Hair Force One
These last few weeks have been a slog for John Edwards, the former one-term senator from North Carolina who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination. First came news that Edwards's campaign had paid for his two $400 haircuts from Joseph Torrenueva, the fashionable Hollywood makeup and hair stylist. Edwards said he was "embarrassed" by his new 'do's and that an underling had scheduled the appointments without his knowledge. If we remember correctly, Democrats have called such behavior in other contexts "kicking down." Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee then got off a great line at Edwards's expense: Congress, he said, has "spent money like John Edwards in a beauty shop."
Next, there were the revelations about Edwards's personal finances, which are bountiful. The author of Ending Poverty in America is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million, a little more than half of which he has invested in the Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Because education is important to Edwards, he also signed on to Fortress as a part-time consultant in order to learn about "capital markets." For this he was paid $480,000.
As good free-marketers do, THE SCRAPBOOK applauds Edwards for his financial acumen. Others, however, may conclude he is a phony populist, especially given last week's news that he charged the taxpayer-funded University of California, Davis, $55,000 to give a talk on . . . "Poverty, the Great Moral Issue Facing America." Meantime, Bob Shrum, the singularly unsuccessful Democratic presidential campaign consultant who advised the failed Kerry-Edwards 2004 campaign, has written a book in which he says John Kerry "wished that he'd never picked Edwards" to be his running mate. Ouch.
Edwards decided to change the subject last week, giving a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations (council president Richard Haass is a director at Fortress Investments) that was nothing less than a bid to lead the antiwar, anti-Bush left. In his speech Edwards said that the notion of a war on terror was something cooked up by Republicans for political gain--a "bumper sticker, not a plan."
Well. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani seized on Edwards's speech, saying that "Democrats . . . are in denial." Which, come to think of it, would make a pretty good bumpersticker.
It could always be worse for Edwards. At least he doesn't have Bob "0 for 8" Shrum in charge of his campaign.
Moving on up
Speaking of John Edwards, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released a report, "Changes in the Economic Resources of Low-Income Households with Children," that he might find interesting for its glimpse into the "two Americas." The study looked at the bottom 20 percent of households with kids. It found that between 1991 and 2005 the average income of those households rose about 35 percent, making for an annual growth rate of slightly more than 2 percent. The most striking thing about the CBO study is that the real increase in income for low-income households with children took place during a time when liberals were screaming that the abolition of direct-cash-benefit welfare would create an army of the unemployed, and impoverish their children.
Suffice it to say, that didn't happen. In 1991, direct-cash-benefit welfare, in the form of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), was responsible for about 30 percent of the income of the households in question. In 2005, direct-cash-benefit welfare, in the form of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families--the program created by the landmark 1996 welfare reform--was responsible for about 4 percent of income. So, even as welfare benefits decreased, the income of America's poorest families increased.
We have to admit we were a little shocked at the reaction to the CBO report among some liberals, who did everything they could to downplay its findings. As some pointed out, the report does show that average income for low-income households with children has fallen slightly since its peak in 2000, at the height of the last boom. But it is still far higher than it was in 1991 in real terms, and higher, we'd guess, than it was 15 years before that. And the current business cycle seems about at the point where it should start producing gains among all income groups.
In any case, the lesson remains that economic growth--along with work, education, and marriage--is the only proven antipoverty program. You'd think that liberals could acknowledge good news when they see it.
Cannes Update
It's not every day that a Cannes film festival audience deems something "most shocking." This, after all, is a place where people have to regularly watch Michael Moore down several trays of chocolate profiteroles at the buffet table. But even the jaded film world groupies of the Côte d'Azur were taken aback by Zoo, the summer's feel-good movie, if by "feel-good" you mean a "movie about people having sex with horses."
The semi-documentary is based on the scandal that ensued after a Boeing engineer named Kenneth Pinyan died from internal bleeding when he, ummm . . . see above. At the remote ranch where he scratched his equine itch, a community of fellow animal-lovers was discovered, which is the subject of the film.
Far be it from THE SCRAPBOOK to issue any icky moral judgment based on our Eisenhower-era prudery. We thought the horse/man intercourse envelope was being pushed when humans chatted up Mr. Ed. But it seems we were woefully out of step. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called Zoo a "strange and strangely beautiful film." Industry bible Variety said filmmaker Robinson Devor has "crafted a subdued, mysterious and intensely beautiful film." John Paulsen, the actor who plays Pinyan, said, "In a way, it's a classic Western, except here, it's the horse riding the man."
Zoophilia defenders--and yes, zoophilia does have defenders--like to say the horses are willing participants. If they were, THE SCRAPBOOK suspects they'd do better than Pinyan, a geeky loser whose Internet moniker was "Mr. Hands." Plus, it's mighty presumptuous of one species to read the thoughts of another. The horses can't talk, Mr. Ed-style. But basic human decency dictates we conclude that sometimes "neigh" means "no."
They're Back
Every time we think we've escaped their gravitational pull, they suck us back in. We refer to Joe and Valerie Wilson, the dynamic duo who did more than anybody to convince the American left that the Bush administration "lied" us into war with Iraq. When last we heard from them, Valerie was appearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on March 16, disputing key findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, such as the fact that she used her perch at the CIA to suggest her husband for his fateful mission to Niger--investigating Iraq's interest in that country's uranium.
This is where things get interesting. In a May 25 report, three GOP senators on the Intel committee undermine Mrs. Wilson's House testimony. Kit Bond, Orrin Hatch, and Richard Burr reveal new evidence contradicting her claim to the House that the idea for the Niger trip arose when she was talking to an unnamed "junior officer" about a phone call from Vice President Cheney's office asking about Iraq and Niger. Valerie claimed another officer had interjected: "Well, why don't we send Joe?" That, she says, got the ball rolling.
The problem, the senators point out, is that she first raised the idea of sending her husband to Africa in a declassified memo written the day before the vice president's office asked for the CIA's assessment of the Nigerien uranium report. Moreover, the senators write, in an interview with Senate investigators preparing the 2004 report, Wilson never mentioned the "junior staffer," claiming then that she didn't remember whether she or her boss had come up with the idea of sending Joe Wilson to Africa.
Here's hoping she has her story straight by the time she writes her forthcoming book, for which Simon & Schuster paid her a $2 million advance.