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Saturday, July 4, 2009
The Rick Monday Moment
Posted by on 7.4.09 @ 11:20PM
When I was growing up in the late seventies and early eighties, some of my best nights were spent watching baseball on television with my dad. We were great Braves fans, but they tended to be irrelevant, so we also rooted for the Dodgers.
One evening, the Dodgers put Rick Monday into a game in the late innings as a pinch hitter. When his presence became known, the crowd let out a great cheer. I was surprised. I didn't know anything about Rick Monday. He wasn't one of the stars whose stats I memorized.
My dad told me about the time Rick Monday saved the U.S. flag from being burned by radicals in the outfield. I never had a chance to see it until now. Thanks to Francis Beckwith at Southern Appeal for linking to this great little video.
Beyond the Palin
Posted by on 7.4.09 @ 2:15PM
My take on Sarah Palin's latest move is up at the Guardian. I focus more on what she might be trying to do than what the likely result will be.
I interviewed Palin's successor, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, for TAS during his unsuccessful primary challenge to Congressman Don Young in 2008.
Back to Basics for the Republican Party
Posted by on 7.4.09 @ 9:00AM
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. -Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
On this Independence Day, with the national Republican Party at its lowest ebb in decades, Michael Zak reminds us that it was not always this way.
Zak is author of the under-appreciated book Back to Basics for the Republican Party. He says Republicans need to remember the party's proud legacy.
The theme of his book and the speeches he has delivered in 30 states to date is that Republicans would benefit from appreciating the heritage of their Grand Old Party.
"As you know, Democrats control most of the media, but they also write most of the history books, thereby controlling what even Republican activists think they know about our party's glorious heritage," he writes.
Zak notes that when it comes to civil rights, Republicans have consistently been on the right side of history. The GOP has long fought against Democrats who favored slavery, backed Jim Crow laws, and fought tooth-and-nail against the enactment of civil rights legislation.
His book was even cited in a Supreme Court case. Justice Clarence Thomas referenced Zak's work in his dissent in Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee.
Zak maintains a website for the book, www.republicanbasics.com, and blogs at Grand Old Partisan.
Why Health Care is so Hard to "Fix"
Posted by on 7.4.09 @ 5:02AM
The basic problem is that health care is a complex human system, not a set of mechanical boxes which can be moved around or replaced without affecting anything else.
John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis made this point well:
Why is Washington having so much trouble reforming health care?
Why, if they do pass a major overhaul, are the problems of cost, quality and access almost certain to get worse?
Answer: Because they don't understand health care. By that I mean, almost no one in Congress understands health care as a complex system. When they campaign, most politicians claim that health care problems could be solved with a few simple reforms. Now that it's time to legislate, they are discovering that health care is very, very complicated. In fact, there is no solution that even comes close to being simple or easy.
As Nobel Laureate Frederick Hayek taught us, a complex system is a structure that is so complicated, that no one person can even begin to grasp it in its entirety. The best each of us can hope for is to master the small part of it we interact with.
Washington policymakers should take note. But almost by definition Washington policymakers don't believe in reality, so I'm not going to hold my breath waiting.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Limited-Government Conservatism Is Sexy
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 8:49PM
Upon being asked to comment on the extramarital adventures of South Carolina's Republican governor Mark Sanford, tax fighter Grover Norquist was blunt:
"I disagree with the idea that this shows problems for the modern Republican Party," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, a group that applauded Mr. Sanford's attempt to refuse some federal stimulus funds earlier this year. In reference to the fiscally conservative philosophies of Mr. Ensign and Mr. Sanford, he joked, "I think instead it shows that sexual attractiveness of limited-government conservatism."
Somewhere, Somebody Is Crying in Anchorage
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 7:43PM
Or Juneau. Perhaps Sarah Palin's resignation will be sufficient to get Mark Sanford out of the headlines. Let us hope they are not soulmates in the GOP's terminal decline.
What Happened to Sarah Barracuda?
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 6:25PM
Karol at Alarming News believes Palin's political career is over, and writes, "What (Palin) had, more than anything else, was a toughness and a dedication to her position. She blew all that with her announcement today."
This is exactly right. It may not be fair, but to succeed, a female politician has to come off 10 times tougher than any man -- "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher being the most obvious example. One of the things that Palin had going for her was that she was, as Cindy McCain described her during the Republican National Convention, a "hockey-mommin' ... basketball shootin' ... moose huntin' ... fly-fishin' ... pistol-packing ... mother of five." She had been nicknamed "Sarah Barracuda," and took on the "good ole' boys" who controlled Alaska politics.
However, to all but her most loyal supporters, today's bizarre press conference made her look brittle -- like a person who couldn't take the heat and was buckling in the face of attacks. Today's move is perfectly understandable if she wants to give up politics and protect her family from the blistering assaults of the media and her political oppenents. Maybe this news -- odd within the political realm -- actually makes her a pretty normal person by real world standards. But normal people do not get elected president.
Palin's Dereliction of Duty
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 4:35PM
Knowing that many, many conservatives will absolutely dump on me for saying this, I can't help myself: Sarah Palin's resignation is an appalling dereliction of duty and a highly cynical move to set herself up for a presidental run for which she is manifestly unqualified.
I have written the same thing about other politicians who resigned their offices mid-term without any scandal or family crisis necessitating it: It is an absolute dereliction of duty to quit mid-term. When you run for office, you are making a promise to your constituents to serve out your term (unless you get elected to higher office or have one of the aforementioned compelling reasons not to do so). To do otherwise is, in effect, to break your word. It is a sign of a lack of integrity.
Now, I also have argued that being governor of Alaska is one of the easiest jobs in politics because Alaska is rolling in money and because its population is so low -- and also because it receives so much outrageous federal pork. I have therefore argued that Sarah Palin was not yet qualified for the presidency. Two years as governor of such a state, with very little other relevant experience beforehand, does not amount to qualification for the presidency. It has nothing to do with Ms. Palin, but everything to do with the nature of the respective jobs.
I have argued, also, that Bobby Jindal is not yet ready to be president, but getting closer. Why? Because almost anybody can get elected as a reformer under the right circumstances; the real test comes when the bad-ol'-boys have time to regroup, re-strategize, and make their counter-attack. If somebody not only gets elected as a reformer and does a few reformist things at the beginning of one's term, but THEN maintains enough political strength AND integrity to fight off the counterattack and remain a reformer four, five or six years into the office at hand -- THAT is when the person starts becoming a statesman. Just as a congressman isn't a legitimate conservative or reformer until AFTER he has been in office for at least six or eight years and still has NOT been Beltwayed, so too is a governor not a fully legitimate reformer and conservative until having remained one for a full cycle or more.
What Sarah Palin did today was get out before the real challenges of the job (whatever challenges there are for such an easy job) really rear their heads. The going got tough in terms of spurious ethics charges against her, and she took off. That's cowardly. That's not a sign of staying power. It's a sign of wanting to get out while the getting is good, in order to become a full-time candidate for a presidential race that won't culminate for 3 1/2 more years. It's a little too calculating, by half -- or more.
I just listened to her speech announcing her decision, and found it singularly unimpressive. "This was a rambling, bombastic, self-centered, 'poor me' kind of speech." That's how Mike Carey of the Anchorage Daily News just described her speech on Fox News. I agree. He then said it was, darn, I already can't remember if he said it was "pitiful" or "pathetic," but it was some word like that. Again, I agree. It was a speech in which she clearly made a bid for a national audience -- not a very effective bid, but a transparent one -- but didn't adequately explain to the people of Alaska why she was relinquishing her duty.
Again, I repeat: I have written the same criticisms of other candidates who left office early. If I remember rightly, I did so even at the report that U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam was doing so -- an erroneous report that I read on the 'Net -- before it became clear that Putnam was just announcing that he would not run again, not that he would actually leave mid-term.
The point is that the criticism here is not Palin-specific; it is a consistent theme of mine. Then again, I am rather old-fashioned, and have some old-fashioned notions of public service. I view a campaign as a commitment to serve. That commitment has now been broken by Sarah Palin.
Statesmen hang tough. Sarah Palin is cutting and running. 'Nuff said.
Palin to Resign
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 4:05PM
In another stunning bit of political news, Sarah Palin announced today that she would resign as governor at the end of the month. We'll obviously learn more in the coming days and weeks about what prompted this move, but I don't see how anybody can argue that this bodes well for her presidential ambitions. At the end of last year's campaign, the general view was that for her to reemerge as a serious presidential candidate, she would have to go back to Alaska, read up on issues, and build up a record of governing accomplishments. It simply makes no sense that she would resign from office after less than 3 years if she were serious about seeking the presidency in 2012. First Huntsman, then Ensign, then Sanford, and now Palin -- the 2012 GOP field keeps on getting thiner and thiner. Will anybody be there to stand in Mitt Romney's way?
Palin Quitting?
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 3:47PM
It is being reporting that Sarah Palin plans on resigning. According to a CBS station:
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has announced she's resigning from her job and plans to step down by the end of the month, CBS News affiliate KTVA is reporting.
Gov. Palin, who ran for the White House vice president seat on a Republican ticket with presidential nominee John McCain, made the announcement in a press conference Friday.
Palin said she will transfer power to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. Parnell will be sworn in during an event on July 25th.
Palin did not answer questions from the press, KTVA reports.
Hillary Clinton: "Never Waste a Good Crisis"
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 12:08PM
Somehow I missed this in March.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a longtime admirer of community organizing guru Saul Alinsky, visited the European Parliament in Brussels on March 6, 2009. She told the assembled Eurocrats:
I'm actually excited by this opportunity. I'm very well aware that we are not yet through this economic crisis but the chief of staff for President Obama is an old friend of mine and my husband's and was in the White House when Bill was there. And he said, you know, never waste a good crisis, and when it comes to the economic crisis don't waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security. And that's what we're trying to do.
This makes it even more clear that the Obama administration's highest priority is the radical transformation of American society. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's statement after Election Day ("Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.") wasn't just an offhanded remark.
The economic crisis is simply an excuse to transmogrify American into a sclerotic European-style socialist state. The economically suicidal cap-and-trade legislation, which would have the effect of a huge national energy tax, is a primary vehicle to impose the left's vision of "social justice" on America.
Who knew the Obama administration was being so blatant about it? They're not even trying to hide it and the media, for the most part, isn't even bothering to ask questions.
Here is a video of Secretary Clinton's remarks in Brussels:
(Hat tip: Berit Kjos of Right Side News)
Turkish Anti-Christian Conspiracies?
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 10:04AM
Turkey long has been allied with the U.S., seen as a bulwark against both the Soviet Union and radical Islam. However, ties have been fraying in recent years for a number of reasons. The Turkish public has turned hostile to Washington and Americans cannot even count on the friendship of secular nationalists.
Particularly disturbing is evidence tying the so-called "deep state," long viewed as a threat to democratic governance, especially by the moderately Islamic ruling party, to the 2007 murder of three Christians, a German and two Turkish converts. The crime was grotesquely brutal and cruel, yet public officials have seemed almost as willing to criticize the victims as the murderers. According to Christianity Today:
In April 2007, five young men tortured and killed two Turkish converts and a German Christian at a Christian publishing house in the southeastern city of Malatya. When the resulting trial began in January 2008, the court and the Turkish public regarded it as a straightforward case of overzealous nationalists killing missionaries, whose activity was widely regarded as a national threat.
But in recent months, lawyers have tied the case to a more serious national threat. Prosecutors have expanded their investigation beyond the five assailants to local officials. The murders are now seen as a plot by the "deep state" group Ergenekon, a cabal of generals, politicians, and other prominent figures accused of trying to overthrow the government. Ergenekon is already accused of plotting a national coup and killing several people, including a Catholic priest.
"From the very beginning, it was clear that some other people were involved with this, because in Turkey you cannot do something on this scale without being noticed by state agents," said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, the lead prosecuting attorney for the Malatya case. He invited lawyers from across Turkey working on Ergenekon-linked murder cases to form "a common eye" on the Malatya murders.
Turkish politics long has had a vicious authoritarian edge. Be careful what you say about the military and don't ever think about criticizing Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. But aiding and abetting murder? If the allegations are true, it turns out there isn't a lot of moral difference between Islamic radicals and nationalist secularist radicals in Turkey.
Empathy for Merit-Based Promotion?
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 7:29AM
Latina Sonia Sotomayor may figure that ethnicity should determine judicial outcomes, but Ben Vargas, a plaintiff in the New Haven firefighters' case, thinks differently. He is a Latino who believes that promotions should be based on merit, not race. Shock!
Not surprisingly, his views have not gone over well with those who have created and benefited from today's racial spoils system. But his career--and desire to be rewarded for his hard work and achievements--act as a powerful rebuke to Judge Sotomayor.
Amazingly, the New York Times includes a positive profile of Vargas today. Reports the Times:
When the United States Supreme Court ruled this week in the firefighters' favor, Lieutenant Vargas, 40, the son of Puerto Rican parents, found himself celebrating amid an awkward racial dynamic: As the lone Hispanic among the 18 plaintiffs who had challenged an affirmative action policy, he had also challenged an appeals court decision joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court.
"She's from Puerto Rico, and I'm from Puerto Rico," he said. "She obviously feels differently than I do."
The Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision is expected to have repercussions on employment discrimination law that go well beyond fire departments, where minority groups have been woefully underrepresented, particularly in leadership positions. On the steps of the federal courthouse in New Haven on Monday, a lawyer for the firefighters, Karen Lee Torre, said they had "become a symbol for millions of Americans who have grown tired of seeing individual achievement and merit take a back seat to race and ethnicity."
For Lieutenant Vargas, the ruling will probably mean a long-awaited promotion to captain in a 350-member department that he has admired since childhood but that has been plagued for decades by racial tension and recriminations.
"I consider myself an American - I was born and raised here," he said in an interview on the porch of his home in the wooded suburb of Wallingford. "I love my people. I love my culture. I love our rice and beans, our salsa music, our language - everything my parents raised us with. But I am so grateful for the opportunity only the United States can give."
When Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor--assuming nothing happens to derail her approval by the Senate--dives into the cases before her, will her empathy reach someone like Vargas? Someone who understands why opportunity, not race, should be what America is about?
The Times profile concludes:
Gesturing toward his three young sons, Lieutenant Vargas explained why he had no regrets. "I want them to have a fair shake, to get a job on their merits and not because they're Hispanic or they fill a quota," he said. "What a lousy way to live."
God Wants You to be Sick
Posted by on 7.3.09 @ 6:02AM
Okay, that's not quite the way the religious Lefties put it when they rallied recently on behalf of socialized health care. But that might as well be their message.
Reports Rebekah Sharpe for the Institute on Religion and Democracy:
Inspired by a meeting with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA)'s office in early April, liberal religious leaders banded together into the "Believe Together: Health Care for All" advocacy network comprised of more than 40 faith groups who are "encouraging our nation's leaders to pass comprehensive and compassionate health care reform legislation this year." The central component of their advocacy was the June 24th "Interfaith Service of Witness and Prayer for Health Care for All."
The healthcare coalition wants the federal government to socialize America's health care system. President Obama and many congressional Democrats are advocating a new federal health insurance program that would compete with private insurance. Critics allege this program ultimately would drive private insurance out of business. Liberal church groups largely prefer a "single payer" plan that would eliminate private health insurance in favor of federal control.
Leaders at the June 24 rally/service emphasized that this was a critical time for people of faith to coordinate their efforts with Congress. Neera Tandan, a Senior Adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services, told the religious activists: "Your united voice is critical... We are, in the next two months, at the most critical time of trying to get [healthcare] legislation passed." Tandan encouraged, "Hopefully, we are months, not years away from the day we cover all Americans."
An estimated 850 to 1100 Religious Left activists sat in the afternoon heat for two hours in Freedom Plaza in the nation's capital as leaders of their churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples prayed and spoke in favor of a socialized medical system that they insisted must be "inclusive, accessible, affordable, and accountable."
You'd think those purporting to represent the poor would advocate a system which expanded individual choice and people's access to medical care. But while the religious Left says it wants "inclusive, accessible, affordable, and accountable" health care," that is the opposite of what would occur in a government-run system.
Look at nationalized systems around the world. Accountable they most certainly are not. Inclusive and accessible they are only in the sense that you are promised a long wait in a long line for services most Americans take for granted. And the systems are affordable only by rationing care and denying the best life-saving treatments to most people, especially the elderly.
I'll admit that God hasn't yet told me what kind of health care system he wants America to have. But I'm skeptical that he views socialized medicine as a means of inaugurating his kingdom on earth. A better approach to affirm human life and dignity would seem to be to increase the choices available to patients, allowing them to make more decisions about their own treatment.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Lawyer Responds to Rep. Jackson Lee's ACORN Questions
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 11:45PM
Even I am getting tired of writing about ACORN today (honest!), but another story came over the transom.
Here we go:
I have learned that after testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on March 19, Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) Vice President Heather Heidelbaugh today responded to a request for additional information about ACORN from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), a member of the committee. (letter available here as PDF)
Heidelbaugh had testified at the hearing about ACORN's many misdeeds. At the time, committee chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan) said the allegations were "a pretty serious matter" and that an investigation was warranted. Heidelbaugh's testimony about ACORN was largely based on evidence provided by ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief in her testimony in a 2008 Pennsylvania lawsuit called Moyer v. Cortes. (331-page transcript available here as PDF)
Heidelbaugh had testified in Congress that the nonprofit group violated a host of tax, campaign finance, and other laws. She said the presidential campaign of Barack Obama sent ACORN its "maxed out donor list" and asked two of the avowedly nonpartisan group's employees "to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN." The New York Times had the donor list story but editors there spiked it the month before the election, she said, repeating the assertion on "The O'Reilly Factor" two weeks later.
Here are the two questions posed by Lee and the short versions of the answers from Heidelbaugh (as provided in an RNLA press release available here):
Q. Do you think ACORN staff was simply untrained and that there was no systematic attempt by ACORN to engage in voter fraud?
A. Based on the evidence I have seen, my opinion is that the ACORN staff were not adequately trained to conduct proper voter registration drives. Further, I question whether the system of compensation in place for the staff obtaining voter registration cards both for the worker and for ACORN encouraged voter registration fraud. It is also my opinion based on the evidence that I have seen that it was not a simple matter of poor training. Lastly, it is my opinion based on the evidence I have seen from the King County Settlement Agreement, the testimony in the Pennsylvania case, and the news reports from other criminal investigations that ACORN as an organization has either willfully failed to properly train its workers or grossly negligently failed to train its workers. Further information is needed in order to determine which is closer to the actual scenario. In addition, since ACORN operated voter registration drives in so many states, each state or local operation may differ in its training efforts.
Q. Do the workers with ACORN get paid based upon how many registrations they complete?
A. There have been widespread allegations from former ACORN employees that ACORN does pay its employees on a per registration basis and has imposed a quota system upon its employees. These allegations have been raised in states including Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. These allegations have been the basis of charges brought against ACORN representatives in the state of Nevada.
If you wish to read Heidelbaugh's complete answers to Rep. Lee, they are available here as a PDF.
On May 4 Conyers mysteriously backed away from plans for a probe the same week a raft of new voter registration fraud charges were laid against ACORN and its ex-employees in Nevada and Pennsylvania. Last week Conyers cryptically remarked that he wasn't going to proceed with an investigation because "the powers that be decided against it." He refused to elaborate.
Incidentally, the chairman of the RNLA, David Norcross, was on the "Glenn Beck Program" last night talking about ACORN, the Secretary of State Project, and their role in electing Al Franken, the incoming second Democratic senator representing Minnesota. Here is the video clip:
Note: On July 3, I obtained the above referenced Jackson Lee letter dated June 17 and added a link to it above.
Do Census Layoffs Clear the Way for Hiring of ACORN Workers?
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 9:21PM
This might be something, or it might be nothing.
Remember when the Obama administration lied about the extent of ACORN's involvement in the 2010 Census?
After the Census Bureau responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Judicial Watch reported that
In its official statement responding to the ACORN controversy, the Obama Commerce Department downplayed ACORN's participation in the Census, and labeled "baseless" the notion that ACORN would be involved in any Census count. However, the Census Bureau offered ACORN the opportunity to "recruit Census workers" who would participate in the count. Moreover, as an "executive level" partner, ACORN has the ability to "organize and/or serve as a member on a Complete Count Committee," which, according to Census documents, helps "develop and implement locally based outreach and recruitment campaigns."
According to its application ACORN also signed up to: "Encourage employees and constituents to complete and mail their questionnaire; identify job candidates and/or distribute and display recruiting materials; appoint a liaison to work with the Census Bureau; provide space for Be Counted sites and/or Questionnaire Assistance Centers; sponsor community events to promote participation in the 2010 Census," among 18 requested areas of responsibility. The documents also show the decision to add ACORN as a partner occurred in February, long after the January 15th Census partnership application deadline. (One Census official had bet "it was under Bush.")
Now today the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the layoff of Census workers comprised the bulk of the jobs just lost in the federal government. The July 2 Employment Situation Summary states: "Employment in federal government fell by 49,000 in June, largely due to the layoff of workers temporarily hired to prepare for Census 2010."
What's wrong with this picture? The federal government isn't exactly on an austerity binge right now.
Given that the Obama administration lied about ACORN's involvement in the Census, it might be lying now about the laid off workers being temporary employees. Is the way being cleared for ACORN workers to be hired?
If the administration hadn't tried a few months ago to move oversight of the Census into the White House and then lied about ACORN and the Census, the news of the layoffs would not have caught my attention.
However, the Obama administration did attempt the Census power play and it did lie about ACORN's involvement in the Census, so reasonable observers have every reason to be suspicious.
And former ACORN organizer Gregory Hall recently warned in a Washington Examiner op-ed about the dangers of letting ACORN participate in the Census:
There is no reason to believe the problems of staff mistreatment or systematic fraud will be any different if and when the federal government asks ACORN to take its show on the road to households across the country.
Helen Thomas Speaks Truth to Power. What?
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 3:48PM
It turns out the woman at a White House-sponsored healthcare forum who pulled the heartstrings of the media by asking President Obama for help in treating her cancer was an Obama plant. (Philip Klein blogged about this earlier.)
Debby Smith is a volunteer for Organizing for America, which is a project of the Democratic National Committee. She was invited to the event not by an outside group but by the White House itself.
No wonder the president hugged her.
Nowadays all presidents host tightly choreographed public events aimed at promoting their policy preferences but this one is particularly Riefenstahl-esque in its execution.
Even veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas (see video) thought the taxpayer-funded dog-and-pony show was a bit much.
"I'm amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency," said Thomas, a hardcore liberal who called George W. Bush "the worst president in American history." Thomas accused the White House of "controlling the press" and said just about all Obama events are "prepackaged."
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was dismissive. "We've had this discussion before," he said.
"Of course you would because you don't have any answers," Thomas shot back.
Gibbs mocked Thomas by gently laughing while she spoke. If you watch the video and observe his body language and tone of voice it's obvious that he's trying to make Thomas, who is 88 years old, look like a senile old kook. I may routinely disagree with her interpretation of events, but in this writer's opinion she's no fool.
The arrogance of Gibbs seems to be par for the course for the Obama White House which is intent on destroying the American healthcare system.
But this appalling lack of respect for the longest-serving member of the White House press corps foreshadows how Obama's system of government-run healthcare would treat the elderly.
After all, Obama already admitted his plan for elder care amounts to launching the nation's sick, old, expensive-to-treat people into the hereafter courtesy of government-provided ice floes.
That's the ghoulish calculus of socialist medicine: if you're too expensive to treat, you die.
When Thinking About a Public Health Care Plan
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 3:15PM
Think about Harvard Professor Malcolm Sparrow's Senate testimony:
The units of measure for losses due to health care fraud and abuse in this country are hundreds of billions of dollars per year. We just don't know the first digit. It might be as low as one hundred billion. More likely two or three. Possibly four or five. But whatever that first digit is, it has eleven zeroes after it. These are staggering sums of money to waste, and the task of controlling and reducing these losses warrants a great deal of serious attention. One of my deep regrets is to discover that academia has paid almost no serious attention to this critical problem. I suspect this neglect is because the art of health care fraud control falls awkwardly between the traditional disciplines of health economics, health policy, crime control policy, anomaly detection and pattern recognition.
That's right. Fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government's medical programs runs somewhere between $100 billion and $500 billion. We just don't know the first number. But there certainly are 11 zeroes afterwards.
Yes, wouldn't a new public health insurance plan be a grand idea! At least, it would be for the crooks who are doing so well milking taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid!
The Wal-Mart Sell-Out
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 2:36PM
Wal-Mart once was seen as a conservative, values-driven company. Unfortunately, it has become a profiteeering rent-seeker, backing a federal employer mandate for health insurance as a means to hobble its competition.
Reports Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner:
The New Republic's health-care blogger, Jonathan Cohn, came close to Wal-Mart's true motivation: "Wal-Mart has suddenly found itself ... dealing with unpredictable health costs and facing new competition from businesses that have found ways to spend even less on employee health benefits."
The most important part of that analysis can be put more simply: Wal-Mart sees a way to use government as cudgel with which to knee-cap smaller opponents.
You see, Wal-Mart already offers health insurance to all full-time employees and some part-time employees. Many of Wal-Mart's competitors do not do this, which is why the National Retail Federation opposes the mandate. An employer mandate imposes costs on Wal-Mart's competitors, possibly without imposing costs on Wal-Mart.
Cato health-care expert Michael Cannon wrote this week of when a Wal-Mart lobbyist explained the company's support for a federal employer mandate: "Target's health benefits costs are lower."
A mandate for employer coverage will have some standards, and if those standards--maximum employee cost, maximum deductible, minimum coverage--are stricter than what, say, Target offers, Target suffers, which is Wal-Mart's gain.
There's always good reason to be suspicious of proposals for new federal regulations. There's especially good reason to be suspicious when some businesses are supporting those new regulations!
Harvard Funded Campaign of Senator-elect Al Franken (D-ACORN)
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 2:35PM
If you need another reason to hate Harvard University, here's a good one: individuals and entities related to the elite politically correct school that has more money than God collectively constituted the ninth-biggest donor to Senator-elect Al Franken's 2008 campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Individuals and entities related to Harvard gave $21,900 to the Franken campaign.
Note: Imprecise wording compelled the amendment of this item at 6:10 p.m.
Kennedy Bill Creates "Start-Up Fund" for Govt Plan
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 1:29PM
I just skimmed through the latest version of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committtee bill that I mentioned earlier. PDF here.
But here are the highlights:
-- The bill would create a mandate requiring individuals to obtain health insurance and employers with 25 or more employees to provide health insurance or face a tax.
--It would offer health insurance subsidies for those making up to 400 percent of the poverty line (that's $84,800 for a family of 4) to help people get covered.
-- It would require that insurers offer coverage to everybody who applies, regardless of preexisting conditions, and it bars them from charging different rates based on health factors. For those following this blog, yes, that still means outlawing programs like the one Safeway runs, which encourages healthier living by offering discounted premiums to those who maintain health weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels.
--It would bar insurers from setting annual or lifetime dollar limits on coverage, and create a federal "slacker mandate" requiring that insurers allow parents to keep children on their family insurance plans until the age of 26.
--Instead of a national health insurance exchange, the federal government will require each state to create its own exchange -- called a Gateway. If a state doesn't create one within four years, the federal government will step in and establish one in the state.
--Each state exchange will be comprised of private insurers who would have to offer plans that are considered "qualified" by the government and a government-run plan, which is called a "community health insurance option.” Private insurers would have to pay a surcharge of up to 4 percent of premiums collected to subsidize the exchange (unclear to me at this point whether that would also apply to the government plan).
--In order to establish the government-run plan, the federal government will create a "Start-Up Fund," which is supposed to be paid back within 10 years. The bill, however, does not specify the consequnces if the government plan is overbudget and unable to pay back its start up costs.
Artistic Skill Saves Life
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 12:00PM
I wonder how many of those huge portraits of dictators are "commissioned" under threat of torture or death. That's what I thought as I continue to follow the testimony in the Nuremburg-type trials of the Khmer Rouge. As I mentioned yesterday, two of the men who survived the torture administered at the S-21 under Cambodian dictator Pol Pot were artists. This is how Bou Meng survived, from AP:
The artist was put to work painting portraits that glorified Mao Zedong of China and North Korea's Kim Il Sung and another that mocked Ho Chi Minh, the father of Vietnam's communist revolution.
"I was ordered to paint a picture of Ho Chi Minh's head on the body of a dog," 68-year-old Bou Meng told a U.N.-backed tribunal. Cambodia's archenemy was neighboring Vietnam, which eventually invaded to oust the Khmer Rouge in 1979....
The beatings stopped when his jailers found out he had a skill that could serve them.
"I survived because I could paint exact portraits of Pol Pot," he said. His first job was to copy Pol Pot's image from a photograph and make a towering painting that was 10 feet high and 5 feet wide (3 meters high and 1.5 meters wide). It took three months to complete.
Duch then ordered him to make three more paintings of Pol Pot and the other communist leaders.
Duch would sometimes oversee his work and smile at him when he did a good job or give him cigarettes, Bou Meng said.
Interesting how these dictators aren't always in one big brotherhood (as we already knew with Stalin and Hitler). In the eyes of Pol Pot, China was good; the Soviet Union and Vietnam were bad (the latter also oweing to land disputes and other neighbor-related conflicts).
AP: Woman Obama Hugged at Town Hall Was His Volunteer
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 11:05AM
The AP is reporting that Debby Smith, the woman who President Obama hugged during yesterday's town hall meeting and promised to help after she described her difficulties getting treatment for a tumor, "is a volunteer for Organizing for America, Obama's political operation within the Democratic National Committee" who "obtained her ticket through the White House."
One can only imagine what the press would have to say if the Bush White House had done something as cynical.
To sum up, during the session, Obama received questions from an advocate of a socialized, or single-payer health care, a representative of the liberal activist group Health Care for Americans Now, a member of the Service Employees International Union who asked what she could do to help, and one of his own volunteers.
I wrote about the town hall for the main site. Thanks to Matt Vadum for pointing out the AP article in comments.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 10:57AM
- "Green shoots:" all the workplace jerks are getting fired (Wall Street Journal)
- Ricci cases delves into some of the uglier parts of racial politics (RealClearPolitics)
- The left is once again hoping and praying for a socialist encyclical from the pope (First Things)
- Huh. The Washington Post, selling access? (Politico)
- Feminist scholarship is lagging (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
CBO Estimate on Revised Kennedy Bill
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 10:31AM
The AP is reporting that a new estimate of the health care bill coming out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has a price tag of $600 billion, while covering 97 percent of Americans -- a stark contrast from the $1 trillion estimate that covered a smaller number of Americans. However, the story is based on a letter from Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd reporting the CBO findings, but not any CBO report itself.
As liberal health care reporter Jonathan Cohn acknowledges, the $600 billion number does not actually include the expansion of Medicaid, which is expected to add about 20 million people to the program's rolls. Add that, Cohn writes, and you're likely looking at a bill that costs $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion over 10 years. He suggests that it will be deficit neutral once you factor in proposed cuts to Medicare, other savings, and tax increases.
The problem is, there's a big debate over how to raise revenue. Obama's proposal to cap the charitable deduction on wealthy Americans is not popular on the Hill, while the idea of taxing employer benefits has drawn fire of unions. That said, I'm going to reserve further comment until I can look at the actual CBO findings.
Government Efficiency at Work
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 9:39AM
The WSJ editorial page uses news of recent busts of a Medicare fraud ring to make an important point:
One of the purported benefits of nationalized health care is that it will be more efficient than private insurers since it would lack the profit motive and have lower administrative expenses, like Medicare. But one reason entitlement programs are so easy to defraud is precisely because they don't have those overhead costs -- they automatically pay whatever bills roll in with valid claims numbers.
In fact, an estimated $60 billion, or 7.5 percent, of the $800 billion spent on Medicare each year is lost in fraud.
Barney Frank Just Can't Stop Wasting Money
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 9:10AM
After having done so much to create the current economic crisis, you'd think House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank would be a little more cautious in the future. But no. He sees every new source of funds as a special interest honeypot for use to further subsidize the housing market which his policies had done so much to inflate.
Reports Byron York in the Washington Examiner:
Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the "TARP for Main Street Act of 2009," a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats.
In exchange for receiving TARP money, financial institutions were required to hand over shares of preferred stock that paid a dividend for the government. In theory, if a financial institution paid the dividend faithfully, and then repaid the TARP money, then the government would turn a profit. Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that, through June 12, 2009, the government had received $6.2 billion in dividend payments. The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt."
Frank, however, wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the "TARP for Main Street" proposal would take $1 billion "from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided under...the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called "neighborhood stabilization" fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.
The "TARP for Main Street" bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to "stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure."
The U.S. is facing a deficit of nearly $2 trillion this year and will average at least a billion dollars annually in red ink over the next decade. And these estimates probably are far too low. With all of the usual suspects--Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Federal Housing Administration, Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, FDIC, and more--facing growing losses and expecting more federal bailouts, there is no end in sight to pressure for increased federal outlays. Shouldn't Congress start trimming somewhere, instead of constantly coming up with new programs upon which to waste money Uncle Sam doesn't have?
Lawyers Gone Wild
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 9:06AM
This kind of thing probably happens so much that we'd be sick if it was all reported: A band of DC lawyers, hired by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to press his environmental "nuisance" case against the Tennessee Valley Authority (bad neighbors, ya know), go hog wild at NC taxpayer expense. My pal (and AmSpec contributor) David Bass at Carolina Journal (the John Locke Foundation newspaper) discovered it:
Invoices show that a Resolution paralegal was reimbursed almost $7,000 last year for a month-long stay at an upscale Washington, D.C., hotel. But airline receipts indicate that she was present at the hotel only 12 out of 29 nights, incurring more than $4,000 in unused room fees.
Other records show that Cooper's office reimbursed Resolution’s lead counsel in the TVA case nearly $500 for a flight between Asheville and Washington that he never took.
As reported by CJ in March, Cooper also repaid Resolution lawyers for alcohol, candy, airline flight upgrades, and valet parking, in addition to paying the Ayres Law Group, a second firm assisting with the TVA case, up to $515 per hour in legal fees.
The reimbursements in part came from $1.7 million in gas-tax revenue and inspection and maintenance fees that Cooper’s office transferred from the N.C. Division of Air Quality to help meet TVA litigation expenses. DAQ is planning to cut 25 staff positions in the fiscal year that began Wednesday; budget constraints caused by the transfers are cited as one reason for the agency’s reduction in personnel.
Hey government watchdogs, this is an easy one: Request expense reports of subcontracted lawyers from your state's Department of Justice. Undoubtedly you will find something amiss.
Stimulus Update: Unemployment Reaches 9.5 Pct
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 8:52AM
Unemployment crept up to 9.5 percent in June while 467,000 jobs were lost, according to the Department of Labor. May job losses were revised downward to 322,000, meaning that the pace of job losses has accelerated. There were 793,000 discouraged workers in June who stopped looking for jobs and were not counted in the unemployment rate.
According to my own calculations, about 2 million jobs have now been lost since the stimulus passed. So it's pretty clear today that what we need to do this July 4 holiday is thank our dear leader, because things would have been a lot worse if he weren't "saving or creating" so many jobs.
Mary Lou Forbes Laid to Rest
Posted by on 7.2.09 @ 6:16AM
Memorial services for those who lived well always are bittersweet. There is sadness at the passing of a friend, mentor, role model, and more. But there are stories and remembrances which generate joy and laughter. So it was yesterday at the funeral mass for long-time Washington Times editor Mary Lou Forbes.
Mary Lou was little known to the public, but was a giant in conservative and journalistic circles. One exceptional experience in a life full of exceptional experiences was her friendship with Carl Bernstein--begun when he started at the Washington Star, well before his Watergate fame. Their friendship carried forth for a half century. The Washington Times covered the service:
Family, friends and journalists gathered Wednesday to pay their final respects to Mary Lou Forbes, longtime commentary editor at The Washington Times, who died Saturday after a brief battle with cancer.
Mrs. Forbes, 83, got her start at The Washington Star as a 17-year-old copy girl and worked for more than six decades as a reporter, news chief and opinion editor. She guided hundreds of journalists - including future Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein and nationally syndicated columnist Cal Thomas. Her reporting on the Virginia civil rights struggle won her a Pulitzer Prize in 1959 and helped open doors for aspiring female journalists.
Mr. Bernstein, who worked as a copy boy and dictationist at The Star, said his first impression of Mrs. Forbes was the "glamorous woman at the other end of the desk.
"She was one of the boys, and yet she never forgot also that she was a woman," Mr. Bernstein said. "And I don't know if she was aware or not of this 'trailblazing' role that she had, but nobody could have done it better than she did."
Looking around the church I saw many people I first met two decades or more ago in politics and journalism. We all seem to have added a few pounds and lost a little hair. Many of us have changed jobs and fallen out of touch. But friendship with and admiration of Mary Lou drew us back together to celebrate her life.
She will be missed.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Malkin on IG-Gate: Does the Endangered Species Act IncludeWatchdogs?
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 7:10PM
For the second time in three weeks, Michelle Malkin devotes her syndicated column to the Obama administration's war on inspectors general:
Watchdogs are an endangered species in the Age of Obama. The latest government ombudsman to get the muzzle: Amtrak inspector general Fred Weiderhold. The longtime veteran employee was abruptly "retired" last month -just as the government-subsidized rail service faces mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes.
Question the timing? Hell, yes. . . .
Read the whole thing. Stay tuned, folks. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have also reported on this story in the past two days. Like I said two weeks ago, this little scandal isn't going away any time soon.
Talking Franken on MSNBC
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 6:02PM
I was on MSNBC earlier debating Open Left's Adam Green about the impact of Al Franken giving Democrats 60 votes in Senate. Things got a bit testy when I challenged Green for promoting polls suggesting widespread support for the inclusion of a government-run plan in health care legislation. Not sure how well I made my point amid all the crosstalk, but the thing is that when the Washington Post asked people if they would still want a government plan if it meant driving private insurers out of business, support dropped to 37 percent. The response I got was that these things depend on how you ask the question -- but that was precisely my point. Outside of Washington, people aren't yet following all of the nuances of the health care policy debate, so it isn't surprising to me that, when asked in a benign-sounding way, they're fine with a government plan. However, as more people follow the debate and they begin to hear the counterarguments, support will drop. The Post poll just demonstrates how malleable public opinion is when it comes to health care.
John Conyers, Call Your Office
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 4:59PM
Rep. John Conyer's wife has gone down for corruption. He wasn't involved in her bribery, but his congressional actions may have been affected by her lobbying of him. Reports the Washington Times:
Rep. John Conyers Jr. reversed his opposition to a controversial hazardous waste project in his district, writing a letter of support to the federal government with the help of his wife, former Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers, whose aide later linked her to receiving money from the contractor in the project.
The letter, sent in July 2007, was written in support of permit transfers for a hazardous waste injection well project in the city of Romulus, Mich., which was operated by a company with ties to Mrs. Conyers, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery in a federal investigation unrelated to the hazardous waste project.
In his letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Michigan Democrat, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said many things had changed in favor of the project since he stood in opposition along with fellow Michigan congressman, Rep. John D. Dingell, in 2003. He also said Detroit's pension funds, which were heavily invested in the project, could not afford to write off those investments.
Mr. Conyers' spokeswoman, Karen Morgan, said in a statement to The Washington Times: "In the context of the congressmans representational duties to his constituents, including the Detroit pension board, he determined that this was something the EPA should reconsider.
The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 4:06PM
So Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair hit piece on Sarah Palin has led to more shooting by that circular firing squad known as the McCain campaign team. Jonathan Martin has a story in the Politico; Mark Hemingway sheds more light over at The Corner.
Once again we're treated to Steve Schmidt versus Randy Scheunemann versus God only knows who else, with a cameo appearance by Bill Kristol. Somebody else can sort out who leaked what to whom. To me, the only takeaway is this: As godawful as Barack Obama has been and will continue to be, it is very difficult to feel it is some great loss that these people didn't get a chance to help run the country.
Peter Schiff Within Striking Distance of Chris Dodd
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 3:04PM
The economist and TV commentator Peter Schiff is considering getting into the Republican primary fight to challenge Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). They've conducted a poll that shows Schiff is competitive with Dodd, though not presently as strong as former Congressman Rob Simmons. I discuss a similar dynamic between Simmons and state Sen. Sam Caliguiri in the July/August issue of The American Spectator. I'll have more to say about Schiff's potential candidacy later.
Obama Health Care Town Hall
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 2:37PM
Expect to have more later, but worth noting for now that the just concluded Obama health care town hall meeting included questions from a single-payer advocate, a liberal activist from Health Care for Americans now, and a member of the SEIU, who asked what she could do to help Obama pass health care reform. Not much news generated, but I'm sure the media will focus on the moment when Obama hugged and promised to help a woman who said she has a tumor that she cannot afford to get treated.
Khmer Rouge Survivors Speak
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 1:30PM
The trial of Comrade Duch, or Kaing Guek Eav, continues this week with the three known survivors of Tuol Sleng (or S-21) who are still alive testifying. Stats are impossible to nail down, but most who paid attention estimate that about 17,000 passed through those torture chambers and only seven survived. Two -- Vann Nath and Bou Meng -- were artists kept alive by Duch because of their skill in painting or illustrating pictures of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. The third, Chum Mey, survived because he could repair equipment and vehicles for the regime. Reuters reports:
"I saw about 20 men with long hair, looking very sick and emaciated. The cell was like hell on earth," Meng told the court.
The prisoners were kept in chains with empty bullet boxes and plastic bottles to use as toilets.
"I saw a lizard and hoped it would drop on me so I could catch it and eat it," Meng said. "They kept whipping me and asked me when I joined the CIA." (the paranoid regime extracted confessions from all suspected opponents -- that they were agents of the CIA, KGB, or Vietnam -- before torturing and executing them)
For the first time in three decades, Meng had the chance to question Duch, the first of five Pol Pot cadres indicted by the tribunal.
He never saw his wife again after they entered S-21 and he asked his torturer what had happened to her.
"I expect she was killed by my subordinates," Duch replied.
Chum Mey's testimony was equally chilling:
(He) told the judges on Tuesday his toenails were torn off and that he, too, was held in a dark cell, his legs shackled. He received hardly any food and expected to die at any moment.
"I will never forget my suffering at S-21, as long as I live," he said, his voice breaking, tears rolling down his face.
"When I entered the room, I didn't expect to survive. I just laid on my back, waiting to be killed."
Mey's wife and four children were among the 1.7 million Cambodian's who died under Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist revolution, which ended in the 1979 invasion by Vietnam.
He too was accused of being a spy for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Can't help but imagine political prisoners in today's dictatorial regimes aren't any better off.
Rep. Sestak Says He Will Challenge Specter in Pa. Dem Primary
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 1:09PM
“I am going to get into the race against Arlen Specter ... for senator.”
So says Pennsylvania US Rep. Joe Sestak, a Democrat from suburban Philadelphia. Sestak made the statement this morning in an interview with a local paper, the Wayne Independent.
A former Navy Admiral, Sestak was elected in 2006, defeating longtime Republican incumbent Curt Weldon.
This will mean a serious fight inside the Democratic Party for the new Democrat Specter. Specter left the GOP after polls showed he was headed for a certain GOP primary defeat at the hands of former GOP Congressman Pat Toomey, who narrowly lost to Specter in the 2004 Republican primary. While Specter has the support of President Obama, his longtime friend Vice President Joe Biden, and Governor Ed Rendell, Rendell is term-limited and will be replaced himself in 2010.
Batman's a Scientist
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 12:30PM
Anyone who has even casually encountered the global warming industry knows that this crowd's first response to any challenge, of any sort, from any source, is to go ad hominem. Ad hom is a way to change the subject by people for whom the facts are not helpful. As we also see in the case of EPA getting caught suppressing the sole substantive report submitted as part of its "internal deliberation" over whether to seize the energy sector of the economy, it also reveals staggering ignorance about the issue on a par with President Obama's recent claim that carbon dioxide, eh, "contaminate[s] the water we drink and pollute[s] the air we breathe." He said, opening a Perrier and exhaling a sigh...
They know what they need to know, and that is that it has been decided that this is the vehicle for long-desired "social change", and whatever means that are necessary will be employed. Facts and logic are, to these people, for losers.
We see it again today, in a Washington Times story about the suppressed report. There we read that a spokeswoman for EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson, who made the determination that CO2 threatens the world, "noted that the memo's author, Alan Carlin, is an economist, not a climate scientist". Funny how people tasked with certain jobs become unqualified only when they are inconvenient.
Carlin is, indeed, a PhD economist from MIT, which he obtained after earning a degree in physics from Cal Tech. Both of which probably explain why he holds the job he holds, to review such proposals. But this reflexive ad hom begs several obvious questions, none more obvious than what makes Lisa P. Jackson a climate scientist? [she's a chemical engineer]
For that matter, who the hell are Barack Obama, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, Nancy Pelosi...need I continue? They all apparently are perfectly suited to reach informed judgment on the issue. Waxman is a scientist (bachelor's in political science, UCLA ‘61) like Batman's a scientist. Freeman Dyson, meanwhile, is "just a physicist". Clearly, our governmental Solons are qualified by means of agreeing that this issue must be ridden to achieve the desired "change".
As I detail in Red Hot Lies, this ad hom addiction doesn't serve the alarmists well. For example, when assailing critics of the IPCC report to which EPA admittedly outsourced its decision making and which was written by 52 government representatives as part of a process expressly chartered to support a future global warming treaty and not, as EPA claims, peer-reviewed (many peers did review it, and we learned through a FOIA threat that just like EPA's reviewer they rejected it, only to be ignored. That's a lot of things, but peer review isn't one of them).
Naturally, some of us wondered about the amazing qualifications which must attach to these "world's leading climate scientists" behind the IPCC who are not to be challenged -- what it must take to become qualified to speak! -- only to discover they were no such thing, but did include some anthropology teaching assistants and the like (really).
Team Soros were particularly adamant about an economist daring to opine - as with EPA today, as part of its deferring instead to the IPCC (remember that) - sniveling "since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?" Hmmm.
The fellow posing as the IPCC's chief "climatologist" (New York Times andUSA Today), or the UN's "chief climate scientist" (AP)? Oh. Right. He's an economist.
The alarmists, and now the Obama Administration through-and-through, are bullying, sneaking, dissembling and on occasion openly lying to the public to get their way. You've got a little bit of time left to be outraged. I and my colleagues are flattered that so many people just assume we're handling these things, and the public can go about their lives. I have a life on the outside, too, with a wife and children. So, please, when this comes down, don't call me. We told you.
Nancy Pelosi's America
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 11:55AM
Nancy Pelosi famously described the "stimulus" bill as triggering a discussion in America in which everyone was asking what's in it for them. She meant this as some sort of compliment.
Well, probably in Nancy Pelosi's America. Similarly, the New York Times has a story today, "With Something for Everyone, Climate Bill Passed", touching on the billions handed out to special interests and their politicians to buy support and drag the Waxman-Madoff bill over the finish line on Friday.
They left someone out of their list. You. You got the biggest tax increase in the history of the United States. Funny how such details get lost in the shuffle.
Obama's Cloudy Crystal Ball
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 10:50AM
Today's New York Times explores why the White House was wildly off in its employment projections when it was trying to sell the stimulus package. If you remember, the economic team said that if we passed the stimulus, unemployment would be around 8 percent now and without it, we'd be looking at unemployment in the double digits. Well, we passed the stimulus, and unemployment is 9.4 percent anyway, and the White House now concedes it will rise above 10 percent. The Times notes that, "In concrete terms, the difference between the situation that the Obama advisers predicted and the one that has come to pass is about 2.5 million jobs."
The White House has offered two main explanations for why their estimates were way off. One is that only a small amount of the stimulus money has been deployed thus far. But I find that rather amusing, because at the time the stimulus was being debated, one of the very arguments critics were making against the package was that it was too focused on long-term projects and that most of the money would not get deployed for years. "I think there's a lot of slow moving government spending in this program that won't work," John Boehner said on "Meet the Press" during the debate.
The other argument the White House has made is that the economy has deteriorated much more than anybody anticipated. In last week's press conference, Obama said, "keep in mind the stimulus package was the first thing we did, and we did it a couple of weeks after inauguration. At that point nobody understood what the depths of this recession were going to look like. If you recall, it was only significantly later that we suddenly get a report that the economy had tanked."
But this is just another example of Obama rewriting history, because when he was trying to sell the stimulus, Obama was talking about the economic situation in dire terms. In a Washington Post op-ed published on Feb. 5, in which Obama made the case for the stimulus, he began, "By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression." So either he was lying then about the depths of the crisis to sell the stimulus or he's lying now to defend it.
However, even if we give Obama the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that economic conditions are inherently unpredictable, why should we then trust the economic projections the White House is making to sell other items on his domestic agenda? If his economic team was 2.5 million jobs off -- and counting -- in projecting unemployment just a few months into the future, how on earth can we trust their claims about all the money preventive care, information technology, and other such measures will save us on health care 10 or 20 years from now?
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 9:55AM
- No one in D.C. is man enough to let a big company fail or fire Bernanke (Wall Street Journal)
- Uh-oh, Deval Patrick is not liked in Massachusetts. Could he be the forerunner for his buddy, plagiarist-in-chief Barack Obama? (Red State)
- A unified theory of Obamaism: Gene Healy subscribes (RealClearPolitics)
- Leon Wieseltier: Obama has the backbone of a chocolate eclair (The New Republic)
More TARP Corruption
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 6:36AM
You are a U.S. Senator. You vote for TARP to bail-out banks. Your office calls the regulators to make sure a bank in which you have a financial stake receives TARP money. You are Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's staff contacted federal regulators last fall to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that he had helped to establish and where he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth.
The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm's losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn't meet the criteria for receiving a favorable recommendation and had forwarded the application to a council that reviewed marginal cases, according to agency documents.
Two weeks after the inquiry from Inouye's office, Central Pacific announced that the Treasury would inject $135 million.
It's good to see that an economic crisis brings out the best in our legislators!
Gov. Sanford: Please Go Away!
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 6:19AM
James Antle says Gov. Sanford should shut up. For some reason, the cheating, lying chief executive of South Caroline believes that we all need to know more details of his "love story." Uh, no. I lost interest long ago. In fact, I never was interested in the details.
While the loquacious, clueless guv is humiliating himself, he's also further hurting his wife and children. But apparently he is too self-centered to notice. The true heroine here is Jenny Sanford. She's conducting herself with dignity and putting her kids first. She appears to have all of the class that her husband lacks. As Ruth Marcus writes in an appreciative column in today's Washington Post:
What I admire most about Sanford's response is that she has apparently concluded -- correctly so -- that the person who is humiliated by her husband's affair is, in fact, her husband, not her. And so she is not standing by his side, but she is not hiding in a hole, either.
Instead, she took the kids out to see the tall ships -- and breezily told the press mob, "I wish we had room on the boat for you all, but we do not." He rambled on in a news conference; she crafted an elegant and thoughtful statement.
Shutting up isn't enough. Gov. Sanford: please, resign and go away. Go heal your family. But if you're too selfish and myopic to do that, go follow your illicit love or whatever else you want to do. Just do it out of the public view and stop inflicting your tortured views on the rest of us. Really, just GO AWAY!
Brits Say: Time to Get Realistic on Defense
Posted by on 7.1.09 @ 4:42AM
A new British think tank report urges the United Kingdom to have more modest military aspirations. Reports the National Newspaper: "Britain should stop trying to be 'a mini-United States' and give up maintaining armed forces capable of policing world trouble spots, a report from an influential think tank said yesterday."
Business as usual simply won't work in today's world, especially in the midst of economic crisis. Added the National:
Lord Paddy Ashdown, joint chairman of the panel and a former international high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, told the BBC yesterday: "One conclusion we arrive at is that we can no longer afford to maintain a museum of Cold War armaments.
"We can no longer afford to maintain full-spectrum armed forces capable of operating anywhere in the globe like a mini-United States."
Lord George Robertson, co-chairman of the panel and a former Nato secretary general, added: "In the post-9/11, post-financial crisis world, we must be smarter and more ruthless in targeting national resources as the real security risks.
A more realistic military policy centered more on genuine national defense? I don't know about Britain, but it sure sounds like a good idea for America!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Al Franken (D-ACORN) Heads to the Senate
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 8:00PM
After the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit today, Republican Norm Coleman graciously conceded the bitterly disputed contest over the second U.S. Senate seat for Minnesota.
None of this changes the fact that as a senator Al Franken is not legitimate. The election was stolen at the precinct level, during the recount, and during the post-election litigation.
Never forget the role that ACORN played in this.
As ACORN-aligned Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a former community organizer, presided over the vote-counting process, Coleman's original lead dwindled. The morning after the election, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. Over the next five days, Coleman's lead had dwindled to just 221. Election officials claimed they had to correct typos on vote tally sheets and that these corrections gave Franken 435 votes and took 69 away from Coleman.
There were mountains of other irregularities which I'm not going to bother detailing here and somehow in the end Franken came out on top.
Ritchie was elected Minnesota secretary of state in part because of outside help. He defeated two-term incumbent Republican Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006 after receiving an endorsement and financial assistance for his run from a below-the-radar non-federal "527" group called the Secretary of State Project. The entity can accept unlimited financial contributions and doesn't have to disclose them publicly until well after the election.
The founders of the Secretary of State Project, which claims to advance "election protection" but only backs Democrats, religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 (Katherine Harris) and in Ohio in 2004 (Ken Blackwell).
The secretary of state candidates the group endorses sing the same familiar song about electoral integrity issues: Voter fraud is largely a myth, vote suppression is used widely by Republicans, cleansing the dead and fictional characters from voter rolls should be avoided until embarrassing media reports emerge, and anyone who demands that a voter produce photo identification before pulling the lever is a racist, democracy-hating Fascist.
In 2006, the Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee endorsed Ritchie and donated to his campaign. According to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, contributors to Ritchie's campaign included liberal philanthropists George Soros, Drummond Pike, and Deborah Rappaport, along with veteran community organizer Heather Booth, a Saul Alinsky disciple who co-founded the Midwest Academy, a radical ACORN clone. One article on Ritchie's 2006 campaign website bragged about the fine work ACORN did in Florida to pass a constitutional amendment to raise that state's minimum wage.
It was revealed during a panel discussion at the Democratic Party's convention in Denver last summer that the Democracy Alliance, a financial clearinghouse created by Soros and insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, approved the Secretary of State Project as a grantee. The Democracy Alliance aspires to create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups-a kind of "vast left-wing conspiracy" to compete with the conservative movement. It has brokered more than $100 million in grants to liberal nonprofits including ACORN. The aforementioned Pike and Rappaport, who gave money to Ritchie's campaign, are members of the Democracy Alliance.
According to IRS 8872 disclosure forms, the Secretary of State Project received donations from Democracy Alliance members including Soros, Rob Stein, Gail Furman, and Susie Tompkins Buell.
Meanwhile, for conservatives, it hardly needs to be pointed out that this Frankenstein is a fundamentally unserious and untested figure worthy of ridicule. After being isolated in the echo chamber of the entertainment-media-academia complex where he got nothing but praise for decades, Franken is quite unsuited for the world outside. He cannot tolerate criticism and characteristically responds to it with over-the-top vitriolic attacks. He is the living embodiment of all the horrible things that conservatives fairly or unfairly impute to DailyKos bloggers.
A professional comedian originally, Al Franken remains a joke.
Shut Up, Sanford
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 5:41PM
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford appeared to have survived his Argentinian political scandal, but this AP interview -- in which he continues to embarrass his wife and himself with a surplus of candor about what really should remain private -- could very well blow the whole scandal open again. Sanford is an introspective man and he clearly was (is?) in love with the woman with whom he was unfaithful. But if he wants to govern, it is well past time to move on.
Sanford finds himself in a hole and he needs to stop digging. Of course, he hasn't taken that advice in the past.
Superior Court Rejects Marriage Referendum in D.C.
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 5:00PM
The fight for a referendum on recognizing same-sex marriage in D.C. likely came to an end today.
After a ballot petition from traditional marriage advocacy coalition Stand4MarriageDC was rejected by the district Board of Elections on June 16, the group filed an appeal in Superior Court, hoping to preempt a measure passed through the D.C. City Council that would recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the district. I have a piece about the leaders of Stand4MarriageDC and the ballot initiative up on the main site today.
Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin handed down a court order (pdf) earlier today, reaffirming the Council's finding that a referendum on marriage violates D.C.'s 1977 Human Rights Act (pdf) and dismissing the appellants' contention that an earlier case already proved that a vote on marriage was not a human rights violation.
In 1995, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in Dean v. District of Columbia that gay couples could not find legal provision for same-sex marriage within the DCHRA, and reaffirmed the districts 1901 marriage statutes, saying they clearly did not intend for marriage to be extended to same-sex couples.
But that finding is no longer valid, Judge Retchin decided, because "Dean involved a different factual scenario and presented a different legal question" and "seven of the eight gender-specific provisions in the marriage statute cited by Dean have been amended to make them gender-neutral." Also, the language of the DCHRA has been changed since 1995 to prevent discrimination based on an individual's "actual or perceived" membership in a protected class, further confusing the issue.
Perhaps most strangely, the ruling makes a distinction between 1995 and now because same-sex marriage actually exists in states and countries worldwide today, but was "a factual impossibility" 15 years ago and thus could not be approved in court. Judge Retchin does not, however, mention Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 2003 the Massachusetts Supreme Court case that effectively created same-sex marriage in that state, although it had not factually existed in the U.S. prior to the ruling.
The Alliance Defense Fund, who has legally represented Stand4Marriage, released the following statement in response to the ruling:
"We are disappointed with the court’s ruling but will proceed immediately with an initiative which will preserve marriage between one man and one woman in D.C. District residents today find themselves disenfranchised, unable to vote on an important public policy matter because political elites would rather serve a radical agenda than the people they represent," said Brian Raum, ADF Senior Legal Counsel.
"Marriage redefinition activists will advance their agenda by any means necessary, even if that means snuffing out fundamental rights like the right to vote. ADF will continue to defend the right of District residents to exercise their right to vote, because their elected representatives and this court have refused to do so."
The Massachusetts Goodridge decision also noted that "In a real sense, there are three partners to every civil marriage: two willing spouses and an approving State." Perhaps D.C. marriages should make room for two partners, the approving state, and the state's alternate personalities?
Our New Diplomat?
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 4:49PM
Speculation that Clinton apologist Sidney Blumenthal will join Hillary’s State Department team may bring inquiry about the statute of limitations for spreading disinformation about Monica Lewinsky. Is this hiring a sign that the Obama Administration is rethinking its foreign policy strategy of apology and appeasement and adding loathsome propagandists to its diplomatic ranks? Does it mean that Ahmadinejad and Kim have reached “Kenneth Starr” villain status?
Our New Diplomat?
By Asher Embry
Is there no better diplomat
Than Sidney, who insisted that
Lewinsky, who his boss defiled,
Was “stalking” Clinton all the while?
In statesmanship, precisely what’s
Equivalent to “nuts and sluts”?
That pretext, Sid had oft implored,
Would save the Prez he so adored.
How grand that State would hire Sid
Because the shady tricks he did.
No better statement there could be
To show the “world community”
They’re judging young Barack all wrong.
He isn’t weak, he’s really strong:
He’s finished with apologies;
Moved on to Sid’s mendacities.
Could this be true? The answer’s “nope.”
But we can always pray and “hope.”
(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)
ABC Pulls Stossel Health Care Special for More Michael Jackson Coverage
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 4:11PM
Last week, ABC made news by providing President Obama with 90-minutes worth of air time to push his health care agenda. Yet ABC reporter John Stossel had intended to present another perspective on the network with a report on the perils of government-run health care, looking at Canada. However, his report was pulled so that ABC could make room for yet more Michael Jackson coverage. Here's an overview of the pulled story.
Coleman Concedes
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 4:05PM
Norm Coleman, in an ongoing press conference, just conceeded the Minnesota U.S. Senate race to Al Franken. Coleman said he would abide by the court decision and called on everybody to come to come together. "I congratulate Al Franken in his victory," he said.
Big Government Wal-Mart
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 3:39PM
The nation's largest retailer has joined with the Service Employees International Union and the liberal Center for American Progress to support an employer mandate. In a letter to President Obama, Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke, along with Andy Stern of the SEIU and John Podesta of CAP, write "We are entering a critical time during which all of us who will be asked to pay for health care reform will have to make a choice on whether to support the legislation. This choice will require employers to consider the trade off of agreeing to a coverage mandate and additional taxes versus the promise of reduced health care cost increases." The letter later said, "We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage, but any alternative to an employer mandate should not create barriers to hiring entry level employees. We look forward to working with the Administration and Congress to develop a requirement that is both sensible and equitable."
This news isn't all that surprising. Wal-Mart has in the past supported initiatives such as raising the minimum wage, which hurt their competitors and allowed them to curry favor with their union critics. But this letter also reinforces why Obama's declaration that people can keep their insurance coverage if they like it is just hot air. Under a mandate, many employers would just pay a tax and dump their workers on to a government exchange, thus meaning a lot of people --likely in the tens of millions -- will lose their current coverage.
That said, the letter will help give President Obama and Democrats cover to push the employer mandate idea, and respond to criticism from the Chamber of Commerce, which has argued that a mandate would cost jobs and reduce salaries.
In Better News for the GOP...
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 2:52PM
Chris Christie is maintaining a 10-point lead over Jon Corzine in the New Jersey governor's race. According to the poll: "Christie is being buoyed by a 60-26 advantage with independent voters and a remarkable degree of party unity, as he leads 93-3 with Republicans. By comparison, Corzine has just a 75-16 edge with Democrats."
Breaking: State Supreme Ct Rules 5-0 for Franken
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 2:27PM
The Court ruled that Al Franken is entitled to a certificate of election. Tim Pawlenty has recently said he would issue a certificate to Franken if the court decided in his favor. So in other words: prepare for Sen. Al Franken.
The Star Tribune has more.
The Obama Administration's War on Science
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 1:28PM
The Bush administration is at it again. It is suppressing scientific views that run contrary to the administration's line.
NO, WAIT! It's the Obama administration that is conducting a war on science. It appears that the EPA has suppressed a report solely because it contradicted the president's belief in imminent catastrophe due to global warming.
Reports Declan McCullagh for CBS News:
The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.
Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."
Not only was the researcher's report not forwarded. He was told to stop working on climate change and to instead update the agency's grants database.
This is all so confusing. I thought we were living in the era of change, of openness, of liberalism and tolerance!
Vanity Fair on Palin
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 12:22PM
I just got through reading Todd Purdum's nearly 10,000-word Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin, and the most frustrating thing about it is that it doesn't break any new ground on a woman who has been scrutinized more heavily over the last ten months than any politician other than President Obama. Sure, there are a few gossipy nuggets, such as the fact that candidate Obama "believed Palin would never have time to get up to speed. He told his aides that it had taken him four months to learn how to be a national candidate, and added, 'I don’t care how talented she is, this is really a leap.'" There are also a lot of anonymous complaints from former McCain campaign staffers, the gist of which we've already heard at one time or another.
The rest of the piece is mainly a rehash of everything we've been reading for months:
Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin raises questions that will not soon go away. What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?
I happen to believe Palin deserves neither to be vilified nor made into a heroine. I always thought the instant comparisons to Reagan by conservatives after her convention speech went overboard, as did the demonization of her by the left. Every treatment of her ever since has followed the same sort of pattern -- uncritical adoration by her supporters, followed by vilification, followed by over the top defenses.
Purdum had the time and magazine space to break this cycle and deliver a more nuanced portrait of Palin. At one point of the article, recounting her surprising victory in the Alaska governor's race, Purdum wrote, "Palin’s victory that November was one of the flukiest successes in modern American politics. Rebecca Braun, the publisher of the Alaska Budget Report, a respected nonpartisan newsletter, describes the result as something 'far beyond anything you could explain in terms of intellect or training.'"
Well, it might have made for an interesting article if Purdum explored the mystery of how "the flukiest successes in modern American politics" came to be, or more broadly, described the political talents Palin actually displayed over the course of her apparently inexplicable rise. Instead, we just get a recycled hit piece that is sure to reignite the worst aspects of the Palin wars.
UPDATE: Alex Massie offers some worthwhile thoughts, noting, "The shame of Paln's emergence last year isn't that she blundered so badly, it's that there was something there but that, after her convention speech, that something was lost in the tumult that engulfed her and, in the end, helped destroy the McCain campaign."
Ricci: A 9-0 Rejection of Sotomayor
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 9:18AM
Don't be fooled by the 5-4 vote breakdown in the Supreme Court's ruling yesterday in Ricci v. DeStefano. The justices unanimously rejected Sonia Sotomayor's position.
Explains Stuart Taylor, Jr. in National Journal:
The Supreme Court's predictable 5-4 vote to reverse the decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and two federal appeals court colleagues against 17 white (and one Hispanic) plaintiffs in the now-famous New Haven, Conn., firefighters decision does not by itself prove that the Sotomayor position was unreasonable.
After all, it was hardly to be expected that the five more conservative justices -- who held that the city had violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act by refusing to promote the firefighters with the highest scores on a job-related promotional exam because none were black -- would endorse an Obama nominee's ruling to the contrary.
What's more striking is that the court was unanimous in rejecting the Sotomayor panel's specific holding. Her holding was that New Haven's decision to spurn the test results must be upheld based solely on the fact that highly disproportionate numbers of blacks had done badly on the exam and might file a "disparate-impact" lawsuit -- regardless of whether the exam was valid or the lawsuit could succeed.
This position is so hard to defend, in my view, that I hazarded a prediction in my June 13 column: "Whichever way the Supreme Court rules in the case later this month, I will be surprised if a single justice explicitly approves the specific, quota-friendly logic of the Sotomayor-endorsed... opinion" by U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton.
Unlike some of my predictions, this one proved out. In fact, even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 39-page dissent for the four more liberal justices quietly but unmistakably rejected the Sotomayor-endorsed position that disparate racial results alone justified New Haven's decision to dump the promotional exam without even inquiring into whether it was fair and job-related.
Not much of an endorsement for her nomination to the high court.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 7:54AM
- Hope for Iran in the Moroccan experience (Washington Post)
- It's man time all the time (Weekly Standard)
- The administration apparently doesn't know the first thing about the Iran protests, where are the spies? (The New Republic)
- The constitutionally-guaranteed right to stripper aerobis is being infringed in Pennsylvania (Reason)
- David Frum wonders why the French like their nuclear reactors so much. I think it might be because they get cheap energy from them (New Majority)
- Another day, another person realizes that RomneyCare is a nightmare (Red State)
Taxing Business, Taxing All of Us
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 6:51AM
The Obama administration wants to tax "business." Actually, the administration currently is pushing at least three significant business tax hikes. And that doesn't count whatever might emerge from health care "reform."
But Fortune's Geoff Colvin helpfully reminds us that when you tax business you actually tax people. Which means all of us.
The White House therefore proposes charging all American companies full freight -- the whole difference between their overseas taxes and the U.S. corporate rate -- on all their profits as soon as they're earned, no matter where. This measure, in their minds, would bring jobs home.
...
That's Obama's first proposed business tax increase. Another would require companies to account for their inventories on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis rather than a last-in-first-out (LIFO) one -- an eye-glazing change that's highly significant. In an era of rising costs, to assume that you're selling your oldest inventory rather than your newest increases reported profits and thus taxes, even though nothing real has changed. If inflation turns worse, as many analysts predict, FIFO would force companies to pay real taxes on phantom profits as the value of goods gets inflated while they sit in inventory.
The third business tax hike would be the new levy on carbon emissions. Regardless of the form it takes -- a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax -- and despite the good reasons for it, it's still a tax, money out the door for which a company gets nothing.
The problem with sticking it to business in these three major ways is that, ultimately, business doesn't get stuck. Tax-wise, a company is just a bunch of incorporation papers; all taxes are paid by people -- customers, shareholders and employees. And guess who would bear most of the burden of these tax increases? It's the U.S. employees of the companies being taxed.
Research has shown that when business taxes are raised by a dollar, 70 to 92 cents comes out of employees' pay. When workers wake up to that fact, they may decide this is one time they don't want the White House beating up on business.
Sotomayor's Nomination Not at Risk: Too Bad
Posted by on 6.30.09 @ 6:21AM
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday overruled the ruling joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor that allowed the City of New Haven to discriminate against white firefighters. Unfortunately, that isn't likely to stop her nomination. After all, with a current Senate majority of 19, the appointment fight is for the Democrats to lose. Nevertheless, the decision offers an important talking point against her appointment.
As reactions broke along the partisan lines seen yesterday on the Supreme Court itself, conservatives called the decision a repudiation of Sotomayor. They signaled they will use it to sharply question her about her views on discrimination, especially in conjunction with her 2001 remark that a "wise Latina woman" would usually decide cases better than a white man.
"Every citizen has a right to have his or her case heard by a judge who will rule on the laws, the facts and the Constitution -- and not play favorites," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "This case sharpens our focus on Judge Sotomayor's troubling speeches and writings, which indicate the opposite belief: that personal experiences and political views should influence a judge's decision."
Although the GOP can't stop the Sotomayor nomination, it should use the battle as an opportunity to educate the public on the importance of choosing responsible jurists who don't believe in enshrining their own views or experiences as the nation's basic law. After all, even white males should enjoy the protection of the Constitution.
Monday, June 29, 2009
ACORN Rent-A-Mob Thugs to Harass Lenders in 14 Cities Tuesday
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 11:05PM
ACORN, which played a starring role in creating the subprime mortgage crisis, plans to add insult to injury by harassing lenders across the nation with protests tomorrow in an effort to coerce them into supporting President Obama's Making Home Affordable foreclosure-avoidance program.
Austin King, director of ACORN Financial Justice, sent out a press release today advising of the demonstrations that are planned as part of its "Homewrecker 4" campaign. The four financial companies targeted are Goldman Sachs, HomEq Servicing, American Home Mortgage, and OneWest. Read the whole document here.
ACORN plans to hit Dallas, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New York City, Wilmington (Del.), Columbus (Ohio), Houston, Little Rock, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Seattle.
But let's not forget that ACORN helped to cause the mortgage bubble by strongarming banks into making loans they shouldn't have. And cheering them on was ACORN's lawyer, Barack Obama, who contributed to the increasingly hostile environment for banks when he represented plaintiffs in the 1995 class action lawsuit Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank. The suit demanded that Citibank grant mortgages to an equal percentage of minority and non-minority mortgage applicants. The bank settled the case three years later and reportedly agreed to beef up its lending to unqualified applicants.
ACORN refuses to acknowledge the role that it and the CRA played in the current crisis on Wall Street, and President Obama continues to support stronger enforcement of the disastrous law.
The final paragraph of the press release is unintentionally hilarious:
Because millions of Americans are losing their homes, neighborhoods and the economy are in ruins, and while the "Home Wrecker 4" are taking tax dollars and giving away huge bonuses, they refuse to do even the bare minimum for American homeowners by signing up for the Obama foreclosure plan.
Millions of Americans are losing their homes and neighborhoods and the economy are in ruins because of groups like ACORN that interfere with markets and force banks to do stupid things.
And ACORN too has taken in millions of dollars in taxpayer funding and is utterly unaccountable. The group even covered up a million dollar embezzlement for eight years.
As I've said before, ACORN lies, lies, and then lies so more. No lie is too big or outrageous for the criminal group now charged in Nevada with voter registration fraud.
ACORN Money Missing in Missouri?
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 8:05PM
Kansas-based blogger Nancy Armstrong (MsPlacedDemocrat.com) reports that St. Louis, Missouri, gave a $100,000 grant to ACORN and that $82,000 of it is unaccounted for.
The money was given to ACORN for loan modifications, that is, to help struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages. ACORN reportedly charges $750 for each loan modified and says it has completed 24 of them, which means it is entitled to $18,000 from the grant.
Read more about it on Armstrong's blog here.
Armstrong and I discussed the matter with G. Gordon Liddy on his show earlier today. (podcast here)
Blackjacked: Why a Government Plan Would Have an Edge Over Private Insurance
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 5:50PM
"Why would it drive private insurers out of business?" President Obama asked last week, defending the idea of creating a new government plan. "If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government -- which they say can't run anything -- suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical."
It's a point that's gained popularity on the left, but one that is a complete red herring. The current debate isn't over whether private insurers could compete all else being equal, but whether government can actually run a fair game. Obama's argument is sort of like asking, "Why should a blackjack player fear losing to a casino?" In theory, unlike with a slot machine, there's no inherent reason why one blackjack player has to have an advantage over another. If a group of friends play blackjack at home against each other, chances are that the most skilled player will win. But things change when that skilled player enters a casino, because the casino sets the rules of the game to give it an edge, and it can outlast any player given the size of its bank account. A player can reduce the casino edge through card counting, but the casino can make it harder to count cards by using more decks and still eject any player it suspects of counting. Casinos, in other words, don't make a profit on blackjack because they hire dealers who are the most skilled blackjack players around, but because they rig the rules of the game in their favor.
This is why Obama's argument for a government plan is disingenuous. Private insurers would be going up against government on an exchange run by government and facing rules and regulations set by government. While the government plan would have effectively unlimited access to federal government tax revenues, the private plans would not. Obama suggested that there were ways to design the plan so that it wouldn't be eating off "the taxpayer trough." But the key question is: would the government plan be allowed to fail? Let's say the government plan gets created, and five years from now it has tens of millions of members, or even more than 100 million, according to some estimates. If it were running at a loss, would it be allowed to close down? Or would Democrats argue that we need to pump money into rescuing it to avoid all of those people losing their health insurance? Anybody being intellectually honest knows that the answer is that it would not be allowed to fail, and thus would ultimately have access to taxpayer cash. This cannot be deemed a fair competition anymore than playing blackjack against a casino can be seen as a level playing field.
Waxman: Lying or Delusional?
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 4:33PM
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman was interviewed by MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell about Minority Leader John Boehner's comments that the cap-and-tax bill was a "pile of s--t." In alleging that Republicans are "rooting against the country" and also "against the world," Waxman has apparently either disregarded, or didn't hear about, the warning/strategy embraced by most other alarmists to avoid the term, "global warming." Waxman's comments, from the interview:
...the world needs to get its act together to stop global warming....
Some Republicans doubt the whole science of global warming, even though the consensus is overwhelming. They don't want to believe it. They don't want to do anything about it. And meanwhile the evidence is mounting faster and faster that we're suffering already from carbon emissions.
Global temperatures are no higher than they were ten years ago. Consensus is a myth, like global warming itself. It's no longer an issue that anyone between the coastal elites take seriously, except for how much it will devastate the economy.
It's hard to believe that Waxman is unaware of the current data and scientific opinion. Even most extreme alarmists I don't think could say, presently, that "evidence is mounting faster and faster that we're suffering already...." So can this be described as anything other than a devious, naked power grab grounded in an issue that is no longer powerful enough to pull it off?
WFB, Iraq, and Conservatism
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 2:45PM
When William F. Buckley Jr. first started expressing doubts about the Iraq war, my colleagues at the American Conservative, where I then worked, joked that the National Review founder was going to find himself denounced as an "unpatriotic conservative." Well, that didn't happen but Richard Brookhiser seems to think Buckley's Iraq stance made him a scornful, indifferent conservative. As Austin Bramwell puts it in a generally favorable review of Brookhiser's Right Time, Right Place (alongside Christopher Buckley's Losing Mum and Pup):
By the end, however, he is puzzling over WFB's late ambivalence about the Iraq War. Charitably enough, Brookhiser rejects first racism (WFB had no faith in dark-skinned peoples), then venality (WFB sought money or praise) and finally callousness (WFB had no sympathy for the oppressed) as the reason. Finally, he concludes that WFB had simply grown weary. WFB had lost his stomach for the good fight.
It seems to me that Buckley's concerns about the Iraq war were pretty straightforward: he was shocked by the failure to locate the promised weapons of mass destruction and came to doubt that invading and occupying Iraq was the best way to protect America after 9/11. "With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," said Buckley in 2004. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war." And Buckley was said to have asked Norman Podhoretz, "Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?"
Say what you will of these objections -- I know plenty of conservatives who still endorse more robust claims for the WMD and Saddam Hussein's ties to al Qaeda than the Bush administration was willing to -- but these are precisely the same reasons a majority of the American people turned against the Iraq war. However horrible Saddam was and the insurgent terrorist groups inside Iraq are, many Americans no longer believed our invasion of Iraq had been essential to our security. And they also began to wonder about the commander-in-chief who had sky-high approval ratings when he launched the war. As former National Review reporter Byron York put it, "The reason that Saddam supposedly posed a threat to us always came back to WMD, and the fact is that the dire scenarios sketched by the Bush administration in the run-up to the war did not turn out to be accurate."
Buckley was influenced both by a Cold War conservatism that emphasized American ideals and an older conservatism that understood the rootedness of normal countries in history and place. Believers in the latter have sometimes been guilty of indifference in the face of tyranny. Believers in the former without any regard for the older conservatism's sobriety tend to be guilty of something else: liberalism.
For further reading: Neal Freeman's cover story on NR and Iraq; Wlady's review of Buckley and Brookhiser; and Brookhiser's kind mention of "The Continuing Crisis."
A Liberal Questions the Obama "Public Option"
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 1:22PM
It's not just conservatives and libertarians who don't like the so-called public option for health insurance. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post trusts government a lot more than do most Spectator readers, but even she has her doubts:
In other words, to work, the public plan has to be able to set prices and, at least at the outset, require providers to participate if they want to remain eligible to accept Medicare patients. Does anyone think that is what's likely to emerge from Congress? If not, is this really where all the energy of those who want to ensure effective reform should be spent?
She's exactly right--the government would have to set prices and force doctors and hospitals to participate. Some "option." Such a system wouldn't work as advertised, but would fulfill the real objective of many of making the "public option" the only option. Yet another reason for Democrats as well as Republicans to rally against government-run health care.
Shorter John Judis
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 1:00PM
It's time to flush another $1 trillion down the toilet.
No thanks.
The Bride of Stimulus
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 12:34PM
John Judis argues that we need a second economic stimulus package, echoing a suggestion that Warren Buffett had. If President Obama were to push for another stimulus bill, it would be a tacit admission on the part of his administration that the first stimulus was a failure. It would would also interfere with his push for health care legislation. So it isn't surprising to see that thus far, the White House has adopted the line that most of the stimulus money hasn't been deployed yet, while remaining open to revisiting the stimulus down the road.
Bernard Madoff De-Funded America's Left
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 12:33PM
Embezzler Bernard Madoff, who swindled clients out of at least $50 billion, was sentenced to 150 years imprisonment today but very few media reports have focused on the damage that Madoff did to left-leaning foundations and political causes.
I wrote about this topic in the American Spectator in January.
The record-breaking fraud has forced the closing of the JEHT and Picower foundations, longtime supporters of leftist groups.
Left-wing groups funded by those charities include ACORN, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Alliance for Justice.
The Left and Health Care Reform
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 11:34AM
Last Friday, I wrote an article for the main site questioning whether liberals would ultimately kill health care legislation by demanding a more comprehensive bill that includes the creation of a new government-run plan, even if moderate Democrats insist on scaled back legislation. It's a question I expect to keep returning to as the health care debate procedes.
Over the weekend, the Washington Post explored the same theme on the front page, and liberal health care journalist Jonathan Cohn, a strong proponent of a government-run plan, ruminated about whether that single aspect of health care legislation had become too important.
On Sunday, David Axelrod went on "Meet the Press" and said over and over again that he expected "a health care plan to pass" (empasis mine). While Obama supports a government plan, Axelrod still didn't draw a line in the sand and say that Obama would only sign a bill that included a government plan. My sense of Obama is that if it came down to it, he would be willing to settle for pared down legislation so he could at least point to some sort of legislative accomplishment, as opposed to the political fallout of watching the whole effort go down in flames. That's why he isn't drawing any lines in the sand, because he doesn't want to end up in a box like Bill Clinton did when he declared in his 1994 State of the Union speech that he would veto any health care bill that fell short of guaranteed coverage for every American. Yet even if Obama is willing to settle for less, he'll have his work cut out for him explaining that approach to liberal activists.
Meanwhile, liberal columnists including Paul Krugman and E.J. Dionne have written columns urging Obama to get tougher on the health care front.
Re: Sotomayor Overruled
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 11:10AM
The Ricci decision Jeffrey Lord noted earlier came in 5-4, with the breakdown along the predictable lines. Kennedy wrote the opinion of the court, and was joined by Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts. Scalia and Alito also each filed concurring opinions.
Here's the reasoning in Kennedy's opinion:
The record in this litigation documents a process that, at the outset, had the potential to produce a testing procedure that was true to the promise of Title VII: No individual should face workplace discrimination based on race. Respondents thought about promotion qualifications and relevant experience in neutral ways. They were careful to ensure broad racial participation in the design of the test itself and its administration. As we have discussed at length, the process was open and fair.
The problem, of course, is that after the tests were completed, the raw racial results became the predominant rationale for the City’s refusal to certify the results. The injury arises in part from the high, and justified, expectations of the candidates who had participated in the testing process on the terms the City had established for the promotional process. Many of the candidates had studied for months, at considerable personal and financial ex- pense, and thus the injury caused by the City’s reliance on raw racial statistics at the end of the process was all the more severe. Confronted with arguments both for and against certifying the test results—and threats of a law-suit either way—the City was required to make a difficult inquiry. But its hearings produced no strong evidence of a
disparate-impact violation, and the City was not entitled to disregard the tests based solely on the racial disparity
in the results.Our holding today clarifies how Title VII applies to resolve competing expectations under the disparate-treatment and disparate-impact provisions. If, after it certifies the test results, the City faces a disparate-impact suit, then in light of our holding today it should be clear that the City would avoid disparate-impact liability based on the strong basis in evidence that, had it not certified the results, it would have been subject to disparate-treatment liability.
Petitioners are entitled to summary judgment on their Title VII claim, and we therefore need not decide the underlying constitutional question. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Ginsburg wrote the dissent, and was joined by Souter, Stevens and Breyer.
She wrote:
It is indeed regrettable that the City’s noncertification decision would have required all candidates to go through another selection process. But it would have been more regrettable to rely on flawed exams to shut out candidates who may well have the command presence and other qualities needed to excel as fire officers. Yet that is the choice the Court makes today. It is a choice that breaks the promise of Griggs that groups long denied equal opportunity would not be held back by tests “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.”
This case presents an unfortunate situation, one New Haven might well have avoided had it utilized a bette selection process in the first place. But what this case does not present is race-based discrimination in violation of Title VII. I dissent from the Court’s judgment, which rests on the false premise that respondents showed “a significant statistical disparity,” but “nothing more.”
Cato Tackles Obama's Health Care Claims
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 10:55AM
The Cato Institute has put out this brief video in which its health care policy experts Michael Cannon and Michael Tanner dissect claims made by President Obama during last week's event on ABC.
Sotomayor Overruled
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 10:40AM
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's controversial ruling in the New Haven firefighter's case, in which she refused to hear an appeal claimning racial discrimination by white firefighters, has just been overruled by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. Here's the decision.
Limbaugh Attacked at UCC Synod by Wright's Successor
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 10:30AM
The Rev. Otis Moss III, the successor pastor to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ -- the church President Obama felt forced to flee as a result of Wright's inflammatory and racist remarks -- is apparently picking up where Wright left off.
At the Friday night opening of the UCC's 27th General Synod, this year in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Moss used his Friday night sermon to attack both Rush Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Said Moss, standing at the podium that serves as the UCC pulpit for the duration of the Synod:
Don't get angry with the haters, the Rush Limbaughs. Next time you hear them, just say, "COMMA!" When you see Dick Cheney, just say, "COMMA!" Remember, there used to be a period on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The comma reference is to a church campaign entitled "God Is Still Speaking," the comma at the end of the phrase representative of God's plans for humanity as always ongoing, never having an end.
So more hate politics from the President's ex-church., heedless that the larger UCC denomination -- to which Moss was speaking -- is filled with Limbaugh listeners and Cheney voters who believe the only hatred here comes from Moss and his mentor, Jeremiah Wright. One has to wonder whether Moss understands the impression he leaves as just another UCC minister afraid to leave the UCC's intellectual plantation of 1960s liberalism. Were he a black UCC minister who had, say, the beliefs of Justice Clarence Thomas or Dr. Thomas Sowell, surely Moss understands he would never be given time at the podium/pulpit of the national gathering of the UCC.
Perhaps it would do Moss well to go back and read Malcolm X's famous talk about the difference between the psychology of the House Negro and the Field Negro?
Here's the text of that memorable speech or a link to the YouTube reading for those who want to hear it.
What about Cuba's Dissidents, Mr. President?
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 9:20AM
I'm sympathetic with the Obama administration's caution in confronting events in Iran. It is not clear that full-throated U.S. government support for the demonstrators would do more to help than hurt human rights activists.
However, it seems always appropriate to highlight human rights abuses. Especially where activists, or their representatives--when, as in the case of Cuba, the activists are in jail--believe a meeting with or at least statement from the president would be helpful. In such a case it's hard to understand why he would refuse. My Cato Institute colleague Juan Carlos Hidalgo poses the question:
How come President Obama can find time to call and congratulate Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on his reelection (someone who has said that he prefers "a thousand times" to be a friend of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez than to be an ally of the United States) but can't find time to meet with, or at least issue a statement supporting, Cuban dissidents at the White House as his predecessors did?
It's a good question. The U.S. government cannot bring democracy to Cuba. But the Obama administration can help highlight oppression in Cuba. Doing so doesn't mean intervention in Cuba or even refusing to engage Havana. But doing so does mean helping ensure that heroic people fighting for freedom are not forgotten even as the Castro regime attempts to portray itself as victim rather than oppressor.
Republican Cap and Traders
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 7:30AM
Though the Club for Growth could prove me wrong, I'm not terribly optimistic that anything will happen to the eight Republicans who voted for cap and trade. Two of them -- Mark Kirk in Illinios and Michael Castle in Delaware -- are being recruited to run for Senate seats, a promotion of sorts. The polling and the need for pickup opportunities make recruiters unlikely to change their minds. If Castle decides against a Senate run, Republicans would fear losing his House seat if they ran any candidate other than him.
Mary Lou Forbes, RIP
Posted by on 6.29.09 @ 4:50AM
I just read the shocking news from Quin about the death of Mary Lou Forbes. She's been at the Washington Times since its birth, serving through the tenure of a variety of editors, executive editors, editorial page editors, and more. Before that she was at the Washington Star, which lost its battle with the Washington Post. The result threatened to leave Washington as a one-newspaper town, but the Times stepped into the breach.
Mary Lou was a wonderful human being, friendly and encouraging, fun to travel with (we were on at least one international press junket together), and committed to maintaining a page open to competing arguments on the Right. It is almost impossible to imagine the Washington Times commentary section without her, though anyone who has regularly dealt with the page also has had the pleasure of working with Ben Tyree and Frank Perley over the years.
Her family, friends, and colleagues warrant our prayers and thoughts. But we all will suffer a loss from her passing. Rest in peace Mary Lou.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Who Killed ACORN Probe?
Posted by on 6.28.09 @ 11:42PM
The Sunday Washington Times ran my op-ed about House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers's (D-Michigan) decision to drop plans for a probe of ACORN.
Here is the top of it:
Who told House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Michigan Democrat, to lay off the radical activist group ACORN?
The 23-term congressman, who has been enamored of the aggressively partisan group for years, gave a truly odd explanation last week when he reaffirmed a May 4 statement that a probe of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) "appears unwarranted at this time."
"The powers that be decided against it," he said Wednesday, refusing to elaborate. His spokesman Jonathan Godfrey later said Mr. Conyers was referring to himself as "the powers that be." Unless you believe that "the powers that be" is a novel variation of the editorial "we," it's clear Mr. Conyers wasn't referring to himself and that somebody "got" to him. [...]
For space reasons I took out a reference to the fact that on Friday I sought a fresh quote from Conyers spokesman Jonathan Godfrey. He declined to provide one citing the fact that he had already provided his explanation to the Washington Times earlier in the week.
More Mary Lou
Posted by on 6.28.09 @ 9:52PM
In my post below, I should have included the official story from the Wash Times.
The Wonderful Mary Lou Forbes
Posted by on 6.28.09 @ 9:34PM
I regret to note the passing of the great Mary Lou Forbes, longtime commentary editor of The Washington Times. Mary Lou came into the office two Tuesdays ago complaining of bad back pain, and the next day she fell twice. She died of cancer, previously undiagnosed, today.
Mary Lou was a legend in the conservative journalism world. Way back in 1959, a full half century ago, she won the Pulitzer Prize. For the past 27 years, she has worked like a dervish to make the commentary pages of the Wash Times a lively and essential outlet for conservative opinion -- one that was especially important in the 15 of those years before the Internet opened more doors. For all those years, her Times pages (along with the companion pages that were the province of Tony Snow, Tod Lindberg, Helle Dale, Tony Blankley, and Deborah Simmons) were an oasis of unimaginable comfort and great information and inspiration for conservatives struggling to be heard. So many conservative opinion-mongers got their first big breaks on the op-ed/commentary pages of the Wash Times, through Mary Lou's services!
More than that, Mary Lou was one of the sweetest ladies I've ever had the pleasure to know. I sat next to her at a number of conservative dinner gatherings; my wife and I often sat in front of or right next to her in church; and for the past two months I had the privilege of working about 20 feet away from her in the Times offices. She was kind, friendly...just a pleasure to be around. And, to her credit, a wonderfully devout woman (Catholic) who loved her family and her God.
On what turned out to be her last day in the office, Mary Lou told me how frustrating it was for her to have her back hurting so much, because she had always been -- and still considered herself, at age 83 -- quite the athlete. "I was always the one who, when we went to the beach, swam way out past the breakers, way offshore, and swam around for longer than anybody else, too, before I came back in," she said. (I think she also said she was quite a basketball player years ago.) And one could tell: She carried herself erect, like an athlete does.
May she now swim safely out past the breakers forever, out where the buoyancy of God's love and peace holds her above the waves. Mary Lou was a wonderful lady. Rest in peace, and in God's hand.
Obama's New "Undisclosed Location"
Posted by on 6.28.09 @ 8:30PM
Through swine flu, turmoil in Iran, North Korea’s nuclear threats, Father’s Day, and the Honduran coup, the constant has been President Obama’s Sunday jaunt for golf.
Obama’s New “Undisclosed
Location”
By Asher Embry
When crisis hits our troubled world, Barack knows what to
do.
They’re cracking down in Tehran; in Honduras there’s a
coup.
O’s whisked off by the Secret Service; we know
where he’ll be:
He’s at his “undisclosed location” at the 14th tee.
(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse
at www.politicalverse.com.)
What Kathleen Parker Knows About Love (In Three Words)
Posted by on 6.28.09 @ 7:59PM
I've taken the romantic view. . . . He's truly in love. If you read those e-mails, and I think it's appalling that they were posted. But since they were there, we went and read them. Didn't we? . . . What was so clear, is this is not a bad man. This is not somebody who is using women and casually discarding them. He's not e-mailing interns and hanging out in bathroom stalls. So he actually fell head over heels, blindingly, crazy in love. . . .
Spare me such amoral idiocy. My wife is a kind, Christian, generous and forgiving woman, the love of my life with whom I recently celebrated our 20th anniversary. But had I done what Mark Sanford did, I would expect to find myself lying in a pool of blood and the last words I'd ever hear would be my loving bride saying, "How do you re-load this thing?"
I'd die with the certainty that she'd never see the inside of a prison, because she would be acquitted on grounds of insanity. Not hers. Mine.
"Boy must have been crazy to cheat on a woman like her . . ."
Analyzing the Cap 'n Trade Vote
Posted by on 6.28.09 @ 7:24PM
In their razor-thin victory on climate change legislation Friday, House Democrats prevailed by holding just enough votes from members in coal states to offset substantial defections from colleagues in Republican-leaning districts, a National Journal analysis of the vote shows.
The historic 219-212 vote for the climate change legislation, which seeks to impose the nation's first mandatory reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming, divided Democrats much more sharply than the vote on President Obama's stimulus plan. With 44 Democrats voting against the climate change legislation and 211 voting yes, the measure cleared the House only with support from eight Republicans who broke from their party leadership to support it.
The interactive table below allows readers to analyze the vote from a variety of angles, including the members' margin of victory, whether Obama or John McCain carried their district, and whether their state is one of the 30 that rely on coal to generate at least 40 percent of its electrical power, according to federal Energy Information Administration figures. (Those states are designated in the chart as coal states.)
Viewing the results through those prisms reveals several clear patterns. In all, the findings suggest that calculations about the underlying political and ideological inclinations of the districts may have shaped the Democratic vote somewhat more powerfully than assessments of the districts' vulnerability to energy price increases if the legislation passed.
In both parties, nothing appeared to drive the outcome more than the presidential result in last November's election.
Of the 49 House Democrats who represent districts that McCain carried last year, fully 29 voted against the measure. By contrast, just 15 of the 207 Democrats from districts that Obama carried last year voted against the bill. (Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings, whose district backed Obama, did not vote, meaning "Obama Democrats" ended up splitting 191-15.) Put another way, while 59 percent of the Democrats from districts that McCain carried voted no, just 7 percent of Democrats in Obama-majority districts opposed the White House on the vote.
It is particularly important to continue targeting the 20 Democrats who voted yes while hailing from districts carried by John McCain. They still could be won over to oppose any compromise coming out of a conference committee with the Senate, if similar legislation passes that both.
- No Freedom Left Behind
- The Right of Conscience in the Age of Obama
- An American Tragedy
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