Post Office: pay more, get less

Walter Russell Mead: Postal Implosion Gathers Force.

'via Blog this'

It's a toss up

Walter Russell Mead thinks that today not even the White House is sure whether Obamacare is constitutional.

Blue San Francisco Plans To Stiff The Unions | Via Meadia

Walter Russell Mead: The next public sector union fight will be in San Francisco.

Political parties are breaking down

Walter Russell Mead: "The decay of American political parties continues as the real money and power in politics shifts inexorably away from party organizations to informal and ad hoc groups.  The combination of citizen grassroots movements, decentralized party structures and the vast sums of money short-circuiting the official party structures is changing the way politics works."

Okay, then, let them go.

Teavangelical vote?

Walter Russell Mead: "Either a lot of Democrats have been slandering millions of American voters as racist, or the Tea Party hasn’t gotten the word that Herman Cain is African American.  That is the only conclusion that can be drawn after a slew of recent polls shows that Cain is picking up the ‘teavangelical’ vote as former favorites like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry fade."

Happy Columbus Day?

Walter Rusell Mead on the celebration of Columbus Day.

European bankruptcy

Walter Russell Mead: "What is worrying investors worldwide is the evident intellectual and political bankruptcy of Europe.  The Europeans are not stupider than other people, but they face deep structural economic and political problems that their institutions are hopelessly inadequate to solve.  Creating a monetary union without a true federal government is looking more and more like the biggest European policy mistake since Britain and France let Hitler have the Sudetenland."

Bad Man Down

Walter Russell Mead's thoughts on the hunt for and death of Osama bin Laden.

What would Machiavelli do?

Michael Barone comments on Walter Russell Mead's recent column.

An analysis of Obama

Walter Russell Mead:

The President looks like a man who is ridden by events; at just the moment when the nation craves a strong leader, the President looks weak, dodgy, uncertain.  The contrast with the inflated hopes that an untested and inexperienced Senator Obama did so much to build up is crippling.  Obama has fallen so far precisely because he and his supporters so hugely oversold him.

He once despised Bill Clinton for the comprising and triangulating that got him through his eight years.  President Obama was going to do it differently: he was going to fight and win.

Perhaps he will; politics is full of surprises and it is still almost a year and a half until the election.  But at the moment the President seems to be envying Clinton’s talents and attempting to emulate rather than scorn them.  From anti-Clinton to aspiring Clinton is a long fall and it can’t be much fun.

The failure of the blue social model

Walter Russell Mead on the failure of the blue social model in northern cities like Chicago and New York. Blacks are leaving these areas with the multicultural lifestyle is supposed to favor them. But in a new Great Migration they are heading for the suburbs and moving South. Here are a few good quotes:

One would think that the Blacks who choose to stay in the cold, unwelcoming North would cluster in the cities where more liberal and humane governance models mandate such generous policies as “living wage” laws and where all the beautiful features of the blue social model can be experienced at full strength.

But one would be wrong.  Blacks across the North are fleeing the urban paradises of liberal legislation and high public union membership for the benighted suburbs.  The Times interviewed a professor to get the straight scoop:

“The notion of the North and its cities as the promised land has been a powerful part of African-American life, culture and history, and now it all seems to be passing by,” said Clement Price, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark. “The black urban experience has essentially lost its appeal with blacks in America.” [bold italics added] . . .

The Census tells us that in the eyes of those who know best, these well intentioned efforts failed.  Instead of heaven, we have hell across America’s inner cities.  Blue economic policy has cut the creation of new private sector jobs to a trickle in our great cities, while the high costs of public union urban services (and policies that favor government employees over the citizenry at large) impose crippling taxes and contribute to the ruinously high costs that blight opportunity.  All the social welfare bureaucracies, diversity counselors and minority set-asides can’t make up for the colossal failure of blue social policy to create sustainable lower middle class prosperity in our cities.

Walter Russell Mead on the dilemmas that American administrations have faced when revolutions occurred in friendly countries.

Walter Russell Mead on the role of charter schools in educational reform. He is optimistic.

Walter Russell Mead has a great post on the need for an American upgrade. Something to think hard about.

I know people who dream of taking off from work as much as possible and retiring as early as possible. But it's clear what is wrong with them: "Being fully human is about doing work that means something," Mead says. This is exactly what has been wrong with me since my retirement. Now I'm stuck in a nothing hole and can't get out of it. I don't need anything, i.e., any new "toys," but I need to make a contribution.

Let me add this: volunteering is not the answer, not for me. I tried it and it was worthless. 

Fallen from heaven

Walter Russell Mead: "No president in my lifetime has fallen from heaven to earth as rapidly as President Obama.  Others have lost popularity and lost control of Congress, but none fell from such a height.  Who can forget the rapturous cries of joy when he was elected in 2008?  Who can forget all those predictions of a ‘transformational presidency,’ hailing the one term Senator from Illinois as a new Lincoln, a new FDR, and (my personal favorite) the ‘Democratic Reagan’?"

Walter Russell Mead: "This is not a good place for a great country to be.  I am glad that Democratic hubris is getting a well deserved rebuke; I am only sorry that the consequence may be to reinforce GOP smugness."

Walter Russell Mead on the coming higher education bubble:

More generally, the upper middle class benefited over the last generation from a rising difference between the living standards of professional and blue collar American workers.  This is likely to change; from civil service jobs in government to university professors, lawyers, health care personnel, middle and upper middle management in the private sector, the upper-middle class is going to face a much harsher environment going forward.  Automation, outsourcing and unremitting pressures to control costs are going to squeeze upper middle class incomes.  What blue collar workers faced in the last thirty years is coming to the white collar workforce now.
Yet as their financial prospects darken, students’ educational costs are exploding.  Like the health care system, the educational system is being overwhelmed by rising costs and rising demand.  And as misguided government policies contributed to the real estate bubble by artificially inflating demand, government programs are burdening students with unpayable loans and contributing to relentless and unsustainable inflation in school costs.
And so, dear students, welcome back!  Your generation is going to have dig its own way out of the hole my generation has dug for you (thanks for the Medicare, kids, and sorry about the deficit!), but here are a few tips that may help you get the best out of your college years.

Mead has much more advice. Read all of it.