Email to Eugene Robinson

Mr. Robinson,

A few questions in response to your column:

• The US attempted to spend itself out of recession under Hoover and Roosevelt, as did Japan during the 1990s. None of these efforts met with success, why do you think under Obama it will be different? I suppose you could point to spending during WWII, but that was also a time of severe rationing and deprivation. Employment is not to be confused with prosperity.

• The money being spent by the government has to be borrowed from somewhere. That means that someone is letting the government borrow their money, money that presumably would have otherwise been spent or invested elsewhere by that individual. Why do you think the money spent by the government would be more effective than letting it remain in the private sector? Do you think that politicians have a better grasp on the most productive use for money than individuals? If so, why?

• On a similar note, why is it preferable to have government spending instead of tax cuts? Why not leave the money with individuals to spend as they see fit? Again, what basis is there for believing that government will make better decisions about how the money is spent than the people who earned it in the first place?

• You openly praised spending on pork projects as "a good thing, not an outrage." Why is money spent on such projects preferable to letting people who earned the money keep it and spend as they see fit?

• In your column you stated that tax cuts are "the Republican prescription that helped get us into these desperate straits." Can you elaborate on this? I am confused as to how tax cuts produced the current recession. Republicans also engaged in massive deficit spending. Shouldn't a "change" president attempt to deviate from this?
  

• In 1993 President Clinton attempted to pass a stimulus package of less than $20 billion that was eventually pared down to $4 billion in unemployment benefits under heavy Republican criticism. The economy performed rather well in subsequent years despite (because of?) this tiny stimulus package. What lessons do you think should be drawn from that? Why was huge government spending unnecessary then but necessary now?

Thanks for your consideration.

Regards,

Colin

Q & A with Eugene Robinson

Eugene Robinson wrote a column yesterday and then conducted an online chat in the afternoon. I submitted the following questions:

• You wrote that "I believe that race is a subtext of Republican attack words such as "dangerous" or "socialist..." As a right-winger, can you explain to me what the rulebook is for attacking Obama in such a way that is not racist?

• You wrote that "...McCain promises "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan without telling war-weary voters how much more time, money or blood he will spend." Has any president in history ever told the people the exact costs of a war? Did FDR do this in WWII? Truman in Korea? Johnson in Vietnam? Wouldn't this require clairvoyance on McCain's part?

• You wrote that "...basically what [McCain and Palin] propose is staying the course that brought us to this point of global [economic] crisis." Can you explain to me exactly how Bush produced the current global crisis? Was it the tax cuts? The added regulatory burden of Sarbanes-Oxley? Should more regulation have been in place? If so, which ones?

Unfortunately none of my questions were answered.

Robinson, yet again

Eugene Robinson has a column today on the travails of Marion Barry. The idiocy is so widespread it's hard to even know where to start:

That's one reason I'm not making fun of Barry's return: Others may have lined their pockets with public funds during his tenure, but he didn't.

So Robinson is giving Barry credit for something he's not supposed to do anyhow -- embezzle taxpayer money. Barry, in Robinson's line of thinking, apparently deserves respect because he wasn't as corrupt as the people he surrounded himself with. Unbelievable.

And, whether you have any fondness for politics and politicians, it's hard to dislike the guy. Getting reelected mayor after being videotaped smoking crack should make him a shoo-in for the Politicians' Hall of Fame. Barry has as much of that special charisma, that all-eyes-on-me presence, as any politician I've ever met. At 69, he can still light up a room.

Yeah, well, a number of people have described Kim Jong Il as charming, but I'm not sure that qualifies him as Man of the Year.

Yes, he's what my grandmother used to call "a mess." And no, I can't be sure that we know the whole story of his recent reported robbery. Did he actually open the door to two guys he didn't really know?

Two things: Robinson should have listened to his grandmother more and that the details of the robbery don't matter. The only thing that does matter is Barry's asinine response to the robbery.

But Barry is one of the few politicians these days who bother to notice poor people. He has the ability to connect with single mothers earning the minimum wage, pensioners on fixed incomes, young men slouching on street corners. As gentrification rampages through Washington and other cities, making the streets safe for Starbucks and Pottery Barn, poor people are shoved pitilessly to the margins. If Marion Barry really intends to be their voice, then his Act XVII will be an act of personal redemption.

This is just jaw-dropping. While Robinson can't seem to muster the courage (or really, just common sense) to condemn Barry, he is not all reluctant to speak out against the real problem facing D.C: gentrification.

Now, let's compare, shall we. Under Barry the murder rate was higher (increasing from 194 in 1986 to 434 in 1989. Who do you think most of the murder victims were? The rich folks in Georgetown? Doubtful. While I don't have the stats I would be willing to bet that more people were on welfare and the general standards of living in the city were lower. I have yet to meet a single veteran DC resident that believes things were better back then.

As for gentrification, who does Robinson think works the construction jobs at the all of the condo developments going up in the city? Who gets the new retail jobs? Hint: not the rich.

This column in many ways shows what is wrong with the left: A refusal uphold Black "leaders" to any kind of real standards. An emphasis on style over substance. And, perhaps worst of all, a belief that it's not whether you're right or wrong that matters, but how much you care.

Robinson strikes again

Eugene Robinson reconfirms his status as the Washington Post's least incisive columnist with today's piece on France and multiculturalism:

The riots in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities ought to wipe the smirk from the lips of even multiculturalism's smuggest critics. Those who lobby against bilingual education or get upset when their children learn about Cinco de Mayo should look at France and realize that multiculturalism is a lot like democracy -- it's the worst system except for all the others.

People who lobbied against bilingual education did so because it wasn't working. Children were not learning -- prompting some California school districts to repeal it. The result:

Two years after Californians voted to end bilingual education and force a million Spanish-speaking students to immerse themselves in English as if it were a cold bath, those students are improving in reading and other subjects at often striking rates, according to standardized test scores released this week.

Many educators had predicted catastrophe if bilingual classes were dismantled in this state, which is home to one of every 10 of the nation's public school children, many of them native Spanish speakers. But the prophecies have not materialized.

As for the second bit, I remember learning about Cinco de Mayo when I went to elementary school in California. Even as a third-grader I thought it was ridiculous that I was learning about a holiday that commemorates a famous Mexican battle. I wasn't that smart, but I knew that Mexico was a completely different country and figured we should stick to more important things such as US history and eating glue.
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Now, did learning about Mexican holidays promote greater understanding among the school's population? Not that I can recall. If anything it helped accentuate differences. It was also at that same elementary school that I encountered the word "honky" for the first time, although it took me a number of years later before I figured out that it had a racial connotation.

Anyway, I think when it comes to promoting unity that Niall Ferguson gets it right:

Not so long ago I was at a junior school in Texas, not far from the Mexican border. The day began with the entire class singing a ditty that went: "I am proud to be an American, be an American, be an American/ I am proud to be an American, living in the USA - OK!" Deeply corny, no doubt. But these little kids sang it with real gusto. Every single one of them was of Mexican origin.

After blithering on some more Robinson offers up this nugget:

The failed French experiment proves that you can't make differences and disparities disappear simply by ignoring them. Other countries have tried that approach and likewise have failed. When I covered Brazil in the late 1980s, I was struck by how residents of the violent, desperate shantytowns were mostly black and the powerful people who ran the society were almost all white -- yet people insisted there was no racism. Now, belatedly, Brazil is beginning to try to redress more than a century of unacknowledged discrimination.

Honestly Eugene, do you think all of the sensitivity training in the world would do the poor in Brazil much good? Well, maybe racism is to blame. Or maybe, just maybe, it has far more to do with the fact that Brazil is corrupt, has poorly defined property rights and is ranked an abysmal 90th by the Heritage Foundation in its ranking of economic freedom.

Robinson concludes:

People of different races, backgrounds, cultures, histories and languages can indeed live together productively and with common purpose. I know that because we do it here in the United States. It's a messy process, because it means we have to argue a lot, and many of us resent all the constant conflict and negotiation that's involved in getting along with one another. But we manage quite well, especially if you compare our society to those, like France, that cover their ears and go "na-na-na-na-na" to avoid hearing complicated truths.

So let's end all this "English-first" nonsense and embrace Spanish as our second language, since that's what it is. Let's learn more about those 5,000 years of Chinese history. Let's have the dates of Ramadan and Eid noted on our calendars. Let's remind ourselves of a big, important lesson that we've already learned, and that we can teach the world: Multiculturalism works.

What's amazing is that while lots of other people have noted how the rioters in France have little economic opportunity, this is left completely unaddressed by Robinson. Nor does he mention the creation of public housing by the government that have become de facto ghettos. Or the lack of a police presence. But who knows, maybe all France really needs is Arab History Month.

Eugene strikes again

More idiocy from Eugene Robinson:

It's much more likely that Miers was done in by the shocking revelation that she holds, or once held, views that suggest a modern and reasonable view of America. As The Post reported earlier this week, when she was president of the State Bar of Texas she gave a speech in which she said "self-determination makes sense" as a way of handling issues such as abortion and separation of church and state. She also set numerical targets to achieve racial and gender diversity in the legal profession.

Of course Robinson ignores the fact that she had already been long under fire before that. Indeed, the Krauthammer column that suggested the strategy eventually picked up by the White House for ending her nomination came out last week. What he misses is that it wasn't her views -- I don't even know what her views are -- it's that she was unqualified. Working for the Texas lottery commission and being religious doesn't exactly get it done for me when it comes to the Supreme Court. This is a point that even the Post's liberal cartoonist Tom Toles gets.

Meanwhile, Robinson reveals that while he has issues with Bush, he at least applauds his commitment to tokenism:

I have many, many problems with George Bush, but I do believe that in his own way he has some commitment to diversity. If it's just tokenism, it's more impressive tokenism than the Democrats were ever able to muster -- Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales are all trailblazers. I think he wanted to put a woman on the court to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, and I think he would be right to believe that some of Miers's harshest critics were being patronizing and sexist.

So to the extent he likes Bush it's because he thinks he has a penchant for placing symbolism over substance. Great.

But back to the Miers nomination. Looking around, I've noticed a lot of teeth-gnashing from Robinson, EJ Dionne Jr, Sen. Harry Reid, Ralph Neas, Daily Kos and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Given the opposition from this crowd I have no idea what some conservatives are so upset about. This is stark evidence that her withdrawal is welcome news.

Race

Eugene Robinson writes about Condoleezza Rice:

She doesn't deny that race makes a difference. "We all look forward to the day when this country is race-blind, but it isn't yet," she told reporters in Birmingham. Later she added, "The fact that our society is not colorblind is a statement of fact."

But then why are the top echelons of her State Department almost entirely white? "That's an artifact of foreign policy," she said in the interview. "It's not been a very diverse profession." In other words, there aren't enough qualified minority candidates. I wondered how many times those words have been used as a lame excuse.

Why is that a lame excuse? Does Robinson know more about the foreign policy community than Rice? You know, I attend an international affairs graduate school here in D.C. and I believe there is a grand total of one black male in the student body. I think there are a few black females but I don't think they number more than 5. When I was an undergrad there wasn't a single black person in my international affairs graduating class. In high school we only had one black person participate in the school's model United Nations program.

If there were lots of qualified black candidates out there for foreign policy posts Robinson may have a point. But there aren't, and he doesn't.

Then we have this:

One of the things she somehow missed was that in Titusville and other black middle-class enclaves, a guiding principle was that as you climbed, you were obliged to reach back and bring others along. Rice has been a foreign policy heavyweight for nearly two decades; she spent four years in the White House as the president's national security adviser. In the interview, she mentioned just one black professional she has brought with her from the National Security Council to State.

This is disgusting. Essentially what Robinson is advocating is a tribal mentality in which you have an obligation to help support people that look like you. Not those best qualified, but merely those who share your skin color.

Read the rest of the column. Rather than celebrating Rice's accomplishments you get the sense that Robinson is upset that she doesn't view herself as a victim. Pathetic.

Update: Powerlineblog basically says the same thing as me.