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Saturday, March 28, 2009
David Brooks and the Crapweasel Coalition
Posted by on 3.28.09 @ 9:31AM
The house "conservative" at the New York Times is further discussed -- and the wise words of our publisher, Al Regnery, are quoted -- as I propose the 12th Commandment:
Thou shalt have no mercy on a crapweasel.
Further admonition should be unnecessary.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Ex-SEIU Staffers Protest SEIU
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 5:37PM
Great video of 75 unionized SEIU employees who were sacked by the SEIU protesting the hypocrisy union's own "union busting" ways. More here.
Not His Job
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 5:12PM
President Obama said yesterday that he will offer GM and Chrysler taxpayer-funded aid, which he said will be unveiled in a couple of days. The Washington Post reported that he has discovered some newfound responsibilities in his job description:
"I know that it is not popular to provide help to autoworkers -- or to auto companies -- but my job is to measure the costs of allowing these auto companies just to collapse," he said.
As my colleague Roy Cordato said recently, I wish he'd go back to his other responsibilities like basketball predictions.
The Afghan Surge
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 5:11PM
President Obama's decision to increase our presence in Afghanistan and provide sufficient resources for a counterinsurgency operation seems like a good one. But there are analysts more qualified than I am to comment on the specific military aspects of the decision. I think it's also interesting to consider the politics of the move. It seems to me to acomplish several things. One is that it is an example of him following through on a campaign promise, to withdraw from Iraq and step up efforts in Afghanistan. Many aspects of his speech today were reflected during the campaign. Back in August 2007, he said, infamously, "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." Today, he said:
Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders. And we will insist that action be taken -- one way or another -- when we have intelligence about high-level terrorist targets.
So, he deserves credit for being consistent about something that at the time was seen as a throwaway line designed to sound tough after he made his comment about meeting with unconditionally with the leaders of hostile regimes within the first year of his administration.
I do think that Obama is being genuine in persuing his policy in Afghanistan, but I also think today's rollout was meant to serve an additional purpose -- to defang any opponents who will accuse him of taking his eye off the War on Terror (aka "Overseas Contingency Operations") while focusing on the economy.
The Criminal Class and the 'Volunteer' Scam
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 3:57PM
The $5 billion GIVE (Generations Invigorating Volunteers and Education) Act reminds Carter Clews of Americans for Limited Government why Mark Twain called Congress the only "distinctly native American criminal class."
Put Your Conservative Bumper Stickers Back on Your Car
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 3:53PM
It looks like the Missouri state patrol won't treat conservative bumper stickers as evidence of terroristic tendencies after all. Reports WorldNetDaily:
The chief of the Missouri highway patrol is blasting a report issued by the Missouri Information Analysis Center and promising immediate changes in the procedures through which it was released to law enforcement agencies.
The report linked conservative groups to domestic terrorism and cited as suspicious those individuals who may have bumper stickers for third-party political candidates such as Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin.
It further warned law enforcement to watch out for individuals with "radical" ideologies based in Christian views, such as opposing illegal immigration, abortion and federal taxes.
Chief James Keathley of the Missouri State Patrol has issued a statement that the release of the report, which outraged conservatives countrywide, prompted him to "take a hard look" at the procedures through which the report was released by the MIAC.
Of course, the real surprise of this initiative was not that it existed, but that it arose first in Missouri rather than, oh, New York or California!
Boehner Backs Obama on Afghanistan
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 3:23PM
The House Minority Leader just released the following statement:
"The challenge of bringing stability to Afghanistan is enormously complex, but our efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban are vital to the security of the American people. I support the strategy the President unveiled today because it reflects the advice of our commanders on the ground. I hope he will continue to honor their counsel because we should not allow political considerations here at home to trump the importance of achieving success in the region. Moving forward, we must ensure this strategy is implemented in a manner that is both flexible and reflective of the situation on the ground, and we must aggressively monitor its progress.
"The commitment and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform is nothing short of amazing. Republicans are committed to doing everything possible to support our troops and give them all the resources they need to succeed in their mission in Afghanistan."
Pro-Lifers for Taxpayer-Funded Abortion
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 2:56PM
The Weekly Standard's John McCormack smokes Harry Reid out on the alleged pro-life Democrat's support for a national health care plan that covers abortion. Reid's spokesman insists that the Senate majority leader "is very strongly pro-life and I resent any suggestion to the contrary, and his voting record speaks for himself." Only a lowly "editorial assistant" could possibly think otherwise.
That's What She Said
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 1:36PM
Has now made it into the public discourse, even among senators.
McCain and Spending
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 1:12PM
John McCain has indeed voted against more bloated spending bills than most Republicans. I don't wish to deny him credit for this record, especially his opposition to the last Bush administration farm bill as an election loomed. But what separates McCain from the Pauls, Flakes, and Coburns with which Quin groups him is that his opposition to high spending is not grounded in any coherent philosophy of government or theory of economics.
How many of those spending bills would McCain have voted against if they'd been stripped clean of earmarks? If he did, what language would he have used to oppose them if he couldn't use bear DNA as a prop? If an expansion of government power can be sold as crucial to the country's national honor, chances are the senior senator from Arizona will support it. McCain isn't a small-government conservative like Paul, Flake or Coburn. He is a Republican William Proxmire -- admirable, but insufficient.
The problem with an earmark-centric criticism of federal spending practices is that it is too process-oriented, too inside the Beltway, and too narrow in its assessment of the problem. That's not to say that railing against pork doesn't have its place. It absolutely does. But not only is "waste, fraud, and abuse" frequently a cop-out to avoid real fiscal discipline. Barack Obama and his party are going to spend the next several years promising the American people health care, college tuitition, housing, green jobs, and any other number of other desirable-sounding things. Republicans are going to need a better reason to say "no" than a bear DNA study buried beneath the fine print.
Don't Paint It Black
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 12:51PM
Actual headline not from the Onion: California May Ban Black Cars.
Re: Getting Spending Right
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 11:49AM
Jim, I bow to almost no one in my distaste for John McCain, but I must defend him here and take slight issue with you. I think you give the man far too little credit for his record of fighting against big spending. On issue after issue after issue, McCain has stood tall againt big spending. Farm bills. Ethanol subsidies. Bloated transportation bills. All sorts of entitlement expansions. And of course, as you say, pork, again and again. The man deserves major credit for standing a lot taller on spending issues than almost everyone else short of Ron Paul, Jeff Flake and perhaps Tom Coburn.
Academic: "Green jobs" kills jobs
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 11:22AM
This study out of a Madrid university's economics department is going to cause some discomfort among the Enron-successors of the world, prowling the halls of Congress seeking hundreds of billions in rents -- requiring increased taxes and causing increased energy costs -- for their uneconomic pets.
I have the study. Highlights include:
- Based upon the Spanish experience that President Oprompter expressly cited as a model, if he succeeded in his (oddly floating) promise to further intervene in the economy to create 3 million (or is it 5 million?) "green jobs," the U.S. should expect to directly kill by the same programs at least 6.6 million (or as many as 11 million) jobs elsewhere in the economy.
- That is because green jobs schemes in Spain killed 2.2 jobs per job created, or about 9 existing jobs - I'll call them "real" jobs - lost for every 4 that are created. The latter, the study shows, then become wards of the state, dependent on the continuation of the mandates and subsidies, subject to the ritual boom and bust of artifically concocted jobs (read: ethanol).
- This does not include jobs lost due to redirection of resources, but are only the jobs directly killed by the scheme.
- The study calculates that since 2000, Spain spent €571,138 to create each "green job," including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind-industry job.
- Each "green" megawatt installed destroys 5.39 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.32 by wind energy, 5.84 by mini-hydro.
What's Spanish for "food-taster" and "car-starter"?
New Jersey's State of Contributions
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 10:45AM
Just came across this little item in the New Jersey Governor's race.
It's complicated, but the short version is that if you give someone a no-bid contract for work and then you run for a federal office, you can't take campaign contributions from them. The same is true for state office.
But there's no law that says you can't take a STATE contribution from someone you gave a FEDERAL no bid contract to. And that's exactly what Chris Christie, the GOP favorite to get the nod to take on Jon Corzine in the Fall has done. As U.S. Attorney, Christie gave the firm of Stern and Kilcullen a 7 million dollar no-bid contract. Now that Christie's running for Governor, the partners and their wives contributed $23,800 to Christie's campaign. Since New Jersey has 2-1 matching funds, it's more like they gave him over $70,000.
While this is not illegal, it sure looks terrible, especially when you consider that Christie has based his entire campaign on ethics and cleaning up New Jersey. If Steve Lonegan is smart, he'll take this story and try to turn Christie's strength on ethics into a weakness. If that happens, Lonegan might just be able to change this GOP Primary from a coronation into a fist fight.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 10:44AM
- FDR's morality play handily summarized for Barack Obama (Reason)
- Will Saletan, walking a tightrope...into incoherence (First Things)
- Alexandria, VA fails to put its terrorists where its mouth is, to mix a metaphor (New Majority)
- The uses and limits of diversity (Via Crunchy Con)
(Minding the Campus)
- The story's always the same, and it's always the oligarchs to blame (The Atlantic)
- Free trade is only good in principle if it is actually free (DC Examiner)
Getting Spending Right
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 10:22AM
Byron York has a characteristically smart piece on Obama's deficits and the broad-based tax increases likely to come. But he probably gives John McCain too much credit. McCain, like Obama, has complained about deficits. But overall, his critique of spending was limited to earmarks. He complained about bear DNA and expensive helicopters while spending rises across the board. McCain did vote against the Medicare prescription drug benefit, but that was partly because it didn't include price controls.
As I've said before, going after pork is fine when you want to make the point of how wasteful and ineffective a lot of government spending is. But the Republican message on spending is going to have to go far beyond where McCain was willing to go if it is ever to become serious.
Thanks, Mitt
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 10:02AM
"Praise Mitt Romney," writes the Wall Street Journal, for creating a government-controlled health care system in Massachusetts that's so bad, it instructs us what not to do nationally.
Republicans and Alternative Budgets
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 9:59AM
The Republicans' alternative budget contains more good policy ideas and fewer bad policy ideas than President Obama's budget. While I agree with every point Phil has made, I'll wait to see how it is scored before I offer a detailed critique or qualified defense. But let's look at the whole concept of a Republican budget proposal in historical perspective.
An alternative budget offered by a minority party almost by definition will not pass. So the party proposing the alternative budget faces two challenges. The first is to present a spending blueprint that offers a clear and compelling contrast to the president's vision, forming the basis of future policymaking when the party returns to power. That's hard enough. But you have to do that while also meeting the second challenge: Crafting the budget so that you don't put your party on record voting for some easily distorted provision that will go unenacted. Budget cuts are often most politically damaging to the party that supports them when they don't pass.
When the spending cuts are actually imposed, people get to see that the economy did not go south and their Social Security checks kept coming. When the spending cuts are debated, voted on, and defeated, there is no real-world corrective to the hysterical projections of starving babies and deepening poverty. There is just a vote standing in isolation that makes good fodder for television ads. This sometimes even happens to the majority party -- remember the Medicare gambit of the Gingrich Congress in 1995.
In 1993, Republicans faced these challenges. They needed to come up with a budet that dealt seriously with the deficit without raising taxes as Bill Clinton proposed to do. The House Republicans mostly united around John Kasich's "Cutting Spending First" plan (a nice play on the Clintonian "Putting People First"). It contained some controversial provisions, like raising the retirement age for some federal employees, but mostly avoided a full frontal assault on entitlement. Nevertheless, it offered serious spending cuts and block-grant reforms of means-tested programs that later became part of the GOP platform. And it offered $450 billion in deficit reduction without tax hikes.
So serious was Cutting Spending First that the Clinton administration often pretended the alternative did not exist. They continued to claim that Republicans hadn't proposed any spending cuts. When challenged, White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said it didn't count as the Republican alternative because not all Republicans supported it. The House GOP leadership, then including Bob Michel, did support it, and so did 80 percent of House Republicans on the floor.
Even a decent alternative budget won't pass and won't silence the president's barbs about Republicans having a "short memory." But a solid alternative did help give the Republicans something to run on in 1994 and a contrast with the Clinton administration, which was offering a tax increase many Americans didn't want.
The Real Media Secret That JournoList Reveals
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 8:21AM
The conservative blogosphere has had a field day with the revelation of a secret liberal media e-mail group called "JournoList," and the latest inside scoop from Slate's Mickey Kaus prompted this remark from blogger Jeff Goldstein:
Think "Woodward and Bernstein bring down Nixon," only replace "Woodward and Bernstein bring down Nixon" with "A bunch of guys who were beaten up daily in junior high show why they almost certainly had it coming."
Dead on target. A plague of neurasthenia has wussified the news business.
Here It Is, Mr. President
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 7:50AM
President Obama shouldn't have a leg to stand on in the budget fight. As I detailed yesterday, every shred of actual data points to unprecedented debt as a result of his policies, while his promised "savings" materialize only in some mystery world in the future. But he does have two important things going for him -- the fact that Democrats have a significant majority in Congress, and the fact that Republicans have not yet gotten their act together.
Facing some uncharacteristically tough questions about his budget during Tuesday's press conference, Obama turned the tables, taunting, "the critics tend to criticize, but they don't offer an alternative budget." Rather than wait until they were ready to unveil an alternative plan, Republicans took the bait. In a hastily arranged press conference yesterday, Minority Leader John Boehner waved a booklet, and boasted, "Two nights ago the president said, 'We haven't seen a budget yet out of Republicans.' Well, it's just not true because – Here it is, Mr. President." (Video below.)
Unfortunately, despite the macho talk, the 19-page document Boehner waved included general proposals, but no actual projections of how it would impact the deficit relative to the White House budget. Pretty soon, Republicans were downplaying the booklet as a mere blueprint of their actual budget, to be released next week. And the Politico reported infighting among Republicans, because some members felt (rightly, in my view) that it would be better to wait an extra week to release a serious alternative, rather than rush out a half-baked proposal with few specifics that would be easy to mock.
The Economist makes an apt analogy:
SCHOOLYARD bullies have a simple trick that usually gets results. Challenge another kid to a fight. If he declines, call him a "chicken". Presto—his dignity under assault, he'll come back and accept your challenge, and lose.
Today, Republicans in the House of Representatives got called "chicken", rolled up their sleeves, and got kicked in the mud.
Many conservatives continue to underestimate Obama, pinning him as some naive rube who is in over his head and unable speak without a telepromter. But, while his policies may be dangerous, he remains a skilled politician, and he played this one beautifully.
Former Mayor For Life in Big Tax Trouble
Posted by on 3.27.09 @ 7:13AM
Mayor Marion Barry always offered comic relief for Washington, D.C. Now a city council member, the 72-year-old isn't in the best of health and these days engages in fewer public antics to entertain the rest of us. But he truly has proved to be fit for the Obama Cabinet, owing more money to the IRS than all of Obama's nominees, approved and withdrawn, combined. Reports the Washington Post:
D.C. Council member Marion Barry owes the federal government more than $277,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties and has failed in six recent months to make scheduled payments on taxes owed the D.C. government, according to federal authorities.
Federal authorities have said that Barry (D-Ward 8) failed to pay the bulk of his taxes on more than $500,000 earned from 1999 through 2004. But they had not disclosed the amount until a court filing yesterday.
Barry, a former four-term mayor and a D.C. elected official for much of the past four decades, also owes the D.C. government back taxes, but prosecutors did not specify the amount.
What Barry owes the federal government is equal to more than half his income in that six-year period, is double his salary as a council member and is more than the tax liabilities that have plagued some nominees and would-be nominees of the Obama administration.
Former senator Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), for example, withdrew as the nominee for secretary of health and human services after it was revealed that he had $146,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson has scheduled a hearing for April 2 on whether to revoke Barry's probation for tax offenses because he did not file his federal or D.C. returns for 2007 in a timely manner.
Barry obviously is yet another "tax and spend" politician who exhibits more than a little trouble paying his "fair share" of the tax bill.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
David Horowitz: '100% Chance' of Terror Strike on U.S. Soil
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 10:11PM
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- There is a "100% chance that there will be . . . an attack on U.S. soil," conservative author David Horowitz said Thursday.
Horowitz made the prediction while speaking to a George Washington University student group, after being asked about the possibility of U.S.-Iranian conflict. In the event of such a terror attack against the American homeland, Horowitz predicted, there will be widespread public outrage against U.S. liberals.
"I don't think leftists will be found hanging from lamp-posts . . . but close," said Horowitz, speaking to the GWU chapter of Young America's Foundation as part of a promotional tour for his new book, One Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy.
His book highlights what he calls "the 150 worst courses" at 12 U.S. colleges and universities, including the University of California-Santa Cruz, which he labels "The Worst School in America."
Noting that classes such as UCSC's "Theory and Practikce of Economic Justice" are replicated throughout American higher education, Horowitz called these course "indoctrination," and said, "Millions of students are going through them every year."
Calling leftists "totalitarians," Horowitz told the GWU students: "You are losing your country as we speak."
Tax Day Tea Party: Going Godiva?
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 7:58PM
Headline of the Day:
Apparently, this is in response to the perception that major national news organizations are ignoring the growing "Tea Party" movement protesting the Obamanomics agenda. However, we caution that this report could not be confirmed at press time, although it was also reported at Instapundit and other leading Internet sites.
Yes, Canadian Health Care Helped Kill Natasha Richardson, Doctor Says
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 7:28PM
Brace yourself for a troll attack here at AmSpec Blog.
That's because a medical expert concurs with my surprisingly controversial assertion that the Canadian government-run health care system helped contribute to the untimely passing of actress Natasha Richardson.
Writing in the New York Post, Dr. Cory Franklin argues that Canada's government-run health care system may have been a contributing factor in the death of actress Natasha Richardson.
I wrote a few days ago that Richardson, after she received a head injury at a Quebec ski resort, received the same kind of treatment anyone in Quebec would have received, and now she's dead at the age of 45 at least in part because Quebec didn't have something as basic as a medical helicopter system.
Dr. Franklin points out that Canadian health care bureaucrats have to ration care and don't authorize the purchase of much of the technology that is commonplace in the U.S.:
What would have happened at a US ski resort? It obviously depends on the location and facts, but according to a colleague who has worked at two major Colorado ski resorts, the same distance from Denver as Mt. Tremblant is from Montreal, things would likely have proceeded differently.
Assuming Richardson initially declined medical care here as well, once she did present to caregivers that she was suffering from a possible head trauma, she would've been immediately transported by air, weather permitting, and arrived in Denver in less than an hour.
If this weren't possible, in both resorts she would've been seen within 15 minutes at a local facility with CT scanning and someone who could perform temporary drainage until transfer to a neurosurgeon was possible.
If she were conscious at 4 p.m., she'd most likely have been diagnosed and treated about that time, receiving care unavailable in the local Canadian hospital. She might've still died or suffered brain damage but her chances of surviving would have been much greater in the United States.
American medicine is often criticized for being too specialty-oriented, with hospitals "duplicating" too many services like CT scanners. This argument has merit, but those criticisms ignore cases where it is better to have resources and not need them than to need resources and not have them.
OK, trolls: We're ready for you now.
Volcker Taps The Breaks...
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 6:56PM
...but will it matter with Obama/Pelosi's foot so firmly on the gas?
The GOP Budget Looks Like a Blown Oppourtunity
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 3:41PM
The GOP released a booklet outlining its alternative budget today, and I'm not impressed. To start, it's difficult to judge because it's a rather sparse 19 page pamphlet that contains no deficit projections, and it hasn't yet been scored by the CBO. And much of it is just filled with criticism of Obama's budget and various bubble charts. So there's no way to measure what it would do to the debt relative to Obama's plan. Republicans caution that this is merely a blueprint rather than a final bill, but there are still a few items worth commenting on.
The proposal has some good elements, such as allowing people to purchase health care across state lines, saying no to future bailouts, allowing for more energy exploration, removing barriers to building nuclear power plants, and creating an optional flatter tax with a 10% bracket for those earning less than $100,000 and 25% for those earning more.
Overall, the biggest problem with the Republican budget is for all of its justified outrage about the exploding debt created by Obama's budget, it makes no serious effort to cut entitlement spending. Sure, there are some fixes around the edges. It would ask wealthier seniors on Medicare to pay more for prescription drugs, allows states more flexibility on Medicaid, and promises to reduce "waste, fraud, and abuse" of Medicare. That's simply not going to cut it when we're facing a $56 trillion long-term entitlement deficit. It doesn't mention any plans for Social Security.
What's alarming is that Republicans are surrendering too much ground to liberals. At one point, the report mentions wanting to "save" Medicare. At another point, it reads:
Instead of accelerating the demise of our nation’s large entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and creating new unsustainable entitlements, Republicans seek to provide universal access to affordable health care and to address our entitlements’ trillion dollar unfunded liabilities with common-sense reforms that ensure our children and grandchildren can secure future benefits.
All this talk about wanting to save entitlements and secure benefits is not much different from what you'd expect from Democrats. If Republicans want to return to being the party of fiscal discipline, then they will have to be honest with the American people that the only way out of this hole is to rein in entitlements and reduce benefits. The problem is much bigger than a few "common sense reforms." The reason why our debt is out of control is that Democrats are afraid to admit that their social agenda will require major tax increases, and Republicans want to cut taxes but are afraid to propose genuine spending cuts. Obviously, given their minority status, Republicans don't have any hope of passing their budget proposals. However, they could have used an alternative budget as an oppourtunity to act as grownups amid all of the fairytale thinking coming out of the White House. I'll look forward to more detailed proposals, but for now it looks like a blown opportunity.
Conservative Leaders Oppose Obama Budget
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 3:26PM
A group of conservative leaders has issued a statement opposing the president's big-spending budget:
Edwin Meese, former Attorney General
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity
David McIntosh, former U.S. Representative from Indiana
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America
Alfred S. Regnery, publisher of The American Spectator
Obama’s Bailout Budget will Bankrupt Americans as it bails out government and special interests, adding $10,000 per family per year to the national debt for the next ten years.
The unprecedented massive spending in the budget proposed by President Barack Obama is simply a bailout for government and special interests. The National Energy Tax and other tax hikes take resources out of the hands of struggling working Americans to finance this bailout. In order to pay for this spending spree, the government will cause irresponsible increases in the deficit, bankrupt the country, and place crushing financial burdens on future generations.
The president claims that Republicans with "short memories" caused the current debt problems, but in reality he plans to quadruple George W. Bush's single largest deficit -- the record-breaking 2008 deficit -- in his first year. The proposed budget will add nearly $1,000,000,000,000 to the national debt every year for the next 10 years, or about $10,000 per family per year.
The president's spending measures are too much even for the freewheeling Senate Democrats, 12 of whom declared in a letter to the Budget Committee that "the deficits projected by CBO are simply not acceptable."
The Administration raises revenue for this orgy of spending through a series of new taxes, including a National Energy Tax which will impose a "light switch" tax of $3,128 a year on every American household – the same Americans whose taxes Obama promised to cut in the 2008 presidential campaign.
The Obama Administration is happy to present the middle class with the bill for a massive spending program designed to cover the government's past irresponsibility and benefit key Democratic constituencies. While the President always focuses his rhetoric on the "failed" ideas of the Bush Administration, he doubles down on the exact kind of fiscal irresponsibility that led to the current downturn.
George Bush set records with a onerous deficit that surpassed $400,000,000,000, but Obama easily outdoes him in bankrupting the country with an initial planned deficit of $1,850,000,000,000 -- roughly $6100 per man, woman, and child in the nation. Every budget through the next decade calls for deficits double Bush's biggest deficit. This massive bout of overspending will finance Obama's wildly expensive pet projects, but at tremendous costs to future generations.
Stunning Liberal Hypocrisy on White House Press Access
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 2:14PM
Fair-minded conservatives were aghast in President George W. Bush's second term when the left-wing character assassination machine went into high gear to destroy Jeff Gannon.
Gannon, also known as James Dale Guckert, asked questions that annoyed liberals because they were based on a right-wing political perspective.
Liberals were outraged. How dare the White House allow a conservative in who didn't constantly bash President Bush. The nerve!
Partisan, ideologically-driven people shouldn't be allowed into White House press briefings, they howled in unison.
Gannon had skeletons in his past, which sent the left into deepening shades of delight. Even though the left prides itself on being gay-friendly, the fact that Gannon's indiscretions were related to his homosexuality only egged on the vicious hypocrites, feeding their schadenfreude.
Now comes the revelation that at least one partisan ideologically-driven leftist is being welcomed to White House media events.
That person is Faiz Shakir of John Podesta's propaganda factory, the allegedly nonpartisan Center for American Progress (CAP). To be precise, Shakir is research director for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at CAP. (link to official CAP bio)
Look at an article prepared by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a nonprofit 501(c)(4) lobbying organization, that appeared today at the Huffington Post website. The bottom paragraph states that Shakir participated in President Obama's prime-time conference March 24:
EXPANDING THE MEDIA UNIVERSE: As with his first press conference, Obama went out of his way to take questions from news outlets beyond the major newspapers and television networks. Though he began with the tradition of taking the first question from the AP, followed by the three major networks, Obama also took questions from outlets such as the Spanish-language network Univision, the military's Stars and Stripes newspaper, Agence France-Presse, and Ebony magazine. As Politico's Michael Calderone noted, "Obama skipped over the nation's top newspapers" as "there were no questions from the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or USA Today." "The president covered a range of topics, including his commitment to addressing the economic crisis, by calling on a wide range of outlets -- including some that rarely, if ever, are given the opportunity to pose a question at a presidential news conference," White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest told the AP. As with his first prime time presser, Obama also opened up the conference to new media, admitting more online reporters, including The Progress Report's Faiz Shakir, who had polled his audience for suggestions of questions [emphasis added]
It's worth noting that when Shakir appeared on MSNBC on March 18 he was introduced as a "Democratic strategist." He did not object to the characterization.
So, a partisan, ideologically-driven individual from an organization that is aggressively promoting the Obama agenda was granted media credentials for the White House.
Will there be Gannon-era howls of outrage from the left over this?
Don't count on it.
David Horowitz Speaks Tonight in D.C.
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 1:46PM
Conservative activist David Horowitz will speak at 7 p.m. tonight at Washington's State Plaza Hotel (2117 E Street, NW) about his new book, One Party Classroom.
Sponsored by the George Washington University chapter of Young America's Foundation, admission to tonight's event is free and the public is invited to attend. More details here.
Judd Gregg: U.S. Too Broke for EU
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 12:56PM
Sen. Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who nearly became President Obama's secretary of commerce, said today that the United States couldn't join the European Union because our deficit and debt levels are too high:
"We won't even be able to get into the EU if we wanted to," the Hill quotes Gregg as saying on MSNBC, "because our government is so large and so huge."
The European Union's Stability and Growth Pact requires a budget deficit of less than 3 percent of GDP and a national debt of less than 60 percent. The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting larger deficits than this under the Obama budget in the coming years.
"We've been lectured by France on the fact that we're not fiscally responsible right now," Gregg said. In other words, the United States has managed to go broke even before adopting a European-style welfare state.
Bush vs. Obama
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 12:17PM
As an addendum to my piece on the main site, I thought it would be worthwhile to compare Bush's fiscal record to the CBO's projections of the next 10 years, should Obama's budget get passed. Remember, Obama called the Bush administration, "the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history." The first chart, which comes from the Washington Post, looks at suprluses/deficits from 2000 to 2019, while the second chart (created by yours truly) looks at the public debt from 2001-2019. This is by no means meant to absolve Bush, who deserves our contempt for his reckless fiscal policies, but to demonstrate how much worse Obama is making things.
Moderate Democrats Feeling the Squeeze
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 11:44AM
It's not easy being a centrist Democrat these days. In the April issue of The American Spectator's print edition, I point out that the Blue Dog Coalition in the House has actually done relatively little to rein in the Obama administration and their liberal congressional leadership. Now liberal pressure groups are mobilizing against the Blue Dogs and self-styled deficit hawks in the Senate Democratic caucus in order to keep it that way.
PACs like Accountability Now plan on supporting primary challenges to insufficiently liberal Democrats in 2010, acting like a netroots-connected progressive version of the Club for Growth. Other groups are up on the air with ads right now trying to get Democratic members of Congress to vote for Obama's budget without trimming any of the spending. Even the Obama administration isn't immune for liberal pressure, though Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner seems to be the fall guy for now.
A lot of the Democrats caught in the middle between conservative and liberal criticism face a Catch-22 politically: many of them could be vulnerable to primary challenges if they show too much independence from the party line, but their party-line voting makes them vulnerable to Republicans in the general election.
What's In A Name?
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 11:12AM
The War on Terror appears to be over -- at least rhetorically. The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama administration has directed its officials and representatives to begin replacing the term "Global War on Terror" with the more anodyne "Overseas Contingency Operation" in their speeches and public pronouncements.
The move is not entirely unexpected. As the Post points out, the term has been used by the new administration "in a war context" for several weeks now, almost since it first took office at the end of January. But what does the change mean, on a practical level?
Here, it's useful to remember that even the Bush administration had doubts about the phrase, despite having coined it. "We actually misnamed the war on terror, it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world," President Bush himself said back in 2004. Back then, Bush was responding to critics who said the GWOT was a misnomer, since "terrorism" is simply a tactic used by radicals to advance their agendas. But, at the end of the day, his administration knew full well that, whatever the official name, we were engaged in a long-term struggle against the forces of radical Islamic extremism.
So, I suspect, does this one. A great many dedicated public servants in the U.S. government, to say nothing of our armed forces, remain committed to the "long war," irrespective of what it happens to be called these days. Of much greater concern, however, is that our allies, and our adversaries, may conclude that the change is not simply semantic -- or benign. Rather, if the perception is that Washington has "gone wobbly" in the fight against radical Islam, the U.S. may soon face a reinvigorated challenge from a range of hostile actors, and a dwindling field of strategic partners to help it fight that threat.
If that turns out to be the case, we are liable to find out just how expensive semantics can be.
Fred Barnes Nails Obamanomics
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 11:05AM
Fred Barnes has a brilliant dissection of what Obama's language regarding economics says about his frightening beliefs about (or ignorance of) how economies work. Barnes is right on target, and timely, and his piece is important. Barnes does not say it, by the way, but the command-and contol "industrial policy" Barnes describes, when combined with the actual details of Obama's national service plan, and when combined with new proposals to give the executive branch authority to take over businesses in industries other than banking, has more than a passing resemblance to the economics of Mussolini. OR see this, from Wikipedia on "the econmoics of fascism, the section called "the political economy of fascist Italy," the paragraphs starting thusly:
In 1929, Italy was hit hard by the Great Depression. The Italian economy, having just emerged from a period of monetary stabilization, was not ready for this shock. Prices fell and production slowed. Unemployment rose from 300,787 in 1929 to 1,018,953 in 1933.[37] Trying to handle the crisis, the Fascist government nationalized the holdings of large banks which had accrued significant industrial securities.[38] The government also issued new securities to provide a source of credit for the banks and began enlisting the help of various cartels (consorzi) that had been created by Italian business leaders since 1922. The government offered recognition and support to these organizations in exchange for promises that they would manipulate prices in accordance with government priorities ....
This topic cries out for a full-length column and lots and lots of talk on the right.....
The Budget Blues
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 10:59AM
On the main site, I have a piece up about how President Obama's macho talk of making "hard choices" isn't reflected in his budget. Over at Investor's Business Daily, David Hogberg covers the state of play for the budget in Congress; at Roll Call Mort Kondracke suggests Obama could be more fiscally irresponsible than Bush; and in the Washington Post, honest liberal E.J. Dionne asks, "Will Anyone Admit That Taxes Have To Rise?"
Two Polls: Toomey Beats Specter Beats Toomey
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 9:56AM
Two polls are out in Pennsylvania on a prospective GOP Senate nomination fight between Senator Arlen Specter and his 2004 primary challenger, former Congressman Pat Toomey. They are front-page news across the state today in an AP story.
The Quinnipiac University poll (Connecticut based) shows Toomey leading Specter 41-27 among Pennsylvania Republicans, with 28 per cent undecided. The poll was head-to-head, leaving out recently announced candidate Peg Luksik, a pro-life activist. The poll also says almost half of the GOP electorate has an unfavorable opinion of Specter, while 45 percent of state voters as a whole have a favorable opinion of Specter -- this down from a 56 percent rating in November. Quinnipiac interviewed 1,056 Pennsylvania voters between March 19-March 23rd. The sampling error was plus or minus 4.8 percentage points for 423 GOP voters polled.
Poll number two is the Franklin and Marshall College survey, which threw Luksik into the mix. Specter won this poll, with 33 percent to 18 percent for Toomey and 2 percent for Luksik. The F&M poll interviewed 586 voters, including 211 Republicans. The sampling error for the Republican voters in the poll, taken between March 17-March 22, was plus or minus 6.7 percent.
The story, by reporter Peter Jackson, notes that the results were announced one day after Specter announced he would be opposing the so-called "Card Check" bill that would make it easier for workers to unionize by shutting down the secret ballot process. Radio ads have been running in the state asking Pennsylvanians to contact Specter and demand that he oppose Card Check.
In 2004, Toomey lost to Specter in the GOP primary by 17,000 votes out of 1 million cast. It was Specter's toughest primary fight since winning his first primary for the Senate in 1980. His recent vote as one of only three GOP votes in the entire Congress supporting the Obama stimulus plan has angered many state Republicans. Toomey, thought to be considering a race for the open seat for governor (Governor Ed Rendell is barred from a third term), has recently had second thoughts, indicating in press reports that he is now considering a second race for the Senate.
Specter's card check opposition comes a handful of days before the state's conservatives gather in Harrisburg for the annual Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, where they will hear from Toomey and radio talk show host and columnist Michael Reagan. The PLC has become a popular statewide version of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 3.26.09 @ 8:56AM
- A step forward for India -- disregard the naysayers (New Majority)
- The courts are a little too passive on Congress's unconstitutional AIG tax (WSJ)
- Naomi Klein, partisan hack (Weekly Standard)
- Reflections on the problem of evil in Brazil (Mere Comments)
- Poor people will be just fine, it's the government that needs charity money (Washington Post)
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The 'Colorado Model' of Doom
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 6:55PM
George Soros
* * * * *
Former Colorado state rep. Rob Witwer has an excellent article in National Review on what the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes has dubbed the Colorado Model.
The Colorado Model refers to liberal activists' political strategy to make Colorado safe for Democratic candidates for years to come. The strategy, as Barnes described it, consists of seven different "capacities": 1) "to generate intellectual ammunition," 2) "to pursue investigations," 3) "to mobilize for elections," 4) to combat media bias, 5) to sue strategically, 6) "to train new leaders," and 7) "to sustain a presence in the new media." The Colorado left now has all seven in place, according to Barnes.
James Dellinger and I examined the rapid conversion of Colorado from red state to blue state in our most recent profile of George Soros's Democracy Alliance. (Capital Research Center's Foundation Watch, December 2008)
The left accomplished this transmogrification by pumping millions of dollars into select activist groups and institutions. The money came from the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA), a state-level spinoff of the national Democracy Alliance, a billionaire leftists' club.
Funders of the takeover push included Pat Stryker, Tim Gill, and Al Yates. Newly minted congressman, Jared Polis (D-Colorado), while not a funder, was involved in planning the onslaught.
An excerpt from Witwer's article:
In hindsight, what Colorado Democrats did was as simple as it was effective. First, they built a robust network of nonprofit entities to replace the Colorado Democratic party, which had been rendered obsolete by campaign-finance reform. Second, they raised historic amounts of money from large donors to fund these entities. Third, they developed a consistent, topical message. Fourth, and most important, they put aside their policy differences to focus on the common goal of winning elections. As former Democratic house majority leader Alice Madden later said, "It's not rocket science."
In a larger sense, this is also a story about the unintended consequences of campaign-finance reform. In 2002, Congress passed McCain-Feingold. That same year, Colorado citizens enacted Amendment 27, a constitutional amendment that capped state-legislative contributions at $400 per donor. By lowering the amounts candidates could raise and spend, these laws effectively took message control out of the hands of candidates and handed it to outsiders.
Campaign spending in large quantities can now be accomplished only through the "independent sector" - a collection of nonprofit organizations that has stepped into the role once occupied by political parties. [...]
The cost of participation in elections through the independent sector is high, especially at the state level. Political nonprofits are subject to byzantine tax, corporate, and accounting rules, and require constant guidance from lawyers and accountants. That guidance is expensive, which is why there's no such thing as a "mom and pop" 527. Small and medium donors need not apply. [...]
By leveraging big dollars against traditionally sleepy local races, Colorado Democrats raised the ante to a level once seen only in federal campaigns. The influx of congressional-level cash has turned state-legislative races inside out. What used to be a local affair of meet-and-greet coffees and door-to-door campaigning now consists of paid staff, television and radio ads, glossy mailers, and platoons of hired door walkers. [...]
Re: Tweet on, tweet off
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 5:53PM
J.P., I don't know who told you that "The rule is that when someone follows you, you should be polite and follow them back." That's crazy-talk. If you're using Twitter mainly as a platform for self-promotion and are trying to build as big a circle as possible, following back and interacting might help, but there's no reason you have to do that.
This is something that a lot of people don't seem to get: Different people use Twitter in different ways. It was originally conceived -- and is legitimately useful -- as a way to let your friends know which bars, movies, etc. you're going to so you can meet up. Since it's also fun, if not exactly "useful," for sharing amusing observations and bantering back and forth, people naturally started following people who they don't know personally but do find entertaining or interesting. This means that, depending on what you choose to do with it, it can also work as something like a platform for very short blog posts, or like a message board. (I know a few writers who have two Twitter accounts -- one "locked," for friends only, and one publically accessible. I resist this because I don't want to keep track of two accounts, and I kind of want to meet anyone who would actually bother to stalk me.) Because Twitter has several different uses, anyone who says that there's a correct (or "polite") way that you must use it doesn't know what he's talking about.
Correction: The Glitch Was the Reporterbot's
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 5:09PM
It turns out that the story about the president reading a thank you to himself off a teleprompter, mentioned here Saturday, was misreported. Obama was joking.
Why Obama focuses on the deficit rather than total spending
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 4:55PM
Last night's press conference provided another teachable moment as to why the focus should not be on "the deficit" but rather total government spending as a percentage of GDP.
When Obama was challenged on the massive size of his budget and the burden placed on future generations, he immediately pivoted to a discussion of deficits rather than the total dead weight cost of the government as a percentage of GDP:
CNN's Ed Henry: "You keep saying that you've inherited a big fiscal mess. Do you worry, though, that your daughters, not to mention the next president, will be inheriting an even bigger fiscal mess if the spending goes out of control?"
OBAMA: "Of course I do, Ed, which is why we're doing everything we can to reduce that deficit."
By repeatedly trumpeting the claim his budget will cut the deficit in half in five years, Obama distracts from the most meaningful metric: Total government spending as a percentage of GDP will rise to a crushing 24.5 percent in 2019. The average of the past 40 years is 20.7 percent.
Obama's predecessor George W. Bush did not help matters by ceding the deficits-are-the-problem frame to those wishing to increase the role of government in our lives.
Focusing on the deficit is like focusing on the visible tip of an iceberg rather than the unseen (and in this case, growing) danger beneath. Obama's maritime metaphor in his concluding statement --"This is a big ocean liner. It's not a speedboat" - reminds us the Titanic was sunk by the iceberg itself, not the visible tip.
Note to the Village Voice
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 3:44PM
I don't think we should have bailed out AIG. I don't think we should have passed the broader "financial recovery" package. I don't think we should buy the toxic assets. And I don't think the AIG execs should have gotten those huges bonuses while being bailed out by the taxpayers. But if the friggin' U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill taxing your last bit of compensation at a 90 percent rate, the New York Times op-ed page might let you complain about getting hosed at your job too.
U.S. Debt Time Bomb Takes A Licking But It Keeps on Ticking
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 3:34PM
A 1923 Weimar German bank note in the sum of 50 million marks
In a few years will Americans be using wheelbarrows to carry around enough cash to buy a loaf of bread, as happened in hyperinflation-ravaged Germany in the 1920s?
Probably nein, but we are all going to experience pain as inflation eats away at our paychecks, our 401(k)s, and our bank accounts.
One worrying sign is that investors are less than enthusiastic about buying triple-A rated U.S. government debt.
AP reports this afternoon:
Stocks lost ground after a weak auction of U.S. government debt stirred worries about how easily Washington will be able to raise money to fund its economic rescue program.
Investors gave an unexpectedly cool response to a $24 billion auction of 5-year Treasury notes Wednesday, which also sent prices for Treasurys lower.
The government is running up record deficits in order to fund an array of plans to provide stimulus to the economy and support to the ailing financial system. [emphasis added above]
Investors are justifiably worried about the long-term solvency of the U.S. government which lacks the political will to set its financial house in order. They also worry whether the value of the U.S. dollars that the Obama administration is urging them to buy will be diluted by an orgy of money-printing. Remember that just a month ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to beg the Chinese to keep buying Treasurys.
The fact that investors, including foreign central banks, have just about had their fill of greenbacks should scare the bejeezus out of all Americans.
Newspaper Industry Reaches a New Level of Desperation
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 3:00PM
Latest survival idea: Read it and eat it.
Class Warfare Watch, AIG Edition
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 2:31PM
The Village Voice's Roy Edroso pokes fun at me, among other conservative bloggers, for defending an AIG executive whose resignation letter was published in the New York Times:
"At AIG, just like everywhere else," generously allows the American Spectator, "there are people who are suffering as a result of the irresponsibility and sins of others." But most of us who have been struck by the fragments of the solid-gold speculative bubble -- burst by AIG, among others -- don't get Op-Eds in the Times. If you get a shit deal from your job, neither the Times nor Dagny Taggart will rush to comfort you -- which probably just proves to these folks that your pain is less important than that of a 17-year high-finance veteran whose spectacular early retirement (to whatever miserable hovel such a career affords) now breaks their hearts.
Look, I'm angry about the government bailing out AIG and the idea of rewarding undeserving executives with bonuses, but Edroso's Tom Joad sermonizing does nothing but convey his own contempt for people of means. The point isn't that this particular AIG executive is a hero, but that AIG has 116,000 employees around the world, and it's unfair to paint all of them with a broad brush as if each of them is equally responsible for the damage the company did to our financial system. Also, while not everybody who loses their job gets space on the NY Times op-ed page, the op-ed page, as well as the news page, as well as the rest of the media, consistently gives voices to those dispossessed by the economic crisis -- those losing their jobs and homes, those without health care, and those who are struggling to stay afloat. For weeks, the media has been pummeling AIG and all of its executives who took bonuses. These people have been villianized, persecuted by Congress and the NY Attorney General's office, and yet we haven't heard from any of them. Giving one of them a forum in the NY Times to make his case in a way that adds nuance to this ugly situation does not seem unreasonable to me.
"Budget Buzz"
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 2:12PM
House Republicans begin their online offensive against President Obama's budget.
Speaking of Card Check
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 1:28PM
At the Capital Research Center labor conference where Grover Norquist announced Arlen Specter was switching sides on card check, there was a spirited exchange among Employee Free Choice Act opponents on how to deal with the issue. Former Congressman Ernest Istook of Oklahoma spoke on behalf of the Save Our Secret Ballot initiative, which takes a state-by-state approach to card check patterned after the successful ballot initiatives against same-sex marriage.
Greg Mourad, the legislative director of the National Right to Work Committee, gave an impassioned argument against this approach. Politically, he said it took pressure off of Democrats in states where unions are not popular -- like Mark Warner in Virginia, for example -- to vote against the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate. It also diverts resources from the Senate fight for something that legally will do very little to prevent card check. Mourad said that the courts would hold that EFCA preempted the state ballot initiatives.
Istook countered that few politicians would be so brazen as to take one position on a state ballot initiative and then vote the opposite way at the national level. He also argued that it would prevent card check for state public employees' unions. Another speaker said that the point of such initiatives was to get politicians on the record on card check before they run for federal office.
My own view is that National Right to Work is right about the legal matter and Istook is generally right about the politics. Keeping same-sex marriage as the imperfect analogy, you can find politicians who have taken one position on state ballot initiatives and another on national legislation on the issue -- John Kerry and John McCain, for example. But overall, the success of marriage initiatives has made politicians reluctant to support same-sex marriage. It's the main reason why Democratic presidential candidates like Barack Obama remain even nominally opposed to redefining marriage. Sure, it hasn't helped the Federal Marriage Amendment. But I have no doubt a bill legalizing same-sex marriage would fail even in a Democratic-controlled Congress and the marriage initiatives are part of the reason.
Then again, that doesn't necessarily mean the state campaigns are the best use of resources during the national debate over EFCA, which is focused on the Senate right now. Given the current composition of that chamber, one vote there is worth more than any number of state ballot initiatives.
Tweet on, tweet off
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 1:19PM
Last night at the Institute for Political Journalism's Board of Visitors meeting, Tim Carney and I found ourselves explaining Twitter to our colleagues. It wasn't a defense of the practice, really. The participants are all eager to learn about new things and how the students benefit from them. But Tim and I both had to be fairly self-deprecating about it, as anyone should be, because Twitter is, in fact, a really dumb trend.
Now, to be clear: Tech crazes are, in fact, crazes. Remember when "Email Lists" first came about, and forwards to massive people? And how we STILL see people yelling at each other about whether or not something was appropriate? Have you seen someone on a Segway? Remember when it was being touted as a revolution? Then everyone started blogging on their own, offering thoughts that would make Jose Ortega y Gassett choke. When it came to family stuff, it was great going. Some people started thinking more seriously about writing that otherwise might not have. But others got silly.
The nice thing about Twitter, then, is that you can't do many stupid things with 140 characters.
Except you can. At the moment, I have almost 1200 followers on Twitter (which makes me sound like a cult leader). The rule is that when someone follows you, you should be polite and follow them back. I'll admit that sometimes it's nice to hear about a mom who just got back from taking her family to soccer practice. It's a reminder of the what real life is like. But it's an interruption -- and so many tweets are just that. It's noise, and the more people you follow on Twitter, the more noise you get.
Which is the problem. Like blogs and email lists, there's no common practice that encourages people to think about what they're saying and how it impacts others. Or, heck, to figure out if what they're saying is worth it. It's self-indulgent to the worst degree.
As for it being a good way of disseminating information, sure. But the smaller networks, not larger networks, allow meaningful relationships to filter out useless information. You can use social programs like Twitter to meet new people, but that meeting is useless unless you develop that relationship. The rules of networking apply even on the Internet.
Which brings me to this video, which has completely discouraged me from going on my massive Twitter account for anything other than professional reasons:
Why Specter Flipped on Card Check
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 1:00PM
Take a look at this poll: according to Quinnipiac, Sen. Arlen Specter trails Club for Growth President Pat Toomey by 41 percent to 27 percent in a 2010 Republican primary in Pennsylvania. Specter has a 16-point net disapproval rating among Republicans, 52 percent of whom don't like the job he's doing as senator. After Specter's vote for the stimulus package, conservative opposition to him hardened. The Pennsylvania GOP has been hemorraghing moderates since George W. Bush became president, leaving Specter with a weakened base.
Specter's numbers among non-Republicans remain respectable, with a 71 percent to 16 percent positive score from Democrats, suggesting he'd still be favored in the general election. But Specter is in a deep hole with the primary voters. It remains to be seen whether his apparent change of heart on card check will be sufficient to dig him out.
Terry McAuliffe and Me
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 11:22AM
The former Democratic National Committee chairman is now a candidate for Governor of Virginia. He held a campaign event last night at Morton's and, of course, my presence was required.
We're old friends, Terry and me. And since he's hosting events at a place where the steaks cost $40, anything I can do to help this friend of the working man . . .
Quitting AIG
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 10:04AM
In all of the controversy over the AIG bonuses, the one side that we haven't heard from is the actual employees of the financial products unit who received the bonuses. Today, the New York Times has run as an op-ed the resignation letter of Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the troubled AIG unit. In the letter, DeSantis explains:
I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.
According to the letter, he worked in the commodity trading division, which has been profitable for AIG, and he played a role in the pending sale of that division to UBS -- a sale that will generate money for the taxpayer.
DeSantis writes:
As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.
Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.
The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.
He writes that he plans to donate all of his $742,006.40 bonus -- after taxes -- to charities assisting people affected by the economic crisis.
The whole letter is well worth a read, because it illuminates the fact that at AIG, just like everywhere else, there are people who are suffering as a result of the irresponsibility and sins of others. And in all of the public outrage and grandstanding on Capitol Hill, it's important to keep in mind that not all AIG employees were guilty of blowing up the financial system.
The Era of Patriotic Dissent As News Story Ends
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 9:20AM
What if thousands of protestors threw tea parties and no media came?
I suppose we're about to find out.
Jindal:We Don't Want Obama to Fail, We Want America to Succeed
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 6:42AM
Last night I caught Bobby Jindal speaking at a fundraising dinner for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Overall, Jindal came off better in front of a live audience and less rehearsed than he did on national TV during his response to President Obama's speech to Congress. But the bottom line is that he simply is not an electrifying speaker. While the crowd reacted positively, their applause was much more tepid than I would have expected given that he's still considered one of the rising stars in the party. Public speaking, as far as I can tell, is not one of his political strengths. With time and practice, Jindal could evolve into a good enough speaker to succeed in higher office, especially if in some date in the future Americans become disillusioned with the idea of electing presidents based on their rhetorical prowess. But it’s pretty clear to me that if Jindal ever makes it to the White House, it will be because he's brilliant, has a mastery of policy issues, and an impressive list of accomplishments – not because of his power as an orator.
With that said, I thought the substance of what Jindal had to say was generally on target.
"I honor and respect the Democratic Party's sincerity," Jindal said in an almost Obama-like conciliatory way. "The differences between the two parties are genuine, legitimate differences. This isn’t because of political opportunism, these are essential differences based on opposing world views."
Jindal noted that we were in the midst of the greatest expansion of government in history, with money spent in the early part of the Obama administration having eclipsed the cost of the Iraq War, the Vietnam War and the Louisiana Purchase.
Much of his speech was focused on how Republicans had a different vision on health care, energy and education than Obama and Democrats in Congress. But he really hit his stride toward the end, in which he tackled the question of whether he wanted Obama to fail. He started by challenging the question's premise.
"If you don't want to answer that question with a loud 'no' immediately, if you don't express instant obedience to the question, then they are trying to suggest that you're not really a patriot," Jindal said. "They're essentially saying that you're trying to undermine America."
But Jindal said that the GOP shouldn't back down on challenging President Obama when they disagree with his agenda.
"There's a very important role in our republic for the loyal opposition," Jindal said. "We must be both."
He continued, "We are the party out of power. It is proper and right and healthy for our democracy for us to speak up when we don’t agree with the policies that this president pushes and proposes. I will not be browbeaten… I won't kowtow to the political correctness. We will be the loyal opposition."
In response to the question of whether he wants the president to fail, he said his answer is simple: "It depends on what he is trying to do." Jindal said that he wants Obama to succeed if the president wants to cut taxes, reduce debt, stop the explosion in government spending, and get serious about earmark reform.
"However," Jindal said, "when our president wants to spend our country into debt, into interminable debt, putting this generation and future generations in a position in which the only way out will be massive tax increases, we oppose that policy not because we want the president to fail, but because we want America to succeed."
His speech lasted a little over 20 minutes and the NRCC raised $6 million from the event to support GOP candidates.
Stupid TSA: Because it Can
Posted by on 3.25.09 @ 5:58AM
Most people support airport security since they would prefer not to end up on an airplane that gets hijacked. But what people want is genuine security, not meaningless activity that attempts to disguise inconvenience as security.
Unfortunately, TSA, which supposedly stands for Transportation Security Administration, really means "tedious, slow, and absurd," according to terrorism expert Chuck Pena. He writes:
One can only wonder what possessed TSA (and exactly whom at TSA) to decide that additional random screening at airport gates was a necessary - and effective - security measure. Although TSA claims that everything it does is for a reason, in the next breath the agency admits that the decision wasn't because of a specific threat. Put another way: there's no real or compelling reason for doing it. So while TSA asserts the purpose is not to hassle travelers, their own logic smacks of "because we can." And because they can, protesting if you are one of the unfortunate random selections means TSA can choose to make your traveling experience less than pleasant - including making you miss your flight.
Anyone who flies regularly can remember the idiotic last minute random searches as you were boarding the plane. Thankfully, TSA dropped the policy after several years of making flying an ever less pleasant experience. But now the inspections are back, and with no explanation. Surely TSA owes passengers more than the claim that "we know what we are doing." After all, that is manifestly untrue--why else do you have to show your boarding pass as you enter the security line and then when you exit, when all you've done is shuffle a few feet further along?
Is the initial screening inadequate? If so, TSA should fess up. But that seems unlikely. Notes Pena:
If vulnerability is the reason, then TSA has a lot of explaining to do. Travelers routinely practically disrobe going through airport security to get to their gate: taking off their shoes, removing coats and sweaters, making sure they aren't wearing anything metal such as belts and jewelry, and separating laptops and liquids and gels (limited to no more than 3-ounce containers in a single quart-sized bag) from their carry-on luggage. Their bags then pass through X-ray inspection. Passengers walk through metal detectors. And they can be subjected to additional searches of their persons and effects. So despite this relatively intrusive security check, is TSA saying that airplanes are still vulnerable to hijacking? That possibility seems difficult to fathom when current security screening is combined with secure cockpit doors and the possibility of armed pilots.
And if the current process is inadequate, that presumably means that TSA left the U.S. vulnerable to attack for years when it dropped the random searches. True, TSA?
So what is it?
The time for TSA expecting travelers to behave like sheep, doing whatever they are told without explanation is over. Getting an explanation would be "change that we can believe in." How about it, President Obama?
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Obama on Charities
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 8:47PM
I'd actually be all for eliminating the charitable tax deduction as part of a broader tax simplification, but Obama is pulling it out of thin air when he says that there's no reason to believe eliminating the deduction would affect charitable giving, as charities fear. The real debate is over whether the federal government should use the tax code as a way to manipulate social behavior as opposed to merely to raise revenue.
Big Government Barack
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 8:25PM
So far, President Obama has:
1. Suggested that growth of government is more real from an economic-growth perspective than growth of the financial sector.
2. Left the door open to a budget that contains no middle-class tax cut.
3. Once again responded to questions about his own deficits by blasting Republican critics for "short memories" and talking about the deficit he "inherited," even though he can only claim to cut the deficit in half by increasing that deficit to $1.8 trillion in the first place.
4. Says there will be "no growth" in the economy if he doesn't get the "investments" he is requesting.
Obama's Magical Budget
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 8:22PM
President Obama's budget arguments are a series of red herrings. Asked about the cumulative deficits estimated at $9.3 trillion from 2009-2018 by the CBO, he says that Republican critics have a "short memory" because he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit for this year. Yes, but his budget would drive that number up to $1.8 trillion. He then says that he'll cut the deficit in half -- but of course, if you drive the deficit up to $1.8 trillion, it's a lot easier to cut it in half. He says that the CBO estimates for his deficit are higher because they assume lower GDP growth than his administration, but even taking that into account, his budget proposals would cause a deeper deficit relative to the CBO's baseline numbers if current laws were followed. Asked about how deficits spike up again in the later years -- even under his administration's own budget numbers -- he said that it's too hard to estimate that far, that "adjustments" will be made along the way, and that all of his magical health care and energy savings will kick in, in the fairytale future.
Jindal Pokes Fun at His SOTU Response
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 7:35PM
Bobby Jindal opened up his speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner in Washington by joking that he came to reprise his State of the Union response speech. Then he quipped that the speech can't be shown to prisoners at Gitmo, because it's now banned as torture.
A Preview of Obama's Remarks
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 5:13PM
The White House has just released these excerpts from President Obama's opening remarks before tonight's press conference:
[W]e've put in place a comprehensive strategy designed to attack this crisis on all fronts. It's a strategy to create jobs, to help responsible homeowners, to re-start lending, and to grow our economy over the long-term. And we are beginning to see signs of progress.
...
The budget I submitted to Congress will build our economic recovery on a stronger foundation, so that we do not face another crisis like this ten or twenty years from now. We invest in the renewable sources of energy that will lead to new jobs, new businesses, and less dependence on foreign oil. We invest in our schools and our teachers so that our children have the skills they need to compete with any workers in the world. We invest in reform that will bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and our government. And in this budget, we have made the tough choices necessary to cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term - even under the most conservative estimates.
At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It's with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.
That's what green jobs and green businesses will do. That's what a highly-skilled workforce will do. That's what an efficient health care system that controls costs and entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid will do. That's why this budget is inseparable from this recovery - because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity.
...
We will recover from this recession. But it will take time, it will take patience, and it will take an understanding that when we all work together; when each of us looks beyond our own short-term interests to the wider set of obligations we have to each other - that's when we succeed. That's when we prosper. And that's what is needed right now. So let us look toward the future with a renewed sense of common purpose, a renewed determination, and most importantly, a renewed confidence that a better day will come.
Kafka-esque DMV
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 4:42PM
Ezra Klein writes:
Little in American life gets described as "Kafka-esque" with quite the regularity of the DMV. That's possibly a sign that fairly few people have read Kafka (updating your registration isn't really like turning into a cockroach)...
Uh, when people compare bureaucracy to a Kafka story, I don't think they're talking about the Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes up to discover he has turned into a bug, but the Trial, in which Josef K gets arrested and has to navigate a labyrinthine justice system.
Perhaps this is a sign that Ezra is the one who hasn't read Kafka.
Dropping Polls for the Chosen One
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 4:35PM
Fewer people seem to be choosing The One these days. Reports Zogby:
However, President Barack Obama's ratings for job performance and favorability did not improve over earlier this month. In the most recent survey, 49% rate his job performance as excellent or good and 50% as fair or poor (less than 1% were not sure.) That is a dip of three points from the previous poll. The percentages who feel very or somewhat favorable toward Obama remained unchanged between the two polls, with 55% now and 56% in the previous poll.
Dropping poll numbers are not good news if the administration hopes to transform the economy and reform humanity. The railroad might just go off the rails.
Chris Dodd's Wife Also Paid by AIG
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 4:27PM
Brian Faughnan at RedState tells us that Chris Dodd's wife was collecting checks as a director of AIG Property. Reports Faughnan:
Senator Dodd, there's been a lot of attention recently to your relationship with AIG. You're the top Congressional recipient of their political donations, they have a major presence in your state, and you sponsored a provision that allowed them to deliver bonuses to many of your constituents. And yet even as you've sworn up and down that you never wanted to protect AIG, and you have no reason to wish to do so, we learn that your wife served on the board of - and was compensated by - an AIG subsidiary?
You've got to wonder what else the esteemed chairman hasn't been telling us!
Pat Toomey Takes Credit for Specter's Card Check Reversal
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 3:51PM
"The difference between Specter's vote on the big government stimulus bill and Specter's vote on card check: a threat in the Republican primary," Pat Toomey wrote this afternoon in a statement emailed to reporters. "It's nice to see Sen. Specter reverse his position in a positive direction on card check, but I wish it didn't take primary opposition to get him to do it."
UPDATE:
More from Toomey:
"When Senator Specter does a flip flop, it's worth checking the fine print. On the senate floor today he said: "I would be willing to reconsider Employees' Free Choice legislation when the economy returns to normalcy." In other words, if he thinks his political fortunes have improved, he will deny workers a secret ballot after all."
Specter's Floor Statement on Opposition to EFCA
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 3:37PM
Sen. Arlen Specter has officially announced that he will oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, or card check, which I reported earlier.
Specter, speaking this afternoon on the Senate floor, called the issue a "very difficult" one, explaining, "it is very hard to disappoint many friends who have supported me over the years, on either side, who are urging me to vote their way."
Here's how he described the major considerations leading up to his decision:
On the merits, the issue which has emerged at the top of the list for me is the elimination of the secret ballot which is the cornerstone of how contests are decided in a democratic society. The bill's requirement for compulsory arbitration if an agreement is not reached within 120 days may subject the employer to a deal he or she cannot live with. Such arbitration runs contrary to the basic tenet of the Wagner Act for collective bargaining which makes the employer liable only for a deal he or she agrees to.
Specter also noted that, "the problems of the recession make this a particularly bad time to enact Employees Free Choice legislation."
He proposed changes to the National Labor Relations Act and left the door open to supporting EFCA in the future.
"If efforts are unsuccessful to give Labor sufficient bargaining power through amendments to the NLRA, then I would be willing to reconsider Employees' Free Choice legislation when the economy returns to normalcy," he said.
The full statement is available here.
Re: Tweaking A-Roid
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 3:30PM
I think that's a charitable assessment of A-Roid. And I say this as a Yankee fan.
Another Opportunity to Tweak A-Rod
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 2:30PM
Curt Schilling retired yesterday, and the Boston Herald's Gerry Callahan couldn't pass up the opportunity to pile on the Red Sox fans' most hated player, Alex Rodriguez, who plays for their most hated rival:
Amazing how things turn out sometimes: The Sox got Schilling. The Yanks got A-Rod. The Red Sox won that offseason (2004) and have been winning ever since....Schilling did as promised, delivering a World Series championship in his first season with the Sox and another one three years later.
Rodriguez has been, in so many ways, the anti-Schilling. A two-time MVP for the Yankees, he has shrunk to the size of a bobblehead doll in October. Lots of players struggle under the postseason pressure, but rarely has a player this good been this bad when the games mean this much. You think we’re exaggerating? In his past 59 postseason at-bats, A-Rod has eight hits. During that time, he has come to the plate with 38 runners on base and driven in none. When the pressure is on, the best player in baseball hits like Obama bowls.
But you have to give A-Rod credit for one thing: He has found a way to divert attention from his pathetic performance in the postseason. Actually, he has found a few ways: Confess to using drugs. Lie. Cheat. Blame your cousin. Reportedly hire a hooker. Leave your wife. Ignore your kids. Tear up your hip and go in for surgery. And oh, yeah, kiss yourself in the mirror while a renowned photographer captures the image for all the world to see.
Does that about sum up A-Rod’s offseason? Gee, why didn’t Bill Buckner think of that?
I so envy Callahan's enormous stockpile of pointed barbs...
We Live in Simulating Times
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 1:45PM
In case you were planning to come by our offices tomorrow morning, check out this message we've received from our landlord -- and stay off the Key Bridge:
Simulated explosion Wednesday 3/25
Please be advised, there is a simulated explosion scheduled for this Wednesday, March 25 between 9:30 am and 12:00 pm near the Key Bridge in the District. Here is some additional information:
For the filming of a TV pilot, there will be a simulated explosion on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, between 9:30 a.m. and Noon near the Key Bridge in the District. The explosion will produce a 20 to 30' fireball that will last for approximately two minutes.
The explosion will take place on the Potomac River just north of the Key Bridge and Jack's Boathouse (K/Water Street, NW under the Whitehurst Freeway). In the scene to be filmed, there will be six (6) sculling boats on the Potomac River and one of them blows up. CBS Paramount television is filming a pilot titled "Washington Field." This is a new television series about the elite Washington field office of the FBI and a team of agents with exceptional and diverse skills who are called together for only the most critical cases.
The Department of Homeland Security and D.C. Police and Fire departments have been notified, along with the Washington Airports Authority. The Virginia State Patrol and Arlington Police Department will also be contacted.
Please notify your office about this simulated explosion so everyone is aware this is just the result of a film crew.
Specter to Oppose Card Check, Office Tells Norquist
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 1:25PM
Grover Norquist said today that he received a call from Arlen Specter's chief of staff informing him that the Pennsylvania Senator will vote against cloture on card check, dealing a serious blow to big labor's efforts to pass the legislation that would make it easier to form unions by denying workers a secret ballot on unionization.
Specter, who has received union backing in his past campaigns, did not support the Republican filibuster of card check last time it came up for a vote, and his support was seen as essential to passing the legislation this time around.
Norquist made the announcement during remarks at a labor conference sponsored by the Capital Research Center, and I confirmed them with our own Jim Antle, who is in attendence.
UPDATE: Specter makes it official.
Ron Paul Grills Bernanke
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 12:21PM
Ron Paul just used his five minutes during today's AIG hearing to note that the Federal Reserve's easy money policies and other moral hazards created by government actions helped get us into this mess in the first place. He posed a key set of questions to Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner -- do they believe in the free market? And does the crisis represent a failure of the free market or the failure of the crony capitalism that we've been living with for decades? Bernanke responded without addressing Paul's specific criticisms of the Fed's policies. He said he believed in the free market, but that sometimes it is subject to bank panics and booms and busts and in those cases the government needed to step in to stabalize the system. Paul asked whether in taking action they were simply creating moral hazards that are making such crises last longer than they needed to, but he ran out of time before Bernanke responded and before Geithner had an oppourtunity to chime in.
Geithner Wants to Be Dark Overlord of the Financial Universe
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 11:45AM
Tim Geither is appearing before Congress right now to ask for expanded authority that would allow him as Treasury Secretary to seize non-banking financial institutions such as insurance companies if he decides that they pose a systemic risk to the economy. Geithner is arguing that the AIG bailout would have gone smoother if the government also had the option of simply seizing the company and winding down the assets. But this is the classic slippery slope in which the solution to incompetence by the government is yet more government and in this case, ever increasing powers for a Treasury Secretary who hasn't been able to handle what he has on his plate so far.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 10:17AM
- Culture11, a history (Washington Monthly)
- Obama brings his agenda to a willing Notre Dame (Wall Street Journal)
- Meghan McCain interviews Supriya Jindal (Daily Beast)
- The Troubles again? (Taki's
Mag)
- The Fed struggles to assert that it will remain independent (Tim Duy's Fed Watch)
Bernanke on AIG
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 9:47AM
Here's Ben Bernanke on lessons learned from the AIG mess:
To conclude, I would note that AIG offers two clear lessons for the upcoming discussion in the Congress and elsewhere on regulatory reform. First, AIG highlights the urgent need for new resolution procedures for systemically important nonbank financial firms. If a federal agency had had such tools on September 16, they could have been used to put AIG into conservatorship or receivership, unwind it slowly, protect policyholders, and impose haircuts on creditors and counterparties as appropriate. That outcome would have been far preferable to the situation we find ourselves in now. Second, the AIG situation highlights the need for strong, effective consolidated supervision of all systemically important financial firms. AIG built up its concentrated exposure to the subprime mortgage market largely out of the sight of its functional regulators. More-effective supervision might have identified and blocked the extraordinarily reckless risk-taking at AIG-FP. These two changes could measurably reduce the likelihood of future episodes of systemic risk like the one we faced at AIG.
There's no doubt that AIG made colossally stupid financial decisions and it sounds comforting to believe all of this could have been prevented by better oversight. But the problem regulators make is to believe that new regulators would be any less fallible than private business just because ostensibly they aren't driven by the profit motive. Fannie and Freddie are perfect examples. During the mortgage boom, they were supervised by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Housing Finance Board, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), and Congress -- and yet that didn't prevent the accounting scandals or their eventual meltdown. In part, this was because corrupt Democrats who were raking in campaign cash from the companies wanted to protect them from scrutiny, but it also was a matter of regulators simply not doing a good job. After all, the mission of OFHEO, according to its website was, "to promote housing and a strong national housing finance system by ensuring the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation)."
Comeback
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 9:31AM
Jeff Lord's piece on the main site today tells the other side of the story when it comes to Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964: the 1966 elections, which marked the beginning of a Republican comeback.
Forced Medicare?
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 9:17AM
This is the court case that all freedom-loving Americans should pay attention to. It tries to overturn a bureaucratically promulgated policy -- not even a formal rule, yet it has the force, right now, of law -- that forces somebody to enroll in Medicare Part A if they want to receive the Social Security benefits for which they have paid over a lifetime. Dick Armey is one of the plaintiffs. Read all about it. The policy is an outrage. The suit MUST succeed.
China Launches Scud Missile at U.S. Economy
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 8:48AM
Metaphorically, of course. After suggesting that the U.S. needed to do more to prove the security of the bonds being held by Beijing, China now has taken aim at the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency. Reports the New York Times:
In another indication that China is growing increasingly concerned about holding huge dollar reserves, the head of its central bank has called for the eventual creation of a new international currency reserve to replace the dollar.
In a paper released Monday, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, said a new currency reserve system controlled by the International Monetary Fund could prove more stable and economically viable.
A new system is necessary, he said, because the global economic crisis has revealed the "inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system."
While few analysts believe that the dollar will be replaced as the world's dominant foreign exchange reserve anytime soon, the proposal suggests that China is preparing to assume a more influential role in the world. Russia recently made a similar proposal.
China's bold idea, released more than a week before world leaders are to gather in London for an economic summit meeting, also indicates that Beijing is worried that its huge dollar-denominated foreign reserves could lose significant value in coming years.
China has the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, valued at nearly $2 trillion, with more than half of those holdings estimated to be made up of United States Treasuries and other dollar-denominated bonds.
Although the dollar isn't likely to lose its dominant role in the short-term, Washington's wildly irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies make the Dollar vulnerable over the longer term. And don't expect the Chinese--or Russian and European, as well--economic challenge to go away any time soon.
The Red Envelope Project
Posted by on 3.24.09 @ 6:41AM
Unfortunately, Barack Obama is living up to his promise to eliminate protections for the unborn. Without doubt the result will be more dead babies. Abortion is one of those tough issues that most politicians would prefer to dodge, but it is too important to sidestep. Frankly, I don't understand how one can argue that people have a right to have sex with whomever they choose whenever they choose, and that the same people have no responsibility for the consequences of choosing to have sex, especially when that consequence is a life. With freedom must come responsibility.
Some pro-life activists are promoting "the red envelope project," urging people to mail empty red envelopes to the White House on March 31, with the back inscribed:
This envelope represents one child who died in abortion. It is empty because that life was unable to offer anything to the world. Responsibility begins with conception.
It's a thoughtful protest, highlighting the reality of abortion: the death of innocent life.
Monday, March 23, 2009
It Pays to be a Democratic Big-Wig
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 7:16PM
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca.) has put together a detailed report on Countrywide Financial's program of providing preferential mortgages for Washington legislators, like Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd. Reports Amanda Carpenter:
A new report showcases the lengths executives at Countrywide Financial went to in order to provide below-market mortgage rates to well-connected Washington insiders.
Countrywide's CEO Angelo Mozilo granted sweetheart mortgages to a number of influential lawmakers including Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Democratic Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. E-mails obtained by government investigators show Countrywide employees often discussed the political influence wielded by "Friends of Angelo" as grounds for granting the discounts.
The 63-page report, titled "Countrywide's Systematic and Successful Effort to Buy Influence and Block Reform" was released by Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Government and Oversight Committee. Some of the e-mails reprinted in the report were released to the committee by former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, who is among those who have recieved preferential treatment from Countrywide. Robert Feinberg, a former Countrywide employee who assisted in processing "Friends of Angelo" loans, also provided e-mails to the committee.
The Depressed Scott Johnson is Very Eloquent
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 4:16PM
Wow. Scott Johnson at Powerline lays it on the line in this column. Really good stuff. He takes a machete to the cardboard cutout that is the Obama presidency. Hear, hear!
Cigarette Taxes and Social Conservatism
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 3:57PM
I've often defended social conservatives from libertarians who overlook the fact that many of the members of Congress who fought runaway government spending most ferociously during the Bush administration were also among the most socially conservative. That's why it was particularly alarming to witness Mike Huckabee gain national prominence with a brand of conservatism that merged tax-and-spend governance and nanny statism with traditional values issues. This struck me when I read that the head of the Florida Christian Coalition has come out in favor of a cigarette tax as a way to stave off the expansion of legalized gambling in the state.
“Something like the cigarette tax is something that could be considered acceptable, not only in shaping acceptable [health] behavior in the future but keeping us out of an arena where we’re depending on people losing a tremendous amount of money,” the head of the group, Dennis Baxley, told the Sun Sentinel.
Cigarette taxes are bad policy on multiple levels. They disproportionately hurt lower income groups and they don't raise the revenue they are projected to raise -- in part because they are successful in discouraging people from smoking, but also because they increase black market sales of cigarettes. In that sense, they actually promote organized crime. Yet cash-strapped legislatures such as Florida, as well as the federal government (see S-CHIP), continue to pursue this policy out of a belief that it's somehow more "acceptable" to raise taxes on a group of people just because they smoke.
Soros-Funded Liberal Group Common Cause in Deep Financial Trouble
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 3:35PM
A screen grab from the October 4 "Saturday Night Live"
* * * * *
One of liberal philanthropist George Soros's favorite lefty groups is in deep financial doo-doo.
The group is Common Cause. It attacks pharmaceutical companies for opposing government-run health care, demands federal regulation of drug prices, and pushes for so-called campaign finance reform and public financing of campaigns for political office.
Common Cause's state chapters in Florida and New Jersey are going out of business, Tampa Bay Online reports:
After 30 years of advocating campaign finance reform, tougher ethics laws, election reform and other "good government" issues, the Florida chapter of Common Cause is shutting down for lack of funding. [...]
The two Common Cause full-time staff members, Wilcox and development director Alex Chavez of Sarasota, were told yesterday their jobs were being terminated at the end of March, along with a total of 20 staffers nationwide, said Chavez. He said that will include closing at least one other state office, in New Jersey.
The Florida chapter was opened in 1974, four years after the national organization was founded by John Gardner, a former high official of the Lyndon Johnson administration, who described it as a lobbying group for the common interests of the populace. [...]
Chavez, hired less than a year ago to boost the organization's membership and fundraising, called the situation "a sign of the times - really a sad story, a sad situation for the progressive movement."
Wilcox said direct mail fundraising for small donors is drying up, and "major donors are the ones who were burned by Madoff. Non-profits are struggling."
That's Bernard Madoff, by the way, the now-jailed liberal embezzler who has helped to kill at least two big left-wing grant-making charities, the Picower and JEHT foundations, so far.
Big liberal institutional donors to Common Cause include Arca Foundation ($1,395,000 since 2000), Carnegie Corp. of New York ($1,360,000 since 2001), Beldon Fund ($1,300,000 since 2005), and Joyce Foundation ($570,000 since 2002). Before he became U.S. president, Barack Obama served on the Joyce Foundation's board. The Barbra Streisand Foundation gave $7,500 in 2000.
At least four members of George Soros's Democracy Alliance, the billionaire socialists' club, have also given big to Common Cause, which suggests that Common Cause is a Democracy Alliance-approved grantee. The list includes Soros's Open Society Institute ($1,225,000 since 2001), Lewis B. & Dorothy Cullman Foundation Inc. ($75,000 since 2004), Rutt Bridges Family Foundation ($23,000 since 2004), and Gill Foundation ($20,000 since 2004).
Robert Bennett in Trouble in Utah?
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 2:01PM
The Politico reports he may face a primary challenge from his right.
Half a Cheer for the Populists
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 1:04PM
Obviously, I don't very much like Congress' latest bonus shenanigans. It is at the very least constitutionally problematic, it sets a bad precedent for other politically unpopular groups, contracts are contracts, and nothing that contains the phrase "90 percent tax" can possibly be a good idea. That said, Daniel McCarthy has a point:
The incentives created by the tax are all in the right direction: 1.) don’t continue to reward the bigwigs at AIG, Fannie, Freddie, etc.; 2.) don’t encourage talented people (if there are any) to stay with these zombie companies that already aren’t “viable” –it’s better that talented people go to companies that actually are viable; 3.) send a signal to other decrepit financial institutions that bailouts come with some personal pain (or at least deprivation of pleasure) for the receiver; and 4.) having already decided to pour billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars (or Chinese loans) down the sinkhole, at least refrain from adding insult to injury.
Given the unitended consequences of government policy, I'd probably quibble with the word "all." But neither federal bailouts nor prison sentences should be fun for the receiver.
UPDATE: A commenter below raises a fair point about financial institutions that did not want to take the TARP money.
Bob Barr
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 12:41PM
Tried to do on a smaller scale what Mark Sanford will need to do on a much larger one: unite right-leaning small government types whose foreign-policy views range from noninterventionism to some form of Jacksonian hawkishness, if not neoconservatism. In the beginning, it looked like he'd be relatively successful. Ultimately, he was not. Though obviously some of Barr's problems had to do with personal dynamics between him and Ron Paul.
WH Official Says We Need to Get Fannie and Freddie to "Lend Like Crazy"
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 12:16PM
Jim Geraghty notes a startling quote by Christina Romer, the chair of the White House Council on Economic Advisers, who said of Fannie and Freddie, "What is going to be the way that gets these institutions safe, gets them doing what we need them to do, which is lend like crazy, and just basically functioning again for the economy." The Obama administration seems intent on replicating the same conditions that got us into this crisis as a way of getting out of this crisis.
The Sanford Revolution?
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 11:07AM
Dave Weigel has a piece about how wealthy Republican donors, especially those in the Club for Growth crowd, are starting to look at Mark Sanford as their potential 2012 candidate in reaction to his consistent defense of limited government and principled stands against the bailouts, the stimulus package, and other aspects of Washington's economic agenda. Especially interesting is that Sanford has the potential to tap into the grassroots Ron Paul fundraising network, which amassed a $35 million war chest in 2008.
Weigel reports:
Paul and Sanford had been friendly when both men served in the House, said Paul’s spokesman Jesse Benton, the congressman’s grandson-in-law. “If Dr. Paul voted no on a bill and Sanford voted yes,” said Benton, “Sanford would come up to Dr. Paul afterward and talk it over. He would give a thoughtful consideration to why he’d voted the other way.”
According to Benton, Sanford is one of the only Republicans Paul might outright endorse if he ran for president—and if Paul doesn’t mount his own bid. “He’s the type of candidate that Dr. Paul could get excited about,” said Benton. “A lot of the people from our movement could find a lot to like in Mark Sanford.”
One of the biggest questions affecting Sanford's chances in 2012 is how he'll navigate foreign policy issues. In a recent American Conservative profile, Sanford said he was against preemtive war. In 1998, he didn't vote for the resoltion making regime change in Iraq official U.S. policy. Should he run, GOP rivals won't be able to attack him on economic or social issues, so they'll try to pin him as weak on national security. How he responds to those charges will determine whether he can cobble together a coalition of Paul supporters and mainstream Republicans. Should Sanford respond to attacks on his foreign policy views by explaining away his past stands and offering hawkish rhetoric, he'll alienate the Paul crowd, whereas if he takes his views on non-intervention as far as Paul did, he risks losing support among the rest of the party.
Of course, much of this will depend on what issues are important two to three years from now. Right now, foreign policy issues are taking a back seat to size of government issues among conservatives. If this continues to be the case, it will be easier for Sanford to skate by similarly to the way Bush did in 2000 -- present himself as somebody who wants a strong military but opposes nation building. However, by the time the primaries roll around, the world may look a lot different, and a terrorist attack or another international crisis will make foreign policy and national security issues much more important in the GOP primaries. Under those circumstances, it would be difficult for Sanford to unite the Paulites with the rest of the party, because the ideological divisions are simply too great between non-interventionist conservatives and those who support an agressive military response to security threats. If Sanford sides with the Paulites, he risks being seen as a softie by the rest of the party, and yet if he sides with the rest of the party, Paulites will see him as another bellicose neocon. But if he does find a way to navigate national security issues and manages to build a broad coalition of limited government voters, then he'll be a very formidable candidate, especially in New Hampshire.
Why You Can't Win a Populist War With Obama
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 10:49AM
Republicans have been trying to exploit populist rage over the AIG bonuses and last week, 85 GOP House members even voted for the unconstitutional 90 percent tax on AIG bonuses, as well as those at other financial firms gaining Treasury money. So how does President Obama react? He says, I'll see your efforts to recoup bonus payments to executives at companies accepting taxpayer money, and I'll raise you by proposing that the federal government regulate all executive compensation, regardless of whether a company is receiving taxpayer money.
The New Plan
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 10:44AM
This morning, the U.S. Treasury unveiled its new plan to rescue the financial system by partnering with the private investors to purchase up to $1 trillion of "toxic assets" (now called "legacy loans" and "legacy securities"). The problem I see with the plan is that with the Treasury, FDIC, and Fed heavily subsidizing risk-taking by private investors, it creates a moral hazard problem.
The plan is broken up into two programs. Under the first program, private investors will bid on toxic loans through an auction process. In the example that the U.S. Treasury department uses, a bank has a pool of $100 face value residential mortgages, an auction is held, and the highest bidder is $84. The FDIC would provide guarantees $72 of the financing, while the Treasury and private investors each pitch in $6. In other words, taxpayers are on the hook for more than 90% of the investment if it goes sour. Not only does this mean that private investors could end up up making careless decisions, but knowing that they are bidding with other people's money, it could artificially drive up asset prices in the auction process. Under the second program, private fund managers raise money to purchase toxic securities and that investment gets matched by Treasury money. On a theoretical $100 private investment, Treasury will pitch in up to $300, bringing the total available for purchasing securities to $400.
The one area that isn't clear to me right now is what kind of upside U.S. taxpayers are getting for taking on a majority of the risk. This program has all the makings of welfare for wealthy hedge fund managers.
Either way, the market seems pleased with the plan for now. As I write, the Dow is up 262 points, which will probably give Tim Geithner a reprieve for the foreseeable future.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 10:29AM
- Urban constructivists, drooling over the stimulus (Think Markets)
- Obama's economic henchmen seem less than composed (NY Mag)
- Justice still not served in Germany (New Majority)
- P.J. O'Rourke stays on a roll (Weekly Standard)
- Why Fr. John Neuhaus gave up his liberal stardom (First Things)
- Chris Buckley's temperamentally superior Barack Obama is turning into a joker (Daily Beast)
Beware the Taxman: He Comes for Thee
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 8:25AM
Prepare to pay more for almost everything. That's the message as governments look for new sources of revenue. Reports ABC News:
In Chicago, surveillance cameras may someday help the city to fine more uninsured drivers. In Ohio, a city court is limiting its new cases because it can't afford more printer paper. In California, there's a loud call to tax marijuana sales. And in Georgia, one lawmaker says he's not giving up on his proposal for a state strip club surcharge.
Across the country, these and other unusual money-saving and money-making efforts have been volleyed by government officials desperate for funding.
"A new wave of creativity is sweeping across budget offices these days," said Pat Hagan, national audit partner for state and local governments at Deloitte and Touche LLP.
Because the recession has cut so sharply into property tax, sales tax and income tax revenues, Hagan said, state and local officials are looking for nontraditional sources of cash such as strip club taxes.
"There are funny stories, although they're quite serious topics," he said.
Among the efforts drawing the most attention are so-called "sin taxes" -- taxes on products or services that many associate with vices like alcohol, smoking, pornography, strip club visits and in Nevada's case, prostitution.
The Anti-Union Union
Posted by on 3.23.09 @ 4:49AM
The so-called Service Employees International Union represents government employees and has grown while other unions have shrunk. The fact that it claims to represent workers apparently doesn't affect how it treats its own workers. The union actually behaves like the sort of abusive corporate slave-master that organized labor claims dominate the workplace and must be resisted. Reports the Washington Post:
As it helps push for legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize, the country's fastest-growing union is engaged in its own labor dispute with employees it is seeking to lay off.
The Service Employees International Union, considered the most influential union in the nation, has notified the union that represents about 220 of the SEIU's national field staff members and organizers that it is laying off 75 of the employees.
In return, the workers union, which goes by the somewhat postmodern name of the Union of Union Representatives, has filed charges of unfair labor practices against the SEIU with the National Labor Relations Board. The workers union's leaders say that the SEIU is engaging in the same kind of practices that some businesses use: laying off workers without proper notice, contracting out work to temporary-staffing firms, banning union activities and reclassifying workers to reduce union numbers.
"It's completely hypocritical," said Malcolm Harris, president of the workers union. "This is the union that's been at the forefront of progressive issues, around ensuring that working people and working families are taken care of, but when it comes to the people that work for SEIU, they haven't set the same standards."
So who is supposed to protect workers from the unions?
(Hat tip to Ivan Osorio over at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.)
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Better Take that Conservative Bumper Sticker Off Your Car!
Posted by on 3.22.09 @ 6:59PM
My friend Ken Marrero, aka the Blue Collar Muse, reports on conservative/libertarian profiling. Have an inappropriate bumper sticker on your car and the cops are warned that you might be a threat.
Missouri State Police have been alerted to be on the lookout for subversive drivers who may be domestic terrorists or members of militia groups. How can Missouri Law Enforcement know the car in front of them might be carrying dangerous people? Why from their bumper stickers of course!
Among the bumper stickers listed as indicative of dangerous, anti-Americans behind the wheel are those supporting Ron Paul or other 3rd party candidates, the Gadsden flag, opposition to the North American Union, opposition to the President's Mandatory Service agenda, the right to Keep and Bear arms and belief that the States are sovereign. All these and more are "identifiers" common to militia movements across the nation and should alert law enforcement to be cautious when dealing with occupants in cars displaying them.
In fact, they are told such people often consider police the enemy. To be fair, the report doesn't claim that all people who hold such views are automatically terrorists bent on shooting cops at traffic stops. However, if you have such stickers on your vehicle in Missouri, tensions just went WAY up.
Sounds like a great case for the ACLU to take on. You know, individual freedom, civil liberties, and all that stuff.
Judge ACORN and the Impending Eruption of Mt. Malkin
Posted by on 3.22.09 @ 6:18PM
Busy week, busy people, and somehow I missed Matthew Vadum's report revealing that President Obama's first judicial appointee, David Hamilton, is a former ACORN fundraiser. I didn't see it until it was mentioned in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review today. Michelle Malkin has a whole blog category devoted to "ACORN Watch," so how she missed this one I don't know, but Twitter is an amazing tool:
rsmccain@michellemalkin Michelle, please prepare to blow a gasket http://tinyurl.com/cdcszj #tcot
So we're now in gasket-blowing countdown mode. Will let you know when Mt. Malkin erupts.
Another Take on Card Check "Compromise"
Posted by on 3.22.09 @ 1:28PM
Earlier I took several companies to task for their apparent willingness to compromise on the election-ending "Card Check" bill. Ed Morrissey argues that the apparent compromise gives organized labor little that it doesn't already have. Writes Morrissey:
The compromise thus restores the secret ballot requirement for union organizing, and it eliminates the equally offensive arbitration provisions that would allow government to impose its own idea of the management-labor relationship. What's left? It forces businesses to allow union-organizing elections in a shorter period of time, and to give unions access to the workplace to organize, two provisions that would easily pass on their own in this session of Congress, and probably would get several Republican votes in both chambers.
It's not great, but it's not horrid, either. In truth, it gives the unions little that they don't already have, and it strips them of two of their cherished prizes. It also gives politicians on Capitol Hill a way to throw a bone to union rank and file without offering a complete game-changer. If it's incrementalism, it's an increment of the smallest variety possible.
A few weeks ago, I predicted that Congress would reach a compromise precisely along these lines. With this proposal floating now, it will either force the Senate (where the real battle will be fought) to accept this compromise, or it will split the pro-Card Check forces enough to stall any movement on the legislation, as the moderates now have a reason to withhold support for the much more radical version. Businesses could live with this result, and hope that any abuses can be corrected by a more business-friendly Congress down the road. It's still a bad bill, but the alternative is much worse.
Since there's a good chance of defeating the Card Check bill, this sort of measure seems unnecessary. But perhaps the companies aren't as ready to feed the crocodile as I had thought.
Eloquent Statement of Israel's Case
Posted by on 3.22.09 @ 1:21PM
Wow. Pete Wehner really hits the nail on the head with this short piece at Commentary's blog. Why is Israel always being asked to do things for the Palestinians that Arab states never did?
Feeding the Crocodile
Posted by on 3.22.09 @ 6:07AM
It has long been obvious that among the greatest enemies of capitalism are the alleged capitalists. Corporate America is one of the least constant defenders of the market economy, ever ready to sell out the system. Businessmen constantly request subsidies and bail-outs, as we have seen in recent months. Similarly, some companies may be preparing to back organized labor's "card check" bill, which would allow union acitivists to initimidate their way to victory without a secret ballot election.
The measure actually is in political trouble, since the vast majority of union members support letting workers vote. Moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill don't want to appear to be in Big Labor's hip pocket, no matter what President Obama or Speaker Pelosi want. But now several large businesses may be ready to feed the crocodile, apparently in hopes that it will be satiated. Reports the Wall Street Journal:
Three big retailers are expected to back an alternative proposal next week on a hotly contested bill that would make it easier to unionize workplaces, a move some experts said would bolster the legislation's chance of passage.
Costco Wholesale Corp., Starbucks Corp. and Whole Foods Market Inc. are supporting the alternative proposal, according to someone familiar with the effort. Ray Krupin, a management labor lawyer in Washington said the most likely compromise would allow employees to unionize if 70% of them sign union-authorization cards, as opposed to 50% as currently proposed in the Employee Free Choice Act.
On Saturday, a person close to the discussions denied that the proposal backed by the three companies included a plan to let unions organize workers if 70% sign cards.
It's unclear whether the proposal addresses a thorny section of the bill that would have a government arbitrator draw up a contract if unions and companies can't agree to terms within 120 days.
"We have had conversations with like-minded companies and are open to exploring alternative solutions to the legislation as it is currently written," said Deb Trevino, a spokeswoman for Starbucks.
Libba Letton, a spokeswoman for Whole Foods, said, "We've been having conversations with other companies that have the same outlook that we do. We've been talking to them about finding fair alternatives."
A Costco representative couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
A person close to the companies said the proposal will be fair to all sides.
Of course: "fair to all sides." As Washington defines fair.
In fact, the measure is no compromise: labor activists admit that they have to surpass the 70 percent level to have a 50/50 shot at winning an election. These companies would sacrifice workers' rights for a mess of pottage. And capitulating to labor activists who have developed an entire agenda for politicizing the economy would be well-nigh suicidal.
As Lenin reportedly said: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Yet again one has to wonder: can capitalism survive the capitalists?
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- Losing It