A Trip Down Memory Lane

Size Isn't Everything: Update

A couple of days ago, I blogged about the size of the crowd on the Washington D.C. mall this past weekend "protesting" excessive government.

The Leftist Elite Media reported numbers ranging from 30,000 to 75,000. Even Bill O'Reilly quoted the figure 75,000 because a Washington city official cited that figure as an unofficial "guess" while at the same time saying that the city does not guestimate crowd sizes or release those numbers.

Left wing blogs downplayed the rally, claiming the numbers were small. The Leftist Elite Media (NBC, ABC, CBS, NYTimes, etc) said the crowd was "a few thousand" people.

Well, now more accurate numbers are available. A number of websites are citing sources that have done extensive research of video and photos of the event and those sources are now saying that about 325,000 people were involved in the march and as many as 500,000 to 600,000 were present at the Mall protest.

While there are no "official" numbers, and never will be, these numbers appear to be the most accurate. These numbers also eclipse the best estimates of the "million man march," which probably involved closer to 100,000 African Americans.

As I said before, size isn't everything, but I think the way the numbers are being reported is an interesting side story in and of itself.

The End of Meritocracy

The Today show has hired Jenna Bush Hager to do a monthly feature story on education. This seemingly innocuous announcement prompted one of the sillier recent outbursts of liberal hand-wringing. The New York Times's Opinionator blog collected some of the left-wing commentary under the title "There Goes the Meritocracy." If irony was intended it was too subtle for me to pick up.

Rather, the Times seems to take seriously various liberal commentators' claims that NBC's hiring of Ms. Hager, the author of two best-selling books for children, has some baleful significance: it's a sign that our nation is in its "late empire" phase, with "white Russians" dominating our political and media classes, and a symptom of our "national disease." Above all, the fact that NBC hired Ms. Hager indicates that our "great meritocracy" is a fraud.

If Ms. Hager had been hired to perform neurosurgery, this hand-wringing about "meritocracy" might have some force. But doing a once-a-month feature on a soft-news TV show? Good Lord, get a grip!

The old sock-puppet Glenn Greenwald, who apparently is still around, uses Hager's new job as the occasion for a broadside against the political and media industries:

They should convene a panel for the next "Meet the Press" with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment. They can interview Lisa Murkowski, Evan Bayh, Jeb Bush, Bob Casey, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Dan Lipinksi, and Harold Ford, Jr. about personal responsibility and the virtues of self-sufficiency.

That's almost clever, except that if you're going to list politicians who have no apparent claim on office other than their names, it is ludicrous to omit Ted, Joe and Patrick Kennedy; not to mention Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, and numerous others on both sides of the aisle. But what, really, is the point? It's true that there are quite a few politicians who are the sons or daughters of politicians, but so what? That is true of most occupations. If your father is a doctor, you are more likely to become a doctor. If your father was a lawyer, you are more likely to become a lawyer. It happens a lot. I've seen no data suggesting that it is more common in politics (or journalism) than anywhere else. And politics is relentlessly competitive; even the worst candidates, like Joseph and Patrick Kennedy, take office only if most voters vote for them.

Two of the liberals quoted in the Times story somehow bring the conversation around to Sonia Sotomayer. It still isn't clear to me how she relates to Jenna Hager. Seemingly the idea is that because she came from an undistinguished background, we conservatives were obligated to support her nomination. Sure: just like liberals backed Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, right?

The TImes gives the last word to the ever-hysterical Andrew Sullivan, who attacks the "nepotism" of Hager's hiring as symptomatic of our "late empire" status. I'm sure grand theories have been hung on a more slender thread, but I can't think when offhand.

Actually, though, it isn't nepotism. Neither President Bush nor any other of Jenna's relatives works for NBC News, and I think it's a safe bet that nearly all of the relevant people at the Today show and NBC detest Jenna's father.

I haven't read Sullivan for a long time, but the snippet quoted by the Times reminds me how unintentionally entertaining he can be: because NBC is hiring Jenna Hager--hey, he drew the connection, I didn't--the United States is on the verge of becoming "17th century Spain." Oh, sure. We understand, Andrew. We think you're sane, really we do.

So: do we have a meritocracy? Of course we do. If you doubt that, apply to medical school. Or try to rise in a sales organization without, you know, making sales. Is our meritocracy imperfect? Of course. Like every other human institution. Is Russia's meritocracy perfect? France's? Cuba's?

Is it a good thing to have a father who is President? Of course. Do you suppose Malia Obama will have some good opportunities one of these days? (As, by the way, her mother has already.) On the other hand, does having a President for a father guarantee success in life? Amazingly enough, in our great meritocracy it doesn't.

Our republic has survived many ups and downs. I predict, confidently, that it will survive Jenna Hager's monthly reports on education issues.

NYT/CBS Poll "Generated" to Show Americans Want Health Care

In a not-so-surprising story, newsbusters uncovered the following (which should be a scandal, but won't be):

Realizing that Barack Obama's healthcare initiative has hit some roadblocks in Congress, the good folks at CBS News and the New York Times figured they'd help it along by creating a new poll on the subject that WAY oversampled people who voted for Obama.

Although the then junior senator from Illinois received 53 percent of the votes last November, NYT/CBS surveyed almost twice as many Obama voters as McCain voters.

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Actually, as Bruce Kesler cleverly discovered, what the poll really found was that most Obama voters support substantial changes to healthcare and are willing to pay higher taxes for a government run system:

[A]ccording to the actual poll data, of the 73% of respondents who said they voted in 2008 only 34% voted for McCain and 66% for Obama.

As can be plainly seen on page 7 of the poll's data, only 73 percent of respondents divulged who they voted for last November. 48 percent said Obama, 25 percent McCain.

What this means is this poll surveyed 66 percent Obama supporters versus 34 percent McCain.

As the final tally last year was 53 percent to 46 percent, this poll WAY oversampled Obama voters.

And you wonder why the survey found so much support for Obamacare?

Honestly, stuff like this should be illegal and any news organization found doing it should be significantly fined.

In any industry you could name, such deception of the public would meet with very serious consequences. 

Why are so-called news outlets allowed to get away with such obvious deceit with total impunity?

High School Teacher Fired for Being Conservative

Early in May, Lawrence High School of Lawrence, Kansas fired government and history teacher Tim Latham. Latham charges that District 912 fired him because he is a conservative and many of his students have since rallied to his defense. Some 200 of them joined a FaceBook page in support and four appeared at a school board meeting on June 8 to advocate for their favorite teacher.

One reason given for the firing is that Mr. Latham did not show Obama’s inauguration live in his class and another is that staff members disparaged him for supporting Republicans during the late presidential race, most especially then vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin.

On June 8, an advocacy group, Kansas 9.12 Project also attended the school board meeting and spoke on Mr. Latham’s behalf.  According to a press release from the Kansas 9/12 Project, school board members admitted to the teachers union that they had not properly followed union rules to dismiss the teacher.

Meredith Richey, member, Kansas 9/12 Project, said it had come to the attention of the group that a teacher within Lawrence Public Schools was given a non-renewal because of a difference in political opinion. She asked the board of education to investigate this and possibly reconsider the non-renewal or check into how teachers are released so this is not a pattern in Lawrence. She said different opinions should be tolerated and she believes this is worth exploring.

Illegal Takeover? They Don't Report; You Decide

The Obama administration’s arguably unconstitutional and potentially illegal makeover/takeover of General Motors and Chrysler hit a legal road block on June 8, when Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a stay preventing Team Obama’s plan to sell Chrysler to the Italian automaker Fiat. This speed bump was a great opportunity for the media to pay attention to objections to the White House’s reckless executive-branch manipulation of the auto business.

Or not.

President Bush and his team were regularly savaged by the media elite if they so much as sniffed a hint of evasion over the rule of law and the bounds of constitutional authority in fighting terrorism. So why is President Obama’s unprecedented intervention in the auto industry, including a TARP-fund bailout expressly ruled out by Congress, all but ignored?

Even with the Supreme Court order, the nightly news shows of CBS and NBC gave the decision just a few seconds of air time, the equivalent of a stifled yawn, and never went anywhere near describing the strange bankruptcy proceedings the Obama administration has cooked up to manipulate the industry to its liking.

Media Falls For Phony Jobs Claims

Tony Fratto is envious.

Mr. Fratto was a colleague of mine in the Bush administration, and as a senior member of the White House communications shop, he knows just how difficult it can be to deal with a press corps skeptical about presidential economic claims. It now appears, however, that Mr. Fratto's problem was that he simply lacked the magic words -- jobs "saved or created."

"Saved or created" has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years."

Mr. Fratto sees a double standard at play. "We would never have used a formula like 'save or create,'" he tells me. "To begin with, the number is pure fiction -- the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being 'saved.' And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it."

Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved." As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it.

And get away with it he has. However dubious it may be as an economic measure, as a political formula "save or create" allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision. Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw calls it a "non-measurable metric." And on his blog, he acknowledges the political attraction.

"The expression 'create or save,' which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius," writes Mr. Mankiw. "You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus."

Mr. Obama's comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.

It's not only former Bush staffers such as Messrs. Fratto and Mankiw who have noted the political convenience here. During a March hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the formula.

"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," said the Montana Democrat. "If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."

Now, something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged. It's true that almost any government spending will create some jobs and save others. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, that doesn't tell you much: The government, after all, can create jobs by hiring people to dig holes and fill them in.

If the "saved or created" formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims. And don't expect much to change. So long as the news continues to repeat the administration's line that the stimulus has already "saved or created" 150,000 jobs over a time period when the U.S. economy suffered an overall job loss 10 times that number, the White House would be insane to give up a formula that allows them to spin job losses into jobs saved.

"You would think that any self-respecting White House press corps would show some of the same skepticism toward President Obama's jobs claims that they did toward President Bush's tax cuts," says Mr. Fratto. "But I'm still waiting."

So Unbelievably Amazing

NBC anchor Brian Williams has never been shy about how amazed he is by Barack Obama. In fact, he is so enamored with Obama that he finds it "UNBELIEVABLE!" when Obama walks by munching on M&Ms.

"To be in the hallway when the president walks by with a handful of M&Ms, popping them in his mouth as he goes to visit his chief of staff -- it was unbelieveable! I don't think the expression 'took up residence' is hyperbolic."

Remind me to never invite Brian Williams over. He'd probably pee his pants if he saw me eat a Snickers bar.