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Saturday, April 4, 2009
Tom Braden, RIP
Posted by on 4.4.09 @ 5:07PM
The liberal commentator has died at age 92. TV political shout shows were never better than when it was Braden vs. Buchanan on Crossfire, though Kinsley vs. Buchanan had its moments.
Gay Rights and the Politics of Coercive Approval
Posted by on 4.4.09 @ 12:40PM
Rod Dreher is not my favorite conservative writer, but his reaction to the Iowa Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling has provoked a revealing response from the blogger Anonymous Liberal:
Dreher thinks it's getting hard to be a "public Christian" in this country. . . . Maybe Dreher should try being a "public homosexual" for a while and compare the experience. If I had a Quantum Leap machine, I'd be tempted to zap Dreher into the life of a gay high school student or maybe a gay man in a small Southern town and see how easy he finds it to publicly be himself. . .
Tens of thousands of gay Americans (at least) remain closeted, afraid to admit to their family and friends--sometimes even themselves--that they are gay. Gay teenagers are three times more likely to commit suicide than straight teenagers. These facts can both be explained--at least in large part--by the continued willingness of many Americans to publicly display their intolerance of homosexuality.
(H/T: Memeorandum.) What is asserted here is that homosexuals are so inherently weak that they cannot survive mere disapproval of their preferences. Anonymous Liberal has witlessly dispelled all the legalistic nonsense about "equal protection" and confessed the real purpose of the crusade for same-sex marriage, which might fairly be summarized thus:
We will compel you hateful small-town troglodytes to approve of homosexuality, and will punish those who persist in displaying an anti-social attitude of disapproval.
Anonymous Liberal is not only contemptuous of the ability of homosexuals to withstand public disapproval, but seems to assume that opponents of same-sex marriage are either too stupid to see through his charade or too cowardly to denounce it as the dishonest humbug it is. And why should he think otherwise, when so many conservatives have been so silent about liberal humbug for years?
The differences between men and women, according to the egalitarian view, are so trivial that the law must forbid any recognition of such differences, so that the sexes are treated as interchangeable. As I argued in January, it is from a careless acquiescence to this egalitarian falsehood that Americans have been steadily -- one might well say "progressively" -- marched to the point where the Iowa Supreme Court mandates gay marriage and anyone who questions that ruling is dismissed as an ignorant, hateful bigot suffering from the mental disorder of "homophobia."
That's from my column that won't be officially published until Monday, but you can go ahead and read the whole thing now. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm tired of having my intelligence insulted by these arrogant bullies. Therefore, thanks to Rod Dreher for smoking them out of their rathole.
Paul Ryan's Budget Address
Posted by on 4.4.09 @ 12:36PM
Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) lays out the Republican case. I have my problems with the Republican alternative, but Ryan is one of the GOP's better spokesmen on fiscal policy.
An Ode to Mr. Jefferson
Posted by on 4.4.09 @ 5:29AM
Frustrated with politics today? Put it to song. This adaptation of Simon & Garfunkle offers an ode to Mr. Jefferson and slap at "fools who legislate." (H/T to Norman Leahy at Virginia's Tertium Quids.)
Friday, April 3, 2009
His Brother's Keeper After All?
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 4:24PM
Curious what a post-Obama Republican candidacy looks like? Fairly similar to a pre-Obama one. That is, riddled with the same sort of ethical lapses that made the GOP look incompetent enough to suck the wind out of its supporters. From the Philly Inquirer:
The Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2005 accused Christie's brother, Todd, of making a series of improper trades of America Online Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. stock between 1999 and 2003. In October 2008, Todd Christie settled with the SEC, admitting no wrongdoing but agreeing to stop improper trading practices, according to a copy of the settlement.
The company Todd Christie headed, Spear, Leeds & Kellogg Specialists L.L.C., settled with the SEC and agreed to pay a $16.4 million civil fine, according to a March 2004 SEC news release.
Yesterday, the Mendham Observer-Tribune published a story noting that Christie, as U.S. attorney, he [sic] gave a lucrative no-bid contract to David Kelly in September 2007. Kelly was the U.S. attorney who investigated the stock fraud case that included Todd Christie.
Kelly, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was out of the office yesterday and did not return a message left with his secretary.
Christie said yesterday that he had never had a conversation with Kelly about his brother's SEC problems. He said he gave Kelly the monitoring contract because "he was a great prosecutor who ran one of the biggest offices in the country and I needed a tough guy."
Long story short: Christie's brother gets in trouble. The prosecutor doesn't pursue him. But later, Christie gives the prosecutor a big financial pat on the back. Even if it's all a happy coincidence that the toughest guy is the one who wasn't particularly tough on Christie's brother, it's still stupid.
The question is whether supporters are concerned about this opening Christie up to a Democratic bludgeoning. Getting these issues out of the way early is the the best option if unseating Corzine is the goal.
VA Dems Exploit Huckabee in Gov. Race
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 3:00PM
Mike Huckabee is under fire from Virginia Democrats for several statements he made while campaigning for Republican candidate for governor, Bob McDonnell, in southwest Virginia yesterday.
Huckabee joked to those at a Tazewell County appearance that if they know people who will be voting against McDonnell, they should "Let the air out of their tires and do not let them out of their driveway on election day." This is a line that Huckabee has used at least as far back as the Iowa caucuses, when I remember him joking that people should shovel snow into the driveways of people who weren't voting for him.
But former Clintonite Terry McAuliffe, one of the Democratic candidates for governor, can't take a joke, so he ended up hyperventilating. "This is no joking matter," he wrote in an email to supporters, asking them to sign an online petition. "People died for the right to vote in this country, and we have to protect it." (Emphasis McAuliffe.)
The other trumped up controversy came from these remarks:
"You can't let one vote get left behind here, because there's going to be some folks up there near the Beltway -- and I need to let you know, I'm sure you already know this -- they aren't necessarily thinking the same way folks like you and me think.
He added, "They may never have fully understood how hard it is for a lot of people to put a paycheck together, to be able to feed a family."
Democrats immediately pounced on the comments, and this afternoon the state party held a conference call, "to discuss the divisive comments of Bob McDonnell surrogate Mike Huckabee, pitting Southwest Virginia against Northern Virginia."
It's pretty clear what's going on here. The once-solidly Republican Virginia has trended Democratic this decade because of the explosion in growth in the northern, more liberal, part of the state. The Democrats have been successful at painting Republican candidates as backward, culturally insensitive, and anti-Northern Virginia during this period. George Allen drew fire not only by uttering the word "Macaca," but also for saying, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!" During last year's presidential election, McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer declared the southern part of the state, "real Virginia" around the same time Sarah Palin, in North Carolina, said she was happy to be in the "pro-America areas of this great nation."
The 2009 Virgina Governor race is being touted as one of the key off-year barometer elections. Democrats are clearly seeking to continue their strategy by trying to link McDonnell to the socially conservative Huckabee and try to portray his comments as divisive, but they seem to be grasping for straws at this point.
What a Joke of a Hypocrite
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 12:05PM
New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, of the arrogant-all-the-way-to-death's-door newspaper industry, takes a shot at the new media that is keeping his business almost still relevant:
Keller said he had little use for Web sites like Google and Drudge Report: "If you're inclined to trust Google as your source for news -- Google yourself."
The Times uses Drudge on an almost-daily basis to leak their top stories for the following day. He ought to be bowing down and thanking him profusely for driving readership up. As for Google, maybe they ought to put a block on all Times stories in their news aggregator mechanism.
Clueless...
The Coward Robert Ford?
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 11:32AM
On this day in 1882 Robert Ford shot and killed Jesse James. James, along with his brother Frank and various other associates, had robbed and pillaged their way across the 19th century American frontier. It is speculated he murdered at least 16 people. Had Ford not unloaded his Smith and Wesson Model 3, Schofield .44 caliber revolver into the back of James' head, he and his brother Charley would most likely have been numbers 17 and 18.
Ironically, for the action Ford took on this day 127 years ago, he is remembered by history, in the words of Bascom Lamar Lunsford's famous (though historically incorrect) song as the "the little coward" who murdered Jesse James. That song and its image of Ford as a sniveling coward and James as a noble Robin Hood has been perpetuated through the last century by such populist left-wing luminaries and Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen as well as countless numbers of glamorized and fictionalized Hollywood biopics. In this narrative James robbed the hated banks and railroads to redistribute their ill gotten riches to those in need - as the song says, "He stole from the rich and he gave to the poor."
Of course, James was no hero. He was a cold blooded psychopath. The money he stole he stole for himself, not to share with others less fortunate.
Remarking on the outrage caused by James' death, Oscar Wilde observed "Americans are certainly great hero-worshippers, and always take [their] heroes from the criminal classes."
Was Wilde on to something? Can we draw any contemporary lessons from this? Maybe. Maybe not. However, it is hard to deny that since at least the early part of the 19th Century there has been a streak of occasionally thoughtless and thuggish populism and lust for class war from certain segments of this country. It is not a stretch to say we have seen some of it over the past few months and weeks -- not just from citizens but from our elected officals as well.
So, how would Americans react to a modern day Jesse James and/or Robert Ford?
Statistical Voodoo Witch Doctor Tapped for Census Post
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 11:16AM
A practitioner of the statistical voodoo known as "sampling" has been selected by President Obama to head the Census Bureau, which is poised to carry out the decennial census next year with ACORN's help. Liberal pressure groups and Democrats have long favored using statistical modeling, a practice controversial because it's flagrantly unconstitutional and because it opens up the counting process to political manipulation.
"A sampling process would open the census to the worst kind of political manipulation," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) recently said. "The Constitution clearly requires a count of every person, not a best guess that could be influenced by political rather than empirical considerations."
The president's nominee is Robert M. Groves, a professor of the alleged discipline known as sociology at the University of Michigan.
Republican lawmakers are justifiably alarmed, the New York Times reports.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), senior Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the nomination "is an incredibly troubling selection that contradicts the administration's assurances that the census process would not be used to advance an ulterior political agenda."
During his confirmation hearing, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke testified that "It is my understanding that there are no plans to use any type of statistical sampling with respect to population count."
Perhaps Locke was telling the truth. Maybe the Obama administration didn't brief him on its Census pick.
Unemployment Numbers Complicate Obama's Budget Forecasts
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 10:38AM
Today, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the March unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent. It's worth pointing out that Obama's budget forecasts are based on the assumption that unemployment will average 8.1 percent this year.
Mark Tooley Named IRD President
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 10:36AM
Congratulations are in order for longtime TAS contributor Mark Tooley on his election as president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. IRD has been a powerful voice for historic Christian teachings and responsible political participation within the once-mighty mainline Protestant denominations. Tooley has been active in the renewal movement within the largest of those denominations, the United Methodist Church. Good luck to him in his continuing efforts to ensure that church ministries are heavier on the Gospel than the Social.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 10:19AM
- The cars and banks are just the beginning of what Obama wants to "fix" (Washington Post)
- Lagos (Slate)
- The looming American Brain Drain (New Majority)
- The cultural conservative-libertarian convergence (Crunchy Con)
- Hunter Baker tackles the economic downturn and higher education at Mere Comments
- Big business hates small government (DC Examiner)
Gay Marriage to Be Legal in Iowa in Three Weeks
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 10:16AM
The Iowa Supreme Court ruled today that the state's statute defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, "violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution." As a result of the ruling, gay marriage will be legal in the state within three weeks. More, including a link to the opinion, can be found here.
Fannie and Freddie to Pay $210 Mln in Retention Bonuses
Posted by on 4.3.09 @ 10:12AM
The WSJ reports.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Bean Counting Breakthrough Boosts Bourses
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 11:13PM
Quasi-governmental good news for a change.
The so-called "mark to market" accounting rule helped to deepen the financial crisis but the Financial Accounting Standards Board decided today to ease the accounting fiat --and voila-- the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 216 points higher than the previous close. According to a report in the Friday edition of the Independent (UK)
Banks in the US are being given more discretion on how to value the toxic mortgage assets that have poisoned their balance sheets in a reversal of parts of the controversial "mark-to-market" accounting rules that many blame for exacerbating the credit crisis.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) voted yesterday to let banks ignore market prices for assets if they judge the market is illiquid and that the most recent sales are being done at firesale prices by distressed sellers. There will also be changes to allow banks to book smaller losses on impaired assets that are available for sale, which could take extra pressure off many of the biggest banks in the US.
Traders put yesterday's dramatic rally by global equity markets down to the relaxation. [...]
The FASB was acting under pressure from Congress, which said it may legislate if the board did not ease the rules.
The Centre for Investors and Entrepreneurs [at the Competitive Enterprise Institute], which has been campaigning for a suspension of mark-to- market accounting, welcomed the move. Its director, John Berlau, said: "By itself, this change will not make the price of mortgage assets higher or lower. Rather, it will allow price discovery to occur. Mark-to-market distorted the market by forcing banks to take losses on mortgage assets even if the underlying loans were still performing." [...]
Back when the stock market crashed in September, Berlau opined that repealing mark to market would have a salutary effect on markets. (Berlau's full Wall Street Journal article is available here.)
Investors Business Daily editorialized today that the mark to market rule, imposed on banks in 2007, forced them to mark down long-term assets as if they were short-term based on present market conditions. The rule "severely damaged banks' balance sheets, forcing them to shrink capital and rein in lending." Bank assets "have had to be marked down to market value even if loans are being paid on time." IBD continued:
From the late 1930s to 2007, the U.S. banking system was reasonably stable, with a few exceptions. One big reason for this is the absence of mark-to-market.
The change of heart from FASB on mark-to-market was largely due to Congress. We're happy to report that bipartisan pressure undid the bad rule - a rare thing these days.
Mark-to-market rules, while well intended, have historically been a problem. During the Depression, Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman noted, mark-to-market rules caused many banks to fail. That's why FDR repealed them in 1938. Those rules had remained dead until two years ago, when they were reimposed as part of a frenzy of ill-considered financial reregulation.
How to Argue With Andrew Sullivan . . .
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 6:18PM
. . . if you must:
Sully and his friends insult conservatives by supposing us to be cowards. If we disagree on what is, at heart, a question of policy, we are accused of vicious hatefulness. Indeed, we are said to be suffering from a psychological disorder, homophobia. . , ,
He does not argue in good faith. We have on our side ancient tradition and religious orthodoxy. He has on his side the prestige of the intellectual elite. Ergo, we are ignorant rabble, and he is so infinitely superior to us that he can insult us with impunity, and we dare not even take notice of the insult.
More where that came from, including a commenter who accuses me of arguing like a "Crunchy Con" (shudder).
Tedisco Up By 12?
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 5:50PM
Maybe so. This is going to take a while to sort out. (Hat tip: John McCormack.)
Hail Atlas Shrugged The Movie
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 4:40PM
I'm no objectivist and Ayn Rand's anti-Christian sentiments actually offend me quite a bit, but if the deal goes through for the Randall Wallace-helmed and written Atlas Shrugged film treatment, then I'll be there on opening day.
Shorter David Horowitz
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 3:37PM
Based on this FrontPage column: "As long as Obama doesn't mess with our wars, let's not get too upset." Of course conservatives shouldn't becomes obsessed with kooky anti-Obama conspiracy theories and should maintain some sense of proportion. But a little bit of outrage against this president's domestic policies wouldn't be inappropriate.
Yeeaarrahh! Howard Dean Pushes Health Care Rationing
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 3:03PM
Screamin' Howard Dean is back pitching Big Government rationing of health care.
MoveOn.org sent out this email today from the former DNC chairman urging a DMV-style health care regime be forced on Americans:
Dear MoveOn member,
I have an announcement. After four exciting years in Washington, I'm hitting the campaign trail again! Only this time, I'm campaigning to help President Obama win health care for all.
During the election, President Obama proposed a health care plan that would give every American the freedom to choose between keeping their private insurance-if they have any-and choosing a universally available public health insurance option like Medicare.
But for-profit insurance companies and HMOs are already working hard to strip this public health insurance option from any upcoming health care bill. They don't want us to have a choice, and they'll stop at nothing to kill real reform. Trouble is, some in Congress are siding with the insurance companies-and against what's best for the rest of us.
Today, we draw a line in the sand. A public health insurance option is the only way to guarantee health care for all Americans. And to show that we mean business, we all need to tell Congress we won't settle for less.
If 250,000 of you sign this petition, I will personally deliver it to Congress. Clicking here will add your name:
[LINK REMOVED]
Here's our message to Congress: "Give America a choice. We support health care reform that allows individual Americans to choose either a universally available public health care option like Medicare or for-profit private insurance. A public option is the only way to guarantee health care for all Americans and its inclusion is non-negotiable. Any legislation without the choice of a public option is only insurance reform and not the health care reform America needs."
The fight is heating up over whether or not to include the public health insurance option. This is going to be the biggest fight in the debate over health care reform. It would take the power away from the private insurance companies that have driven up costs and denied coverage for years-and they're dead set against it.
But I've seen firsthand what people power can accomplish. And I know I can count on MoveOn members to help lead the charge.
Now is our moment to stand up. Together, we can generate broad-based support for a public health insurance option. We will need to canvass our neighborhoods, call our elected leaders, and arrange meetings with members of Congress in the coming months.
Our goal today is to show Congress that we are many and ready to fight. Can you click here to stand with me?
[LINK REMOVED]
After you add your name, spread the word to your friends, family, and co-workers. Send a personal email and include a link to the website, update your Facebook status to tell people about the campaign, write a blog post about why you support this campaign-we need all hands on deck to win this fight.
Thank you for all you do.
Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
Global Warming, Kyoto and LOST
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 1:45PM
All in one jam-packed PJTV interview.
If you like it, rate it. Now that the link's up, you know the shout-down alarmists will.
Naive or Necessary?
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 1:30PM
There are a lot of problems with the House Republicans' alternative budget, though considering its doubling of the national debt I don't think representing a vision of the "ideal small-government society" is one of them. Ross Douthat disagrees, decrying the Republican alternative as naively ideological:
It's as if the Democratic Party, in the aftermath of it's 2002 and 2004 defeats, had proposed an alternative to George W. Bush's wartime budgets that slashed defense spending dramatically, raised income taxes across the board, and invested all of the resulting revenue in a revivified AFDC, a massive cash grant to the UN, and a big new federal jobs program for "green-collar" workers, community organizers, and Planned Parenthood clinicians.
One could cheekily reply, "Good thing the Democrats waited until they were in power to start trying to do all that." But here's the larger problem: there is going to be inordinate upward pressure on taxes and spending even if we do nothing. That pressure will increase if the economy continues to sag, stimulating demand for government services, or if it revives, pushing people into higher tax brackets as their income rises. The baby boomers are retiring. Payroll tax surpluses are declining. Bills long delayed are coming due.
On top of that, the Obama administration is reacting to these circumstances by dramatically increasing the size and cost of the federal government -- not just for the duration of the economic crisis, but permanently. There is no basis for believing the administration will be able to achieve its long-term cost reductions through health care reform to offset all this. If there was ever a time when it was necessary for somebody, anybody, to be pushing hard in the opposite direction, it's right now.
It is of course politically risky for Republicans to try to control spending and reform entitlements. But it's a risk they have no choice but to take. The alternative is to give up on a platform of keeping this a relatively low-tax economy and replace it with either a program of slowly, painfully managing the bankruptcy of our entitlement programs or coming up with clever new taxes to pay for them. Realistically, this probably means usually being out of power and being every bit as irrelevant to national policy-making as conservatives were in the wake of the Goldwater debacle anyway.
We've tried the approach of taking an axe to tax rates and regulatory red tape while just nibbling cautiously at government spending. That approach (combined with tight money) worked masterfully against stagflation when all the wise establishment hands, Republican and Democratic, said it would fail. But the failure to seriously confront spending -- as the baby boomers were entering their peak earning years rather than retirement -- eroded those gains almost immediately and pushed the country deeply in debt. We started taking some of the tax cuts back as early as 1982. And it isn't the Reagan years anymore: conservatives get more bang for their buck cutting a 70 percent tax rate than slashing a 35 percent or 39.6 percent tax rate.
We've also tried the approach of shelving free-market health care reform the second the campaign is over, bringing up entitlements and then running away at the first peep of protest, and passing a slew of our own government programs to address voter anxieties and steal issues from the Democrats: SCHIP, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, TARP. This tactic has failed even more spectacularly, digging the hole in which we currently find ourselves.
Maybe there's some Grand New Party-style compromise that can get us out of this predicament. More likely, there isn't. But for all their numerous flaws, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans are at least trying to deal with this fiscal climate on Republican terms.
He’s Doing Such A Great Job, Let’s Keep Him Around Until At Least 2020!
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 11:59AM
Anyone interested in working towards Obama's reelection - in 2016 - and presumably opening to door to his permanent presidency, should take a look at this: http://www.end22.com/
If that's not your cup of tea, it's also good for laugh...or a cold chill.
Europe's Dead Parrot Sketch
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 11:50AM
Desperately trying to be helpful to the energy rationers on our own shores who seek to import Europe's disastrous energy rationing "cap-and-trade" scheme -- being debated as part of the president's budget as we speak -- Europe and its enablers are striving to convince us that their statist "global warming" debacle is actually a vibrant experiment in market-oriented policymaking.
Today's offering is destined to go down as a classic, appropriately coming to us from (at least some of) the people who brought us Monty Python. First came a report in Reuters that the rationing scheme was at least 40 million tons short of carbon permits in 2008 -- meaning fewer were required than were printed -- the first time the scheme has registered a shortfall. Reuters noted that it is likely that the ETS will once again register a surplus of permits in 2009, raising question marks over its effectiveness.
Given that the the WSJ accurately covered the issue -- "UPDATE: EU '08 Emissions D[ow]n As Recession Takes Hold", noting that carbon emissions from heavy industry and utilities in the EU fell 6% last year as the economic downturn slowed industrial activity in everything from construction to auto manufacturing -- I cautioned colleagues to watch for the usual suspects spinning this straw into golden claims that the "Emissions Trading Scheme" or ETS is finally on track, has found its legs, is working at last etc. You see, they're desperate to say that, as part of selling it on you and instead of the less painful tax, even though for its first three years the highly touted myth of "certainty of emissions" (denoting reduced emissions, and to an amount certain) were in reality emission increases each year...even while economy-wide emissions managed to dip! It's that distorting and subject to gaming, which also explains why Enron invented the scheme in the mid-1990s.
Sure enough, out rushes the New York Times, gasping with a story "E.U. Carbon Trading System Shows Signs of Working". Why, not stone dead...remarkable plumage, and, I think it's just stunned, resting, shagged out after a long squawk, pining for the fjords! It moved, or, was that just you pushing the cage...
As summarized by Climate Wire (and with my emphases added, so you don't miss some of the finest spin around). You can just hear the success amid the wistful speculation!:
The European Union's trading system for reducing carbon emissions is showing signs of working, according to a preliminary analysis released yesterday.
Emissions fell between 4 and 6 percent in 2008 among industries covered by the E.U. system, compared with increases of roughly 1 percent in 2007 and 2006, according to analysts who reviewed the figures.
Most of the decline was attributed to falling industrial and electricity production caused by the economic crisis, but analysts pointed out that the size of 2008's decline showed the system was causing some businesses to be marginally cleaner.
"What we're seeing today is that it is easier to meet the emissions targets in the short term because of lower economic activity in the world, but it doesn't change the fact that carbon markets do work," said Henrik Hasselknippe, head of carbon analysis at Point Carbon.
Spread the entrails another way and you "see" no such thing, that's just puffery. Yes, real markets work but, no, dear friends, this... is an ex-parrot! Now, if it would only expire and go on to meet its maker, as opposed to flying over here.
Another Dodd Thought
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 11:21AM
If these numbers hold up, they will also make the Republican primary more competitive. Sam Caligiuri is more conservative than Rob Simmons. While Simmons continues to look like the strongest candidate, Caligiuri supporters will be able to argue that their candidate could potentially win the seat.
A Conservative Rorschach Test?
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 10:57AM
Sometimes I wonder what separates conservatives from liberals and libertarians on a gut level, before we really get into sorting through individual issues. When it comes to the role of government, I often side with libertarians on social issues (such as the legalization of drugs and on gay marriage), but once we move beyond the realm of what should be allowed by law, I'm more traditionalist. And I think that's one of the reasons why I end up identifying as a conservative.
This photo spread in the French version of Vogue is a good example of the fault line I'm talking about. I posted two images below so as not to clog up the entire blog, but you can see the rest here.
My initial reaction, before any intellectualizing gets involved, was, it's pretty appalling to mock the concept of motherhood and glamorize neglectful behavior that actually causes physical damage to the fetus.
Yet over at Jezebel, blogger Tabitha loves the spread, and expresses regret that it wouldn't be possible in the U.S. because of the puritanical nature of our society. She writes:
French Vogue found the tenderness in mothering, but also the humor, the wackiness, the suggestion that it isn't perhaps natural to all women, and the surprise....
Can you imagine the reader outrage if a similarly unsentimental editorial take on motherhood ever slipped past the censors at Condé Nast USA?
Jill, over at the blog Feministe, concurs with Tabitha, and there's some debate in the comments to her post. One commenter writes: "Love it! I am so sick of the cult of the mother that has been growing to epic proportions in this country. It’s ridiculous."
In my view, the fact that cultural taboos such as this exist in America is positive, yet to Tabitha and evidently this commenter, it's something that makes us boring and backward compared to our culturally enlightened counterparts in Europe. I could be wrong, but I think showing these photos to somebody and asking, "What do you see here?" would be a good indication of where that person stands politically.
The Incredible Shrinking Dodd
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 10:16AM
Chris Dodd's approval rating has sunk to 33 percent in Connecticut in a new Quinnipiac poll, which the director of the survey calls "unheard of for a 30-year incumbent, especially a Democrat in a blue state." If an election were held today, Dodd would lose to Rob Simmons 50 percent to 34 percent, and he's also behind other potential Republican comers:
Matched against two other possible Republican challengers, Sen. Dodd trails both State Sen. Sam Caligiuri 41 - 37 percent and former ambassador Tom Foley 43 - 35 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
In the Dodd-Simmons matchup, Democrats back Dodd by only 58 - 27 percent while Simmons leads 87 - 6 percent among Republicans and 56 - 25 percent among independent voters.
Also, 39 percent of voters say they blame Dodd "a lot" for the AIG bonus mess, and 35 percent say they blame him "some."
Another factor that the poll doesn't take into account is that Dodd has received so much scrutiny over his financial industry contributors, that he may have difficulty raising as much money as he otherwise would have, potentially neutralizing another incumbent advantage.
While Republicans are no doubt salivating at their oppourtunity here, they shouldn't get too far ahead of themselves. If things continue to look this bad for Dodd, he'll most likely be challenged in the Democratic primaries, perhaps by Ned Lamont, who of course won the 2006 Democratic primary against Joe Lieberman before Lieberman became an independent. And in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, a Democrat without Dodd's baggage would have a good chance of holding the seat, especially because ads will Rebulicanize somebody like Simmons in a general election. For that reason, I'd be curious to see how Simmons would poll against other Democrats.
Either way, this is not a seat you would have considered in serious danger a few months ago. Obama carried Connecticut by 22 points in November, and Dodd was reelected in 2004 with 66 percent of the vote.
UPDATE: a DailyKos diarist snarls:
Dodd has been in congress for 35 years, and a senator for 5 terms. It's no shame if he starts thinking about retirement. Democrats have a strong bench: AG Richard Blumenthal, Ned Lamont, or one of several congresspeople could step and hold the seat without too much trouble.
I just hope Dodd does not follow the course of his father, who cost the Democrats a senate seat in 1970.
Statement on Sebelius
4.2.09 @ 9:27AM
A group of leading conservatives, representing the broader conservative movement, has released this message:
Gov. Sebelius May Not Pay Her Own Taxes, but Has No Qualms About Using Tax Dollars to Pay for Others’ Abortions
Disclosures that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama's nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, faces tax problems provides yet one more example of the incompetence that has characterized the Obama administration's transition process. By disclosing that she was forced to pay over $7000 in back taxes after her nomination, Gov. Sebelius joined the ranks of Obama nominees who thought they were above paying taxes, a group that includes her predecessor as nominee for HHS, Sen. Tom Daschle.
Gov. Sebelius may not pay her own taxes, but has no qualms about using tax dollars to pay for others’ abortions. Even before she reported her tax issues Gov. Sebelius was manifestly unqualified to run America's health care system, as illustrated by her coddling of the abortion industry at the expense of Kansas women's safety. With her background, Gov. Sebelius can only be expected to politicize the office of HHS. Gov. Sebelius's difficulties illuminate an emerging pattern: that Obama nominates non-experts who cannot be relied upon to solve their own tax problems, let alone govern effectively.
Obama Nominees See Taxes As Other People’s Problems
• Obama nominations with tax problems are by no means limited to Gov. Sebelius and Sen. Daschle at HHS. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, OMB performance officer Nancy Killefer, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk have all demonstrated an inability to get their own personal tax affairs in order, and yet Obama expects us to believe they are capable of governing a nation of more than 300 million people.
Gov. Sebelius Even Opposed Parental Notification
• More acute than her tax problems, Gov. Sebelius is not to be trusted with any aspect of citizens' health care. As a member of the Kansas House of Representatives in the 1980s and 1990s Gov. Sebelius voted to weaken or eliminate even such modest measures as parental notification, waiting periods and informed consent. As governor, she twice has vetoed bills attempting to protect the health and safety of women by more tightly regulating abortion clinics. Gov. Sebelius has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood and they have conducted fundraising activity on her behalf. Clearly, Gov. Sebelius has a track record of politicizing common-sense health issues.
Gov. Sebelius Can’t Be Trusted On Her Own Taxes, But Wants to Run 16% of Economy
• As Secretary of the HHS, Gov. Sebelius will be tasked with implementing Obama's massive health care changes. Someone so indebted to the abortion industry that she vetoes common-sense provisions is incapable of administering any meaningful change or reform in the health care sector.
Gov. Sebelius is unable to manage her own affairs or the affairs of her state. It is ironic that the same woman who pledged in a confirmation hearing to crack down on medical fraud to signal that there was ‘a new sheriff in town’ would ignore our tax laws until she is nominated to the Cabinet. Obviously, she is incapable of running the HHS. All who have a stake in America's health care system should call on their senators to vote against Gov. Sebelius's nomination for HHS.
This message was issued by:
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research
Council
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for
America
David Keene, chairman of the American
Conservative Union
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president, Susan B.
Anthony List
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax
Reform
Tom Minnery, svp of government and public
policy, Focus on the Family
Don Wildmon, president, American Family
Association
The Push to Internationalize American Law
Posted by on 4.2.09 @ 6:03AM
It has long been fashionable to criticize the U.S. for being out of step with more progressive nations--like continuing to execute murderers, for instance, despite complaints from more evolved European countries. Several Supreme Court justices have been making more than a perfunctory nod towards foreign law in deciding American cases. If, oh, Albania looks at an issue a particular way, so should we, they seem to believe.
The Obama administration is likely to push this process along. Exhibit A of its thinking is the recent nomination of Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as the State Department legal advisor. Koh's a bright guy, but has been putting his intelligence to work for a dubious cause. Writes John Fonte in National Review's The Corner:
The Transnational Progressive assault on the sovereignty of the American liberal democratic nation-state has just kicked into high gear with the nomination by the Obama administration of Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh to be the Legal Advisor to the U.S. State Department. Dean Koh wants to "trigger a transnational legal process" that will "generate legal interpretations that in turn can be internalized into domestic law." Put simply, he favors opening a transnational legal space beyond the Constitution and the democratic decision-making process of our liberal democracy.
It's one thing for the American people to knowingly and voluntarily agree to join an international compact and apply international standards. It is quite another for them to find their laws and practices transformed without their consent by choices made beyond their own borders and Constitution by peoples with very different philosophies and theologies.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
If the President Does It, It's Constitutional
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 6:00PM
That was essentially the Bush administration's line, especially, though not exclusively, on national security. Now it's starting to look like the Obama administration's on domestic policy. Terence Jeffrey asks where Bush and Obama got the legal authority to spend TARP funds on the automobile industry.
Neil Cavuto Clobbers Sponsor of Radical Pay-Limit Bill
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 5:31PM
Americans are living in what Confucius might term interesting times.
Legislation that in earlier days might very well have sprung from the mind of Benito Mussolini or Fidel Castro is being debated on the floor of the House of Representatives right now. (live video stream available at CSPAN)
The bill, HR1664, is sponsored by Rep. Alan Grayson, and would impose limits on compensation for "all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government," in the words of Byron York of the Washington Examiner.
Grayson is a member of the extremist Congressional Progressive Caucus, which until fairly recently was run by Rep. Barbara Lee, a Marxist who once betrayed her country. (Lee was co-chair of the CPC with fellow California Democrat, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, whose primary qualification to be a congresswoman is the fact that she was once a single mother on welfare.)
This Mussolini-style corporatist legislation handing President Obama's bumbling Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extensive control over salaries of employees who work for businesses that take in government bailout funds was approved by Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee last week on a 38 to 22 vote.
Grayson appeared on Fox yesterday and evaded question after question about this MASSIVE power grab of a bill, but Neil Cavuto wouldn't put up with it and ripped him to shreds. Watch the clip:
White House Official Calls GOP Budget "Unrealistic"
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 5:25PM
A White House official, speaking on a conference call this afternoon, blasted the Republican alternative budget as an "unrealistic" proposal that was merely a series of talking points and a continuation of failed policies of the Bush administration.
"I don’t think this was designed as a real plan that could be implemented in this country," Rob Nabors, deputy director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, said. "I think what this is a series of talking points that they were hoping nobody would look behind… I think this is an effort just so they can say, 'We can magically create more deficit reduction than President Obama.'"
Later in the call, he said the Republican alternative looked a lot like the type of idea pursued by President Bush.
"While we do appreciate the details that have been provided, these details don't look a lot different from the details we saw from the previous administration," he said. "These are the same tried and true policies that have failed this country in the past."
When given the opportunity, I asked how we can trust that Obama's spending proposals on health care, education, and energy would produce promised savings, given that the president's budget would increase the public debt to $15.4 trillion by 2019 even under the OMB's own projections.
"What you have when you're looking at the President's plan is actually a real plan with tough choices standing behind that plan," Nabors responded. "I think when you look at what the House Republicans put out today, you have a series of hopes about entitlement reform occurring, but they're not actually taking any steps to implement those entitlement reforms. We see promises about tax cuts but no real efforts to actually pay for those tax cuts. You see what I would consider to be 'funny budgeting' when you start to talk about how unrealistic it would be for Congress to actually go back and repeal two major bills that they just passed within the last six weeks."
He continued, "One of the things you can look back at is, whose budget is more likely to be passed? Is it a budget that has tough choices, but choices nonetheless, or a budget that seems to punt these choices simply to hit a bottom line that they desire to hit for public relations purposes?"
I then interjected, "But what tough choices are there in the Obama budget that would increase spending to $5.1 trillion by 2019?"
He explained, "I think what you're seeing is that we've been very clear up front that we need to do things in the short-term to put the economy on a stable path going forward. We need to do things to jump-start the economy and protect and preserve the jobs that need to be created in this country. But in the long term, we are being very strict about slowing the growth of discretionary spending, we're being very strict about slowing the growth of defense spending. And we have specific proposals, not everybody in the world thinks they are the most popular proposals, but they are real proposals to start to address things like subsidies for more agribusinesses. The alternative from Republicans is $24 billion programs over the next decade that are completely unspecified. At least we have put on the table the types of programs that we believe could and should be cut in the future to make our numbers add up."
According to the White House's own numbers, the Obama's budget would add up to debt totaling 67.2 percent of gross domestic product by 2019. That number would be 82.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Another Technology for Republicans to Adopt Late
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 4:14PM
Change Congress is a website dedicated to rallying public support for the Fair Elections Now Act introduced yesterday by Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter. It features a virtual whip count that allows you to go down the list of senators and representatives, "whipping" those who haven't committed to supporting the act by clicking on their names. Doing so brings you to a page with the politician's contact information so you can call them and also the option to enter in donations you are withholding based on their opposition to the bill.
One interesting note: the virtual whip count was designed by some of the good folks at Google. It's very sleek, and definitely simplifies the process of contacting congressmen. This is exactly the kind of technological advance that Republicans have fallen behind the curve on in recent years. John McCain's tweets notwithstanding, the GOP, in my opinion, is still way behind in Web 2.0. For instance digg, reddit, and even Facebook seem to be awash in messaging straight from CAP, with hardly any Republican or right-wing stuff making it through. Now would be as good a time as ever for somebody on the right to make sure that Google-type programmers have a few projects to work on that benefit conservatives.
How the GOP Alternative Budget Stacks Up
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 3:31PM
Today, Republicans released their alternative budget plan, this time with more detail and numbers. The challenge with judging it relative to the Obama budget is that the Congressional Budget Office has not evaluated it, and thus we cannot make an apples to apples comparison. The Obama budget looks much worse if you're considering CBO projections than it does if you trust the estimates of the White House Office of Management and Budget. So, if you compare the Republican estimates to CBO projections of Obama's plan, the Democrats can argue that the GOP is using rosy assumptions about its own budget and that the CBO is being too pessimistic about Obama's budget. If, however, you compare it to Obama's budget, Republicans can argue that the White House is relying on rosy assumptions about its own budget. There's also the matter of the CBO baseline numbers, which project the budget based on what it would be like if we were simply to follow current laws. In order to try and sort through this mess, I created the two graphs below, which measure the growth of public debt both in dollar terms and as a percentage of GDP.
Under the GOP plan, the public debt in 2019 would be $3.6 trillion lower than under the Obama budget if you're looking at CBO figures and $1.7 trillion lower if you believe the White House. However, the GOP proposal still manages to increase the debt by $1.9 trillion more than it would increase by if we were simply to follow current laws.
So, it shouldn't surprise readers of this blog to know that while I think the GOP alternative would be preferable to the Obama plan, I don't think it goes far enough in terms of really attacking runaway spending. In fact, if Republicans could actually get their way, we'd still be looking at the debt exploding from the $5.8 trillion it was in 2008 to $13.7 trillion by 2019, or from 40.8 percent of GDP to 65.1 percent. For American taxpayers, it really is choosing between Scylla and Charybdis.
Conyers Says ACORN Probe On Track
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 3:06PM
Uber-liberal House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan) reaffirmed that he still plans to launch a congressional probe into the wrongdoings of the radical direct-action group ACORN.
The Washington Times reports
Opponents of the liberal activist group ACORN have found an unlikely champion in House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., who is clashing with his own party to pursue hearings on accusations that the group has committed crimes ranging from voter fraud to a mob-style "protection" racket.
"I still want to do it and I probably will," Mr. Conyers, Michigan Democrat, told The Washington Times on Tuesday.
He dismissed the argument made by fellow Democrats that accusations of voter fraud and other crimes should be explored by prosecutors and decided in court, not by lawmakers in Congress.
"That's our jurisdiction, the Department of Justice," Mr. Conyers said. "That's what we handle - voter fraud. Unless that's been taken out of my jurisdiction and I didn't know it."
Mr. Conyers' continued commitment to hearings bristles Capitol Hill Democrats because it threatens to rekindle criticism of the financial ties and close cooperation between President Obama's campaign and ACORN and its sister organizations Citizens Services Inc. and Project Vote.
The groups came under fire during the campaign after probes into suspected voter fraud in a series of presidential battleground states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Mexico and Nevada. [...]
Just last year Conyers defended ACORN, describing it as "a longstanding and well regarded organization that fights for the poor and working class."
But that was before the damning congressional testimony of GOP lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh about ACORN's protest-for-hire services and the "muscle for the money" program. Much of the evidence against ACORN comes from whistleblower Anita MonCrief, a former employee of ACORN's affiliate, Project Vote.
As anyone who has been following the ACORN story knows, ACORN and Project Vote are joined at the hip. My fellow AmSpecBlog contributor, the legendary investigative reporter Robert Stacy McCain, has noted that the ties between ACORN, Project Vote and the 2008 Obama campaign were so close that the New York Times spiked a story that editors thought might harm Obama's chances of winning the White House.
Do All Smokers Make At Least $200,000 A Year?
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 2:13PM
Because President Obama just raised their taxes. Now, I don't think he has to worry about tax increases on tobacco products to pay for children's health insurance becoming a political liability. But it does look like a broken promise.
Not Partying Like It's 1994
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 1:57PM
Back in New York's 20th congressional district, David Freddoso reports that the absentee ballots already in and waiting to be counted lean Republican. That's the (relative) good news for Republican Jim Tedisco. But the fact that this even has to come down to the wire is not a very good sign and offers a reality check as to how little anti-Obama anger exists at this moment in competitive districts. I fully expect Republicans to win back many conservative and Republican-leaning seats currently held by Democrats in the next election. But we don't have any evidence yet that 2010 is going to look anything like 1994.
UPDATE: Here's an unconfirmed report that Scott Murphy's lead has dwindled to just 25 votes.
Joe the Plumber Targeted by Card Check Goons at Rally
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 11:02AM
In a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Tuesday appearance on the state capitol steps to oppose the "Employee Free Choice Act" or "card check" Joe the Plumber, AKA Joe Wurzelbacher, was jeered and heckled by members of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. The union members were bused in at the order of union president William M. George. A radio on one union bus was deliberately cranked up to try and drown out Wurzelbacher.
"Rat! Rat! Rat!" the angry union members yelled as Wurzelbacher attempted to speak.
The dramatic event captured local headlines and filled local television screens. It had the ironic impact of vividly underscoring the point opponents have been making of the bill, that removing the secret ballot from workers asked to decide whether they wish to join a union would open them to acts of intimidation. In a front-page story by reporter Laura Vecsey the Harrisburg Patriot-News described the rally appearance by the union members as a "display of union anger, intimidation and outrage that helps make the point that strong-arm tactics are the reason union organizing activity should be done by secret ballot," a point made by Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips. AFP was a rally sponsor, along with Pennsylvania Right to Work.
According to the news account, union boss George had ordered union-owned buses to "haul carpenters, sheet-metal workers, Teamsters, steel workers and, yes, ‘real’ licensed plumbers" from an area union hall. When questioned, one vocal union protestor identified himself as "Bill Smith" and refused to say where he worked. Others identified themselves as members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local 143, while a leather jacketed man with the words "steel workers organizer" emblazoned on the back of his jacket was seen working the crowd.
The rally was originally intended to persuade U.S. Senator Arlen Specter to oppose card check. In an announcement several days ago, Specter said he would do just that.
Ironically, Wurzelbacher began his remarks by noting his support for unions. "Let me start off right now by saying I’m not against unions. Not at all. Unions have made America strong, no doubt. I have a brother and other family members who are union members and they tell me they want to work their 40 hours and go home without coercion or intimidation."
The union organizers would have none of it.
Wurzelbacher drove to Harrisburg from his home in Toledo, Ohio, and returned after the rally. In his pickup truck.
And Sorry About That Senate Seat, Too!
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 10:33AM
The feds drop their charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens after withholding evidence from his defense lawyers.
Beware The Soap Police in Washington
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 10:00AM
Want clean dishes if you live in Spokane? You'll probably have to shop in the black market and evade the soap police. Reports the Associated Press:
The quest for squeaky-clean dishes has turned some law-abiding people in Spokane into dishwater-detergent smugglers. They are bringing Cascade or Electrasol in from out of state because the eco-friendly varieties required under Washington state law don't work as well. Spokane County became the launch pad last July for the nation's strictest ban on dishwasher detergent made with phosphates, a measure aimed at reducing water pollution. The ban will be expanded statewide in July 2010, the same time similar laws take effect in several other states.
But it's not easy to get sparkling dishes when you go green.
Many people were shocked to find that products like Seventh Generation, Ecover and Trader Joe's left their dishes encrusted with food, smeared with grease and too gross to use without rewashing them by hand. The culprit was hard water, which is mineral-rich and resistant to soap.
As a result, there has been a quiet rush of Spokane-area shoppers heading east on Interstate 90 into Idaho in search of old-school suds.
Don't tell the Obama administration. It will probably attempt to take the ban national.
Liberal Fantasies of Obama
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 9:31AM
Friend and colleague Gene Healy lists some of the hilarious liberal fantasies about the president. Writes Healy in the Washington Examiner:
You've met them. They may be friends of yours, or family members. You may even be one of them (in which case you'll hate this column). I'm referring to those who've heard the Call of Obama. Tucker Carlson compares it to a dog whistle: Inaudible to most, but irresistible to those who can hear it. Obama "walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere," George Clooney gushed to Charlie Rose.
"I'll collect paper cups off the ground to make [Obama's] pathway clear," Halle Berry recently told the Philadelphia Daily News, "I'll do whatever he says." (Does Michelle know about this?)
Hollywood stars aren't known for their political wisdom. More disturbing is how starstruck the mainstream media has become. Hardball host Chris Matthews isn't the only one who gets a "thrill" up his leg at the very thought of our new president.
Last summer, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote that "Many spiritually advanced people I know ... identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who ... can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet."
The Politico recently ran a 900-word article entitled "The Power of Obama's Hand," reverentially describing how the president "uses touch to control and console simultaneously," laying hands on supporters and opponents alike.
And in February, author Judith Warner used her New York Times blog to confess that "The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs."
Of course, conservatives aren't immune from presidential worship. Healy goes on to list a few of the silly things said about President George W. Bush.
Legalizing the Geithner Break
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 8:05AM
A North Carolina state legislator wants everyone to enjoy the benefits of paying taxes late without penalty, a la Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, reports The News & Observer of Raleigh:
Rep. Jerry Dockham, a Davidson County Republican, has filed the Geithner Tax Fairness for N.C. Citizens Act, named for the Treasury secretary.
During his confirmation hearings, Geithner revealed that he had failed to pay $34,000 in back taxes. He paid the Internal Revenue Service the taxes and interest; but was not fined.
Dockham's bill would allow North Carolinians who owe $50,000 or less in back taxes on their state income tax to also avoid a penalty fine.
"If he got that benefit, I think the average citizen should get the same courtesy," Dockham said.
I Am NOT Part of the 'Brian Moran Smear Machine'
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 7:53AM
The Democratic primary for governor of Virginia is getting nasty. Moe Lane informs me that participants in some Democratic online forums are speculating that the campaign of Brian Moran is trying to exploit my friendship with Terry McAuliffe in an effort to discredit good old Terry.
For the record, I have never met Brian Moran nor, to my knowledge, have I ever been contacted by his campaign, directly. Any Internet gossip that Brian's older brother, Rep. Jim Moran, ever appropriated money for me via so-called "earmarks" is without foundation in fact.
While I'm dealing with scurrilous rumors this morning, I might as well also deny any allegation that, in support of good old Terry's tireless effort to raise money for his progressive campaign in Virginia, I served as a "straw donor" or "go-between" for the McAuliffe campaign and a certain wealthy right-wing Greek playboy.
Where do all these silly rumors on the Internet come from, anyway? Can't a man and his friends have dinner over a briefcase full of unmarked cash without these Internet troublemakers engaging in unfounded speculation?
Justice on Demand
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 6:20AM
Anyone who believed that the Obama Justice Department would operate independently has had their illusions shattered. Department attorneys opined that the attempt to create a congressman for Washington, D.C. was unconstitutional, but were overruled by Attorney General Eric Holder. Reports the Washington Post:
Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster.
A finding that the voting rights bill runs afoul of the Constitution could complicate an upcoming House vote and make the measure more vulnerable to a legal challenge that probably would reach the Supreme Court if it is enacted. The bill, which would give the District a vote in the House for the first time, appeared to be on the verge of passing last month before stalling when pro-gun legislators tried to attach an amendment weakening city gun laws. Supporters say it could reach the House floor in May.
In deciding that the measure is unconstitutional, lawyers in the department's Office of Legal Counsel matched a conclusion reached by their Bush administration counterparts nearly two years ago, when a lawyer there testified that a similar bill would not withstand legal attack.
Holder rejected the advice and sought the opinion of the solicitor general's office, where lawyers told him that they could defend the legislation if it were challenged after its enactment.
What decision will the Attorney General next politicize?
Cutting the Deficit, One Obama Appointee at a Time
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 5:52AM
Worried about the explosion of debt under President Obama? Don't be. Another Obama Cabinet nominee is paying her taxes.
Reports ABC News:
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama's nominee for to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has amended her 2005, 2006 and 2007 tax returns, the Obama administration disclosed Tuesday, on the even of a major world economic summit in London.
The HHS Secretary-designate asked a CPA to review her taxes before her nomination was officially sent up to the Senate. The CPA found the problems, and Sebelius and her husband wrote a check to the IRS for $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest.
The president's strategy is obvious: he plans on paying down the deficit one appointee at a time.
Pathetic
Posted by on 4.1.09 @ 12:51AM
Wake me when the Republican Party can handle something in an even remotely competent fashion. I imagine New York's 20th congressional district will no longer exist by the time I have to hit the snooze button the first time.
UPDATE: For those who don't get what I'm bellyaching about, I'm referring to the Republicans blowing a 16-point lead in New York's 20th congressional district. I'm also not sure that being too moderate or too conservative was the biggest problem in a race where the Republican candidate was a career politician who didn't live in the district, took almost a month to take a position on the stimulus package, and then campaigned like it was 2002. Tedisco could still pull it out from the absentee ballots and Republicans are going to point to how much better he did than Gillibrand's 2008 challenger, but it really shouldn't be this close.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
NY-20 The Spin Wars
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 11:50PM
From National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Pete Sessions:
“As the latest vote totals reflect, there still remain thousands of absentee and military ballots that have to be counted. Rest assured that Republicans will ensure that the integrity of the election is protected and every vote is counted. As it stands now, there is a Republican advantage in the number of absentee and military ballots that have been returned.“With that being said, Jim Tedisco has closed the gap in a district that has come to exemplify Democratic dominance in the Northeast in recent elections. That is a testament to the strength of Jim’s campaign and the effectiveness of the Republican message of fiscal responsibility and accountability that Americans are demanding in the wake of the AIG scandal.
“Less than 150 days ago, President Obama carried New York’s 20th District, and former Congresswoman Gillibrand was handily reelected in this district by a margin of 62-38 percent, despite the fact that her Republican opponent spent $6 million trying to defeat her. For the first time in a long time, a Republican candidate went toe-to-toe with a Democrat in a hard-fought battle over independent voters. This was hardly a common phenomenon in 2008, particularly in the Northeast.”
From DNC Chairman Tim Kaine:
“Scott Murphy embraced President Obama's message of change and his plans to fix our economy and create jobs, and as a result he stormed from more than 20 points down to winning a majority of votes cast tonight. Scott's performance tonight in an overwhelmingly Republican district, where Republicans enjoy a registration advantage over Democrats of more than 70,000, represents a repudiation of the failed politics and policies that Republicans continue to embrace. We are confident that when all the ballots are counted, Scott will expand his lead and become an ally to President Obama in Congress who will help the President create jobs and turn our economy around."
The Return of the Bride of Recount
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 10:48PM
If you're worried that the Franken-Coleman fiasco is nearing a conclusion, fret no more -- Murhpy-Tedisco is coming to a theater near you. With all precincts in for the NY 20th congressional district's special election, Democrat Scott Murphy is clinging to a 65-vote lead, 77,344 to 77,279. The AP is reporting that there were 6,000 absentee ballots returned yet to be counted.
Soros Buddy Funds HuffPo "Investigative Journalism" Fund
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 8:20PM
Arianna Huffington (L) with Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans (R)
Internet gossip Arianna Huffington announced that her left-wing gossip website, the Huffington Post, is launching the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. She said on her site that
This nonprofit Fund will produce a wide-range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers.
As the newspaper industry continues to contract, one of the most commonly voiced fears is that serious investigative journalism will be among the victims of the scaleback. And, indeed, many newspapers are drastically reducing their investigative teams. Yet, given the multiple crises we are living through, investigative journalism is all the more important. As a result, all who recognize the indispensable role good journalism plays in our democracy are looking for ways to preserve it during this transitional period for the media. For too long, whether it's coverage of the war in Iraq or the economic meltdown, we've had too many autopsies and not enough biopsies. The HuffFund is our attempt to change this. It will also provide new opportunities for seasoned journalists who have been laid off or forced into early retirement. [...]
The program's startup budget will be $1.75 million. The money will be provided by the Huffington Post and the Atlantic Philanthropies. The Bermuda-based Atlantic Philanthropies is headed by Gara LaMarche, who used to be a vice president of liberal uber-philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute. LaMarche is a member of Soros's Democracy Alliance, a billionaires' club that is organizing to impose socialism on America.
Will the new program fund anything other than left-wing hit pieces? Your guess is as good as mine.
Coleman Attorney: "We're Going To Appeal"
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 6:04PM
Blasting today's ruling by a three-judge panel as an "April Fool's Day Order," Norm Coleman attorney Ben Ginsberg just said on a conference call they would have no choice but to appeal the decision to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Ginsberg said the court's order was an "unprincipled decision" because it called for a different standard for ballots than was followed on election day, and that separate standards were applied in different counties.
He cautioned that today's order is not the final opinion, which is anticipated next week once the court looks at the ballots and rules on other matters, but assuming the final opinion doesn't change the decision they made today, he said, "we're going to appeal."
"[The decision] continues to disenfranchise thousands of Minnesotans whose votes should be counted, whose votes would have been counted had they lived just in a different jurisdiction," Ginsberg said.
Court Hands Coleman Major Setback
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 5:34PM
The Star Tribune reports:
In a potentially decisive ruling, a panel of three judges today ordered up to 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than Republican Norm Coleman had sought in his effort to overcome a lead by DFLer Al Franken.
The ballots also appear to include many that Franken had identified as wrongly rejected as well as ballots that Coleman wanted opened.
Given that Coleman needed to overcome a 225-vote Franken lead, this ruling is a big blow.
Not Just Me
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 4:23PM
Chris Cillizza had a similar reaction to the Washington Post poll as I did earlier.
He writes:
What's clear from the Post poll is that while Obama still gets the benefit of the doubt -- in a substantial way -- from voters, the underlying premise of his plans to rebuild the nation's economy remains a somewhat risky move politically as voters are genuinely conflicted about significantly adding to the size of the national debt.
Obama vs. GOP Alternative
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 3:59PM
After last week's fiasco in which Republicans released an alternative budget blueprint without any numbers, Rep. Ryan today provided a glimpse of how the GOP alternative, to be released in full tomorrow, would stack up against the Obama budget. The chart below looks at the long-term debt as a percentage of GDP from now until 2080. President Obama's budget itself extends through 2019, and the rest of the sharp red line that sails off the chart is based on CBO projections. Looking at the chart, it seems that debt would still grow under the GOP plan over the next decade, but would hover in the low 60s as a percent of GDP, as opposed to the Obama plan, which would bring it to 82.4 percent by 2019, according to the CBO. Ryan didn't offer more details in remarks today (see video below), but he promised, "a budget that is lower on spending, that is lower on deficits, that is lower on taxes, that is lower on debt and higher on jobs."
Lurid Cougar Fantasies
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 3:40PM
Gene Healy rubbernecks at the sight of Obama cultists enjoying the thrill running up their legs. He also takes a few passing glances at Republican man-crushes on George W. Bush.
The Left's Straw Men
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 3:16PM
John Hawkins has a list of "The Top Seven Techniques Liberals Use to Lie About Conservatives," including No. 7, the Straw Man:
If you can't find a sin conservatives have committed to attack, then invent one. This is one of the most used arrows in the quiver of liberals who claim the Right wants to create a theocracy, kick senior citizens off of Social Security, or reward the rich at the expense of the middle class.
The Left uses this tactic against specific politicians as well. Remember during the 2004 campaign when the Left kept promising to fight a draft that Bush didn't propose and didn't support? How about all the attacks on Saxby Chambliss because he supposedly questioned the patriotism of crippled war vet Max Cleland? Except, of course, Saxby Chambliss never questioned Cleland's patriotism.
Reconciling Kent Conrad
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 2:39PM
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has revised and extended his remarks on whether health care reform should be part of the reconciliation process. Like the Weekly Standard's John McCormack, I read Conrad's comments as a softening of his opposition though TPM Cafe's Brian Beutler remains concerned from a liberal perspective. Here are the most relevant Conrad comments:
I've been as clear as I can be publicly and privately, that I don't think reconciliation is the right way to write fundamental reform legislation. It wasn't designed for that purpose. It was designed for deficit reduction...
And so I would strongly prefer not to do it that way. One of the things I've said to colleagues is, "look the Budget Act contemplates a second budget resolution--only 10 hours in duration on the floor." And so one could go through this year--at least most of this year--on this budget resolution without reconciliation instructions. And then if it proved absolutely essential--if there were no Republican co-operation on writing major health care reform--you could run a second budget resolution. It would only take a day on the floor and you could put reconciliation instructions there.
If health care reform legislation were advanced through the reconciliation proces, it will not be subject to filibuster -- and therefore much more likely to pass in whatever form the Democratic leadership wants. Robert Byrd's decision to oppose using reconciliation in this fashion was considered a major turning point in the health care reform debate in 1993-94. Conrad was the leading Democrat seen as most likely to reprise Byrd's role in this debate. Republicans would still be able to invoke the Byrd Rule, named after the West Virginia senator, which requires a filibuster-like 60-vote majority to waive. But unlike a filibuster, it would be subject to a ruling by the parliamentarian.
Obviously, liberals can't be pleased even with Conrad's reworked position since it would give moderate Democrats and liberal Republicans a lot of influence in writing reform legislation. But conservatives shouldn't be thrilled by a choice between a health bill written by Arlen Specter or one rammed through the Senate via reconciliation.
Worse Than France
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 2:33PM
Liberals accuse conservatives of being alarmist when we talk about America evolving into a socialist welfare state, but judging by at least one measure --debt as a percentage of GDP -- we're well on our way. If the Obama budget gets enacted, our debt will surge to 82.4 percent of the economy by 2019, according to CBO projections. To put that in context, that would make us far worse than where Canada (62.3 percent), Germany (62.6 percent) and France (67 percent) are today, according to the CIA World Fact Book. In fact, it would place us 11th in the world, between Bhutan* (81.4 percent) and Egypt (84.7 percent).
* The Bhutan figure is somewhat misleading, because India finances nearly three-fifths of Bhutan's spending. India ranks 14th on the debt/GDP list, at 78 percent.
Barney Frank Wants the Government to Set Your Salary
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 2:27PM
More Mussolini-style corporatism from Capitol Hill Democrats.
The House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Barney Frank (D-People's Republic of Massachusetts), has approved legislation handing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extensive control over salaries of employees who work for businesses that take in government bailout funds.
As Byron York of the Washington Examiner reports
[I]n a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.
The purpose of the legislation is to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards," according to the bill's language. That includes regular pay, bonuses -- everything -- paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.
In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."
The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.) [...]
The Battle of the Budget
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 1:51PM
Congressman Joseph Cao (R-Louisiana) is thinking of voting for President Obama's budget. Cao's win was a surprise to the non-Hillyers of the world and his reelection will be a tough slog. No Republican in the House represents a more Democratic district. Barack Obama won there with 74 percent of the vote. It's perfectly understandable that he'd be feeling pressure to side with the president against the Republican leadership on some issues. But this shows how different the dynamics of the Obama budget debate are from the Clinton budget debate sixteen years ago.
In 1993, the Democrats controlled the Senate by 57 to 43 and the House by 258 to 176. The one independent congressman was the socialist Bernie Sanders, who caucused with the Democrats. That roughly compares with the Democrats' current majorities of 58 to 41 in the Senate (counting the two independents who caucus with Democrats) and 254 to 178 in the House.
Yet when Bill Clinton unveiled his first budget, complete with a tax increase, it only passed each chamber by one vote. Were it not for Al Gore's tie-breaking vote in the Senate and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky's decisive vote in the House, the budget would not have passed. And key portions of the original Clinton economic plan, ranging from a stimulus package that was but a fraction of the Obama plan's cost and a BTU-based energy tax, never stood a chance. The Democrats did lose one Senate seat before the budget debate was over -- Lloyd Bentsen's interim replacement, Bob Krueger, was beaten by Kay Bailey Hutchison in a special election in Texas -- but Krueger wasn't on board with the Clinton tax increase in any event.
Bob Dole was able to hold together a group of Republicans that would make Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe feel at home: Jim Jeffords, John Chafee, David Durenberger, Mark Hatfield, William Cohen, Bob Packwood, and, of course, Arlen Specter. But more importantly, Democrats in competitive states and districts were afraid to vote for the Clinton budget. So the Democratic leadership not only lost of the votes of relative conservatives like Sam Nunn, David Boren, and Dennis DeConcini -- senators like Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin were no votes too.
These Democrats feared a vote for the Clinton tax-and-budget package for good reason: Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky was booted out of office after only a single term in large part because she voted with Clinton to raise taxes. There are a lot more Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinskies -- Democrats representing districts with underlying Republican sympathies -- than Joseph Caos in the current Congress. But right now, Democrats don't seem all that worried about voting with their president. They might become even less worried if the Republicans can't win the NY-20 special election today. There's been a lot of grassroots conservative activism against Obama's budget but nothing like the anti-Clinton anger in conservative parts of the country yet.
Obama Polling
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 11:49AM
A lot of conservatives have tried to suggest that President Obama's approval ratings are sinking as Americans get to know what he's really about while liberals believe that not only is he popular, but he has a broad mandate to implement his liberal vision for the country. If today's Washington Post/ABC News poll is any indication, both views are wrong.
Conservatives are wrong bacause Obama's approval rating still stands at 66 percent; 60 percent approve of the way he's handling the economy; five times as many people believe the country is heading in the right direction as did last fall (though the number is still low at 42 percent); by a 58 percent to 25 percent margin, Americans still trust Obama more than Republicans to handle the economy; and while high majorities of Americans blame banks, Bush, business, and consumers for the state of the economy, only about a quarter blame Obama.
So, all told, Obama looks to be in good shape for now. However, Democrats shouldn't get to cocky about their position. The polls also show that on issues such as taxes and spending, the country is much more divided. Asked about his handling of the deficit, only 52 percent of Americans approved of Obama (while independents disapprove by a 50 percent to 45 percent margin).
When asked, "Which of these do you think is more important right now - (increasing federal spending to try to improve the economy, even if it sharply increases the federal budget deficit); or (avoiding a big increase in the federal budget deficit, even if it means not increasing federal spending to try to improve the economy)?" Americans chose increasing spending, but only by a 49 percent to 48 percent margin. This is significant because right now, while we're in the midst of a deep recession and in full crisis mode, the hunger for government spending is likely at its peak.
Also interesting is that when asked whether Obama is "an old-style, tax-and-spend Democrat" or "a new-style Democrat who will be careful with the public's money" -- only 32 percent say he's old style, while 62 percent say he's a new-style Democrat. Anybody who is paying close attention to his actual policies knows that he is a big government liberal, but most Americans aren't looking at CBO data or examining his proposals in detail. While that allows him to paper things over with rhetoric right now, once we get a few years of actual deficit numbers, most Americans will see his true colors.
Right now, the president is telling people that we live in a dream world in which we can spend all of this money to get ourselves out of the recession, drastically increase spending on health care, education, and energy, without facing consequences. But eventually, the unprecedented level of debt we're amassing will come back to bite us either in the form of higher taxes or massive inflation, or a combination of both. At that point, deficits will become much more important to Americans, who have a much more restrained view of the role of government than liberals would have us believe.
So, while conservatives are wrong to think Obama's popularity is declining, liberals are wrong to confuse his current popularity with a popular mandate to drive our debt through the roof while radically remaking the American economy. As I've written before, the big question is how many permanent programs (such as government-run health care) Obama can force through before Americans wake up to what's going on.
Don't Blame 'Greed'
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 11:39AM
"Those who wish to blame greed for the crisis need to explain how and why it is that greed seems to causes crises only at specific times, despite the fact that it is omnipresent as a feature of human nature and market economies. As the economist Larry White has noted, if we saw a bunch of planes crash all on the same day, we wouldn't blame gravity. It's always there. Something else must be at work."
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 10:14AM
- The G20: utterly pointless (Slate)
- The Midwest prepares to find out just how tough Obama really is (NY Times)
- Incommensurable moral arguments (Crunchy Con)
- About that girl who gets the free PC in the anti-Mac commercials... (TechCrunch)
- The dawn of Douthat (Politico)
Campaign "promise" is such an ugly term
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 8:54AM
In case you missed it, every single sign from the Obama administration and its apologists in the global warming industry make clear that the U.S. will not agree to a Kyoto II in Copenhagen - or, as some rakes are now calling it, Kopenhagen - this December. That doesn't mean they do not plan to pursue the idea pushed by the very same enablers of simply calling Kyoto's replacement not-a-treaty to avoid Senate ratification, of course, but for the moment just savor the collapse of this grandest of all gestures.
Possibly the most emphatic sign of the demise of Kyoto-proper as an ongoing U.S. concern was the vow reported yesterday by "Climate Envoy" (I still get a kick out of that) Todd Stern, that, per ClimateWire: "the United States would be ‘powerfully, fervently engaged' in global talks."
Uh oh. Sort of like being 1000% behind one's running mate when certain uncomfortable facts emerge. To be sure, many things about Kyoto have been coming to light given time and (relative) sobriety, thanks to the failure of this particular "we must act now!" hysteria to ram through that which doesn't withstand scrutiny.
But this is the best, from the same Stern remarks:
"I don't think anybody should be thinking that the U.S. can ride in on a white horse and make it all work."
Social Insecurity
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 8:10AM
The Washington Post has a story out today on what I believe is one of the most overlooked aspects of the economic crisis -- that rising unemployment is pinching payroll tax revenue. For years, the government has collected more in Social Security taxes than it pays out, which has allowed it to use the surplus to fund other government operations. But now, the CBO estimates that the surplus is expected to virtually disappear next year, reaching just $3 billion, and that by 2017 it will start running deficits. Sure, there's a "trust fund" that isn't projected to run out until 2041, but that is only comforting to those who pretend that the money doesn't ultimately come from the same piggy bank.
And then there's this:
"This is not a problem for Social Security, it's a problem for fiscal responsibility," said Christian Waller, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He said the new estimates would force President Obama and his budget director, Peter Orszag, "to stay on track in what they have set out to do, and that is rein in deficits."
Yeah, and they're doing a good job of it, too -- so good, in fact, that the projected cumulative deficits over the next decade are only $9.3 trillion (as opposed to $4.4 trillion they would be under current law).
GM Only a Few Nations Away from Viability
Posted by on 3.31.09 @ 2:53AM
For all Obama's grandstanding on the automakers, I wonder what the administration hopes to accomplish. It is hard to look at GM's numbers and not sense inevitability. In 2008 GM lost $30.9 billion, or roughly Kenya's nominal GDP. It also has $86 billion in negative equity. In other words, if all 153 million people in Bangladesh sent along a year's worth of their production to GM right now, GM's creditors would still be about $3 billion away from breaking even on the deal.
Monday, March 30, 2009
INFREAKINGCREDIBLE!
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 11:30PM
The journalistic legacy of Walter Duranty, Herbert Matthews and Jayson Blair is alive and well at the New York Times:
A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a "a game changer."
Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the committee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group's Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee's litigation against ACORN, she had been a "confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom."
Read the rest, if your digestion can stand it.
Democrats Kill Provision in AmeriCorps Bill that Would Keep Funds from ACORN
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 11:15PM
Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana) tried to stand up for civil society and taxpayers last week but his effort was shot down by liberal Democratic senators.
Vitter tried to prevent the radical direct-action group, ACORN, and its affiliates from benefitting under the odious national service legislation known as the (proposed) GIVE Act. The bill itself, which received a glowing review from John Podesta's pro-Obama propaganda factory, the Center for American Progress, would give government money to volunteer programs and would dramatically expand the feel-good liberal program, AmeriCorps, which ACORN and other groups have used to promote their own political objectives.
Vitter's amendment to the bill known as HR1388 would have prevented ACORN from receiving funding under the legislation and from participating in any program authorized by it involving the use of government-sponsored volunteers.
Vitter noted in a press release that ACORN is
currently under federal investigation, and this is simply not the sort of organization that should be funded by taxpayer dollars. Although this bill prevents the use of funds for political activities, a loophole exists that would allow volunteers sponsored by the federal government to work on behalf of ACORN, freeing up ACORN workers to engage in voter registration activities. The fact that ACORN has been caught engaging in a number of suspect activities is of even more concern. [emphasis added]
On the Senate floor March 26, Vitter explained further, saying of his amendment:
It says no money under this program could go to ACORN or any of its affiliates. Although it is about that one organization, I think the amendment goes to the heart of this debate.
A lot of us are concerned this bill could politicize and put too much Government involvement in charitable work across the country.
Some folks may like ACORN, other folks may not, but nobody can argue that ACORN isn't at its core political and ideological. It should not get money under this program. The language in the bill that says you can't do political activity with the money clearly isn't good enough, because ACORN and other very political and ideological groups would simply have charitable offshoots that could accept the money and be underwritten indirectly in that way.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), long a friend of ACORN, objected. She made a motion to kill Vitter's amendment, saying "I think this is an amendment that has no purpose and [sic] has Draconian consequences if passed." Senators agreed, voting 53 to 43 to kill the amendment. The only Democratic senators to vote with Vitter were Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
The original version of HR1388 passed by the House contained an amendment offered by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) that prohibited organizations involved in "engaged in political or legislative advocacy" from receiving funding.
But two left-wing pressure groups distorted Foxx's amendment and demanded its removal. "The First Amendment protects against speech restrictions such as those in [this] amendment," said OMB Watch. The Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest said Foxx's amendment was "anti-nonprofit" and "anti-democratic," and added that "civic participation is the touchstone of American democracy."
Of course, their arguments were nonsense because groups are not required to take funding from the government, but Sen. Mikulski did ACORN's bidding, filing a substitute bill in the Senate that took out Foxx's provisions. The bill was approved by the Senate on a 79 to 19 vote.
The bill could be revisited by the House at any time and soon be on its way to President Obama's desk for his signature.
(modified from a post at the Capital Research Center blog)
Man's Best Enemy?
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 6:42PM
Reading this kind of makes you wonder why the New York Times didn't endorse Mitt Romney, no?
Perhaps when President Obama is done sprinkling his magic green dust on the automobile industry he can turn his inventiveness to solving the issue of how to make our pets less trip-over-ish. Considering the lost worker productivity, surely this fits the exploit-the-crisis rubric our government now operates under. And think of all the jobs we can save or create retraining our pets to be more considerate via our imminent Leviathan Corps!
The Republican Blame Game
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 4:48PM
Has already begun in New York's 20th congressional district.
Trump and Celebrities: A Beautiful Moment for the Natural Law
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 3:47PM
Last night I watched the latest episode of The Apprentice: Celebrity Edition. I have been pulled into the series this year largely because of the compelling finishes where The Donald lectures celebrities about their work habits and managerial ineptness. Dennis Rodman has been a draw because of his incredibly bad behavior.
This was Dennis’ week. His teammates chose him to be the project manager because they hoped he would rise to the challenge if he was running things. It worked, for a short while, then he drank enough to go past caring. First, he got angry. Then, he absented himself from the project he was supposed to direct.
The men’s team lost, which gave rise to the beautiful moment. Motorcycle entrepeneur and reality star Jesse James confronted Dennis Rodman with his drinking problem. The others readily agreed with the diagnosis. Rodman got angry and defensive, mostly offering support of his own worthiness by adverting to his NBA career which has been over for some time now. Finally, getting nowhere, Rodman said in frustration, “I . . . I could kick all y’all’s asses. Everyone one here.”
Now, I’m not sure that is actually true. Jesse James, for example, was a professional bodyguard at one point. But James didn’t respond to Rodman’s provocation with a physical challenge. His actual reply was devastating:
“Then why don’t you kick our asses at being a good person?”
Rodman sat silent.
I called this a beautiful moment for the natural law because Jesse James put the idea out there for millions of people whether he or they realized it. We know what a good person is. We expect people to aspire to that AND to achieve it.
At a minimum, we expect people to be honest, to keep their promises, to be reliable, and to moderate their own behavior out of respect for others. These are things Thomas Aquinas would say we can reason to from the premise of the social nature of man. Rodman did none of that. And he was kicked out.
Murtha: "If I'm corrupt, it's because I take care of my district."
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 3:42PM
One word -- wow!
"If I'm corrupt, it's because I take care of my district," Mr. Murtha said. "My job as a member of Congress is to make sure that we take care of what we see is necessary. Not the bureaucrats who are unelected over there in whatever White House, whether it's Republican or Democrat. Those bureaucrats would like to control everything. Every president would like to have all the power and not have Congress change anything. But we're closest to the people."
"A Great Proliferation Of Misinformation"
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 2:13PM
Philadelphia tour guides stand up for their right to be stupid.
What the Heck Happened in New Hampshire?
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 1:15PM
One of the most suprising events in all of last year's election season was Hillary Clinton's upset win in the the New Hampshire primary. I remember running into Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire poll, in a sandwich shop on Elm Street in Manchester on the day of the primary. He confidently anticipated an Obama win of at least 8 points, and perhaps one in the double digits. Like many reporters, I went to the Clinton rally that night expecting to be writing her political obituary, and instead stared at the television screens in disbelief as her lead held with more and more precinct data flowing in. Today, the American Association for Public Opinion Research has released a detailed 123-page report attemting to determine what happened.
Among the highlights:
- Given the compressed caucus and primary calendar, polls conducted before the New Hampshire primary may have ended too early to capture late shifts in the electorate's preferences there.
- Most commercial polling firms conducted interviews on the first or second call, but respondents who required more effort to contact were more likely to support Senator Clinton. Instead of continuing to call their initial samples to reach these hard‐to‐contact people, pollsters typically added new households to the sample, skewing the results toward the opinions of those who were easy to reach on the phone, and who more typically supported Senator Obama.
- Non‐response patterns, identified by comparing characteristics of the pre‐election samples with the exit poll samples, suggest that some groups who supported Senator Clinton--such as union members and those with less education--were under‐ represented in pre‐election polls, possibly because they were more difficult to reach.
- Variations in likely voter models could explain some of the estimation problems in individual polls. Application of the Gallup likely larger error than was present in the unadjusted data. The influx of first-time voters may have had adverse effects on likely voter models.
Mark Blumenthal has more.
The Philadelphia Society and New Orleans, Part II
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 12:18PM
This year's national meeting of the Philadelphia Society was my first. William Campbell of LSU invited me (a young-ish faculty member of Houston Baptist University) after reading a piece I wrote on libertarians and conservatives for the Acton Institute. I am very thankful for the opportunity and enjoyed the event very much. The list of attendees was really quite impressive and people were generally interested in and open to others.
At each meal I sat with a different group of people and found the conversation rewarding. There was a strong sense of fellowship and collegiality. I felt that individuals who offered divergences of opinion were treated respectfully and well. It was, in the best sense of the word, scholarly.
However, I write to offer a suggestion. To me, the panels shaded too much to the hall of famer/veteran side and not enough (or even at all) to rising, young talent needing an opportunity to demonstrate what they can do or what new things they have to say. A meeting of this kind would represent a great way for the distinguished members to identify talent and then to figure out how to promote the careers of young people who can seek to build on the previous generation's successes.
For every paper delivered by a long-standing member who is confident in what he has said and is ready to say it again, there are young people who will work their brains out for a chance to present something impressive to people they respect. The leadership needs to figure out how to move national meetings in that direction to a greater degree.
Philadephia Society and New Orleans, Part I
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 11:51AM
The Philadelphia Society's New Orleans meeting has concluded. This was my first time to be invited. I have some impressions to report about both the society and the town. For this post, I’ll focus on New Orleans.
If I can judge from the French Quarter and the rush hour traffic, New Orleans is back. The downtown area was absolutely hopping and it wasn't Mardi Gras time. I've never seen an American city other than NYC with so much night life.
However, I have to admit I was taken aback by Bourbon Street. On Saturday morning, I visited Cafe du Monde with a fellow academic who'd been a Bush appointee. After eating our beignets, we walked along the sidewalks and were nearly flooded out by a street washing machine that literally poured soapy water all over the streets and walkways. I wondered how often the city conducted that operation. My guess now is every night. By the end of Saturday, I'd seen the Quarter in operation. You run into an awful lot of questionable liquids on the street and sidewalks. Come morning, the wages of overindulgence (and a lot of horse droppings) need to be washed away.
I was stunned by "out there" nature of the sexually-oriented businesses in evidence. That takes a little doing since I live in Houston which is filled with elaborate strip clubs, but there you spin rapidly by them on elevated freeways. In New Orleans, you walk by women in lingerie standing on sidewalks and in doorways to beckon customers inside. I imagine Times Square was like that P.G. (pre-Giuliani).
Having been to 21st century Times Square and seedy Bourbon Street. I'll take Times Square. One changed for the better. The other stayed the same. Of course, I take into account the admonition of Thomas Aquinas that you can't use the law to abolish all vice, lest you create a backlash of total rebellion. Still, Rudy G. seems to have done a better job of locating the golden mean than his counterpart Ray N.
Internet Goons Attack 'Tea Party' Web Site
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 10:37AM
Message posted by administrators of the Tax Day Tea Party site:
An international effort to shut down the TaxDayTeaParty.com website has been detected by our technical staff. Internet experts commonly call this type of attack a Denial of Service (DOS) attack. Corrective measures are being implemented, and the site should be fully accessible again within 48 hours.
Unfortunately, these DOS attacks are very difficult to trace. In this case, the attacks have come from both domestic and international sources. All we know for certain at this point is that a group of people want to stop this movement. We will not allow this to happen. This citizens' movement will not be stopped.
Remember this the next time a liberal tells you he's all in favor of an open, honest, debate about the issues. They're totalitarian thugs.
Toomey Hits Specter, Will Announce 'Very Soon'
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 10:31AM
Former Pennsylvania Congressman Pat Toomey blasted Republican Senator Arlen Specter at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference over the weekend.
Toomey, a Republican who lost a close primary to Specter in 2004 by 17,000 votes, said: "I think it's time for a change, and that is why it is very, very likely that very soon, I will be a candidate for the United States Senate." Toomey received a standing ovation from the group, the Pennsylvania version of the national Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), according to a reporter for the Harrisburg Patriot-News. He spoke on Saturday.
Said Toomey: "When Republicans were in the majority, I believe that Arlen Specter helped to squander...the obligation of Republicans to common-sense conservatives. Now, he is actively helping the most liberal elected government in American history to advance an extremely liberal agenda."
Specter was not invited to the conference, but responded earlier in the week to the increasing threat from Toomey while on a stop in Harrisburg. The Senator charged that Toomey's votes while a member of the U.S. House representing Allentown helped create the current economic situation, specifically citing votes for deregulation of the financial services industry. Said Specter of Toomey: "He's like the AIG employees. He creates the problem; now he wants the bonus. He wants to be promoted to the Senate. He's going to have more votes to explain than I do. Stay tuned."
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 9:47AM
- Geithner's hedge fund strategy (Washington Post)
- Supreme Court vacancy watch (Slate)
- War hawk Barack Obama ramps up defense spending (Reason)
- Economists need to be taken down a notch or two (The Atlantic)
- Obama's health care plan, like Romney's, is a swindle (Econlog)
Obama Motors
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 9:24AM
Unfortunately, I'm becoming numb to things like this lately, but today's Washington Post front page headline is still rather alarming:
GM Chief to Resign at White House's Behest
This is, of course, the same issue we're confronted with whether it comes to the banks, AIG, or any other entities that are coming to Washington, hat in hand. Once taxpayer money is put on the line to save these companies, it gives the government the ability to make unprecedented interventions into the way private businesses are run. It's rather disturbing that the President of the United States is the one pressuring an executive to step down. In this case, it's hard to argue that General Motors chairman and CEO Richard Wagoner Jr. has performed well, but at the same time, Obama's reasons for dismissal seem more cosmetic than anything else. An anonymous administration official told the Post that, "We felt that having a change of leadership would be consistent with the clean-sheet approach." Whatever Wagoner's faults, it doesn't make sense to change management just for the sake of it, unless you have a replacement in mind who you think will be able to do better.
Abolitionists and Abortion
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 9:12AM
The always-interesting John Zmirak disagrees with Lew Lehrman's attempts to make abolitionists a model for the pro-life movement. Zmirak is right that centralizing, univeralizing ideology is more likely to lead to results pro-lifers and other social conservatives dislike than the other way around. The logic might also appear to justify violent antiabortion extremism. "We can't," Zmirak writes, "turn the pro-life movement into a Kantian, ideological monstrosity."
There are definitely problems with Lehrman's essay, and perhaps with the entire project of rooting the pro-life movement in excessively Declarationist grounds. But I'm not sure Lehrman's basic premise has to lead in the precise direction Zmirak takes it. For one thing, Lehrman doesn't come close to suggesting we should fight a Civil War over abortion. He specifically defends Lincoln's political efforts against slavery, which prior to the war were fairly incrementalist (which is why some anti-Lincoln Civil War revisionists argue the 16th president was insufficiently abolitionist).
Furthermore, Lehrman doesn't seem to be "suggesting that a set of natural rights" ought to be "discerned by intellectuals and imposed by judges." Neither does he appear to be proposing "a totalizing system that enforce[s] 'human rights'" in place of conservative if occasionally wrongheaded local subcultures. Instead Lehrman opposes the abortion and slavery rulings "imposed by judges" and urges pro-lifers to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion, which would enable the "state-by-state approach to banning abortion" Zmirak supports. Lehrman is appealing to the conscience of the nation, hoping that the American people will use reason to discern natural law and have their elected representatives vote in the morally correct way.
A modest linkage between opponents of legal abortion and legal slavery can probably be defended: both groups oppose something widely practiced, recognized by law, and seen as indispensable to the economic livelihood and social fabric of its practictioners. Yet both movements, dominated by believing Christians, nevertheless recognized these accepted practices as moral evils perpetrated against their fellow human beings that must ultimately lose the sanction of law. The British anti-slavery movement might be a better parallel than the more radical American abolitionists -- and the British succeeded earlier -- but there are definitely some deeply American traditions to draw upon here.
The main thrust of Zmirak's argument seems to be that Lehrman's project is a politically pointless delusion. Abortion opponents will ultimately fail to win the image of moral authority held by abolitionists. I suspect Zmirak is right that it is probably easier to teach a slightly prejudiced pro-lifer to abandon racism than to make a committed anti-racist social liberal feel sympathy for the plight of the unborn. But there's also good reason to believe that the pro-life movement's ability to marshal liberal, rights-based arguments for its position -- even this approach is not without its own problems -- has made the pro-life cause accessible to people who would never, say, oppose same-sex marriage.
But the pro-lifer/abolitionist analogy is just that: an analogy that is imperfect and inevitably breaks down somewhere. To my mind, it works best as a cause for encouragement among pro-lifers: If abolitionists could succeed against a moral evil with such deep roots in law, custom, and culture as slavery, they should have some hope of overturning the abortion regime of the past 36 years.
AIG and Dodd
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 8:45AM
The Washington Times reports that in 2006, the chief of AIG's infamous Financial Products unit, urged employees to contribute to Chris Dodd, who was poised to become the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Dodd collected more than $160,000 from employees of the division and their wives.
The whole thing is worth a read.
Keep These Clowns Away From Me
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 6:59AM
"Do you want to have to jump through bureaucratic hoops when you are sick? If not, why would you be in favor of government-run medical care?" --from Thomas Sowell's Random Thoughts
My, How You've 'Grown,' David Frum
Posted by on 3.30.09 @ 5:13AM
"I don't think of myself as having gone squishy. I think of myself as having grown sober."
-- David Frum
The details of Frum's conversion to an Obamaphiliac squish are tedious and trivial, and ultimately irrelevant to his journey down the path worn smooth by such trailblazers of moderate Republicanism as David Gergen and John Dean. Let the Republican Party lose an election or two, and suddenly there is no shortage of persons (usually those deeply implicated in recent defeats) declaring that they see exactly what needs to be done. And always the prescription is the same: "new ideas," Me-Too-ism, "National Greatness," et cetera, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
However, let it not be said that Frum offers no amusement in his rationalization for joining the "Echo, Not A Choice" chorus:
But on environmental issues, we have to follow the evidence where it leads -- and on social issues we have to take our society as it is. If the world changes, we have to change with it. The refusal of so many of my fellow conservatives in the United States to adapt their thinking to facts and realities does not demonstrate their adherence to principle. It demonstrates a frivolous indifference to the responsibilities of political leadership.
Well, take that, all you global-warming skeptics at Cato, Reason and CEI! Of course, environmentalism is entirely a movement of the elite. In November 2008, no Florida retiree or Ohio truck driver went to the polls with the idea, "Those Republicans aren't taking the environment seriously enough. Guess I'll have to vote for Obama." There is a word for voters who consider environmentalism a make-or-break issue: Democrats.
I've admired Frum's writing for years, and still harbor some glimmer of hope that he'll part ways with David Brooks and the Crapweasel Coalition, but . . . I don't know. Once a Republican starts sounding like Al Gore on the environment, he's usually beyond retrieval (cf., John McCain).
And on the off-chance that there is any conservative too stupid to understand when he's being insulted, Frum boils it down to 14 words:
Conservatives stopped taking governance seriously -- and so Americans ceased to trust conservatives in government.
In case you didn't notice -- in your "frivolous indifference," you may have overlooked it -- that was the back of his hand.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
A Whiff of Fascism from Obama's White House
Posted by on 3.29.09 @ 10:37PM
There is a whiff of Fascism emanating from the Obama White House.
Reports say that the head of GM is quitting under duress from the Obama administration:
General Motors chairman and chief executive G. Richard Wagoner is resigning at the request of the White House, clearing the way for the Obama administration to offer the company more federal aid.
On Monday, President Obama is expected to unveil his plan to prop up General Motors and Chrysler, offering them more money if the companies agree to shrink and refocus their businesses.
Wagoner's resignation was one of the White House conditions for more federal aid. "He agreed and will do that," a senior administration official said Sunday evening.
Wagoner, 56, joined the company in 1977 and has been chairman and chief executive since 2003. [...]
Although there have been some incidents of government exercising minor control over industry during wartime, this aggressive assault on American capitalism is unprecedented and should give all Americans who care about freedom pause.
Strict government control over businesses is the essence of Fascism, or more precisely, Mussolini-style corporatism. As Mussolini said, "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Corporatism boils down to this: government tells industry (and labor) what to do and they do it for the supposed good of the country.
For the president of the United States to be able to, effectively, fire the head of a major corporation is not a road America has ever headed down before.
ADDENDUM the next day: A commenter below brings
up the issue of AIG. This is a fair point to raise. I regret for
several months last year my research was focused on ACORN, the
Community Reinvestment Act, Goldman Sachs, and a few other
topics.
Preoccupied, I failed to comment on the reported firing of
AIG's Robert Willumstad by then-Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson. But I
began railing against the Bush administration's corporatist
policies long ago, before I became a blogger here at The American
Spectator. That said, the Obama administration has done much more
to move America toward corporatism than Bush ever did. Bush began
driving America down the road to Fascism, but Obama, with the
Wagoner purge and other events, put the pedal to the metal.
America is not there yet but it is progressing there.
Breitbart Reflects on Obama's Left-Wing Internet "Trolls"
Posted by on 3.29.09 @ 9:25PM
Conservative strategic visionary Andrew Breitbart hits the target again.
In his Washington Times op-ed today the Internet news entrepreneur warns of the apparently coordinated proliferation of left-wing, pro-Obama Internet trolls out to stifle dissent and demoralize conservatives:
A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing. Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power.
We must not let that go unanswered.
Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy - us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency - and the humanity - of George W. Bush.
Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way - all in the pursuit of victory. Moral relativism is alive and well in the land of Hope and Change and its Web-savvy youth brigade expresses its "idealism" in a most cynical fashion.
The ends justify the means for them - now more than ever.
Much of Mr. Obama's vaunted online strategy involved utilizing "Internet trolls" to invade enemy lines under false names and trying to derail discussion. In the real world, that's called "vandalism." But in a political movement that embraces "graffiti" as avant-garde art , that's business as usual. It relishes the ability to destroy other people's property in pursuit of electoral victory.
Hugh Hewitt's popular site shut off its comments section because of the success of these obnoxious invaders. Breitbart.com polices nonpartisan newswire stories for such obviously coordinated attacks. Other right-leaning sites such as Instapundit and National Review Online refuse to allow comments...[...]
Breitbart gets it. Such trolls already dominate Wikipedia and many other online meeting places.
I recently highlighted Breitbart's work in this space. He noted that refusing to engage the ideological enemy in popular media invites failure. Conservatives "can't win the political war until we take on the Hollywood and mainstream media battles," he wrote in a previous op-ed.
Barack Obama: Jimmy Carter Redux?
Posted by on 3.29.09 @ 1:01PM
How the mighty have fallen. Barely two months after the great communicator was inaugurated, he is being compared to ... Jimmy Carter!
Writes Tim Shipman in the Daily Telegraph:
Barack Obama's gaffe mocking the disabled by comparing his (inept but improving) 10 pin bowling skills to the "special Olympics" illustrates the problem he now has in communicating with the American people.
Obama seems incapable of balancing the need to be a national leader and his childish desire to retain his image as the uber cool dude he so clearly believes that he is.
The fact that he felt the need to go on Jay Leno at all to sell his stimulus plan, budget and banking bailouts shows that he has communications issues. The public are not buying his spending splurge, or his administration's confused attempt to kill off executive bonuses.
Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei at Politico wrote a characteristically insightful piece on Thursday that began: "Of all the pitfalls Barack Obama might face in the presidency, here is one not many people predicted: He is struggling as a public communicator."
It's a little early to write off President Obama, and it's hard to imagine him failing as dramatically as did Jimmy Carter. But the mere fact that commentators, British as well as American, are making the comparison is not good news for the president, and his plans to turn America into a slightly less collectivist version of Europe.
Podesta's Pressure Group Successfully Intimidates Major "O'Reilly Factor" Advertiser
Posted by on 3.29.09 @ 4:31AM
An affiliate of the George Soros-funded think tank and pressure group, Center for American Progress (CAP), is now in the media-bias analysis business.
Claiming to be outraged at the aggressive news-gathering techniques of Bill O'Reilly's team, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) lobbying organization that grew out of CAP, rejoiced Friday after getting UPS to stop advertising on "The O'Reilly Factor." The Fund released this statement on its Think Progress website:
In response to our Stop Supporting The O'Reilly Harassment Machine campaign, UPS told us yesterday that it was investigating whether to continue supporting O'Reilly's show. "We are sensitive to the type of television programming where our messages and presence are associated and continually review choices to affect future decisions," spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg told us.
Today UPS announced it will stop advertising on O'Reilly's show. Here is the statement UPS emailed out just moments ago:
Thank you for sending an e-mail expressing concern about UPS advertising during the Bill O'Reilly show on FOX News. We do consider such comments as we review ad placement decisions which involve a variety of news, entertainment and sports programming. At this time, we have no plans to continue advertising during this show. [emphasis in thinkprogress.org post]
Meanwhile, the great Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters noted a few hours ago that chest-beating leftist tool Keith Olbermann of MSNBC hyped the UPS-dumps-O'Reilly story.
I regret I missed this anti-Bill O'Reilly campaign until it struck gold. The campaign also claims to have elicited responses from Capital One, AT&T, and Ford.
I've never been a fan of ambush-style interviews but as any journalist worth his or her salt can tell you sometimes in the news-gathering process the approach is justified as a last resort. Surely nothing the O'Reilly team has done is any worse than anything done by myriad leftist commentators such as Michael Moore and journalists such as the obnoxious performance artist Max Blumenthal, Geraldo Rivera, and the team at "60 Minutes."
The whole campaign by the CAP Action Fund is a cheap piece of political theater calculated to hurt the revenues of a prominent right-leaning TV commentator perhaps with the ultimate goal of removing him from the airwaves.
Incidentally, CAP is funded by Soros's Democracy Alliance, a billionaire's club that is funding a drive to turn America into a European-style socialist country.
CAP, run by Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta, is an extremely well-funded machine that has aspirations of becoming a "Heritage Foundation" of the left. (Perhaps aspirations is the wrong word. It has already become a formidable force.) It has an approximately $25 million annual budget and took in $64,681,960 in donations from 2003 through 2006, according to its tax returns.
The 501(c)(4) CAP Action Fund may be legally separate from CAP, a 501(c)(3), but both have roughly the same goals: pushing liberal, Big Government policies.
CAP funds the CAP Action Fund directly. It gave $1,796,235 in "grants" to the CAP Action Fund in 2007 alone, according to the CAP 2007 tax return.
Podesta is president and CEO of CAP and president and CEO of CAP Action Fund.
(modified from a post at the Capital Research Center blog)
