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Saturday, July 18, 2009
Reid Collins on Walter Cronkite
Posted by on 7.18.09 @ 4:24PM
Our Monday lineup will include former CBS newsman Reid Collins' response to the death of Walter Cronkite. You can read it here now.
Ace of Spades Is My Blog Hero, But . . .
Posted by on 7.18.09 @ 8:50AM
. . . excuse me for not enthusiatically endorsing the sentiment he expresses here:
But I really hope we don't lose sight of the fact that we're in a bad position -- worse than we anticipated, I think it's fair to say -- and that winning is indeed preferable to "losing with principle and ideological integrity."
Am I serving as an apologist? You betcha I am. I also served as an apologist for the horrible candidate John McCain, and I will continue to serve as an apologist until we actually win something and can better afford to be choosy.
Meh. ("Meh" being on of the many blogger tropes I've shamelessly stolen from Ace, who was named CPAC's 2008 Blogger of the Year.)
The problem with Ace's argument is in his use of the word "we." To whom does this first-person plural refer? I'm reminded of the punchline of an old joke where the Lone Ranger says: "Tonto, We're surrounded by hostile savages!" To which Tonto replies, "What do mean 'we,' Kemosabe?"
Are "we" conservatives, or are "we" Republicans and, assuming that these two circles on the Venn diagram are not coterminous, what is the proper relationship between "we" and "we"?
Unlike Ace, I am far from certain that a John McCain presidency would have been better in the long run for either either conservative "we" or Republican "we" -- or for that much larger set, "We the People."
A couple of days ago, I explained in a phone conversation with a buddy that, if I'm going to get screwed over, I'd much rather be screwed over by my enemies than by my friends.
An honest enemy is better than a false friend. The realities of coalition politics in a two-party system require toleration of sincere disagreement and a pragmatic acceptace of necessary compromises.
At some point, however, every man must draw a line and say, "This far and no further." Otherwise, you become an advocate of The Politics of Meaninglessness, and your support can be taken for granted by any opportunistic scoundrel who puts an "R" beside his name (e.g., Arlen Specter.) Some may argue that on Nov. 2, 2010, a conservative in Florida would feel compelled to hold his nose and vote for Charlie Crist, but the time for making such a shameful compromise of principle is not 15 months before the Republican primary.
This was what Phyllis Schlafly meant in 1964 when she said the Republican Party must offer A Choice, Not An Echo. Ace says we (by whom, I suppose, he means conservatives) cannot "afford to be choosy"? Yet it was at the very zenith of liberalism's prestige that Schlafly argued that, if the GOP wishes to succeed, it can only do so by offering a clear, principled alternative to the liberalism of the Democratic Party. Even when principled conservatism is, in the short term, a loser at the ballot box, if you believe that liberal policies inevitable produce disaster -- and I most certainly do believe that -- then to lose an election by standing firmly for principle is merely the first act of a drama that will end in triumph.
Barry Goldwater's 1964 defeat paved the way for Ronald Reagan's 1980 victory precisely because conservatives heeded Schlafly's advice. Of course, Reagan loyally supported Gerald Ford against Jimmy Carter in 1976, but only after coming within an eyelash of taking the GOP nomination away from Ford.
Which brings me back to my thoughts about the 2008 election. If the Republican Party could nominate as its presidential candidate a man whose only apparent political principle has been the advancement of his own ambition and still win, what kind of cynic would call that a good outcome? When the GOP nominates the wrong man, the electoral debacle that inevitably follows cannot be interpreted as evidence that the party should nominate more scoundrels like that.
Which brings us back to Charlie Crist, you see. Political loyalty must be a two-way street. If GOP leadership wishes to promote a strong sense of party loyalty, then in what alternative universe does it make sense for John Cornyn to repeatedly jab his thumb in the eye of the party's conservative grassroots? And who can blame the grassroots when they complain about this abusive treatment?
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
--John Adams
Facts and evidence clearly show that the current national leadership of the GOP is a bunch of clueless losers who couldn't organize a winning campaign in an election for treasurer of a high school math club. When the only place your leaders ever lead you is to disaster, you need to get some new leaders. And if Ace's "we" means conservatives, then "we" are entitled to demand conservative leadership.
But you're still my hero, Ace, no matter what David Frum says.
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Binding Arbitration Bludgeon
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 6:02PM
News broke earlier that Senate Democrats, seeking to save the Orwellian-named "Employee Free Choice Act," have agreed to ditch the provision that would enable unions to rapidly expand their membership ranks by denying workers a right to a secret ballot on unionization. However, the new bill would preserve the other major element of the bill, which would force businesses that failed to reach a contract agreement with unions to accept terms imposed by a mediator. The Associated Press reports that unions are on board with the move. Many conservatives had predicted that if EFCA was in serious danger, Democrats would drop the controversial "card check" provision and settle for binding arbitration. But while the arbitraton provision has received less attention, it is no less damaging to the economy or workplace freedom.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Shikha Dalmia describing the nightmare Michigan got itself into when it passed a compulsory arbitration measure that saddled its cities with unsustainable compensation obligations to police and firefighters. "We now know that compulsory arbitration has been a failure," Detroit mayor Coleman Young declared in 1969.
But as Dalmia writes, it would have even more damaging consequences for the private sector:
In a dynamic economy, a business's survival depends upon its ability to constantly cut costs and innovate. But a company forced into binding arbitration will be frozen for two years (the duration of the initial contract) from making any changes to any aspect of its business that is covered by the contract. Literally every issue -- from its 401(k) contributions to its reliance on outside labor -- could potentially become subject to review by a government panel that has neither the company-specific knowledge nor the incentive to turn a profit.
Businesses are not the only losers in compulsory arbitration. Currently, any contract negotiated by union officials has to be ratified through a vote of rank-and-file members. Under compulsory arbitration, workers do not get this vote. In other words, EFCA will take away the right of workers to vote to form a union, and then binding arbitration will take away their right to vote on a contract.
Walpin Lawsuit Details
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 5:40PM
More details on the Walpin lawsuit. here. The age discrimination-issue threat is particularly interesting.
Obama's Medicare Commission Sounds Like Daschle's Federal Health Board
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 3:34PM
Yesterday, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf, delivered a serious blow to Democrats' credibility on health care when he testified that none of the Democratic bills he's looked at would decrease federal health care spending, which is the stated justification for the urgent need to pass their legislation. In fact, it would only make the problem worse.
Today, the White House responded with a new proposal to save money on Medicare: create a commission! Of course, lawmakers would vote on health care legislation before the commission gets created or has the chance to issue any recommendations. So they'd be asked to take a leap of faith -- so that even though legislation adds to our health care cost crunch, they'll have to trust that this commission will solve the problem down the road. But reading the description of the the proposal by Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and budget, I was also struck by the eerie similarities it has with Tom Daschle's idea of creating a Federal Reserve Board for health care, which he called a Federal Health Board.
Before he was elected, Obama praised the idea, and ended up appointing Daschle to lead the White House health care effort -- only to be sidetracked when Daschle stepped down due to tax issues. While the Federal Health Board has never been formally introduced, aspects of the idea have been reflected in the administration's thinking, particularly the emphasis on comparative effectiveness research. But the commission proposed today comes a lot closer. And just to demonstrate how close, compare how Orszag describes the Medicare commission to how Daschle described the the Board in his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.
Orszag wrote:
The Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) would be an independent, non-partisan body of doctors and other health experts, appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serving for five-year terms.
Here's Daschle (Critical, page 170):
The Federal Health Board would be a quasi-governmental organization. It would have a board of governors consisting of clinicians, health benefit managers, economists, researchers, and other respected experts...The president would appoint them to Senate-confirmed, ten-year terms.
Orszag:
There are a number of steps that can be taken to bend the curve – health IT, investing in research into what works and what doesn’t, and changing incentives so that doctors and hospitals give you better care not just more care.
Daschle (Critical, page 171):
In an ideal world, the staff (of the Federal Health Board) would have access to privacy-protected electronic health record data to use to identify what works and what doesn't.
Orszag:
As with the military base-closing commissions, this proposed legislation would require the President to approve or disapprove each set of the IMAC’s recommendations as a package.
Daschle (Critical, page 116), under the headline, "Models for Health Care Reform," urges people to:
Consider the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC), which deals with an issue that would be difficult, if not impossible, for lawmakers to tackle.
Orszag:
This approach would free Congress from the burdens of dealing with highly technical issues such as Medicare reimbursement rates while rightly giving them, your representatives, a say in the matter.
Daschle (Critical, page 136):
During the push for reform, the promise of a board would allow legislators to defer some of the tough technical decisions that have derailed previous efforts.
There are differences between the two ideas, to be sure. Daschle envisioned a broader role and greater powers for the Federal Health Board. For instance, its recommendations would be binding for all federal programs, while Orszag said the recommendation's of the commission could be struck down by the president or Congress. But it's easy to see how the idea of a Medicare commission could become more powerful over time, just as, for instance, the Federal Reserve Board has. Orszag doesn't suggest a sunset provision for the commission, but instead writes that, creating such a body "would make sure that there is someone always on the beat, looking for ways to bend that curve."
And in Critical (page 179), Daschle describes how Federal Health Board recommendations for federal programs could be more broadly adopted:
In the past, private insurers have followed Medicare's lead in areas such as refining the hospital payment system, and the Board's coverage decisions could have the same spillover effect. Private insurers participating in the new (exchange) might find it hard it hard to maintain separate sets of rules for enrollees inside and outside the pool, and employers might use the Board's recommendations as a guide in crafting their own health benefits packages. Furthermore, Congress could opt to go further with the Board's recommendations. It could, for example, link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board's recommendations.
Emphasis mine.
The point is, there is more than one ways to skin a cat, and Obama is pursuing many avenues to chart a course for the eventual government takeover of health care.
Obama's Evolving Stimulus Rhetoric
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 12:56PM
Today, the House Republican Conference, released the following web video, which does a good job exposing Obama's shifting timeline for when the stimulus was supposed to create jobs.
Health Care and the Tea Parties
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 12:34PM
I just got off a conference call led by Amy Kremer of the National Tea Party Patriots, who said that health care was becoming the focal point of the tea parties. So far, most of the activism on the health care issue has been on the left, led by the group Health Care for Americans Now (a coalition of liberal activist groups and unions). Critics of the tea party movement have argued that there doesn't seem to be any unifying purpose behind the tea parties beyond general disgruntlement with our Demcratic-run government. So, the health care debate will be a good test as to whether the tea party movement can mobilize its grassroots energy around a specific purpose and actually present a counterweight to the well-financed and organized liberal movement.
Right now, it's pretty clear from the health care bills we have already seen that the Democratic leadership wants to push through very liberal legislation, and is willing to ram it through without any Republican support. That means moderate Democrats in both the House and Senate will hold the keys to whether President Obama gets what he wants, and if there is any hopes of stopping a government takeover of health care, lawmakers in conservative states and districts will have to feel the heat from their constituents.
Sen. Jim DeMint, who participated in the call, said that if those opposed to government health care continued to make calls to their representatives and Senators, nothing will get passed before the August recess, at which point there will be more time to expose the legislation for what it is and put more pressure on wobbly lawmakers.
“If we are able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo," DeMint declared. "It will break him.”
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has a roundup of some of today's protests.
From Torture to Execution
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 12:28PM
I've tried to post updates the last several weeks about the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, or Comrade Duch, as it has provided a rare open window into the brutality and evil conducted by despotic regimes like that of Cambodia's Pol Pot. Even though outlets like AP and Reuters (and the New York Times, a little) have covered the hearings that detail the acts of the former S-21 jailer, I have seen none of their dispatches carried by any other U.S. media Web sites or publications. I guess genocide and a Nuremburg-type trial about crimes committed in Southeast Asia thirty years ago is too distant a subject to be newsworthy.
This week saw the testimony move from the experiences of those few who survived the torture chamber that was S-21, a school the Khmer Rouge converted to eliminate its "enemies" (almost none of whom were a threat), to that of a security guard for the regime who witnessed the victims' final hours at the mass gravesite that was Choeung Ek:
A senior Khmer Rouge prison guard on Thursday told a war crimes tribunal he was forced to send thousands of detainees to an execution site, where they were brutally killed and their bodies thrown into mass graves.
Him Huy, 54, a guard at Phnom Penh's notorious S-21 prison, said he was ordered by Pol Pot's chief jailor to transport prisoners to a rice field where they were stripped naked and beaten with clubs as they bled to death.
"All prisoners were blindfolded so they did not know where they were taken and their hands were tied up to prevent them from contesting us," Huy told the joint United Nations-Cambodian tribunal.
"They were asked to sit on the edge of the pits and they were struck with stick on their necks," he said, his voice breaking as he gave his harrowing account of the Choeung Ek executions.
"Their throats were slashed before we removed their handcuffs and clothes, and they were thrown into the pits."
As I've reported (secondhand) before, Duch is the only one in the regime who has expressed remorse and apologized to his victims. There is evidence he may have become a born-again Christian, although understandably many are skeptical about that.
Regardless, the trial has been remarkable in that Duch has repeatedly corrected (or at least disagreed with) testimony in ways that reflect even more poorly on him. Khmer Mekong Films has been videotaping the trial and segments of the fascinating exchanges can be viewed at YouTube, with a sampling below.
The Senate Bravely Outlaws Hate
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 12:11PM
Last night, the Senate voted 63 to 28 to attach a new hate crimes bill to the defense appropriation. While the legislation sounds good in theory, its likeliest impact will be to federalize crimes that are properly state matters and permit double jeopardy against politically unpopular defendants. Democrats clearly lacked confidence that the thought crimes bill would pass on its own, thus the need to tuck it into the defense spending bill.
Five Republicans voted with the Democrats: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Richard Lugar (Ind.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and George Voinovich (Ohio). Of this group, the most conservative is Lugar. No Democrats voted against.
Sotomayor Final Wrap-Up
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 11:09AM
Thursday wrapped Senate questioning in the Sotomayor hearings and brought the much-anticipated testimony of New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci.
Sen. Kyl began the morning's questions, dwelling heavily on the Ricci case and refusing to accept the diplomatic non-answers that Sotomayor has been so carefully counseled to give. Kyl called the bluff on her claim that she was bound by Supreme Court precedent in the case, demonstrating that cases did not exist on which to base such precedent. When she skirted the question and recited the facts of the case instead, he took a page from her "tough judge" playbook: "that's all fine and dandy, counsel, but answer the question."
Much later in the day, the testimony of Ricci himself was less forceful, but moving nonetheless, as he recounted the hours of study he spent away from his family for the exam that Sotomayor's court tossed out, and reminded the Senate that "the very reason we have civil service rules is to root out politics, discrimination and nepotism." Yet he and fellow firefighter Ben Vargas were less adamant about the judicial merit (or lack thereof) in the ruling under cross-examination, and the drama that some were expecting from the event failed to materialize.
Other notable moments: Sen. Lindsey Graham, while frankly declaring some of Sotomayor's statements troubling, seemed to warm up to her today, complimenting her on her judicial record and leading some to speculate that she may have won his confirmation vote.
Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life delivered a moving plea on
behalf of the unborn, citing Sotomayor's association with PRLDEF,
which opposes even parental notification restrictions on
abortion, and challenging Sotomayor's statement from Monday that
all cases decided by the Supreme Court become "settled law." Roe
v. Wade, Yoest said, represents "precedent on shaky
ground."
The testimony of Cato's Ilya Somin described with clarity Sotomayor's failure to follow judicial precedent in rulings on property rights and incorporation of the 2nd Amendment.
And sometimes, what is not said is just as significant as what is. One issue that has not come up during the hearing cycle is Sotomayor's membership in the women-only private club Belizean Grove. Last month, TAS' Jeffrey Lord wrote about how membership in a similar men's club had become a dealbreaker for Sen. Pat Leahy and others in the confirmation of Bush Third Circuit Court nominee D. Brooks Smith. Leahy's silence on the issue during this cycle of hearings speaks loudly.
Transcripts from yesterday's hearings and those of the past three days are thoughtfully compiled here on the LATimes Web site.
Colorado is Coming Down Hard...
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 10:41AM
...from its long-running public welfare high, free cell phones notwithstanding.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 9:24AM
Social Security Administration spends $700,000 on Pheonix Conference (ABC News)
Clinton still has $1.5 million bill from 2008 campaign (Bloomberg)
CBO says healthcare reform won't cut costs (Wall Street Journal)
Congress proposing income tax hike of 5.4% for top earners (USA Today)
Die-hard White Sox fan Obama butchers the name of home stadium (National Review)
New York Times Misleads in Editorial on Census and ACORN
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 6:15AM
The New York Times was less than truthful in an editorial yesterday on ACORN's involvement in the 2010 census.
After pontificating that Republicans' fears were overblown about Robert M. Groves, the statistical voodoo practitioner who was recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as census director, the Old Gray Lady opined
Still, some Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate are clinging to an even bigger red herring, that the Census Bureau is inviting manipulation of the 2010 count through its partnership with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
The group, Acorn for short, is one of tens of thousands of census partners - including state and local government agencies, community groups, business clubs, corporations, media outlets and churches - that voluntarily promote the importance of being counted. First used in the 2000 census, such partnerships were credited with reducing the undercount of hard-to-count groups, like African-Americans, Hispanics and the poor.
In 2008, some Acorn workers were fired and prosecuted for submitting false voter registrations. And in 2009, the organization was charged in Nevada with violating that state's voter registration law. Acorn is fighting those charges. The bad registrations, most of which Acorn says it flagged as problematic before turning them over to election officials, never resulted in any known fraudulent votes being cast. But Republicans who flogged the voter fraud angle in 2008 are now raising fears of census fraud. That's overblown. Census partners promote the census; they do not fill out forms or collect personal information. [...]
New York Times editorial writers, it's worth noting, are also adept at throwing out red herrings.
An entirely justified concern that some Americans have is that ACORN is actively involved in the 2010 census planning process (including hiring decisions) and that the Obama administration lied about it. This was proven in the document dump ably engineered by Tegan Millspaw of Judicial Watch. Of course the NYT ignores this issue altogether.
We've come to expect this kind of behavior from the New York Times.
In the days leading up to last Election Day it spiked a politically sensitive news story involving corruption allegations that might have made the Obama campaign look bad. The story concerned possibly illegal coordination between the Obama campaign and ACORN.
And as far as I know the Times hasn't even bothered to report on the fact that authorities in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, are investigating ACORN --the organization itself-- in connection with actual voter fraud (as opposed to voter registration fraud) after a man registered to vote multiple times by ACORN was indicted by a grand jury for casting a fraudulent vote in an election.
Then there's the newspaper's woefully inadequate coverage of its business partner Bruce Ratner's ACORN-assisted land grab related to the taxpayer-subsized proposed Atlantic Yards project right in the newspaper's own backyard in Brooklyn, but perhaps I digress.
It's common sense that ACORN shouldn't be anywhere near the census but the Old Gray Lady will never say that.
Amtrak IG: Important Background
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 5:50AM
When this was first reported in 2006, it seemed to be a serious scandal:
A recent probe into Amtrak's legal department by the Department of Transportation's inspector general and Amtrak's inspector general at the request of Congress found more than $100 million in mismanaged legal fees from June 2002 to June 2005. According to the report, released on Oct. 25, Amtrak was billed more than $40 million by 10 law firms. The report found that those firms submitted bills with vague time sheets, inappropriately billed for secretarial or administrative work and billed at rates that may not have adhered to typical government-discounted rates.
That was before Eleanor Acheson was hired as Amtrak's general counsel. But after the Democrats took over Congress in January 2007, everyone seems to have lost interest in what went on in the legal department before Acheson's arrival. Until last month, when IG Fred Wiederhold submitted a 94-page legal report -- and then immediately retired.
Now, questions are being asked on Capitol Hill. As I reported Tuesday, the Republicans who are asking the questions have begun to wonder if their Democratic counterparts are equally determined to get answers to those questions. And then there was this headline in the Washington Post last week:
Financial Agency IGs Say Bill Threatens Independence
The bill was sponsored by Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), chairman of the House Democratic Congress. A little background on Larson.
CNN's Roesgen Reportedly Will Leave Network; Bias Alleged
Posted by on 7.17.09 @ 1:54AM
CNN reporter Susan Roesgen will leave the network, a media-industry Web site reported Thursday, three months after Ms. Roesgen's coverage of an April protest in Chicago drew widespread criticism.
Ms. Roesgen's "contract will not be renewed and she will be leaving the network," Chris Ariens, managing editor of TV Newser, wrote in an exclusive report. According to Ariens, a CNN spokesperson was not authorized "to comment on personnel matters" regarding Ms. Roesgen, who joined the cable-news channel in 2005.
While covering an April 15 "Tea Party" protest in Chicago, Ms. Roesgen got into an on-camera argument with one protester who criticized the Obama administration's economic policy.
According to a transcript of the live broadcast, Ms. Roesgen told the protester, "Sir, what does this have to do with taxes?… Did you know that [Illinois] gets $50 billion out of the stimulus? That's $50 billion for this state, sir." Ms. Roesgen then told CNN anchor Kyra Phillips, "Uh, it's anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network, Fox."
Subsequently interviewed on a radio program, the protester said Ms. Roesgen's comments "confirmed something that I knew all along" about "liberal bias that's been going on in the media."
Ms. Roesgen's coverage was criticized by many conservative commentators, including RedState.com blogger Jeff Emanuel, who said the reporter showed "pathetic ignorance," and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, whose blog post about Ms. Roesgen's coverage was titled, "CNN beclowns itself." An Internet video of the incident, posted at Ms. Malkin's HotAir.com Web site April 15, has since registered more than 550,000 viewings.
In the wake of the incident, Ms. Roesgen "took a break for a few weeks," according to TV Newser, and more recently reported from Los Angeles about the death of pop singer Michael Jackson.
Many conservative sit blogs responded gleefully Thursday to the reported end of Ms. Roesgen's CNN career. although veteran blogger Dan Riehl wrote: "Actually, I hope she gets another gig. Out of work is still out of work."
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Lyin' Joe Biden
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 6:36PM
On the main site, I've posted a piece from the Joe Biden event I attended earlier this afternoon, called, "Dead Cows and Other Biden Health Care Whoppers."
DeMint: Democrats are trying to destroy the free market
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 5:44PM
I posted at the Examiner about the AmSpec newsmaker lunch today, but I question the wisdom of standing on the edge of Godwin's law and repeatedly declaring Obama a socialist. What Obama is calling for is no different than what most politicians call for -- yes, socialist policy -- but it's rarely called that.
Lunch With Senator DeMint
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 5:37PM
Senator Jim DeMint spoke about healthcare reform today to The American Spectator and Americans for Tax Reform at the Newsmaker breakfast series. Overshadowing all topics was the Democrats' healthcare reform bill. DeMint emphasized the need to keep free market incentives in reform. While the senator was optimistic that the Cap-and-Trade bill would die in the Senate, he underscored the threat of the healthcare bill, saying that "if we lose healthcare, we've lost free market economics in America."
DeMint attacked supporters of the president's healthcare reform proposal saying that "proponents do not understand free market economics." He conceded that sometimes conservative messages were hard to sell due to their longer-term benefits as opposed to short-sighted spending sprees proposed by Democrats. "They are giving away twinkies, and we are trying to sell health food," DeMint illustrated. The senator expressed some optimism that the bill would fail, although he did not have complete confidence in the Blue Dog Democrats due to their ties with organized labor. He cited voter activism as a way of countering organized labor's lobbying power.
The senator said that he wanted universal access to health insurance, but that he did not want the government controlling and administering the care. For that reason, he introduced the "Health Care Freedom Plan" in the Senate in June. His plan would give a $5000 tax credit for families who would then choose their own plans. While such a plan could minimize government involvement, the downside could be yet another example where the government descends deeper into the habit of providing entitlements that it can never rescind.
While healthcare was the main topic of discussion, foreign policy issues arose during the question and answer session. When asked about the crisis in Honduras, DeMint expressed disgust towards the State Department's handling of the situation, and said that by Honduran law, President Zelaya had legally been stripped from office due to his conduct.
Towards the end of the lunch, DeMint also briefly discussed the future of the Republican Party. DeMint underscored that leaders would emerge, but that it was more important that the party establish a firm set of principles first. With such a set of principles and a clear message, he believed that it would help to get Americans to vote with their brains again as opposed to their hearts as they had in 2008.
Honduran Archbishop Blasts Zelaya and Chavez
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 4:46PM
An article published by the Catholic news agency Zenit quotes Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, as saying that the Catholic Church is "not taking sides" in the current conflict in Honduras. But this is hardly the impression one gets from a lengthy interview with Cardinal Rodriguez published today in the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). In the FAZ interview, Cardinal Rodríguez accuses Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of fomenting unrest in Honduras in the interest of bringing about a "Bolivarian" revolution in the country and he rejects outright the return to power of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
"You must know," Cardinal Rodríguez tells the FAZ,
that we are struggling against a very powerful, because very well-financed, campaign, which is being directed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez -- to the extent that agents of the Venezuelan secret services are active in the country and are organizing the supposed popular protests against the removal of President Manuel Zelaya. Weapons have also been brought into the country. Thank God that up to now more blood has not been shed. But not a day goes by without my receiving a death threat.
Asked why he was being threatened, the Cardinal continued:
Because the Catholic Church enjoys great moral authority in the country, but is determined to resist foreign powers again taking control of this country: this time, in order to "bolivarize" it. The agents are already working against the Church, using the same methods that we have come to know from Venezuela. Last Sunday, Mass could not be held in any of the three churches in downtown Tegucigalpa, because gangs had ransacked the churches and threatened the faithful.
Rodríguez said that it was "absurd" to qualify Zelaya's removal as a military coup, noting that "there is not a single military official that in any way belongs to the [current "de facto"] government." Accusing Zelaya not only of violating the Honduran constitution, but also of misappropriating international development aid, he insisted that the aim of negotiations "cannot be to bring about Zelaya's return to Honduras and his restoration to the President's office. The man has shown that he is dishonest and incapable of governing within the limits of the constitution."
"During the crisis, the parliament and the justice system have shown that they are functioning well," Cardinal Rodríguez told the FAZ, "Now everything depends on strengthening these institutions and not following the path taken by Venezuela, Bolivia or Ecuador in systematically discrediting democratic institutions."
Asked by FAZ reporter Daniel Deckers why the American government has publicly supported Zelaya -- "in perfect harmony with Chavez and his followers" -- Cardinal Rodríguez replied: "A lot of Hondurans would like to know that. But nobody can explain it to us."
Overall Grade of GOP Senators on Sotomayor
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 1:25PM
Apparently all the questioning is wrapping up. I know I've mean more harsh than not about the GOP senators. That has been on individual interrogations. Now is the time for the overall grade.
Try a C+. And I consider a C+ to be a weak grade. The object should be to give the public a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the nominee and of how and why THEY, the public, should care. The biggest problem was the GOP senators' weakness in asking follow-up questions. The nearly co-biggest problem was their inability to connect the dots and summarize them concisely. They had a lot of individual questions and comments that were strong, but the overall impression was of people sure of what they believe in but not sure that their beliefs are politically winning beliefs (even though they are), and thus a bit tentative in making all these issues explicit IN A MEMORABLE way.
They didn't have to play dirty like Democrats so often did against Republican nominees. But they DID need to be tough, declarative, firm, and eloquent. Overall, they did only a moderately good job of that. They did NOT do anything strong enough to really pressure their DEMOCRATIC colleagues outside of the committee to feel the heat for voting for Sotomayor. In all, they gained a few points, but it was a larger opprtunity very much missed.
I despair.
Cornyn was good
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 1:06PM
In the third round of questioning, Cornyn was pretty darn good (a grade from me of about 94 out of 100) on asking her about her absurd speechr emarks denoncing objectivity and asking her about foreign law. She is weakening. I've been pretty hard on Republican senators, so credit where due: Cornyn in all three sessions has ranged from good to very good in his questioning. I STILL think the senators need to make definitive statements at the end of their question sessions, each time, summing up what THEY have gleaned from that round of questions in terms of what it means for the public. Declarative, not inquisitive. Like lawyers would do when trying to make juries understand their points. Still, Cornyn, who does have good trial experience, has done a mostly good job of eliciting information and getting his point across.
If Chevy Is Gay, Does This Mean That Only Homophobes Drive Fords?
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 1:04PM
Now that Obama and the UAW have taken over The Bankrupt Health Insurance Company Formerly Known As General Motors, some things are starting to happen that you might call strange, weird or bizarre, and as I thumb through my pocket thesaurus, the next synonym is queer:
For a local movie promotion a week ago aimed at gay buyers, General Motors' Chevrolet sponsored an online video on YouTube featuring the "Bumble Bee Boys in Briefs" -- a couple of buff "go-go boys" wearing only Speedo-type swimsuits with the letters CAMARO stitched across the behind. In the video, they are washing a Camaro. . . .
The video was produced to promote Chevrolet Gay Days at the Movies in Los Angeles, part of an ongoing outreach program to minority groups and the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender community. The movie was a screening of the new Transformers movie, chock full of GM vehicles including Bumblebee, a Camaro. . . .
"Chevrolet Gay Days"? So as not to be accused of despicable bigotry against LGBT/GM, I've decided to celebrate Chevrolet Gay Days 365 days a year -- starting today:
"We're here! We're queer! We're driving Chevy!"
Don't call it a "lifestyle choice" -- Chevy drivers were born that way.
CBO Says Dems' Health Plans Do Not Cut Costs
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 1:02PM
President Obama has made controlling health care costs the focal point of his drive for health care legislation, and has made the counterintuitive argument that the federal government can save money while paying to cover tens of millions of more Americans. But under questioning from Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad today, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf, testified that the current Democratic health care plans do nothing to control costs -- in fact, their proposed changes would add to costs:
Conrad: Dr. Elmendorf, I am going to really put you on the spot because we are in the middle of this health care debate, but it is critically important that we get this right. Everyone has said, virtually everyone, that bending the cost curve over time is critically important and one of the key goals of this entire effort. From what you have seen from the products of the committees that have reported, do you see a successful effort being mounted to bend the long-term cost curve?
Elmendorf: No, Mr. Chairman. In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.
ABC's the Note has the full exchange.
AMA Endorses House Dems' Health Care Bill
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 12:41PM
The American Medical Association has just sent a letter to Charlie Rangel enthusiastically endorsing the House Democratic health care bill, and urging members of the relevant House committees to send it to the floor for a full vote. You can read it here. The letter includes a bullet-point list of what it sees as the strong points of the bill, and while it does not specifically endorse the creation of a government-run plan, it does not critcize the inclusion of one either. The letter does not even mention it. As liberals always remind us when the AMA is opposing their agenda, the AMA does not represent most doctors. However, politically speaking, this will provide a strong boost to proponents of government-run health care. The AMA has just thrown its weight behind the most liberal health care legislation that could conceivably pass into law, and so Democrats will now be able to say that it has the backing of the nation's largest group of physicians, and argue that it can't really be that radical.
Felon Voting Easy to Raise
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 12:15PM
I will write a special column, maybe over the weekend, about how easy it would have been -- the exact words to use -- to REALLY get middle America upset about Sotomayor's court opinion saying that current jailbird -- murderers, rapists, etc. -- should have the right to vote even while behind bars.
It would have been incredibly easy to get beyond the dodges we know she would have used.
I swear, our senators have no sense of what moves Middle America, very little sense of how to do follow-up questions, very l ittle sense of how to get beyond inside baseball, very little sense of PR, and very little sense (Sessions, Kyl and Coburn probably excepted, and partially Cornyn) how to get beyond the cant, the BS, the obvious dodges that Sotomayor is slinging around.
They have done some good work -- Sessions consistently, Kyl at times, Cornyn at times, Coburn very very well -- but overall, they have shied away from, or just failed in their attempts at, landing real knockout blows.
And the felon voting case, which they NEVER brought up in questioning (they let Cardin bring it up in a way that made SOTOMAYOR look good), was the single key to really turning the tide against her, especially when combined with the fairly solid work they did puttin gpressure on her on gun rights.
Again, my column will be coming soon. And it will show that the questioning would have been an easy slam dunk against her.
At Heritage, a Supreme Court Review
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 11:38AM
Robert Alt has all the details of what should be a great event tomorrow at the Heritage Foundation from 11-1, where "Scholars and Scribes" review the latest Supreme Court term. The great Miguel Estrada is one of the panelists; little old me is another. We'll surely get into the Ricci firefighters case, and the Voting Rights case from Texas, and lots of other important decisions that can really have wide-ranging effects on American life.
Basic, Basic Stimulus Arithmetic
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 10:53AM
The stimulus has so far failed to live up the Obama administration's promises. That's not up for debate; they promised that the stimulus package would cap unemployment at 8 percent for June, and unemployment reached 9.5 percent.
The question that raises is whether those numbers indicate that the stimulus was a failure, and should be cancelled, or that the stimulus was too small, and we need another stimulus on top of the $787 billiion already slated to be spent.
In the latest go round, Casey Mulligan of Chicago takes the first view in the NY Times Economix blog. Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin rebuts him.
But they're debating over whether to have a second stimulus. Before we as a country sign up for another round of debt and big government, I think that we should at least frame the debate correctly. It would be a third stimulus. The recession began at the end of 2007, and George W. Bush's stimulus was passed in February of 2008.
I'm Your Friend, Governor!
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 10:37AM
South Carolina's The State newspaper got all of Gov. Mark Sanford's emails (at least those on his government account) and, well, a lot of reporters tried to schmooze him into an exclusive interview during his disappearance last month -- embarrassingly so, as the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz explains:
"If you all want to speak on this publicly," a Washington Times staffer wrote, "you're welcome to Washington Times Radio. You know that you will be on friendly ground here!"
Griff Jenkins, a Fox News feature reporter and producer, wrote: "Having known the Governor for years and even worked with him when he would host radio shows for me -- I find this story and the media frenzy surrounding it to be absolutely ridiculous! Please give him my best."
It goes on from there, and is not limited to what many recognize as "conservative" news outlets. Not exactly the "slobbering love affair" that President Obama enjoys, but unbecoming nonetheless (not that I haven't done it myself!).
As Kurtz writes, "Not everyone plays the game this way, and it is hardly unusual for reporters and bookers to promise a fair hearing or empathize with the plight of someone under fire. But the parting of the digital curtain reveals a process that its practitioners would undoubtedly rather keep from public view."
It's quite a lesson for all of us who report and comment on the news for a living, who think we know a story, but really haven't a clue. We often do, but sometimes don't.
Human Rights Watch Bashes Israel Supporters To Raise Money in Saudi Arabia
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 10:07AM
Human Rights Watch's reports are routinely cited by enemies and critics of Israel who are out to paint the nation's efforts to defend itself against terrorism as inhumane. HRW, of course, portrays itself as a neutral player that is willing to call out all sides when it judges that they have committed human rights violations. Yet in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, David Bernstein reported that a delegation from the organization recently visited Saudi Arabia to raise money, and as part of the fundraising pitch "highlighted HRW's battles with 'pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations.'"
The idea that a group that bills itself as impartial judge of human rights atrocities would exploit Arab sterotypes about Jews controling the world in order to raise money in a kingdom known for the brutal oppression of its people, is obviously a serious charge, and one that the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg did not want to take at face value. As Goldberg notes, "The term pro-Israel lobby, of course, means something very different on the Arabian peninsula than it does here. Here, even to critics of AIPAC, it means a well-funded, well-oiled political machine designed to protect Israel's interests in Congress. In much of the Arab world, 'pro-Israel pressure group' suggests a global conspiracy by Jews to dominate the world politically, culturally and economically."
Goldberg emailed Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, to ask him if the charges were true. The whole exchange is well worth a read, because Roth is initially evasive, but but Goldberg is persistent, and then Roth confirms:
That's certainly part of the story. We report on Israel. Its supporters fight back with lies and deception. It wasn't a pitch against the Israel lobby per se. Our standard spiel is to describe our work in the region. Telling the Israel story--part of that pitch--is in part telling about the lies and obfuscation that are inevitably thrown our way.
Not only that, Roth also revealed that a member of Saudi Arabia's Shura Council was present at the meeting.
Goldberg concludes:
In other words, yes, the director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division is attempting to raise funds from Saudis, including a member of the Shura Council (which oversees, on behalf of the Saudi monarchy, the imposition in the Kingdom of the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law) in part by highlighting her organization's investigations of Israel, and its war with Israel's "supporters," who are liars and deceivers. It appears as if Human Rights Watch, in the pursuit of dollars, has compromised its integrity.
Kyl is on Fire!
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 9:51AM
Arizona's Sen. Jon Kyl started the Sotomayor hearings today on a tear, challenging Soto repeatedly to say WHICH precedent she was following in the Ricci case. She kept trying to dance around the question, and he kept doing GREAT follow-up questions demanding that she cite specific precedent. Now THAT is was good follow-up questions are all about. I'm a very tough grader, and I give his line of questions a grade of 95 out of 100. Oh... wait... he's still going, and he may be raising his grade even more. He's now EXPLAINING why this is all so important. That was what I was about to say was the only thing missing in his cross-examination. He's getting up in the way high 90s now on my scale.
And she is coming across as if she's either a prevaricator or else just stupid. We know she's not stupid, so......
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 9:48AM
- $700,000 of stimulus money to replace sunken crab pots (Associated Press)
- Congress silent on latest round of AIG bonuses (Politico)
- Indefensible: $2 billion in earmark requests in House Defense Spending Bill (Wall Street Journal)
- Venezuelan cocaine trade soaring (Wall Street Journal)
An End to Bail-Outs?
Posted by on 7.16.09 @ 8:04AM
Good news! Uncle Sam finally found a bankrupt concern which he won't bail out. Bad news! This firm already has received a $2.3 billion federal bail-out, which means that money is likely to be lost.
It appears that the Obama administration isn't going to save CIT Group, a "troubled" lender, as they say. Apparently CIT, which specializes in loans for small and middling firms, isn't big enough to be "to big to fail."
A bankruptcy filing also could wipe out the $2.3 billion that the Bush administration invested in the company in December as part of the government's $700 billion financial rescue program. CIT would become the first firm bailed out by the government to subsequently fail.
An administration official said that those concerns were thoroughly discussed but that officials decided the larger problem was the perception that bailouts were available to every troubled firm.
"Even during periods of financial stress, we believe that there is a very high threshold for exceptional government assistance to individual companies," the Treasury Department said in a statement last night.
Well, fiscal discipline is a good thing. Too bad this decision is coming after roughly $13 trillion in bail-outs. But we've got to start some place some time.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Infanticide Advocate Peter Singer Argues for Healthcare Rationing
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 9:01PM
Peter Singer, an animal rights fanatic and longtime advocate of murdering newborn babies, has an op-ed in the New York Times called "Why We Must Ration Health Care."
His reasoning is similar to that recently employed by President Obama when he explained at a fixed townhall event why elderly Americans should be put on ice floes.
(Hat tip: American Power blog)
Hail to the Senate Staff
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 8:11PM
I know I've been rather critical of GOP senators for not quite carrying their case against Sotomayor, but it's worth giving credit where due: The Senate staff has done a spectacular job of getting the real facts out. Leadership staff and Judiciary staff have produced a constant stream of rapid-response, highly accurate, very much "on point" facts checks. The thoroughness and timeliness of these communications has been most impressive. So here's a tip of the hat to them for a job very well done.
Murderers Voting
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 6:14PM
Why aren't senators who are worried about Sotomayor using the single best issue against her?
Grassley ALMOST Trips Up Sotomayor
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 5:38PM
Bless Sen. Grassley. He tries.
At the END of his second round of questioning Judge Sotomayor just now, he did what he should have done within his FIRST round of questioning yesterday, and then certainly should have done at the beginning of his second round. He put her on the spot about how landowner Didden should have been expected to file suit against the eminent domain "taking" of his land a full year and half before his land actually was taken. The way Grassley's question was worded was perfect. It covered all the bases -- for a FIRST question upon returning to the subject. The problem, though, was that it was at the end of his question period -- so it allowed Sotomayor to give an answer that actually sounded rather convincing, to the untrained ear, even though her answer was utterly full of balderdash.
And then Grassley's time was up, so he didn't even get the chance to note all the ways her answer was utter balderdash. It came off sounding as if he asked a tough question and she answered it fully and well. She got the last word, sounding good doing it, even though her word was intellectually indefensible if you know the case -- and indefensible even to the untrained ear fairly easily IF Grassley had given himself time for follow-up in this, his final round of questioning. As this is a crucially important case, his failure to give himself a proper chance to drive home his point was a real oversight, a real failure. And this is even though he merits credit for bringing up the topic not once but twice, and for how he and his staff worded the question the second time around.
Again, what this shows is a failing of the GOP senators to understand how these hearings can and should be used for public elucidation and for shaping public opinion. It's as if they are throwing lots of good spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, rather than having already figured out for themselves which recipes are likely to be delicious.
What a shame. A little more effort, a little more planning, would have REALLY made a difference.
Do Conservatives Need to “Support the Troops”?
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 3:58PM
I just got back from a speech sponsored by the American Conservative Defense Alliance in which the speaker, Christopher A. Preble, argued that America should cut back its military spending. A former naval officer, he objected to the use of American troops for "nation-building" and supported a stance similar to the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine that troops only be used to protect vital interests in winnable missions where there is evident American public support. Preble differed from Weinberger and Powell in that he wanted the size of the military to be cut so as to cut costs and avoid nation-building temptations. His argument, expressed in his book, The Power Problem, was interesting from a conservative angle when one thinks about military spending in the same way as regular bureaucratic government activity. He pointed out that many of the countries that we protect essentially get to free ride off of our military power. For example, the United States spends $2600 per person on national defense while Germany spends only $452 per person. Legally, Germany enjoys the benefit of collective defense from Article V of NATO and is therefore able to devote resources to other expenditures while the United States picks up a disproportionate share of the military bill.
In recent years, as deficit spending has ballooned, this argument in favor of fiscal conservatism with respect to military expenditures has gained some support. The most obvious proponent being Congressman Ron Paul who expressed similar views during the 2008 Republican Primary debates.
While it might be tempting in this time of record deficits to cut-back on military spending, we must continue to view the military as an investment rather than as a vehicle for "nation-building." Our military, which is the strongest in the world, has the effect of deterring both enemies and potential enemies. During the Cold War, President Reagan's "peace through strength" foreign policy helped squeeze the Soviet Union into collapse. Instead of increasing military investments as Reagan did, had we cut back on military spending during the 1980s, it is not clear whether the USSR would have fallen. We could still be spending up to 10% of GDP on the military today -- or in an even worse scenario there could have been a nuclear war with the Soviet Union or a geopolitical situation in which several less rational nations began nuclear programs to deter the Soviet threat. Peace through strength, echoed in the Bush Doctrine from 2002, should not be abandoned due to short-sighted economic problems. America is, should be, and will continue to be the world's military leader. Americans, especially conservatives, should not want the USA to be in a position someday where we feel dependent on other nations for our own security. That said, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was correct in 1999 when she wrote in Foreign Affairs that the United States' armed forces "are not the world's 911."
The Fudge Factor
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 3:48PM
I appreciate Bill O'Reilly informing his large audience that cap-and-trade is a con, as he has for the past two evenings. And I'm not unused to the ritual "hey, I believe in global warming but..." preface to certain skepticism that so many feel compelled to offer for reasons unique to each, one of which reasons is surely on occasion sincerity and equally as often a vain attempt to curry favor or credibility with those who will never afford it.
What's sticking in my craw is O'Reilly's insistence that since the 1970s it has warmed one dgree (F or C, he didn't say, but as you'll see it makes no difference). Specifically, it is that his vehemence is accompanied by a shrug and "look, it's just what the stats say" or something very close to that, even sneering at others who disagree as unable to read a thermometer. OK. Let's look at the thermometer.
Doing so we see that this claim is simply made up. Whether he's making it up, is sure he heard it somewhere, his staff wrote it, etc., I of course do not know. But he's clearly sticking with it, so let's get something straight: no it hasn't warmed a degree since the 1970s, or anything within a cannon's shot of there. Thanks to the continued cooling we've even arrived right on the nose of the 30-year average for that period, which is another way of saying no warming at all, let alone anything statistically significant.
You don't even get a degree since the 1970s by taking Jim Hansen's torturing-slash-corruption of the data by emphasizing surface thermometers -- hundreds of which have now been exposed to be placed on airport runways, above air conditioning units venting hot air and even above a BBQ grill, and the vast majority of which instruments in the U.S. violating applicable siting standards.
In short, that is to say that you can't really even make that claim up. It's pulled from thin, cooling air.
Here's the totality of the satellite record (h/t for the mock-up to AlGoreLied and plotted data courtesy of Dr. Roy Spencer), which runs to 1979 because that's when we launched these babies in response to equal certainty about Man-made cooling. You may be interested to know that that also was the end of a three-decade-plus cooling and the coldest decade of the century. Even given that, do you see a degree, or even any appreciable warming or a trend in there anywhere?
Let's stick to facts. But drop the sneering at those who disagree and whose dispute is grounded in actually looking at the thermometer.
Did Sotomayor Tip Her Hand on the Sixth Amendment?
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 3:44PM
Contrary to my expectations, Sotomayor actually was asked today about the Confrontation Clause case I wrote about a couple weeks ago. Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota senator who we can be certain never did coke with Chris Farley, expressed her concern as a former prosecutor with Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts and asked for Sotmayor's thoughts. Here's how she answered:
It's always difficult to deal with people's disappointments about cases, particularly when they have personal experiences and have their own sense of the impact of a case.
I was a former prosecutor. And it's difficult proving cases as it is. Calling more witnesses adds some burdens to the process.
But, at the end, that case is a decided case. And so its holding now is its holding, and that's what guides the court in the future on similar issues to the extent there can be some.
As I said, I do recognize that there can be problems, as a former prosecutor, but that also can't compel a result. And all of those issues have to be looked at in the context of the court's evaluation of the case and the judge's view of what the law permits and doesn't permit.
Souter was in the majority in Melendez-Diaz, which was decided 5-4. It's hard to be sure based on her vague phrasing, but if Sotomayor means to suggest that she wouldn't vote to overturn Melendez-Diaz, that's a big deal -- the Court will revisit the issue of the Sixth Amendment right to confront forensic analysts next term.
Blue Dog Leader Says He Has Votes To Block House Health Care Bill
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 3:24PM
Dow Jones reports:
U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of fiscally conservative House Democrats, said Wednesday a House plan to overhaul the U.S. health-care system is losing support and will be stuck in committee without changes. "Last time I checked, it takes seven Democrats to stop a bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee," Ross told reporters after a House vote. "We had seven against it last Friday; we have 10 today.
Three House committees are slated to begin considering the $1 trillion-plus bill this week, but the Energy and Commerce looms as the biggest challenge. That's because it counts among its 36 Democratic members seven members of the Blue Dog Coalition, a fiscally conservative bloc that is opposing the House Democrats' effort.
Elsewhere in the article, Ross is quoted as saying, "The current bill would have to be substantially amended before we could consider supporting it."
Meanwhile, North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said he opposes the bill because the government-run plan would drive down reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals.
House Democrats face a July 31st deadline for passing a health care bill, unless they delay recess.
McConnell: FUBAR
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 2:06PM
I have a major problem with this (read beyond the whole release for my comments):
Boehner, McConnell Announce Appointments to Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Select Bill Thomas as Vice Chair, former CBO Director Doug
Holtz-Eakin,
AEI Scholar Peter Wallison, & former NEC Director Keith
Hennessey
WASHINGTON, DC – House Republican Leader John Boehner (OH) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) announced their four appointments to the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today that Congress established to investigate the causes of the financial crisis and the collapse of major financial institutions.
Boehner and McConnell jointly selected former House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas to serve as Vice Chairman of the Commission. In addition, Boehner appointed Peter Wallison, Co-Director for Financial Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and McConnell appointed former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Holtz-Eakin, and former National Economic Council Director Keith Hennessey to serve on the Commission as well.
“This commission is charged with examining the financial crisis that sent our nation into a severe recession, and it’s critical that it works in a bipartisan manner to do so,” Boehner said. “With Bill Thomas serving as Vice Chairman alongside these other distinguished members, I am confident this commission will vigorously seek out the facts so Congress can move forward with common-sense reforms that restore confidence in our financial system.”
“It is my hope this Commission will fully examine the policies which contributed to the near-collapse of the financial system last year,” McConnell said. “Not only do the American people deserve answers, but we in Congress must first understand the root cause of the problem before we act so we can be sure to enact policies that address the issue and strengthen our economy.”
The Commission was established in a mortgage, securities and financial fraud bill that Congress passed earlier this year and is required to issue a final report by December 15, 2010. The other six members were chosen by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV).
NOTE: The four appointees’ biographical information follows:
The Hon. Bill Thomas
· Senior Advisor,
Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney
· Visiting Fellow
at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
· Member, U.S.
House of Representatives, 1979-2007
· Chairman, House
Ways and Means Committee, 2001-2007
· Chairman, House
Administration Committee, 1995-2001
· Cochairman,
National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare,
1998-99
· Member,
California State Assembly, 1974-79
· Professor,
Political Science, Bakersfield College, 1965-74
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
· President, DHE
Consulting, LLC
·
Director for Domestic and Economic Policy for Senator
John McCain’s presidential campaign, 2007-08
Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO),
2003-2005
· Chief
Economist, President's Council of Economic Advisers, Executive
Office of the President, 2001-2003
Chair, Department of Economics, Syracuse University,
1997-01
Senior Staff Economist, Council of Economic Advisors, Executive
Office of the President, 1989-90
Peter Wallison
· Co-Director for
Financial Policy Studies at the American Enterprise
Institute
· Member, Shadow
Financial Regulatory Committee, 1991-present
· Member,
Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting, SEC,
2007-08
· Counsel to
President Ronald Reagan, 1986-87
· Partner,
Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, 1987-98, 1985-86
· General
Counsel, U.S. Treasury Department (Reagan), 1981-85
· Counsel during
Nelson Rockefeller's Vice Presidency, 1972-76
Keith Hennessey
· Assistant to
the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National
Economic Council, 2008-09
· Deputy
Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Deputy
Director of the National Economic Council, 2002-07
· Economic Policy
Advisor to former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott,
1997-02
· Economic
Advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, 1995-97
· Staff member on
the 1994 Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform
OKAY, THIS IS WHERE MY COMMENTS START: See who
McConnell appointed. Do these people have ANY understanding of
who their friends are?
So here is the guy who advised McCain to dump all over the
honest, conservative Chris Cox at the SEC while blaming Cox for
NOT doing something Cox ALREADY had done; the guy who advised
McCain to suspend his campaign, embrace the bailout, and ruin all
chances of keeping the radical leftist Obama out of office... and
he. Holtz-eakin, is the one asked to help determine what CAUSED
the crisis? What a pathetic commentary on our people in office
right now. What in the Lord's name is McConnell thinking? Mr. H-E
is also the same guy who fought AGAINST dynamic budget "scoring"
while at the CBO, thus hamstringing conservative budgeteers. For
McConnell to appoint him is for McConnell to effectively shoot
the middle finger at conservatives of the Jack Kemp school, and
at all who were appalled at McCain's panicked performance last
fall. This is, truly, an outrage.
Student Loans and Government-Run Health Care
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 1:45PM
Today, Bloomberg reports, Democratic Rep. George Miller is introducing a White House-backed bill that would end the subsidies to private student loan providers and have all lending done directly by the government. The legislation is worth considering in light of President Obama’s insistence that the creation of a new government-run health care plan will not put America on the pathway to a single-payer health care system.
As the article explains:
Obama and Miller seek to end a 16-year-old arrangement under which the government runs competing college loan programs. The 43-year-old Federal Family Education Loan Program subsidizes and guarantees loans made by private lenders. A second program, created in 1993, enables the Education Department to make loans directly to students.
Miller’s plan, like Obama’s proposal, would eliminate the loan-guarantee program and switch all new federal loans to the direct-lending program, according to a committee fact sheet. Both plans would let companies compete for loan-servicing tasks such as processing payments and collecting on defaulted loans.
So in other words, the Clinton administration created a new fully government-run lender, and 16 years later, another Democratic president wants to do away with private companies issuing federal student loans and have that government-run lender take over the entire market.
To be sure, there are significant differences between the health care and student loan markets. Private health insurers work within a government regulatory framework, but they have independent revenue streams and were founded as private enterprises. Sallie Mae, the largest student loan provider, was founded in 1972 as a government-sponsored entity like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was only in 2004 that it theoretically severed ties with the government, but in practice, 74 percent of the loans it issues are still federally guaranteed. It’s hard to shed many tears for Sallie Mae and other providers that are able to make profits by earning interest on federally-backed loans, while all of the risk is ultimately absorbed by the American taxpayers. So, there is a certain logic to saying, if the federal government is backing the loans anyway, they may as well make them directly rather than prop up an intermediary.
However, what this does demonstrate is how easy it would be for the Democrats’ proposed changes to the health care system to be turned into a single-payer system down the road. Under the proposals working their way through Congress, the federal government would provide subsidies for individuals to purchase health insurance on a government-run exchange, choosing a government-run plan or among private plans. Right now, Democrats are trying to argue that the exchange would be a level playing field, and the government plan wouldn’t have any advantage over private plans in terms of accessing government subsidies. It would all depend on how individuals choose to use their subsidies, they say. But, even if it’s a decade or two down the road, it’s easy to see how lawmakers would decide that the insurance market is too fragmented, that it doesn’t make sense for government subsidies to be distributed among so many different insurers when the government can just provide coverage directly. This is just another one of the many ways in which the Democratic health care legislation could put us on the pathway to single-payer.
Coburn Did Well
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 1:08PM
After criticizing GOP senators for not quite doing good follow-up questions, and thus letting Judge Sotomayor off the hook, I must say that Sen. Tom Coburn did a superb job this morning on holding her feet to the fire on gun rights and to a lesser extent on abortion. He knew how to ask follow-ups, and he knew how to NOT let her change the subject or wriggle away from an answer.
Bipartisanship Watch
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 11:11AM
Bloomberg reports that President Obama will be satisfied if health care passes on a strict party-line vote, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel offered a new definition of bipartisanship:
“That’s a test of bipartisanship -- whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”
Yet even by that standard, Democrats aren't doing too well. Earlier today, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed its health care bill on a strict party line vote. Ranking Republican Sen. Mike Enzi notes that "In 12 days of mark-up, we had 45 roll call votes on Republican-sponsored amendments, and only 2 prevailed."
HELP Committee Passes Bill
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 10:39AM
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has voted along party lines (13 to 10) to get the bill out of committee. The HELP bill, also known as the Kennedy bill after chairman Ted Kennedy, would cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years when you include the cost of expanding Medicaid, and it would include a new government-run plan.
Now we await the release of the long-delayed Senate Finance committee bill, which will have to be marked up and then merged with the HELP bill before the whole Senate will have something to vote on. Democrats have just over three weeks to accomplish all of this if they're going to meet the deadline to pass something before going on recess. That's a pretty tall order.
UPDATE: Ranking Republican Sen. Mike Enzi notes that "In 12 days of mark-up, we had 45 roll call votes on Republican-sponsored amendments, and only 2 prevailed."
PHYSIOLOGICAL!
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 9:51AM
Cornyn is asking the right questions, this time about "inherent physiological differences." He is homing in on the right topic. He is trying to hold her feet to the fire. Then... ARRGGGHHH.... he fails to hit the obvious last follow-up, which is to absolutely insist on her discussing the "physiological" differences in judging. He said HE was struggling to understand her (bizarre and implausible) distinctions, but did not ask the ultimate follow-up that put HER on the spot. He let her wriggle of the hook. He's doing a pretty good job, but not a great one -- on several of the areas where she is most vulnerable. Likewise, he asked about her embrace of the "indefinite" nature of the law... but didn't, quite, adequately follow up.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 9:49AM
- Republicans more trusted than Democrats on economy, national security, and abortion (Weekly Standard)
- The wise white males press hard on Sotomayor's remarks (Politico)
- No more starving artists thanks to stimulus money (Los Angeles Times)
- God and science, mixing a little bit (First Things)
- Some easy ways to make scientists more conservative (New Majority)
Soto Mischaracterizes O'Connor
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 9:37AM
Already, Soto is on bad ground if only John Cornyn will call her on it. She said that Justice O'Connor's words literally mean that if people reach different conclusions, one of them must be unwise. That's just false. Justice O'Connor's clear and obvious point was that there are no gender differences that could make a wise man reach a different legal conclusion than a wise woman.
Soto's explanation that she "never intended" to say that gender and ethnicity determine whose decisions would be "better" is laughable. She is flat-out lying. There is NO way to read her words in the seven speeches in the way she is trying to say she meant them.
Cornyn is NOT asking the obvious follow-up that he himself set up for himself on a silver platter. He noted that she called her remarks a "rhetorical flourish" that "fell flat." The OBVIOUS question is, if it fell flat, why did you repeat it SEVEN TIMES???
Doesn't ANYBODY know how to ask a follow-up question?!?!?
Sotomayor Table Setters for Today
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 7:51AM
Bench Memos, with Ed Whelan, Matthew Franck, Roger Clegg, Robert Alt, Andy McCarthy and others, continues to rock in terms of its Sotomayor coverage. We at the Washington Times have not one but two editorials on her hearings, the first talking about her direct contradictions of her own record, the second talking about her stance against gun rights. Meanwhile, even the Post's liberal Dana Milbank is struck by how "gingerly" the Republican senators treated Sotomayor. I myself would call it -- Jeff Sessions excepted -- "pathetically deferential." Sessions showed that there is a perfect middle ground between the nasty, brutal, smear tacti cs the Democrats used against various Republican nominees and the weak-kneed, halting treatment some of his GOP colleagues used against Sotomayor. Sessions was very fair but very tough, without ever being disrespectful. Sen. Grassley, on the other hand, never even challenged Sotomayor's weak explanation about why she used a (bogus) statute of limitations claim to let the Village of Port Chester run roughshod over a property owner named Didden.
On her own considerable demerits, this nominee is very vulnerable. Republican senators are incompetent if they cannot figure that out.
It's Only Money, Part XXXVI
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 6:55AM
Never mind the fact that we are running a $2 trillion deficit. Don't worry about all those new losses piling up at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and more. We must spend more! As investments, of course!
President Obama came to this economically struggling state Tuesday with a sobering message about its vanishing jobs and a promise of renewal through a new federal investment in community colleges.
But that message was up against rising unemployment -- 14 percent -- and rising frustration. A Detroit newspaper welcomed Obama to the state with a scathing editorial, calling the administration's stimulus package a "failed experiment."
Obama refused to concede that point during his speech at Macomb Community College, where he said part of the answer to recovery is also in a new focus on community colleges. His proposed American Graduation Initiative would pump $12 billion into community colleges and add 5 million new graduates by 2020. The program, he said, would offer training to millions of students who cannot afford four-year universities and opportunity to older workers who need new skills.
Well, as I always say, it's only money. What's a few more billion dollars in debt among friends?
A Democrat Makes Good
Posted by on 7.15.09 @ 6:46AM
There are many fringe benefits of serving in Congress. Such as using legislation to promote a bank in which you've invested.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado inserted a provision into the recently passed House climate change bill that would drum up business for "green" banks, such as the one he has invested in and his family and a political donor helped found in San Francisco.
The bill calls on bank regulators to promote green banking and says federal dollars should be used to support energy-efficient home improvements at government-funded housing projects.
Mr. Perlmutter, a two-term Democrat, has two investments in the 3-year-old New Resource Bank, which calls itself the nation's first green bank. Among other environmentally conscious banking products, the bank offers home equity loans for consumers to make their homes more energy efficient, in addition to construction loans for green builders.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Sotomayor Hearings Wrap-Up, Day 2
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 11:15PM
Slate Magazine's Dahlia Lithwick predicted Saturday what we would see today at the Sotomayor hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee: "The judicial confirmation process is more or less the political equivalent of Dancing With the Stars, in that the senators perform complex leaps and turns while admiring their hair in the mirror, while the nominee shuffles her feet a bit and calls it the foxtrot."
If there were any surprises today, it was that Sotomayor gave a few more inches of ground than expected in detailing her judicial policy, and the senators were a hair less long-winded. (Slate, for whatever reason, also constructed this stopwatch comparing senator-to-nominee speaking time, for your independent verification.)
Sen. Jeff Sessions set an aggressive pace for the hearing, questioning Sotomayor's judicial impartiality and her assertion, from a 2005 panel at Duke University, that judges make policy. In response to the persistence of Sessions and senators Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham, Sotomayor dropped a few clues about her stance on the issue every Supreme Court nominee tries to avoid: Roe v. Wade and the constitutionality of abortion.
Hatch established Sotomayor's belief that Roe was "settled law" (somewhat true, but so were Plessy v. Ferguson, Lochner v. New York, and dozens of others -- all overruled now.) Later, Sotomayor told Sen. Feinstein that "the health and welfare of a woman must be compelling consideration" in abortion-related cases. These admissions are somewhat short of a policy brief, but noteworthy during a hearing to which the original plaintiff Roe paid a protest visit.
Sotomayor early in the day attempted to recant for all time that niggling quote from a 2001 speech about the exceptional judiciary prowess of a wise Latina woman, explaining that she was adding a "rhetorical flourish" on a quotation from a female predecessor that, in reality, said roughly the opposite: "a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases."
Blogger William A. Jacobsen unearthed an article from the NYU Law Review that settles the quote's origin for all time (Sotomayor attributed the words first to Sandra Day O'Connor, then to "Supreme Court Justice Coyle.") The line belongs to Justice Jeanne Coyne of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and the article (by Justice O'Connor) goes on to say that "asking whether women attorneys speak with a "different voice" than men do is a question that is both dangerous and unanswerable."
So I'd guess that Sotomayor hasn't seen the last of her "wise Latina."
And Graham, the liveliest of the speakers yesterday, created today's longest uncomfortable pause when, riffling through his notes to find the precise language of Sotomayor's "wise Latina" quote, asked her to recite it for him from memory. Was his motive efficiency, or a mischievous streak? At any rate, he found the quote before she found her voice, so we'll never know what sort of skirmish might have ensued.
IG-Gate: Sincere Doubts
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 11:02PM
Investigations of the inspector general firings are "moving forward in a bipartisan fashion," I was told Tuesday afternoon in separate face-to-face meetings with both Democrat and Republican staffers on Capitol Hill. The Democrat said it with apparent sincerity, while the Republican's repeated the same words with transparent irony.
Exactly how "bipartisan" are these investigations? Republicans remain skeptical of Democratic sincerity. Some telephone interviews with key witnesses have been scheduled as bipartisan conference calls. Sometimes Democratic investigators are on the call; other times, they're no-shows.
This on-and-off, hot-and-cold interest in the IG story by Democratic staffers may or may not be politically significant. Republicans continue slogging forward either way, though mystified or frustrated by the intermittent nature of bipartisanship.
Much more is going on behind the scenes than has been reported and, indeed, I was told Tuesday afternoon by one investigator that keeping up with all the meetings and phone calls prevents staffers from seeing all the reporting. However, the investigator praised the thorough work of the Examiner's Byron York and was heartened by a Tuesday morning report from USA Today's Matt Kelley.
Two intriguing tidbits emerged from my Tuesday trip to the Hill:
- Attention to the IG story has prompted at least one more inspector general to contact Congress. Meaning . . .? "When they come knocking on our door," said the source, "it's not because everything's hunky-dory."
- The name of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) was mentioned in an indirect way. Many questions have been asked publicly about Dodd, the TARP bailout and troubled insurance giant AIG. There are now whispers of hints of shadows of suspicions that certain "Friends of Chris" may be trying to muzzle at least one watchdog that threatens to bite Dodd.
As I say, however, that was just an indirect mention and there was no suggestion of actual malfeasance by the senior senator from Connecticut. Certainly, none of my Hill sources mentioned the senior senators's good friend Ned Lamont. However, when I discussed all this with a fellow journalist, he observed that the junior senator from Connecticut "doesn't owe those people squat."
If bipartisanship doesn't work, perhaps tripartisanship will.
The Dems Lowest-Rated Governor?
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 10:38PM
Most readers will likely shrug with a "Bev Who?," but another sign of potential Democratic trouble because of the economy could be approval/disapproval ratings of North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue. Democrat-leaning Public Policy Polling has tracked her downward spiral since she took office in January, when she replaced Democrat Mike Easley, who is probably not helping his successor either with the feds investigating possible corruption during his two terms.
PPP's latest poll, released today, has Perdue with a 25 percent approval rating, and 55 percent of voters in the state disapprove of her performance. She has seen a steep decline in support even among Democrats now. With North Carolina's unemployment at 11.1 percent, she is catching more of the blame for the economy than President Obama is.
Hat tip: Former Rocky Mountain News-man Rick Henderson, who has landed with the John Locke Foundation's Carolina Journal.
Regulations Fail Too
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 9:13PM
In writing about proposals for new financial regulations, Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School reminds us of the essential truth of government:
"Regulatory failure is, on average, a far greater risk than market failure."
Are We Doomed Politically?
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 8:38PM
We're doomed. At least, that is what the polls suggest. My Cato Institute colleague Gene Healy points to polls which show that today's young people, Generation Y, are generally statists:
The CAP report shows that Gen Y is substantially more likely to support universal health care, labor unions, and education spending than older voters. And other surveys support CAP's "Progressive Generation" thesis.
In 2008, the nonpartisan National Election Study asked Americans whether "the free market" or "a strong government" would better handle "today's complex economic problems." By a margin of 78 to 22 percent, Millennials opted for "strong government."
Kids today are a credulous bunch. The 2007 Pew Political Values survey revealed "a generation gap in cynicism." Where 62 percent of Americans overall view the federal government as wasteful and inefficient, just 42 percent of young people agree.
No wonder, then, that GenNext responds to President Obama's call for "public service," roughly translated as "a federal paycheck."
Here, they differ dramatically from their skeptical "Generation X" predecessors. A 1999 survey asked Gen X college seniors to name their ideal employers; they "filled the entire list with for-profit businesses like Microsoft and Cisco." What a difference a generation makes. In the same poll today, Gen Y prefers the State Department, Teach for America, and the Peace Corps. That's a problem for a country built on the entrepreneurial spirit.
Demography might not be destiny, since minds can change. And an Obama administration which racks up trillions of dollars in debt to be paid by Generation Y might reduce people's enthusiasm for endless government spending.
Still, the numbers are sobering. If the limited government/individual liberty crowd is going to prevail, we have a lot of educating and convincing to do.
Republicans Turn Hostile to Palin
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 7:25PM
The latest poll ratings suggest that many Republicans have turned negative towards Gov. Sarah Palin after her surprise resignation announcement. Reports CNN:
A majority of Americans think Sarah Palin is stepping down as Alaska's governor for political reasons, according to a new national poll, with a majority of Republicans now saying that they do not believe that Palin would be an effective president.
Only 33 percent of Republicans questioned in a CBS News survey released Monday night say that Palin would have the ability to serve effectively as president. Last fall, 71 percent of registered Republicans felt that way.
"It's unclear whether the change in Republicans' view of Palin is the result of her decision to step down as governor, or whether the GOP rank-and-file felt they had to defend their party's vice-presidential nominee during the campaign but don't feel the same tug of party loyalty today," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Either way, this is bad news for Palin, whose first task in 2012, if she runs for the White House, will be to convince Republican primary voters to support her."
It will be interesting to see how these numbers move if she stays involved in politics. Voters have proved willing to forgive many things over time, but quitting the governorship prematurely might prove to be a tougher sell if she runs for president.
Prepare to Meet the Taxman
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 6:37PM
Congress is worried. Deficits are climbing. So legislators have decided to make a thorough review of the endless duplicative programs and wasteful outlays that fill the federal budget.
Hah, hah, hah! No, Congress plans on beefing up the IRS to squeeze more money out of people so legislators can keep wasting money.
Congress is preparing to substantially increase the enforcement resources of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the FY 2010 Financial Services appropriations bill, representing a reversal in the lethargic funding approved during the Bush administration. This much-needed increase in resources is only a first step in improving the enforcement of the tax code, however, as observers say the IRS also needs to improve how it uses its limited resources.
On July 9, the Senate Appropriations Committee near-unanimously approved its version of the FY 2010 Financial Services bill, which sets funding for the IRS, among other agencies, at $12.2 billon. That is an increase of $549.8 million over FY 2009 levels and $26.4 million more than requested by the Obama administration.
The majority of the funding increase was directed to the enforcement budget of the IRS, which grew to $5.5 billion, an increase of $386.7 million over FY 2009 levels and equal to the president's request. With the House and Senate set to begin conference negotiations over the differences between its Financial Services bills, these funding levels could change somewhat before the final bill is passed. The House allocated $22.4 million less to the total IRS budget than the Senate did, but regardless of the final compromise, enforcement activities are sure to receive a significant increase in funding over FY 2009 levels since both the House and Senate included the president's requested increase.
Well, you wouldn't have spent the money on anything useful, anyway. Better to let Congress use your money take care of us!
Blue Dogs React to House Democratic Health Care Bill
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 6:08PM
Rep. Mike Ross, has released a statement on behalf of Blue Dog Democrats reacting to the House Democrat's health care bill, which I'd categorize as neither supportive nor dead set against -- in fact, it doesn't really address the bill specifically. The moderate Blue Dogs hold the key to whether the legislation will pass -- liberal Democrats will get behind this bill, and it's so extreme that few, if any, Republicans will vote for it.
Here's Ross:
"The skyrocketing cost of health care is not only bankrupting American families and businesses;
it is leading this country down a path to fiscal disaster. We can never balance the federal budget
again without reforming the system to hold the growth of health care costs to the rate of inflation."The Blue Dogs are committed to passing health care reform. However, reform that does not meet
the President's goals of substantially bringing down costs is not an option."Over the past several months, Blue Dogs have put forth substantive policy proposals aimed at
achieving this objective, and we look forward to working through the legislative process to
incorporate these cost cutting measures."
Last week, 40 Blue Dogs signed a letter coming out against a strong government-run plan, which the House bill includes, so make what you will of Ross's decision not to mention it.
Post Blog Is Fair on Soto Hearings
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 5:25PM
Eva Rodriguez at the Washington Post blog does a good job assessing Sotomayor's early performance this morning. Like others, she said that Sessions was very effective, that Sotomayor did not sound credible, etc. Again, though, that was earlier in the day. I think she didn't keep getting hurt later on.
10-Year Time Frame Obscures Full Cost of Democratic Health Care Plan
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 5:23PM
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the House Democratic health care bill that I summarized below would cost more than $1 trillion over ten years (subject to revision once it evaluates the entire bill). Michelle Malkin noted earlier that it's more like a five year estimate, and I thought it would be worthwhile to add some specific numbers to flesh out that argument.
It's important to keep in mind that the most costly aspects of the legislation involve providing subsidies to individuals to purchase health care ($773 billion) and to expand Medicaid ($438 billion), but it takes several years for those provisions to kick in. As you can see from the chart below, that means that the costs start out relatively modest but ramp up over time. In the first three years of the plan the cost of the subsidies and Medicaid expansion is just $8 billion; in the first five years, it's $202 billion; but in the last five years, it's $979 billion. Put another way, 17 percent of the spending comes in the first five years, while 83 percent comes in the second five years. What this means is that the American people see $1 trillion over 10 years and they think that means the bill would cost about $100 billion a year -- but the reality is more than double that. In the final year of the CBO estimates, 2019, the spending hits $230 billion.
Republican Senators Are Pitiful
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 5:02PM
Sen. Jeff Sessions really had Judge Sotomayor "rocked back on her heels," according to a Fox News analyst (I think it was Chris Wallace). His performance was magnificent. But while she has been VERY unimpressive throughout, the other GOP senators have utterly failed to make their points or issue their questions in concise, memorable, understandable ways. I missed Orrin Hatch, but heard that his performance was only so-so. Sen. Grassley, bless his heart, did not adequately explain her awful property rights decision in Didden v. Port Chester and let her get away with the dodge that it was just a statute of limitations claim. Sen. Kyl started okay but then took WAY WAY WAY too long to get to his point, and lost his advantage. Lindsey Graham sort of rambled, perhaps setting himself up like a good lawyer for a later strong case, but so far he hasn't closed the deal on any of the issues he raised.
And nobody has yet brought up (unless I missed it) the sleeper case of all sleepers, the one where she ruled that currently incarcerated murderers and rapists might have a constitutional right to vote.
In short, I think only Sessions has fully done his homework. Kyl might have, too, but he didn't practice enough at getting his questions and statements concise. And Graham -- well, you never know what he's gonna do. He's plenty smart, but he's so darn squirrelly.
All in all, a disappointment, even though I think she has not helped her own case one bit today, and probably has hurt it, mostly based on Sessions' bravura performance.
Soto Hurts Lib Arguments
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 4:43PM
Sonia Sotomayor's pathetic explanation for her anti-property rights decision in a Port Chester NY eminent domain case presents problems for the left. Read why here.
Not That Bad
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 4:07PM
The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza calls it a "bad week for House Republicans" because two Republicans from Democratic-leaning districts (Mark Kirk of Illinois and Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania) have decided to run for statewide office and a third (Mike Castle of Delaware) is thought to be close to doing so. Throw in the Cao seat in Louisiana and that's four obvious pickup opportunities for the Democrats in 2010.
Yes, obviously it would have been nice (from a purely partisan perspective) if the incumbents could have held onto their House seats and some wildly popular self-funding billionares could have parachuted into those statewide races on the Republican ticket instead. But considering that 49 House Democrats represent districts carried by John McCain in 2008 and three of the four Republicans leaving their Democratic districts are running for higher office, and things still look pretty good for the GOP. Especially since it hasn't fixed any of its structural problems. Republicans are just riding the political and economic cycles.
By the way, I noted Friday that whether Kirk would run for Senate would depend on the powers that be clearing the field for him. And they cleared the field, without regard to Kirk's liberal cap and trade vote.
Wal-Mart Buys New Friends
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 3:52PM
Wal-Mart once had the reputation as a "conservative" company no longer. Along with its support for employer-mandated insurance to hurt its competitors, it has shifted its campaign giving to the Democrats.
Ever since retail giant Wal-Mart announced on June 30 that it is embracing an employer mandate as part of health care reform, the company has been criticized by some congressional Republicans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and fellow retailers.
And Republicans are probably even more unhappy with the direction of the company's political donations this election cycle.
Like many others in the business community, the company's campaign contributions have moved with the power shift in Washington to Democrats from Republicans. Wal-Mart's political action committee has doled out $108,500 to federal candidates and parties in the 2010 election cycle, with 69 percent to Democrats and 31 percent to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. See here.
That is a switch from the 2008 cycle, when Wal-Mart gave out $1.24 million, of which 46 percent went to Democrats and 53 percent to Republicans. The change is even more pronounced when looking at the 2006 cycle, when the company's PAC contributed $1.29 million to federal candidates, of which 32 percent went to Democrats and 68 percent to Republicans.
There's nothing unusual in corporations running after the winners. But combine that with its health care stance, and Wal-Mart could give lessons on corporate prostitution.
NRSC Endorses Toomey
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 3:51PM
After throwing its weight behind a few moderates -- and, in recent election cycles, fighting his Club for Growth -- the National Republican Senatorial Committee has endorsed Pat Toomey for Senate in Pennsylvania.
"I am honored to have the National Republican Senatorial Committee's endorsement along with the wave of support I have received from people all across Pennsylvania," Toomey said. "Pennsylvanians are looking for thoughtful policies instead of the extremism they are witnessing in Washington today. Over the next sixteen months, I will continue to bring my message of fiscal responsibility, political balance, and economic growth to voters across the Commonwealth."
The NRSC originally supported Arlen Specter for this Senate seat, until Specter became a Democrat earlier this year.
The GOP's Sotomayor Shuffle
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 3:32PM
My take is up at the Guardian. You can rarely count on more than a handful of Republicans to stand firm at a time like this.
House Dems Propose Massive Tax Hikes to Pay For Government Health Care
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 3:30PM
The House Democrats just released their health care plan. You'll have to forgive me, because I confess that I did not read through the entire 1018-page piece of legislation. However, I did look at the summary and scan through the tax provisions, and based on that it seems clear that the bill represents a liberal health care wish list.
In short, the bill would:
-- Create a new government-run plan.
--Expand Medicaid elgibility to 133 percent of the poverty line.
--Provide subsidies to individuals earning up to 400 percent of the poverty line ($88,000 for a family of four).
--Create a new government-run insurance exchange in which individuals could use the subsidies to purchase government-designed private coverarge or the government-run plan.
--Force individuals who purchase health coverage or face a tax, and force businesses to provide coverage or face at tax.
--And this will be financed by a massive tax hike during a recession on wealthy individuals that will target gross income. Americans for Tax Reform has calculated that taken together, these tax hikes would raise the top rate above 50 percent and the capital gains rate at 30 percent. Not the way to get the economy moving again.
The Democrats are in much stronger position in the House than the Senate, but the big question is whether the moderate Blue Dog Democrats will be able to get behind such a massive expansion of government.
UPDATE: The CBO has put a pricetag of the bill at $1 trillion over, but has cautioned that this does not represent an analysis of the entire bill and is subject to change once it evaluates the language of the most recent draft. Specifically, it pegs the cost of the Medicaid expansion at $438 billion and of the subsidies at $773 billion. But as Michelle Malkin notes, the bill doesn't fully kick in for five years.
Right Isn't Wrong
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 1:51PM
The Financial Times has published a bizarre column by Matt Miller, a former Clinton administration budget official, titled "right is wrong to attack Obama’s health plan" in which he lashes out at conservatives for criticizing what Obama is actually proposing rather than what Miller wants him to propose. This article is so misleading and poorly written, that it's hard to know where to start, so I'll just begin at the beginning.
Miller writes:
The Republican charge that Barack Obama is seeking a “government takeover” of US healthcare is further proof that American political rhetoric has become detached from reality. In fact, once you take away the proposed public insurance option, which Mr Obama’s aides have signalled they will drop in final negotiations, the likely outcome is an affordable reform that embraces Mitt Romney’s blueprint from Massachusetts and funds it with John McCain’s best idea from the presidential campaign.
Only in America can you co-opt Republican thinking and have critics label you “socialist”.
Arguing that we should judge Obama's health care effort assuming the absence of a "public option" is quite a caveat for Miller to just throw out there. This isn't some minor feature of Democratic proposals, but is seen as the key to their efforts to overhaul the health care system. The provision was central to President Obama's campaign proposal, he has maintained public support for it, Rahm Emanuel was forced to backtrack when he hinted that it was negotiable, Harry Reid has said the Senate Bill needs to have one and Nancy Pelosi has said the same on the House side.
Just because Mitt Romney is a Republican, doesn't mean his health care plan wasn't a step toward socialized medicine. Plenty of conservatives who weren't shilling for Romney's presidential campaign recognized the 2006 Massachusetts "reform" for what it was: a big government health care plan in which government forced people to obtain insurance and then provided them with government subsidies to purchase government-designed insurance on a government-run exchange.
Miller then writes:
Start with cost. It’s easy for foes to feign shock at Obamacare’s $1,000bn 10-year price tag, but a trillion dollars ain’t what it used to be. That is just over 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product over the same period, and barely 3 per cent of the roughly $35,000bn total healthcare spending during that time. If Mr Obama’s approach is otherwise sensible, the idea that America can’t afford it is preposterous.
Yes, it's "preposterous" to say we can't afford something when the Congressional Budget Office is already projecting $9.3 trillion in cumulative deficits over the next decade. It's "preposterous" to argue that we can't afford to create a new entitlement when the ones we have now are already driving a long-term entitlement deficit of $56 trillion. It's "preposterous" to argue that we can't afford to add 20 million beneficiaries to Medicaid when the current program is currently bankrupting state governments.
Of the Massachusetts plan, which has led to skyrocketing costs and longer waiting times in the state, Miller writes:
The results have been impressive. The ranks of the uninsured have been slashed; just 2.7 per cent of residents now lack coverage, the lowest of any state – against 15 per cent nationally. Costs, which overran as the programme was brought in more quickly than planned, are now on budget.
What he doesn't say is that Taxachusetts just passed a 25 percent hike in the sales tax. And State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, a Democrat, criticized the health care legislation, telling the Boston Globe that : “Everyone wanted it to pass, to get it on their resume...Nobody asked the tough questions. It was expensive, even in good times. In tough times . . . it just doesn’t seem doable.’’ Later in the article, Cahill is quoted as saying, “We’re all still waiting for the savings....Universal healthcare was supposed to eventually save us money.’’ He added, “It’s a warning for the federal government as it looks to do something similar."
Then, after having written that it's "preposterous" to say that we can't afford health care, Miller argues that the only way to do so is to tax employer-provided health benefits:
When it comes to financing expanded coverage there’s no way to get there without revisiting the current scheme, under which employees escape taxes on employer-provided health benefits. This subsidy is so massive, at $250bn a year, and regressive – reserving its biggest bounty for those with the most generous plans – that a phalanx of health economists from both political parties recently begged Congress to trim it.
As it turns out, scrapping this tax subsidy was the bold, if unappreciated, centrepiece of Mr McCain’s health plan during last year’s election. The fact that candidate Obama slammed it then as a tax hike on the middle class does not mean President Obama cannot embrace it as part of a deal that achieves his goals; his top advisers have long agreed it is the soundest way to fund reform. Moreover, union leaders who defend the tax exclusion because it bankrolls union plans tell me they are open to change to get to universal coverage.
The problem is that Harry Reid ordered Max Baucus to rule out the idea of taxing employer-based health care, especially given low polling numbers. Obama has also remained opposed. And as for the unions, I'm not sure who Miller spoke to, but unions have been fiercely opposed to the idea publicly. Last month, Gerald McEntee, President of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), warned that any attempt to tax employee health benefits would “turn good people against great reform.”
Miller writes, "just because Obama is on a path to give America the Romney health plan with McCain-style financing does not mean the Republicans will embrace it, if it seems politically more attractive to scream 'socialist.' But the rest of us do not have to listen to them. Mr Obama can fairly claim to have championed a bipartisan health policy, even with few Republican votes."
This is really weird. Normally, the way it's supposed to work is that somebody defending an administration's policies is supposed to defend its actual policies. Yet Miller is arguing that we must praise Obama for championing bipartisan health policy that neither he nor the relevant Democrats are supporting, and refrain from criticizing him for what he and most Democrats are actually proposing.
Old News
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 1:23PM
Dear Media Formerly Known as Mainstream,
The Sonia Sotomayor "compelling personal story" was appropriate for the first week after her nomination by President Obama. It is now old news and irrelevant to this week's proceedings. Time to put it away now, at least until her confirmation.
Sincerely,
Me
Leaker for the Speaker?
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 11:49AM
What a coincidence! The now-canceled CIA idea for an “assassination plan” became public less than three weeks after House Democrats were briefed, although it apparently had remained secret since September 2001. Clearly, protecting the American people is less of a priority than protecting Speaker Pelosi’s political viability.
Leaker for the Speaker?
By Asher Embry
Seems the spooks had the germ of a plan:
Kill Osama near Afghanistan.
Told Schakowsky and Reyes
And within 18 days
To the Times it’d been leaked and it ran.
(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)
Sotomayor Says Roe Is "Settled Law" -- Why Wasn't Plessy?
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 11:34AM
The business of saying something is "settled law" is, with every Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing, revealed as little more than a game. Judge Sotomayor tells America that Roe v. Wade is "settled" law.…that mystical ironclad thing called precedent. What Senator will now ask why Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that approved racial segregation, was not "settled law" by 1954 when it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education? Brown dismantled the Supreme Court's Plessy decision, the latter a classic of Sotomayor-style judicial activism run amok with jurists who considered themselves wise white men simply ignoring the 14th Amendment.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 10:52AM
- Ms. Roe exercises her right to choose to get arrested (Washington Post)
- Obama’s trusted and old friend and speech aid, his teleprompter, dies (Los Angeles Times)
- Administration to waste $18 million on website that tracks stimulus waste (ABC News)
- Judge Sotomayor “wise Latina” speech (University of California-Berkeley)
Coming and Going
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 10:51AM
William McGurn bravely ventures into the funhouse-style rules of liberal judicialism in today's Wall Street Journal. He points out that the fact that Sotomayor is Catholic allows for a direct comparision between the way she is being treated in the confirmation process and the way that another known papist, John Roberts, was questioned.
To sum up McGurn's attempt to encapsulate the liberal Senators' varying attitudes toward the two nominees:
John Roberts: Catholic, professed that judges should not bring own moral feelings to bear on cases = Romanist sleeper trying to usher in theocracy through the bench.
Sonia Sotomayor: Catholic, subscribes to the liberal judicial philosophy that judges have a responsibility to consider moral feelings (or empathy?) in deciding = judicial moderate, there's no problem with six of nine judges being Catholic even though that's exactly the pope's plan.
What's the difference between the two? Apparently it is that Roberts appeared to be devout (the evidence being, apparently, that his wife was a member of "Feminists for Life") and that Sotomayor doesn't seem to take the rules coming from Rome too seriously.
In other words, to impose any kind of coherence on the liberals' Calvinball rules of judicial philosophy, you must accept the premise that a judge of religious background is fine as long as he doesn't care about the rules of his religion very much. (Then of course you have to ignore that being a judge is all about caring about rules.)
Sotomayor On Thin Ice Already
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 10:09AM
Over at the Washington Times' Water Cooler blog, I note that Judge Sotomayor already has badly contradicted herself by mis-citing her own statement about a belief of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She should not be able to get away with it.
Capitolism
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 9:49AM
Don Boudreaux coins a brilliant term to describe our new economic system.
MSNBC's Morning Racist Show
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 9:45AM
Somewhere along the line at a Washington function I've met MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. He's a nice guy.
So I am curious to know whether Joe and his crew over there at MSNBC's Morning Joe are aware of the real origin of the title of their show?
The "Joe" comes from one Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy for President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). Secretary Daniels was a progressive reformer like his boss (and his Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a young man named Franklin D. Roosevelt). One of Daniel's "reforms" was to ban wine from the officer's mess on Navy ships -- and substitute coffee instead. As one might imagine, this particular reform didn't go down all that well with sailors, and coffee on Navy ships acquired the nickname "Morning Joe" in honor of Secretary Josephus Daniels.
Alas, also like his boss President Wilson, Daniels was a thoroughgoing racist, as noted in my posting nearby, "Two Presidents and the Court: When Bigotry Takes the Bench."
The nationally prominent owner and editor of the Raleigh News and Observer in his native North Carolina, where he vividly practiced a scurrilous racism, Daniels shrieked that Wilson's predecessor Theodore Roosevelt (before Taft) and opponent in the 1912 election had insulted "the sensibilities of every man in the South" by inviting black leader Booker T. Washington to lunch at the White House during TR's tenure. He insisted that "the subjection of the Negro, politically, and the separation of the Negro, socially, are paramount to all other considerations…short of the preservation itself of the Republic." He prided himself as owner of the News and Observer, proclaiming his paper was "the militant voice of White Supremacy." And, not to be forgotten, "Morning Joe" Daniels segregated the U.S. Navy. There's more, lots more -- a hat tip here to Bruce Bartlett's informative book Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past -- but you get the picture. This was someone who gives the words "overly ripe" a new meaning.
So the question in these quarters as we listen to the Sotomayor debate, where accusations of racism have been raised, is this:
Does Joe Scarborough realize his show is named for the phrase coined for Josephus Daniels? Do the suits at MSNBC realize the titter potential from a show that could quickly be tagged the "Morning Racist"???
Just asking. As Joe surely knows, the record of our friends on the left with issues of race…a record bequeathed by the likes of Josephus Daniels is…ahh…a bit dicey. Some would argue it's the storyline for the American left. And since the left runs MSNBC…
There Will Be No Committee Filibuster of Sotomayor
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 9:21AM
I keep hearing that the Senate Republicans still have one more weapon at their disposal to block Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court even though the Democrats technically have a 60-seat, a Vote:filibuster-proof majority in the full Senate. Why? Because of the following rule on bring a matter to a vote: "The Chairman shall entertain a non-debatable motion to bring a matter before the Committee to a vote. If there is objection to bring the matter to a vote without further debate, a roll call vote of the Committee shall be taken, and debate shall be terminated if the motion to bring the matter to a vote without further debate passes with ten votes in the affirmative, one of which must be cast by the minority."
This has been intrepreted to mean that Sotomayor can't get to the Senate floor without at least one vote from a Judiciary Committee Republican, so the GOP can still block her. Let me say this as clearly as I can: It's not gonna happen. Not only did Senate Republicans spend the bulk of the Bush administration arguing that judicial filibusters were not only unseemly but also unconstitutional. Not only does Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Gang of 14, sit on the Judiciary Committee. Not only did Sen. Orrin Hatch vote to confirm Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Not only has Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the committee, disputed the idea that Sotomayor needs a Republican vote to advance to the Senate floor.
The Democrats could attempt to defeat a committee filibuster by filing a discharge petition, effectively bypassing the committee vote and bringing the nomination to the Senate floor. And given the size of the Democrats' majority, any differences over how to interpret the Judiciary Committee's rules are likely to be resolved in their favor. The odds are vanishingly small that the Republicans will try a committee filibuster and smaller still that the Democrats would let one succeed.
CBO Says Employer Mandate Would Cause Job Loss Among Low-Wage Workers
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 8:34AM
The Congressional Budget Office has determined that a mandate requiring employers to provide health insurance or pay a tax would lead to job losses, and that lower-wage workers would be the hardest hit.
"Requiring employers to offer health insurance—or pay a fee if they do not—is likely to reduce employment, although the effect would probably be small," the CBO wrote. "Those who would most likely be affected are currently paid close to or at the minimum wage. They would be more vulnerable to job loss because their wages could not be lowered sufficiently to absorb the cost of health insurance (if their firm decides to offer) or the fee (if their firm does not) without bumping into the minimum wage."
Public Protests Slowing Down Health Care Takeover
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 3:28AM
It appears that moderate Democrats in Congress are getting nervous. The public doesn't like the idea of wrecking the economy in the name of stopping warming, especially when the climate hasn't actually warmed any for a decade. People aren't responding any better to the idea of turning hospitals into the medical equivalent of the post office.
Call it the hangover effect.
Democrats who helped the sweeping climate change bill squeak through before jetting home for the July Fourth break got a surprisingly ugly homecoming, encountering a barrage of protests, attack ads and negative press. Police turned up at a local protest aimed at Rep. Allen Boyd (Fla.), a leader of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition. Freshman Rep. John Adler (N.J.) told a local paper he got shoved.
The bruising endured by the moderates - along with serious substantive concerns -prompted them last week to derail the planned Friday rollout of the health care bill. And it presents a continuing challenge to leaders hoping to wrap work on the package this month. "They are completely and totally rattled," one senior Democratic aide said of the centrists. "I've never seen them as bad as they are now."
The lesson is simple. The American people need to maintain the pressure. Legislators need to be reminded that they represent the folks back home, not Nancy Pelosi & Co. The battle is winnable.
Unhelpful Europeans in Afghanistan
Posted by on 7.14.09 @ 2:31AM
NATO is theoretically a military alliance, but the Europeans would prefer not to do anything that involves the military. A number of states have contributed troops to Afghanistan, but countries like Germany station their forces in areas where they hope there will be no fighting. Moreover, most governments restrict the use of their troops, sharply reducing the military value of NATO's "contributions."
The outgoing NATO SACEUR, or supreme allied commander Europe, would gladly forgo more NATO troops to fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan if allied countries dropped their caveats against their use in combat operations. Gen. John Craddock, the outgoing supremo, says these caveats "increase the risk to every service member deployed in Afghanistan and bring increased risk to mission success." They are also "a detriment to effective command and control, unity of effort and ... command."
NATO's International Security Assistance Force consists of 58,300 troops from 41 countries. But NATO's 28 member nations provide the core of the force. Most of them labor under operational restrictions, known as caveats, on combat imposed by their governments or parliaments. U.S. soldiers joke that ISAF stands for "I Saw Americans Fight."
In addition to American troops that have no combat caveats, British, Canadian and Dutch are the only national contingents under NATO command that are not handcuffed.
During the Cold War even the Europeans could agree that containing the Soviet Union was an important goal. There's no similar consensus on conflicts at the periphery of Europe, let alone outside the continent. Which means Washington will never be able to count on the kind of practical assistance which it desires. The alliance will remain one in name only, in which Washington does all the heavy lifting while most everyone else helps "supervise."
Monday, July 13, 2009
HELP Committee Amends Bill to Save Safeway Program
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 7:19PM
I've written on a number of occasions about a Safeway health and wellness program touted by lawmakers in both parties -- including President Obama -- which has reduced the grocery store chain's health care costs by creating financial incentives to encourage employees to adopt healthier lifestyles. The program involves offering discounted insurance premiums to those who avoid smoking and maintain a certain range of weight, cholesterol, and blood pressure. The program, as well as similar efforts, was in danger because of a provision in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee legislation that would bar insurers from charging individuals differently based on health status. However, just a few minutes ago, Sens. Tom Harkin and Judd Gregg announced a deal to amend the bill to allow for employers to vary the price of a premium by 30 percent, and 50 percent if they get authorization from the Secretary of Health and Human Services (it is capped at 20 percent under current law). The amendment easily passed by the committee. We'll have to see if this provision stays as the HELP bill gets merged together with other bills currently floating through Congress.
Sotomayor Hearings Wrap-Up, Day 1
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 5:23PM
The first day of Senate hearings on the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter's seat on the Supreme Court was all that Democrat strategists could have hoped: boring.
Sotomayor sat silent for most of the day as senators on the Judiciary Committee gave previews of their concerns, objections, or approval of the nomination. Ranking committee member Jeff Sessions and other conservative senators expressed anxiety about her ability to render impartial decisions in view of her now-infamous "wise Latina" statement from a 2001 speech, while liberal senators spoke in broad terms of her accomplishments and hardscrabble childhood in a Bronx housing project, which she rose above through hard work and education.
In his statement, Republican senator Lindsey Graham cut to the chase: "unless you have a complete meltdown, you're gonna get confirmed, and I don't think you will."
Not even new-minted Democrat senator and veteran comedian Al Franken could lend some levity to the proceedings: his brief statement included nary a pun in its laudatory account of Sotomayor's lifetime embodiment of the American dream, to the surprised dismay of press in attendance.
Franken's testimony did, however, include a tired sports metaphor ("level playing field"), handily appropriate for a hearing awash with umpires, balls, and strikes, a la Chief Justice John Roberts.
Sotomayor's opening statement, delivered right before the committee adjourned foir the day, dwelt heavily on her appreciation for her supportive family and the impressive rise of her career. She referenced her judicial philosophy only once, saying that, "in the past month, many Senators have asked me about my judicial philosophy. It is simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make the law -- it is to apply the law."
Throughout the day, a number of pro-life protesters interrupted the hearing with shouts and questions before Capitol police threw them out of the building. (Though she has ruled on several abortion-related cases, Sotomayor has never clearly articulated her personal stance on abortion). But during Sotomayor's own opening statement, silence reigned.
The hearings will continue for two more days, and as you follow along on C-Span, SCOTUSblog's Tom Goldstein has compiled a list of buzzwords for your Senate Nomination Bingo or drinking game of choice. (Nearly all got at least one mention today, a promising start.)
Sonia Sotomayor's Bad Decisions
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 4:44PM
As the confirmation hearing proceeds, it is worth remembering the important areas where Judge Sonia Sotomayor is on the liberal extreme. Robert Alt of the Heritage Foundation helpfully covers three of the most important cases. He writes:
Throughout her career, Judge Sotomayor has made statements and issued decisions that raise grave concerns about her impartiality, her judicial philosophy, her views on ethnicity and gender, and her perspective on issues ranging from gun rights, to property rights, to U.S. courts' reliance on foreign law. With that in mind, here are three troublesome cases that will highlight the hearings:
Second Amendment. Everyone knows about the 32 words Judge Sotomayor uttered about the "wise Latina woman," but what about the 11 words? That's how many she dedicated to determining whether a state law prohibiting weapons possession involved a fundamental right. She held that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to the states -- a ruling that would permit local governments to completely ban gun possession if they so desire.
Sotomayor's defenders have suggested that this case is an example of judicial restraint, because she relied upon 19th century cases in deciding that weapons could be outlawed. But the Supreme Court just last year said those cases do not meet the requirements of current law. This defense also ignores that Sotomayor did not cite a single case in her decision, just dismissing seven pages of analysis that the Ninth Circuit conducted to reach the conclusion that the right to bear arms is a fundamental one, deeply rooted in our nation's history.
Kirsten Gillibrand
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 2:47PM
Is no Chuck Schumer when it comes to speechifying.
UPDATE: Though she did manage to annoy the chairman, Patrick Leahy.
Al Franken
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 2:34PM
Seems to be using his time to try to prove he's not a jerk.
Arlen Specter
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 2:26PM
Is every bit as boring as a Democrat as he was a Republican.
Sen. Alexander Says He Can't See Senate Meeting August Health Care Deadline
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 2:03PM
I just got off the phone with Sen. Lamar Alexander, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee -- and he poured cold water on the idea that Democrats could meet the White House deadline to get health care legislation passed in both chambers of Congress before the August recess.
“I don’t see any way that can happen in the Senate," Alexander said. "We don’t even have a bill. We don’t even have an estimate on what we’re voting on and we’re talking about legislation that involves 16 percent of the economy and it’s being written in two different committees. The Finance Committee isn’t marking up its bill until next week. So, my hope is we’ll take the time to do it right, and not rush it through.”
Health Care Takeover in Trouble
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 1:57PM
Rasmussen Reports has good news. The public is shifting against a government takeover of the medical system.
Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters now at least somewhat oppose the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, while 46% at least somewhat favor it, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
This marks the first time that more voters lean against the plan than support it. Just two weeks ago, 50% were for the reform plan, and 45% were opposed.
The "nays" also continue to have the edge in terms of intensity. While 22% strongly favor the Democrats' health care
reform plan, 38% strongly oppose it, up four points from the previous survey.
Among those voters who have health insurance
We have to ensure that changing public attitudes are transmitted to Capitol Hill.
Obama: Stimulus "Worked as Intended"
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 1:54PM
Which obviously is the problem. Reports Bloomberg News:
President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill "has worked as intended" as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.
"It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession," Obama, who is traveling today in Ghana, said in his weekly Saturday radio and Web address. "It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and business."
Obama spoke after stocks fell for a fourth week on concern that an economic recovery will be delayed. A government report last week showed that employers cut 467,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent, the highest since 1983.
Given how well the first "stimulus" has worked, obviously we need a second one. At least, that's what the usual suspects in Washington think!
Dr. Bernanke's Prescription
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 1:48PM
Before noon today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had jumped more than 100 points, which indictates . . . well, your guess is as good as mine, or possibly much better.
One struggles to resist the foolish temptation to view the Dow as a barometer for forecasting the economic future. Highly trained forecasters (e.g., Jamie Saetelle) predict a long-term trend downward, while the zigzagging daily results are sometimes upward. Yet the folks who buy and sell stocks every day are interested in profits, not prophecy, and the long-term picture can usually only be seen in the rearview mirror.
One market-watcher who shares my own oft-repeated pessimism about the prospects for recovery under the current policy is Francis Cianfracco:
The extremely strong economic conditions that prevailed earlier in the decade were the result of a massive credit bubble, and you don't recover from those easily. The widespread deleveraging that has taken place in global finance can't help but be reflected in global economies. Relatively weak conditions are settling in for a long stay, and this realization is finally coming to market participants.
Cianfracco then goes on to examine the policies being pursued by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke:
As with so many things in this big-government renaissance, the basic assumptions at work were accepted without question and with barely any debate. Following Bernanke, policymakers simply assume that it's possible to forestall widespread deflation with rapid, decisive action.. . .
The basic idea is that we can stop the collapse of a credit bubble by blowing it back up again. If this works, I'll be the first to tip my hat to Ben Bernanke and the intellectual revolution he has founded. But it will be a repudiation of centuries of financial history.
My thoughts exactly. This countercyclical interventionist approach, it seems to me, ignores a host of potential negative consequences of such policies. If we are unlikely to get a full-on Weimar-style currency meltdown, we at least risk 1970s-style "stagflation."
However, it is impossible to predict exactly what will happen, simply because we're in uncharted territory and yet Bernanke, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are like the "Star Trek" crew aboard the Enterprise, boldly going where no economic policy has gone before.
My hunch that we're headed straight into an economic black hole (the pessimist instinctively seeks out voices of doom) is reinforced by Guy Sorman's City Journal interview with Anna Schwartz, a colleague of the late Milton Friedman who says Bernanke is ignoring Friedman's teachings:
[Former Fed Chairman Alan] Greenspan wanted to avoid recessions at all costs. By keeping interest rates at historic lows, however, his easy money fueled manias: first the Internet bubble and then the now-burst mortgage bubble. . . .
Greenspan's successor, Ben Bernanke, has followed the same path in confronting the current economic crisis, Schwartz charges. Instead of the steady course that the monetarists recommend, the Fed and the Treasury "try to break news on a daily basis and they look for immediate gratification," she says. "Bernanke is looking for sensations, with new developments every day." . . .
[Bernanke] has famously declared that "the Great Depression will not happen again." Bernanke is right about the past, Schwartz says, "but he is fighting the wrong war today; the present crisis has nothing to do with a lack of liquidity."
Schwartz's verdict that Bernanke "is fighting the wrong war" echoes the concerns of many other economists -- unfortunately, none of them with any influence in Obamaland -- who see the current policy prescription as the wrong medicine, based on a misdiagnosis of the underlying economic disease. The Dow zigzags day to day, but any prognosis for a quick recovery from this disease requires an irrational faith in Dr. Bernanke's healing powers.
Dionne Says GOP in SCOTUS Battle are the Real Radicals
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 1:19PM
It seems that the more power liberals acquire in Washington, the more unhinged E. J. Dionne becomes.
Mr. Dionne, put down the bong.
Kirk Back In
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 1:01PM
The latest news is that Mark Kirk will in fact now run for Senate after the GOP cleared the primary field for him.
Hey, Republicans
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 12:46PM
Obviously, with 60 Democratic senators, you can't stop Sotomayor unless there is some last-minute bombshell. Just as obviously, you should be respectful in your treatment of her. But you should at least have two objectives in these hearings: 1.) Highlight the less popular aspects of a liberal judicial philosophy and 2.) Make political points about the discriminatory impact of Title VII. I realize this may be too much to ask Republicans to do, but there it is.
Sotomayor Takes The Hill
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 12:44PM
We're at halftime of today's Sotomayor hearings, and at this point, there's not much to say. So far, we haven't heard a peep out of Justice Sotomayor, because we're stuck listening to the Senators make predictable opening statements, which you can view here. In the meantime, check out the Washington Times one page quick reference of Sotomayor's record on a number of pressing legal issues.
Lessons from the Sotomayor Hearings
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 12:37PM
1. Decisions based on the letter of the law that don't reach the desired policy outcome or defy "common sense" are "activism."
2. Lily Ledbetter really got shafted, once you omit certain key facts of her case, ignore existing provisions in the law that reset the clock on statutes of limitations, and grant that companies should be unable to defend themselves against discrimination lawsuits by allowing people to sue for the alleged discriminatory actions of supervisors who are dead. (The first two lessons come from Sen. Dick Durbin.)
3. Jeff Sessions and Tom Coburn seem to be the only Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
UPDATE: Jon Kyl was pretty tough too.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 10:07AM
- Federal government deserves a 2-stroke penalty for granting $2.2 million for watering golf courses (San Mateo County Times)
- Senator Hatch doesn’t trust invisible hand of college football, wants to regulate (Rivals.com)
- Krauthammer: Why START should have been stopped (Chicago Tribune)
- Free-market vandals object to stimulus pork (USA Today)
Obama's Health Care Deadline Likely a Pipe Dream
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 9:45AM
Today, the Politico calls it unlikely that President Obama's deadline to pass health care legislation in both chambers of Congress before the August recess will be met, and the Associated Press reports that lawmakers are telling the White House that they'll be on vacation before it gets done. I don't see how it can happen.
If there were a movie about this health care effort you'd have series of split screens -- in the House, where Blue Dogs say they won't vote for legislation with a strong government plan and the liberals say they won't vote for a bill without it, and Charlie Rangel keeps proposing tax increases that there isn't an appetite for; in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, where they haven't figured out how they're going to pay for everything after weeks of marking up the legislation, and then the Finance committee, where they were supposed to release a draft of their bill over a month ago and still haven't.
Setting the deadline of August was an ambitious goal that may have, despite everything, still made lawmakers move faster than they otherwise would have. However, if they can't meet the deadline, it creates the impression that the health care effort is failing, while opponents have weeks to rip apart the various provisions of half-baked proposals.
Obama's Fink
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 8:09AM
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) once asked Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner why BlackRock Inc., a securities firm, received no-bid contracts for work with the federal government. Geithner answered, "They come with a world-class reputation."
The question is: given that reputation, why aren't U.S. taxpayers more concerned about BlackRock's activities with the Bush and Obama Administrations. Now, according to Time magazine, the Treasury Department has selected nine large firms to operate funds to buy toxic securities from troubled financial institutions. BlackRock is one of those firms.
And here's where the dubious rep comes in. BlackRock's CEO Laurence Fink is credited with being one of the first to trade mortgage-backed securities, which are widely viewed as key contributors to the market crash of 2008. Apparently, following the same logic that has the chicken farmer hiring the fox to identify the best way to protect the hen house, Fink is viewed as the go-to guy for the Obama Administration to fix the mortgage-backed security mess.
BlackRock claims to manage "hundreds of billions (of dollars) for governments," but Fink and other senior executives at the firm will not disclose the governments for which BlackRock does business.
Fink's rise to prominence resulted from his previous work with First Boston where he sold Freddie Mac on the idea of buying $1 billion in collateralized-mortgage obligations, e.g., slicing and pooling mortgages and selling them as bonds. While Fink was paid $21,000,000 in 2007 and $26,400,000 in 2008, entities dealing with him have suffered huge losses.
Rounding out his résumé, Fink was also a large fundraiser for Barack Obama. Given all of this, one has to wonder why Obama couldn't just do American investors and taxpayers a break and give Fink an ambassadorship or something that gets him out of the economy instead of giving him a role in the economy.
Goldman Sachs and the Next Bubble
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 5:40AM
Goldman Sachs is expected to report record profits this week. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi calls the giant investment bank a "vampire squid," and notes how many Goldman alumni were involved in last year's financial bailout, which benefitted the firm. Taibbi concludes:
It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs - its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign - sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.
Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. . . . And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits - a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade.
Hope and Change!
Christian Churches Again Attacked in Iraq
Posted by on 7.13.09 @ 5:31AM
It is not clear that Christians will have a home in even a theoretically safer Iraq. The forces of Islamic intolerance may be too strong.
Reports the Christian Science Monitor:
It takes a certain amount of courage to attend a church in Iraq.
In the past 24 hours, bombs exploded outside of six churches in various Baghdad neighborhoods, killing at least four people, and wounding more than 30, according to a Reuters report from the Iraqi capital.
Sunday's attacks were among the worst, in terms of the death toll. But many of these same churches have been bombed before. On Jan. 6, 2008 - also a Sunday - seven churches (four in Baghdad, three in Mosul) were hit in a similar round of bombings. Two years earlier, four churches (three in Baghdad, 1 in Kirkuk) were bombed - also on a Sunday in January.
The Assyrian (Christian) International News agency reports that 52 Assyrian churches have been bombed in Iraq between June 2004 and the end of 2008.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
More Conservative Protestant Thoughts on Caritas in Veritate
Posted by on 7.12.09 @ 10:58PM
In an earlier post, I already set out my own attitude of humility before the pope's encyclical. I recognize the respect due both his office and his tremendous personal learning. There is no question that what the pope has said about the nature of truth is stupendously good.
In that post, I expressed a degree of unease with some of the economic thought, at least as I perceived it, in the encyclical. Looking it over again, here are the parts (more than any others) that cause me the most trouble:
In section 32:
The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone (italics original to the document).
And then just a little further:
Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth distribution in order to increase the country's international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development.
Now, when I read those parts of the document, I recognize a type of thinking about the economy that I would typically associate with western Europe and pre-Thatcherite Britain. At least, it is possible to interpret the document in that fashion. When I think about prioritizing "the goal of access to steady employment for everyone" I contemplate the kind of worker security initiatives that slowly bankrupted General Motors or government programs that subsidize anti-productive schemes for workers as a class.
I may be guilty of reading too much into the words I've selected because I know the pope is a western European accustomed to exactly the brand of economics which give rise to my concern.
The great question, of course, is what does the pope mean when he says we must provide access to steady employment? Does he mean that we should educate citizens and provide a culture that gives individuals initiative and the desire to be productive so they will be worth employing? Or does he mean that we should attempt great governmental schemes of guaranteed employment for working age people? Or does he mean both? Or something else entirely? I'm not sure we can know because the pope says the church does not offer technical solutions.
And when he writes about protecting the rights of workers and retaining mechanisms of wealth redistribution it is difficult to imagine he is referring to any action of the free market. But again, it is difficult to say because he is purposefully vague. What I keep thinking is that some of those mechanisms could be exactly the things preventing a nation from attaining greater prosperity.
The New Establishmentarians
Posted by on 7.12.09 @ 8:54PM
Am I the only one left who thinks of conservatism as a philosophy of opposition, a defiant creed that aims to challenge the hegemony of organized liberalism? The reason I ask is because of a rather strange article in today's Boston Globe:
Where . . . will the next big conservative ideas come from? A few young thinkers are offering intriguing new intellectual frameworks for conservative principles. . . .
[T]heir ideas provide a glimpse of what the search for new ideas looks like, and how conservatives might come up with a new conceptual scaffolding in what are, politically and economically, unfamiliar times.
A rather strange article, I say, because one of the "young thinkers" named is Reiham Salam of the New America Foundation (NAF). If that causes some conservatives to scratch their heads, take a gander at the NAF board of directors. To say that the most recognizably "conservative" name on the list is Francis Fukuyama would be to say everything that need be said, were it not for the presence on the NAF board of Berrnard L. Schwartz.
Ring a bell? Yep, the same Bernard L. Schwartz who gave more than $1 million to Bill Clinton and Democrats, and whose Loral Space & Communications was fined $20 million for providing sensitive missile technology to Beijing.
Obviously, Schwartz is just the fellow to sponsor the development of "intriguing new intellectual frameworks for conservative principles." Another of the "young thinkers" named by the Globe is Megan McArdle, who supported Barack Obama in the last election. Such are the fonts of "the next big conservative ideas," you see.
The Episcopal Church: Still Christian?
Posted by on 7.12.09 @ 2:24PM
I ask because I'm not a member of the Episcopal Church, and thus have no personal experience from which to judge articles like this.
Reports the Associated Baptist Press:
The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a "great Western heresy" that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society.
Describing a United States church in crisis, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told delegates to the group's triennial meeting July 8 in Anaheim, Calif., that the overarching connection to problems facing Episcopalians has to do with "the great Western heresy -- that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."
"It's caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus," Jefferts Schori, the first woman to be elected as a primate in the worldwide Anglican Communion three years ago, said. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."
Jefferts Schori said countering individualistic faith was one reason the theme chosen for the meeting was "Ubuntu," an African word that describes humaneness, caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation.
"Ubuntu doesn't have any 'I's in it," she said. "The 'I' only emerges as we connect -- and that is really what the word means: I am because we are, and I can only become a whole person in relationship with others. There is no 'I' without 'you,' and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the One who created us."
Jefferts Schori said "heretical and individualistic understanding" contributes to problems like neglect for the environment and the current worldwide economic recession.
It certainly isn't my job to pronounce judgment on other churches (I attend a nondenominational Evangelical fellowship). But I can only wonder at people who gain their authority from the historic Christian church while simultaneously trashing the doctrinces of the very same historic Christian church.
Well, it's Only Money
Posted by on 7.12.09 @ 2:00PM
Another day, another bail-out!
The Obama administration is developing an initiative to take money from the $700 billion rescue program for the banking system and make it available to millions of small businesses, which officials say are essential to any economic recovery because they employ so many people, according to sources familiar with the plan.
The effort would represent a striking shift from the rescue program's original mandate, since it would direct billions of bailout dollars toward a plan that aims more at saving jobs than at righting the financial system. Some economists estimate that small businesses, defined as firms with fewer than 500 workers, employ most of the country's workforce.
A proposal being floated by senior Treasury Department officials calls for using the bailout funds to expand a government program that helps small companies borrow from banks at low rates to keep their businesses going, the sources said. These "working-capital" loans would come with few restrictions and could be used to buy inventory, hold on to employees and pay off short-term debt.
It would be tragic if there was even one business left in America that was not eligible for at least one bail-out. Obviously, the Obama administration isn't about to let that happen!
The Dangerous Yoga Industry
Posted by on 7.12.09 @ 1:19PM
I should have known. Americans were at risk from a yoga industry run amok. Only government regulation can save us. And collect big bucks for government.
Citing laws that govern vocational schools, like those for hairdressers and truck drivers, regulators have begun to require licenses for yoga schools that train instructors, with all the fees, inspections and paperwork that entails. While confrontations have played out differently in different states, threats of shutdowns and fines have, in some cases, been met with accusations of power grabs and religious infringement - disputes that seem far removed from the meditative world yoga calls to mind.
In April, New York State sent letters to about 80 schools warning them to suspend teacher training programs immediately or risk fines of up to $50,000. But yogis around the state joined in opposition, and the state has, for now, backed down.
In other states, regulators were not moved. In March, Michigan gave schools a week to be certified by the state or cease operations. Virginia's cumbersome licensing rules include a $2,500 fee - a big hit for modest studios that are often little more than one-room storefronts.
Lisa Rapp, who owns My Yoga Spirit in Norfolk, Va., said she was closing her seven-year-old business this summer. "This caused us to shut down the studio altogether," Ms. Rapp said. "It's too bad, because this community really needs yoga."
Makes you wonder how we survived all those terrible years when Americans could go to work without having to satisfy an industry-controlled government commission that they were qualified to work!
Uncommon Sense from Barack Obama
Posted by on 7.12.09 @ 4:58AM
President Barack Obama actually said something sensible about Africa. Reports the Associated Press:
Obama told AllAfrica.com that he was "a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africa."
"Part of what's hampered advancement in Africa is that for many years we've made excuses about corruption or poor governance, that this was somehow the consequence of neocolonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racism," Obama said. "I'm not a believer in excuses."
Now, if he would only apply the same principles in America ... .
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