Hypocrisy 2

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The response to Warren Buffett's piece is interesting (see previous post). I think that there is a nice parallel with the reaction to government programs.

Michele Bachman stated that "There is nothing keeping Mr. Buffett from writing a check." If he wants to pay higher taxes.

That is true but it (in her mind) allows her to completely ignore his major point: That higher tax rates will not run off the "job creators". They will still be around just like they were when we had the 'higher than now' Clinton rates in the 90's.

However Ms. Bachman does not (as far as I know) call Mr. Buffett a hypocrite for holding that opinion without paying up.

Consider now a conservative M C who a) futilely votes against a liberal benefit program and b)after it passes this MC still arranges for their district to get its share.

I have a liberal friend who thinks that that is rank hypocrisy.

It just seems like the other side of the coin from Buffett's comments to me.

There was a lot of discussion about a similar point last year on this blog. I have included most of it in the first 3 comments.

(Wayne in that discussion is YA.)
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long range planning

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Consider any major problem facing the seven billion people in the world.

Ask yourself, “What would that problem look like, if there were only
1 billion of them."

My question is "Why do people propose solutions to those problems that do not include a reduction in the population, or at least the encouragment of it?
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Congratulations to the Egyptians!

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Now comes the hard part. The transition from what has been to what will be. When contemplating the difficulty of the job they have in front of them I naturally compare their problems with those that our own founders faced in the late 18th century.

In many ways their job is much harder than ours was.

Our colonies had a lot of democratic experience. Our guys had the luxury of a lot of time. In fact they had enough time to try something that didn’t work (the Articles of Confederation) and after that failure they still had time to take two years to create and implement a constitution. During that time there was no outside interference and George Washington stood as the rock that guaranteed that there would be no dictatorship.

The Egyptians have probably not more than a year and there will be all sorts of interference from various outside groups and there will be internal groups that will want to create one or another form of dictatorship. Also, people expect a lot more from government now than they did then. The Egyptians have some positives though. The world now has had 224 more years of experience with democracy than it did in 1787. They can draw on that and there are a lot of people who wish them well.

If their friends (read “us”) can find the right balance between support and noninterference, maybe they can make it that would help.
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Egypt rising?

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Very soon now there will be a lot of complaints that the President stayed with Mubarak too long and shortly thereafter a lot of complaints about how he abandoned Mubarak too quickly. How to play this is one of those hard questions which make me glad Barack has the job and I don't.

One of the reasons that we have so much trouble in the middle east is that it is there that one of our dearest values (democracy) is appears to be most clearly in conflict with one of our major national interests (stability i.e. oil).

Yesterday, a young woman appeared on TV. She was one of the many people in Cairo who were cleaning up the streets from the previous nights demonstrations. It was spontaneous, on a volunteer basis.

When asked why she was doing it she said, "Because it is my country."

That seemed like a good sign in a situation that is, as they say, 'fraught with peril.'
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Wanted, dead or alive

"A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit that had sought to block the American government from trying to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a United States citizen and Muslim cleric in hiding overseas who is accused of helping to plan attacks by Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen."

It is a bit puzzling that we have not heard more from the political and chattering classes about this. Particularly the left which, you will recall, went berserk when W engaged in scanning the nature of someone's email traffic. At least the ACLU stepped up here to question whether it is appropriate for the Ex. Branch to just put an American citizen on a kill or capture list.

Basically, I think I'm OK with it. I am assuming that the President has a very serious procedure for putting someone on such a list and doesn't just wake up some morning and say you know that guy really got on my nerves. I would think that it should involve some sort of self proclaimed identification with our enemies.
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Rules of engagement

My understanding of the rules of engagement in Afghanistan is this. To have a chance to succeed we must have the support of the people. To get that you have to keep civilian casualties low. That means that you have to have very restrictive rules of engagement. That is, you must limit our people’s responses in various situations. That increases the chances that our people will get killed. What it would come down to is deciding how many American lives you would give up in order to keep the collateral damage (= civilian casualties) low enough to have a chance for success. That would be a tough decision.