Why Washington DC is SO Out-of-Touch

Sweet Ride. Uber D.C.'s Rachel Holt
in one of her company's digitally
dispatched luxury sedans. Some
riders use them to get groceries.
(Time magazine)

Describing the über-Washingtonian lifestyle of exotic cocktails, 25 to 30 course dinners, and luxury rides, Andrew Ferguson draws a stark contrast between the affluence of the nation's capital and the country it governs. His Time magazine article, Bubble on the Potomac, is well worth a full read (subscription required), but here are some excerpts:

[The Passenger Bar's] motto? "God save the district." The sentiment is easy to understand, for these are good times in Washington and the seven counties that surround it. Even as the nation struggles, the capital has prospered, making it a magnet for young hipsters but leaving its residents with only a tentative understanding of how the rest of the country lives.

Hayward: Green Energy Bubble Bursting Everywhere

"The green energy bubble "is bursting loudest at the moment, and as usual environmentalists are slow to see that they're about to get run over by a revival of the hydrocarbon economy," writes John Hayward at powerlineblog.com. "Those old dinosaurs may have been big lumbering animals, but the nimble fossil fuels they threw off are crushing the so-called green “fuels of the future” beloved of fruit-juice drinkers and vegans everywhere." Three examples:

• The New York Times reported "Obama pushed hard for the final approval of Shell Oil's long sought permit to begin drilling in a new offshore oil field in Alaska."
• "Obama has grown very quiet about climate change ... He's not attending the UN's 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit that started the whole climate diplomacy circus."
• Germany's "pledge to phase out nuclear power is looking increasingly unrealistic" and "some leading Social Democrats have called for building ... more coal-fired power plants."

Concludes Hayward:  "Have a nice day, green weenies. Your party is over. Deal with it."

16 States with Real Job Growth

The 16 states that have seen job growth since President Obama took office have a few things in common, reports John Merline at Investor's Business Daily (IBD). They are more likely to be business friendly, to keep taxes, spending and regulations low, and to be, on average, more red (conservative) than blue (liberal).

[S]ince the recovery started, red states have had a job growth rate of nearly twice that of blue states.
Tossup states, meanwhile, have performed worse than either red or blue states. In fact, 9 of the 11 battleground states have fewer people employed now than when Obama was sworn in.

European "Austerity" or American "Job Growth"?

Liberals' idea of 'austerity' is raising taxes so that taxpayers are forced to tighten their belts while governments continue to expand theirs. Michael Barone explains why this European-style austerity hurts everyone, including governments:

Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University took a look at what "austerity" in Europe actually means.

What she found is that government spending has increased or not appreciably declined in Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Germany. The only significant spending reductions are in Greece, where the bond market cut off funding. In the other countries, the big adjustment has been an increase in tax rates. European "austerity" is an attempt to reduce government budget deficits largely by increasing taxes and only to a small extent by reining in spending.

The debate before Americans today is which type of policy to pursue: European-style austerity or American-style job growth.

Obama Administration's Binge Spending

"Until Barack Obama took office in 2009, the United States had never spent more than 23.5% of GDP, with the exception of the World War II years of 1942-1946," writes James Pethokoukis. Responding to an article claiming Obama's spending binge never occurred, Pethokoukis put the Obama binge spending record into a simple graphic:

Will: When the Looter is the Government

Is it unanticipated 'collateral damage' from the War on Drugs, or deliberate highway robbery by government agencies? George Will relates a chilling story of a $1.5 million motel, owned by the law-abiding Caswell family since 1955, that should scare every property owner.

The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury [MA] Police Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million. The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the “equitable sharing” of the fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is indistinguishable from robbery.

Barone: Cocooned Liberals

We all tend toward cocoon living, writes Michael Barone, "associating only with those who share your views, reading journalism and watching news that only reinforces them, [and] avoiding those on the other side of the cultural divide." But cocooning seems to hurt liberals more than conservatives.

Even in a cocoon, conservatives cannot avoid liberal mainstream media, liberal Hollywood entertainment and, these days, the liberal Obama administration. They're made uncomfortably aware of the arguments of those on the other side. Which gives them an advantage in fashioning their own responses.

Liberals can protect themselves better against assaults from outside their cocoon. They can stay out of megachurches and make sure their remote controls never click on Fox News. They can stay off the AM radio dial so they will never hear Rush Limbaugh.

The problem is that this leaves them unprepared to make the best case for their side in public debate. They are too often not aware of holes in arguments that sound plausible when bandied between confreres entirely disposed to agree. We have seen how this works on some issues this year.

Barone offers two examples: liberals' shock that "a majority of justices seemed to take the case against Obamacare's constitutionality very seriously indeed," and the Wisconsin public-unions-vs-Gov-Scott-Brown drama that isn't going well for libs.