Barone on Income Inequality

Michael Barone has an article for The Washington Examiner on why income inequality doesn't bother most of us, and who it may bother. He begins:

Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics. Yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it.

Talking about our federal tax rates, Barone observes:

Current tax rates mean that the top 1 percent of earners account for 40 percent of federal income tax revenue.

In other words, in a nation of 308 million people, less than three million people pay four out of every ten income tax dollars. How do most of us feel?

I suspect that most Americans would be thrilled to get a 13th month of pay. But they're not seething with envy at those who are better off.

Barone concludes about who does most of the resenting:

One example is the cartoonist and author Garry Trudeau, a college classmate of George W. Bush, who has been spewing contempt for the Bushes for 40-some years. The strongest class envy in America, it turns out, may be the resentment of those who were one club above you at Yale.

I know of people who own Learjets and the like, but I'm not worried that I don't own one. I think Barone has it right, see what you think.

Political (and Other) Humor

Dave Barry has written his humorous review of 2010, which appears here in The Washington Post. Unless you are BP, Toyota, a Yankees fan, or President Obama, go have a laugh while reading it.

Warning: this is no short article.

Foreign Policy Challenges

A Brit lists what he sees as President Obama's top 10 foreign policy challenges, you'll find them here in The Telegraph. Most of us could have written this article and come up with more or less the same list.

It saddens me he didn't include in his list something from Latin America, either the drug wars in Mexico/Guatemala or the descent of Venezuela into dictatorship. Unfortunately, it is typical that American presidents give low priority to our hemisphere.

Palin and Class

Nate Silver has done a thoughtful, relatively even-handed treatment of Sarah Palin's chances at the Republican nomination for 2012. You'll find it here in The New York Times.

I think his analysis of her strengths and weaknesses is close to the mark. If he misses anything, it is not being explicit in discussing the social class issues in the divided reaction of Republicans to her.

Upper class Republicans like David Brooks and Peggy Noonan can't stand Palin, she appeals to what we once called "Reagan Democrats." Some of those who oppose her might find Obama more "class compatible" than they find Palin "ideology compatible" and either stay home or vote Dem.

I can imagine Sarah Palin becoming a U.S. version of Evita Peron, they share a number of characteristics.

Who Would Have Guessed?

Gasoline usage in the U.S. is declining, and the decline is predicted to continue. Amazing. Why didn't the carbon footprint freaks tell us that the problem was going away on its own?

See this article from the Chicago Sun-Times which lays out the details and suggests some reasons why it might be happening.

Kuhn: Why the Dems Lost

David Paul Kuhn does political analysis for RealClearPolitics. His year-end summary of 2010 reaches exactly the opposite conclusion to that of Joe Klein for Time described a couple of days ago.

All of Kuhn's summary is good; I particularly like his analysis of the Democrat's confusion about the unpopularity of the health care law:

The mystery is why it's still such a mystery. About 85 percent of Americans had healthcare. Polls showed Americans were largely pleased with the status of that care. (snip) Democrats' top priority was healthcare when the nation's top priority was the economic crisis.

The voters' message to the Dems in the 2010 election was "You just don't get it." Everything Dem leaders have said since November suggests they still don't get it.

Apparently Democrats can't accept that voters are selfish enough to vote their own interests. It turns out most voters who have health care don't much care about those who don't.

New Year Electronics Tips

The good folks at Lucianne.com recommend the free or low cost suggestions in this article from, of all places, The New York Times. Some of them look sensible to me, others aren't relevant to me but might be to you.

One that I've already tried is great, the one about having multiple charging cables. Quite by accident I ended up with multiple phone charging cables and love it.

Near Future Flashpoints

Go here to see an excellent Foreign Policy survey of 16 nations where warfare may break out around the globe in the year to come. Warfare, as a way of life and death, is prospering around the world.

Actually, I suspect there are others at risk. Not included in the article are places like Nicaragua, Korea and Bolivia.

Climate Forecasting Difficult

Here at COTTonLINE we have commented repeatedly on the difficulty of predicting the weather, and on the unlikelihood that weather is much influenced by human activities. Here is an article from Fox News citing eight really off-the-mark predictions mostly about climate change and its effects on us.

These eight were made by serious people who believed they had good reasons upon which to base their predictions. Yet they could hardly have been more wrong. The moral of the story: making sweeping assertions about future climatological events is a fool's business. We humans simply don't know enough to do so.

Public Employee Unions Wrong

John Hinderaker, of the blog Powerline, weighs in with trenchant observations concerning public employee unions:

For the large majority of our history, public employee unions have been illegal. It is only since the 1960s and 1970s that they have been allowed. (snip) The United States has carried on a four-decade experiment in legalization, and the results are in: public employee unions are a cancer on our country.

Hinderaker's conclusion is one with which COTTonLINE concurs:

Legalization of public employee unions has been a disaster. It is time to end the experiment and make them illegal once again, at both the federal and state levels. I expect that this will become one of the great political issues of the next decade.

Opinion Evolution

Public attitude about a variety of options has changed from "isn't it awful" to "what's the problem?" See an article from Reason which recounts much of this history.

One of these days we'll decide having designer children is not only okay, but your responsibility if you choose to reproduce. Today we view this a morally questionable, an echo of the earlier eugenics movement.

Tunisian Trouble

The Guardian (U.K.) reports on the beginnings of trouble in Tunisia. It sounds like the same kind of desperation that triggers suicide bombers is now triggering dissent against the one party rule in Tunisia.

Long viewed as one of the peaceful parts of North Africa, Tunisia may be moving into the column headed "troubled spots." That will not be good for the tourist trade of sun-seeking Europeans.

Afghan Insight

David Ignatius writes about foreign policy for The Washington Post. Here he has some sad wisdom concerning the situation in Afghanistan:

History shows that three variables are crucial in countering an insurgency: a real process of reconciliation, no safe havens for the enemy and a competent host government. None are present in Afghanistan.

I buy Ignatius' first two variables, I'm less sure about the third. If a country has a "competent host government," can it have an insurgency with which it needs foreign help?

India for example has both a competent government and an insurgency. India, however, doesn't need foreign troops to deal with its Naxalite rebels. Colombia is another nation with a competent government which hasn't needed foreign troops to deal with its insurgency.

Quote of the Day

Joe Klein, writing in Time about the year just past:

Nothing much happened in 2010.

Just an election that rolled back the Democrat waves of 2006 and 2008 and saw the rise of the Tea Party economic conservatism movement, insignificant-to-him political events he shrugs off as "inevitable." Some of us found these a bit more exciting.

It's Cold

No doubt about it, this is a cold, snowy winter, and in SoCal a cold, rainy winter. Go anywhere and see stories about storm mess, like this one about Berlin on China's Xinhua News. It turns out Berlin hasn't had this much December snow for 110 years.

More snow means more of the planet covered in sheets of blinding white. More white means more sun heat reflected back into space. More reflected heat means more cold. More cold means more snow.

That's Gaia doing her magic. Is this how ice ages begin? Global cooling? Sounds reasonable to me, although I'm the first to admit climate isn't my field of science.

This New York Times article by Judah Cohen has one explanation, somewhat convoluted and forced.

Interesting Ideas

Columnist David Brooks, who writes for the New York Times, annually gives the Sidney Awards to interesting articles he has read in the past year. This year's collection are particularly intriguing.

I won't try to summarize them here, except to note that the one about corruption rings true. They are all worth your time.

Bail Out California?

This article for The Daily Caller argues that conservatives might want to bail out California in order to use the leverage to force it to reform, a la International Monetary Fund bail out reforms. It could work, who knows?

I suspect newly elected Governor Jerry Brown will try to get radically higher taxes to pay for all the stuff CA wants to spend money on. The sensible thing would be for Congress to pass legislation to permit states to file for bankruptcy.

Samuelson: Entitlements Under Fire

Robert Samuelson, writing for RealClearPolitics, tells us we need to cut entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Tellingly, he self-identifies as part of the problem, as he is 65 and now has a Medicare card.

As he notes, politicians are notoriously unwilling to tackle these issues because retirees are serious voters who are particularly serious about protecting their "entitlements." Failing cuts in these programs results in some combination of much higher taxes and higher government debt as the boomer bulge retires.

Barone: Don't Count Obama Out

Michael Barone, one of the wiser political pontificators, takes a look ahead at 2012 and concludes that Obama has a quite good chance of reelection. I cannot find much in his analysis with which to disagree.

Of course the President has another two years in which to earn the public's disapproval. See Barone's column in RealClearPolitics.

WaPo: Obama Weak on Nicaragua

Every now and then the Washington Post demonstrates that it is not totally owned by the Obama administration. This editorial is an example, criticizing the Obama administration's weak response to the anti-democratic activities of the Daniel Ortega administration in Managua, Nicaragua.

For COTTonLINE readers who track Latin America, this is a must-see. There are echoes here of Reagan's contras.