I Fear the Greeks, Even When They Bring Gifts
I see the Greeks gave their answer to their creditors Sunday:  Take a good look, young people. This is where quasi-socialism, with unaffordably generous pension programs and early retirement, runaway borrowing and spending, and a kleptocratic unenforced system of tax collection leaves you: helpless, penniless, and crying in the streets.  Retiree Giorgos Chatzifotiadis had queued up at three banks in Greece's second city of Thessaloniki on Friday in the hope of withdrawing a pension on behalf of his wife, but all in vain. The 77-year-old told AFP that he had broken down because he "cannot stand to see my country in this distress". "That's why I feel so beaten, more than for my own personal problems," Chatzifotiadis said. The image of him sitting outside the bank, openly crying in despair with his savings book and identity card on the floor, was captured by an AFP photographer illustrating how ordinary Greeks are suffering during the country's debt crisis. Athens had imposed capital controls and shut all banks since Monday to stem a haemorrhage of cash, but on Wednesday allowed some branches to reopen for three days so retirees who have no bank cards could withdraw their pensions — capped at 120 euros. That's about $132. Imagine being told you're only allowed to take that out, and God only knows when the banks will reopen. You've got money in a safe deposit box? Tough luck, the left-wing Greek government declares: Greeks cannot withdraw cash left in safe deposit boxes at Greek banks as long as capital restrictions remain in place, a deputy finance minister told Greek television on Sunday. This may seem harsh to the Greeks. But they willingly and knowingly tried to build a society where everyone was allowed to retire early – really early: Early: "Trombone players and pastry chefs get to retire as early as 50 on grounds their work causes them late-career breathing problems. Hairdressers enjoy the same perk thanks to the dyes and other chemicals they rub into people's hair. Then there are masseurs at steam baths: They get an early out because prolonged exposure to all that heat and steam is deemed unhealthy." Really Early: "The Greek government has identified at least 580 job categories deemed to be hazardous enough to merit retiring early — at age 50 for women and 55 for men… The law includes dangerous jobs like coal mining and bomb disposal. But it also covers radio and television presenters, who are thought to be at risk from the bacteria on their microphones." Really, really early: "In the public sector, 7.91 percent of pensioners retire between the ages of 26 and 50, 23.64 percent between 51 and 55, and 43.53 percent between 56 and 61." Yes, in the past years, they raised the retirement age, trimmed pensions, and tried to raise taxes – although because they have a deep-rooted culture of not paying taxes, it didn't do nearly enough good. Once a people get a taste of unbelievably generous entitlement spending, they begin to feel . . . well, entitled to it. In the case of Greece, they will demand that they keep getting those benefits long after the money runs out, even as it grows clearer and clearer no one will loan them any more money. They'll vote, overwhelmingly, "no" to bailout offers they deem insufficiently generous . . . ignoring that the alternative is unknown, and probably worse.
A Follow-Up on Scott Walker, Stephen Moore, and the New York Times Friday I wrote about Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation – an advocate for broader legal immigration – telling the New York Times that he liked what he heard on the issue from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Moore's good vibes seemed strange, considering how not long ago, Walker was echoing one of the Senate's strongest advocates for legal immigration reduction, Sen. Jeff Sessions. Fans of Walker reached out, contending that the New York Times' version of events simply wasn't accurate. I asked Stephen Moore, and his version of events is quite different from the way the New York Times characterized it. Here's what Moore told me: The conversation that Walker had wasn't with me; it was an off-the-record conversation with someone else. We also talked to the governor at our dinner in February about immigration. He's not going to go in a nativist direction. (That "someone else" appears to be Larry Kudlow.) Here's the Times original version: Moore said he had become concerned about Mr. Walker's stance in recent weeks, but was reassured after a phone call with the Wisconsin governor. "He said, 'I'm not going nativist; I'm pro-immigration,'" Mr. Moore recalled of the conversation. (Mr. Walker's spokeswoman, Ms. Strong, said he was "not for amnesty" and believed the border must be secured before any conversation begins about a pathway to legal status.) But Mr. Moore also said he was not convinced that Mr. Walker was quite the immigration hawk as he may appear now. Rather, he called the governor's positioning "a work in progress." So was there ever a phone call? I've got no reason to think Moore would lie now. How was this Times interview conducted, via a psychic?
Should Supreme Court Justices Have to Run for Reelection? At the end of last week, I took a look at Sen. Ted Cruz's proposal to have Supreme Court justices stand for retention elections every eight years: "I am proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution that would subject the justices of the Supreme Court to periodic judicial-retention elections," Cruz wrote in an NR piece last week. "Every justice, beginning with the second national election after his or her appointment, will answer to the American people and the states in a retention election every eight years. Those justices deemed unfit for retention by both a majority of the American people as a whole and by majorities of the electorates in at least half of the 50 states will be removed from office and disqualified from future service on the Court." Our Andy McCarthy likes it, or at least deems it a necessary counter-move: Of course it would be better if we did not have to do something like this. It would be better if Congress and presidents had used their constitutional appointment and impeachment powers to make clear that judges were expected merely to judge (a hard enough job). It would be better if Congress had used its constitutional control over the judiciary's jurisdiction to minimize the opportunities for judicial imperialism.
But they have not. Thus, as reformer types like to say, the system is broken. Cruz did not break it; the justices did, with lots of help. Cruz is trying to fix it: proposing a political check to pressure a politicized institution into reverting to the Court [that George] Will is nostalgic for — the nonpolitical branch that fortifies limited government. The conservative legal minds I interviewed find the proposal to be a mixed bag: "If we are going to tweak the Supreme Court because it's not sufficiently responsive to the people, adding an election element isn't the way to go," says Ilya Shapiro, the editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Shapiro says he's not a fan of judicial elections because he believes they reduce the judiciary's independence, although he prefers them to judicial-nomination boards, which tend to become dominated by trial lawyers and other special-interest groups. "If the federal judiciary were to borrow a structural element from the states, I'd go with term limits rather than retention elections," Shapiro says, pointing to a plan proposed by Steve Calabresi, one of the founders of the Federalist Society, to institute staggered 18-year terms for Supreme Court justices, with a new vacancy arising every two years. That system would guarantee each president two appointments, and end the practice of justices remaining on the court for three decades or more… One conservative legal mind who does find Cruz's proposal a useful starting point is John C. Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University and a former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. "I like it better than some of the proposals I've seen to limit the terms or age of justices, because I think neither of those actually address the problem of judicial overreach," Eastman says. "I do think it is a serious proposal to restore some balance to our imbalanced separation of powers, [though] I fear that a retention election — as opposed, say, to a recall election — might swing the pendulum too far in the other direction."
Here's the million-dollar question: Is it harder for conservatives right now to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or to nominate and confirm strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court who won't shift to the left over time? ADDENDA: My segments on Media Buzz with Howard Kurtz can be found here. Seemed to go pretty well from where I sat. Our raucous special edition of the pop culture podcast – featuring special guests Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson – took a look at the movies, music, television and historic events of the 1990s. Among the arguments: Whether Reality Bites was the most morally-inverted movie of all time, whether only sociopaths didn't cry when they watched The Lion King, whether you're a Friends person or a Seinfeld person, whether the 1990s as a whole were overrated, and whether we should miss the national shared experiences of the pre-Internet monoculture. Finally, things that make you say, "hmm": "A recent Hillary Clinton campaign stop at Dartmouth College saw College Republicans turned away from standing near the Democratic presidential candidate and College Democrats apparent no-shows at the event." | 
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