benefits.  They have dumbed down the education system in the US with excessive layers of useless administration, featherbedding rules and the like.  There is no excuse for these unions now, if there ever was, which I doubt.  Barone has it about right in his analysis.

Glenn Beck -- Helpful or Hurtful?

Glenn Beck has become the whipping boy for liberal media pundits like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Stewart and all the rest.  The reason is simple: his daily TV program is growing in audience numbers and influence, while theirs are losing audience numbers and influence.  The producer of one of the libs's program recently suggested, on air, that she didn't know why Glenn Beck was allowed on TV since he was mentally unstable.  So what is Beck doing that upsets these people so much?  Among other things he's discussing the causes of recessions and what we need to do to come out of them.  Beck's prescription for coming out of this recession follows that  proposed and enacted for coming out of recessions by Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy. Since the solutions of these two presidents are not  being employed by the Obama administration, namely big tax and spending cuts leading to a smaller government,  the Obama liberal media enablers are outraged,  resorting to their usual character assassination and ad hominem attacks.  What we are seeing here is nothing more than the struggle between those who want bigger government through increased spending and regulation of the economy, and those who want exactly the opposite.  Those who study history know that the greatest periods of economic growth have always occurred during periods of the least amount of government interference in the the markets and during periods of minimal taxation.  It has always been so and always will be so. Some people simply can't abide that message largely because it reduces their influence.  Rather than excoriating Beck, everyone should applaud him  at the very least, for trying to educate his viewers on these subjects.

ADDED:  Here is a pretty fulsome paen to Mr Beck by someone I am not familiar with.  It sounds pretty accurate based on what I know about him.

ADDED: 6/5/10.  Amity Slaes is a conservative columnist who writes for WSJ, Weekly Standard, etc.  Her column here describes Glenn Beck's threat to the established professoriate guild that tilts strongly progressive while Beck is pushing non-academic professionals who are presenting another view of history and current events.  Profs don't like this intrusion into their little monopoly on learning credentials and are going on the attack.  According to Amity they have reason to be afraid since their stranglehold on the interpretation of history is being challenged by non guild writers.

ADDED:  This article by Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard, provides a clear picture of Glenn Beck and his role in the Tea Party and Republican firmament.  Continetti thinks Beck represents the dismal or root canal face of Conservatism while by contrast Ronald Reagan represnts the optimistic, forward looking, optimistic face.  Bot faces are real and legitimate, however Reagan's face is the one that makes the Republican Party capable of winning elections.  Barry Goldwater, for example, was a root canal Conservative who wanted to repeal the New Deal, etc, and lost bit time.  RR was uninterested in repealing the New Deal, rather in passing laws that promoted growth and limited the role of the government in the economy (through less regulation).

Venetian Rice and Peas Recipe - Risi e Bisi

Here is a link to a recipe recommended by a blogger friend at Maggie's Farm.  After having sampled another friend's recipe for Fusilli with Sausage, Artichokes, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes, I'm looking forward to what my resident super chef can make of this delicious sounding specialty from Venice.

CRA -- The Real Culprit in the Great Financial Meltdown

Edward Pinto, the author of this article, was the chief credit officer at Fannie Mae during the 1980's.  It should be noted that the federal law creating the CRA (Community Redevelopment Act) occurred in 1977 during the Carter Administration.  A thorough re-write of the history and effectiveness of this law has been going on by various official spokespeople for the government and institutions involved in the great financial meltdown of the last few years.  Pinto attempts to set the record straight in this article and since he was an official at Fannie Mae prior to the ramping up of the CRA during the Clinton years, he clearly has a bird's eye view of what has gone on.  This is aother piece of evidence that the whole CRA exercise was the root cause of the meltdown and remains unacknowledged by those involved to this day.  Clinton administration officials and all their enablers in the Congress are most complicit in this fiasco and should be called out for their roles.  This horrific crises did not need happen.  However, it did and is proof positive that government social engineering and meddling in the workings of the free market always leads to disaster.  Since there has been no attempt at accounting here, we can be assured that the whole sordid affair will be repeated.

Added 2/23/10:  Thomas Sowell today adds another comment to the many, including his book, he has contributed to this subject over the past few years here.  What's worrisome about his observation is the thought that many of the easy credit and permissive financing schemes that brought about the meltdown are being repeated.

Added 4/21/10:  This WSJ article here clearly anoints the real culprits in the financial meltdown: the government GSEs, Freddie and Fannie, and in this article he tells us why and how the Republicans were unable to put in place reforms that would have limited if not prevented this catastrophe.

ADDED: 5/23/10:  Andrew Cuomo, another flaming liberal like his father, now aspires to the Governor's seat in New York, a very blue state where his father was Governor in 1984.  Cuomo was the Secretary of HUD in the Clinton administration and was responsible for some terrible policies that opened the floodgates on sub-prime mortgages which overwhelmed the system and led to the financial meltdown we are still trying to recover from. Cuomo was in his 30's when he held the HUD position, had the usual career politician's experience in business, which is to say none, and as one can see from this article, he made some very bad decisions and choices in that job.  Since he was in a democrat party administration there were no adults to advise or reign him in, so we live with the consequences.  It would be nice to believe that his disastrous time in the HUD job will haunt him and relieve the people of New York of his services in the future, but that will not happen.  The corrupt media will not mention his horrible record, or if they do they'll blame it on Bush or someone else, and New York will suffer through yet another Cuomo regime.  Too bad.  Read all about his shenanigans at HUD here in some super reporting by Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, published in August '08.

ADDED: 9/20/10:  This particular video tells the full story about the run up to the financial crises with sub-prime mortgages that led to the meltdown in '07/'08.  It's all here, in this You Tube video.  Note how over and over in Congressional committee meetings responsible Republicans warned, cajoled, and fought for reforms of Freddie and Fannie, and how repeatedly all Democrats pooh-poohed their concerns and refused any changes in the regulation of these out-of-control GSEs.  This is one of the greatest scams and politically induced frauds surely sine the Teapot Dome debacle in the Harding administration and maybe ever.  The behavior of the representatives who enabled Frank Raines and all the other democrats who feasted on the bonuses paid out by these GSEs for years, should be the target of criminal investigations at some point in time.  If their were Republicans involved, and there may have been a few, in this fraud, they should be investigated as well.  Democracies cannot survive when the political class is directly involved in fraud of this nature.  Hopefully the election this Fall will clean out some of this detritus and allow us to move forward with policies that make sense.  What a crying shame all of this is.

Ivy League Ignorance

I've written before on the subject of the academy and governance.  Here is an article that elaborates on the theme of experience versus theory.  Of particular interest is the study conducted by a McGill U. researcher interested in discovering the success ratio of MBA graduates as CEOs.  He found that of a group of 20 MBAs with the title of CEO, 15 were failures or mostly failures and 5 were "successful".  The chart in the article showing the number of academics vs. real world members of various administrations, both republican and democrat, shows the Obama Admin with by far the most academics and fewest real world types running things in Washington.  Is it any wonder there exists a massive disconnect between the "rulers" and the "ruled" in today's politics?

In a related commentary by John Zeigler here,  is the results of Zogby and Pew polls to determine what the voters in the last election actually "knew" about issues before or after they acually voted.  These are highly disturbing findings because they support the strategy of the Obama campaign''s vacuous pitch of "Hope and Change" and the effectiveness of the hapless media coverage of the candidate himself.  Regrettably it appears the American public, or at least about 60% of the public, are ill-informed and vote largely on the basis of the presentation or impression made by the candidate and the presentation of the candidate by the media.  Now we know why Obama won.