Amazing prosperity. Yes, he wasn’t the only person responsible, and the Republican Congress from 1994 on helped maintain growth, but the statistics on income just released by the Census really do seem impressive. To wit:
The census numbers do indicate, however, that the prosperity of the 1990s had a broad, positive effect. Lower-income counties posted greater gains than richer ones, and the proportion of households at the low end, with less than $15,000 a year, shrunk as those people brought in more money. The nation’s 34 million people in poverty represented 12 percent of the population, a slightly smaller share than in 1990. The greatest declines were among people 65 and older, but poverty also declined for children. The poverty line for a family of four in 1999, the year measured by the census, was $16,895.
Perhaps welfare reform helped; perhaps expanding the EITC helped; doubtless declining deficits and lower interest rates and freer trade worked. But these numbers should undermine the notion that free markets and free people cannot generate wealth without immiserating the poorest. Wealth really does trickle down and up – even when a country is absorbing unprecedented numbers of poor immigrants. And Bill Clinton helped make it happen. For a look at how leftists can still spin this as failure, check out – surprise! – the New York Times version of the story. They even quote Marian Wright Edelman, trying to spin a decline in poverty as a rise.
LONG TO REIGN OVER US: When even the Guardian has to concede that on yet another day, a million patriotic Brits showed up to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in London, then you know the monarchy’s obituary is a long, long way off. Look at this photograph in the Telegraph. When I was in London a few months back, all the chattering classes were abuzz with the notion that the Jubilee would be a huge flop. One more reason not to buy the spin of the BBC, the Guardian and the rest. Tony Blair got the national mood right, as he did when Diana died, proving once again that he is the master of the political surface: “We know that you are, without falter or hesitation, totally committed to serving us, the British people,” he said. “Whatever the vicissitudes of your own life, whatever dramas or crises are played out around you, no one ever doubts that commitment to serving Britain.” I think the British people understand that about their odd, but indispensable institution. And I’m glad for it.
RAINES WATCH: Looks like I was right about Bush and global warming. Mickey Kaus adds some persuasive nuances. This, indeed, looks like a set-up. Some enviro groups figure out a way to embarrass the president, by finding minuscule discrepancies between presidential statements last year and a bureaucratic report this year, feed it to their friends at the Times, who then run an editorial and a cover-story on the phony “news.” Rush and Drudge fall right for it. Is Raines a left-liberal ideologue, Mickey asks? I don’t think so. He’s just a big-footing Democratic partisan, who wants the Times to wound the president and wage populist or liberal campaigns. Remember the Enron poll that said the public was blaming Bush? Exactly the same scenario. There’s a theme here, surely.
SELF-PARODY WATCH: “Special Report: Zambian Copper,” – a headline from this week’s Economist.
SOCCER AND AMERICA: Yet another view about this country’s aversion to football:
It’s true – most American’s don’t like soccer. The reason? Possession. We Americans like our things….we like our possessions. And in soccer possession is fluid. It drives us crazy. Look at your basic American sports. In baseball, football, and basketball possession is so important that ‘turnovers’ (i.e. loss of possession) are considered nothing short of disastrous. They are counted by statisticians, and those deemed responsible are taken to the woodshed after the game. This reaches its most extreme in baseball. It is perhaps the only team sport where possession is fixed: a turnover in baseball is IMPOSSIBLE. Is it any wonder it’s known as the ‘American pastime’? Possession is fluid in hockey (not, mind you, an American sport), but since it’s fast and they beat the crap out of each other, speed and violence provide adequate compensation.
That would help explain the aversion to rugby as well, although they also beat the crap out of each other on rugby pitches (I have nightmares from my schooldays to prove it). Then there was this notion proferred by another red-blooded Yank:
As I strolled by a local park the other evening, I watched a group of young boys trying to keep a large ball in the air using only their feet. I asked one of the adult supervisors what was going on, and he informed me that they were having “soccer practice”. Observing this exercise a while longer, something jogged my memory. I said to myself , “Soccer practice, my ass. They’re learning how to goose step.” Did Adolf and Uncle Joe have their young socialists playing real football? Hell no!! They were teaching them how to crush freedom in Eastern Europe under the guise of soccer… Wake up America!!! First, they take away real football in Ann Arbor or Tuscaloosa and make you play games without using your hands. Next, they’ll come to confiscate your guns. And before you know it, there’s no more free press, religion or speech and you’re being marched off to the nearest feminist sports collective to get estrogen shots. Remember, it starts with soccer.
I think he’s kidding.
LADS AND SOCCER: By the way, a reader alerted me to a truly hilarious piece in the new issue of “Gear,” Bob Guccione’s lad magazine, on the subject of footer (that’s what they call it in the English north). I particularly liked the sidebar on tips for staying awake while trying to watch the World Cup:
“1) Almost all of the players have extremely hot wives… bald French goalkeeper Fabien BNarthez was married, until last year, to rainbow-haired supermodel Linda Evangelista. Think about that as you watch him flap his textured gloves and bark inaudible instructions at a teammate 500 yards away. 2) Remember that Colombian guy who scored the own-goal in the 1994 World Cup? Dude, they killed him. That’s how much this matters. It’s life or death, baby. Seriously. 3) Barthez included, every national-team goal-keeper is completely insane and liable to start dribbling the ball suicidally towards the enemy goal at any moment. 4) Someone might score.”
Gear is the first men’s magazine in a long, long time that I found positively hilarious and intelligent. It got me all the way to Philly on the Metroliner this afternoon. (In comparison, I’m sorry to say, the New York Sun was positively soporific.) Gear has a writer called Bruno Maddox who’s a real star. They even had the most honest Moby review I’ve yet read (“18 is exactly the kind of thing you want from an artist whose last album, Play, was a masterpiece: more of the same,”) and alerted me to the existence of http://www.derekandclive.com. (If you’re in any way of a sensitive dispensation, don’t go there. But it’s the best thing Dudley Moore ever did.)
BROKEN WHEELCHAIRS: A sad, but somehow instructive, tale of Western aid gone awry in the developing world.
THE ALABAMA FOOTBALL TEAM ABUSE CASE: “Thank you for providing the link to the ESPN Magazine Article about the football players at UAB. But I have one serious problem with your summary: it is clear from the article that the University did not look the other way. No, they may not have put four, full-time bodyguards around the poor girl or explicitly told the football players to stay the hell away, but the administration did warn the athletes and they tried to intervene with the girl. She chose to lie to them and said nothing was going on. Tell me, where was the impetus for them to investigate further? Speaking as a woman who was sexually assaulted while at college, I can say without a doubt that UAB did more for her than my university did for me…” This letter continued, a defense of Lord Kimberley and Tony Kushner, and the American Prospect’s odd web statistics – all on the Letters Page.
I’M ABNORMAL: Stop the presses! But are you?
The Dish 