Showing posts with label James Pethokoukis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Pethokoukis. Show all posts

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Trump's Carrier intervention isn't just chilling, it's a crock of corporate welfare and perhaps explicit fascism

Jimmy Pethokoukis, on whom I have been very hard in the past, is certainly right about this one, calling the implicit intimidation in this affair "chilling", here.

But it's a lot more than chilling, it's at the very least more of the same cooperation between government and industry we have seen for decades but which used to go by the name of fascism, except it's more explicit than we're used to coming as it does from someone like Donald Trump, perhaps veering off now into explicit top-down federal intervention into business decisions.  

"We certainly don't want to take as our guide to creating jobs special tax breaks for a company that earned $7.5 billion in profits last year, got $6 billion in defense contracts, paid its top five executives $50 million, in order to preserve 1,000 out of 2,100 jobs," said [Robert] Shapiro, [former undersecretary of commerce]. "It's essentially a transfer from the taxpayers of Indiana, who are providing these tax breaks, to the shareholders of United Technology plus those 1,000 workers. That's really not a model for creating jobs across America," he added.


Thursday, November 10, 2016

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Publius Decius Mus eviscerates libertarian James Pethokoukis as a mere leftist materialist, calls him a traitor

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Here are some excerpts, but read the whole thing:

'In the leftist-Hegelian hive mind of which Pethokoukis is but one drone, the benefits of mass immigration and open trade are true simply; therefore popular objections are illegitimate. ... Pethokoukis ... has absorbed the core premises of the Left. “That’s racist!” This points to one of the deepest problems with “conservative intellectualism.” It accepts, out of conviction or fear or both, every restriction the Left places on it. The left rules out-of-bounds any discussion of the cultural or political effects of immigration as “racist,” and the conservatives go along. Hence they can only talk about immigration in economic terms, as if human beings were widgets.

'In fact, this particular intellectual rot defines almost all of “conservatism.” It’s allowed the Left to bully the Right out of talking or thinking about so many subjects that all conservatives can rouse themselves to address any more is the economy. They rationalize such a narrow focus by insisting economics trumps all. But the root is fear. Or was. Fear may have caused the initial retreat, but younger “conservatives” raised in the faith actually believe every line of the Leftist creed. Except the parts about redistribution, because Hayek. Also, the donors don’t like it. ,,,

'Like all self-castrated “conservatives,” Pethokoukis goes right along. Whether out of fear or conviction doesn’t even matter anymore.


'Either way, he—and all the others like him—are obstacles to the near- and long-term project of saving what’s left of American and Western civilization. To climb out of the hole we’re in, we don’t need liberals, we don’t need cowards, and we don’t need traitors.'

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Mark Levin is right to be upset about Trump's proposal to grant paid maternity leave and childcare, eldercare subsidies

This is the same sort of objectionable thing rammed through by George W. Bush in the Drugs for Seniors legislation. Totally unaffordable, but helpful for reelection purposes.

The difference this time is that it ain't gonna pass, unless of course you idiots out there give the House to the Democrats.

I think it's all politics and will get drastically pared down. Some token thing may pass, but not the full monty.

If Trump wins, which is what this is really all about.

It is noteworthy, however, that other radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are nearly rolling over for this thing. The program is objectionable out of the box, except to people like James Pethokoukis, but those two today were almost paragons of equanimity. I think Laura even took a call praising the pro-family aspects of the plan. The worst argument for the idea being repeated is that it will encourage single mothers to work. So we'll subsidize single motherhood? Yeah, that's a Republican value.

I don't expect the Limbaughs and Ingrahams to diss Trump at this stage of the game, but it is this stage of the game. They could have at least hinted at the politics.

Trump can't defend patriotism without Jimmy Pethokoukis invoking totalitarianism

Friday, January 29, 2016

James Pethokoukis on China trade reminds me of my doctor pushing statin drugs

As everyone knows, statin drugs for cholesterol inhibit CoQ10 synthesis. So now the doctors push a CoQ10 supplement on you at the same time they push the cholesterol drug.

As George W. Bush famously said, "That doesn't make any sense."

So along comes James Pethokoukis confronted with the study showing how the opening to China trade destroyed many American jobs and lives.

His solution?

An expanded earned income credit, wage subsidies, and other government safety net initiatives to encourage work over retirement.

And relocation assistance to where the jobs are.

Never mind we don't want to move to China, India, Pakistan, Thailand or Indonesia.

Like Keynesians and MDs pushing drugs libertarians can never be proven wrong.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Fox News didn't want Repubicans to discuss the economy and jobs last night because that didn't fit Fox News' agenda

Jim Tankersley noticed the glaring omission from last night's Republican debate, here:

Polls continue to show that Americans care more about the economy than any other election issue. Fox News moderators noted that they had received more than 3,000 economy-themed questions on Facebook before the debate. Which is why it's so baffling that neither the questioners nor most candidates seemed eager to talk about growth, jobs and - as Republicans have been promising to do all election cycle - America's beleaguered working class. ...

"Way too little discussion" of economic growth, the conservative commentator Larry Kudlow tweeted after the prime-time debate ended. "If you're one of the 65 percent of Americans who think the U.S. is on the wrong track," said James Pethokoukis, a conservative writer for the American Enterprise Institute who has pushed Republican candidates to address worker angst, "what have these debates offered?"

----------------------------------------------

Obviously the economy and jobs didn't fit Fox News' agenda last night, which was to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump, who has pledged to end the flood of illegal immigration stealing Americans' jobs, end the farce of free-trade and become the greatest jobs president the country has ever seen.

Fox News, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by the open borders, free-trade libertarian Rupert Murdoch. It has its marching orders. And every candidate who takes money from the libertarian Koch brothers has his and is similarly beholden to the same ideology which demands the cheapest labor possible in service of the almighty bottom line, not in service of the country's citizens. The involvement of Facebook and Debbie Washerwoman Schultz of the DNC were just the bow around the illegal alien amnesty package.  

And that's why Donald Trump scares the crap out of them and must be destroyed:

He doesn't need their money to run for president, and won't do their bidding when he wins.


Saturday, November 30, 2013

The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank Draws A Graph Showing How Much Obama Sucks

Red is where we are. Green is where we should be.

Obama is the worst president since he's been born.

h/t James Pethokoukis

Thursday, January 5, 2012

James Pethokoukis Trots Out His August 2010 Surprise as a January 2012 Surprise

Involving a supposed mass refinancing of GSE-backed mortgages.

Rush Limbaugh fell for it on his show today, but it's a recycled attempt at a story to which there was nothing when it first appeared a year and a half ago, and there's nothing to it now unless . . . Obama makes another very quick recess appointment, and a bunch of lenders agree to take huge hits.

Fat chance, I say.

Aside from the political toxicity of the former (even The New Republic thinks Obama's recent appointment was unconstitutional), I can't imagine how lenders are just going to agree to eat half of the losses associated with rewriting mortgages at today's lower interest rates, especially with the stiffer Basel III bank capital rules now taking effect: "[T]he plan would have an immediate fixed cost to the government of . . . $242 billion with half that cost split equally between the government and lenders." 

Linda Lowell at housingwire.com, among others, knew the story was malarkey way back when here.

For Pethokoukis' August 2010 version, see here. For the January 2012 version, now see here.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Solyndra: A One Half Billion Dollar Microcosm of Obama's Crony Capitalism

Which rewards the takers, not the makers.

Read about it here, from James Pethokoukis:

"politicians enriching favored businesses, who then return the favor." 

Saturday, August 13, 2011

What?! James Pethokoukis Must Be High.

I just heard James Pethokoukis on Kudlow's radio program say Gov. Rick Perry is very conservative, to the right even of . . . Rep. Paul Ryan.

Wow! Whoopee! Imagine that, someone to the right of a moderate Republican.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Beware Of Greeks Defending TARP

James Pethokoukis of Reuters actually defends the fact that American politicians have ROBBED the taxpayers, always the last in line for money, to rescue the bankers, who are always first:

Of course, voters should be skeptical of paying for other people's financial mistakes. But it seems short-sighted for them to penalize politicians when they actually do something that's unpopular but right. And the TARP bailout does seem to have been the right thing. Despite its high sticker price, the final cost to American taxpayers will likely be a fraction of that thanks to speedy bank repayment of government capital injections.

Yeah. Speedy repayments. Sort of like GM's with TARP funds. If they could do it so quickly, maybe you overestimated the gravity of the original problem, and discount now how banks' profits are made possible by capital from the taxpayers.

Maybe it's because of what Spengler has recently observed about the Greeks, James:

[C]orruption pervades Greek society to the point that to purge it would destroy the social fabric: all political and social relations are premised on corruption.

You may be willing to justify theft, but the voters in Utah don't accept accommodation with corruption, throwing out Senator Bennett in the Republican PRIMARY. And now the voters in West Virginia have joined them, throwing out Representative Mollohan in the Democrat PRIMARY. All this after Germans just voted against Angela Merkel last Sunday after agreeing to bail out the Greeks.

Do you see a trend here, James?

Better get used to it.