The American Spectator

If Health Care "Reform" Sinks,Then What for the Drugmakers?

Posted by Doug Bandow on 2.9.10 @ 1:56PM

Oops.  That presumably is the reaction of Big Phrma and other industry advocates of Democratic health care "reform."  By playing footsie with the politicoes who most hated them, the big health care lobbies expected to mitigate the damage.  Now the strategy is in ruins.

Kim Strassel looks at Pfizer under CEO Jeffrey Kinder, who was seemingly chosen to make peace with the Democrats:

The sight of ObamaCare on life support has many Democrats disappointed. It could be worse. They could be Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler.

The twin events of an Obama presidency and a financial crisis rattled corporate America. Public anger put companies on the defensive. A liberal president vowing to punish firms that didn't aid his agenda got companies scared.

Fortune 500 execs could stand up for a free market that benefits consumers and shareholders, or hitch their cart to the new Democratic majority. Pfizer's Mr. Kindler is a case study in the hitch-and-hope mentality-a CEO who became the motivating force behind Big Pharma's $80 billion "deal" on reform, and industry support of ObamaCare. With that health agenda burning, the choice isn't looking so grand.

Pfizer was long a company that zealously guarded against government interference. Prior CEOs had seen how European governments had ruined its industry and recognized the threat. When the board made Mr. Kindler CEO in 2006-picking a relative newbie over insiders-it was a vote for shakeup. Mr. Kindler changed a lot more than the business.

Already known as a Democrat and political junkie, Mr. Kindler was primed for the Obama ascendancy. Like many big CEOs, he started playing footsie with groups that had long despised business but would now have the president's ear. Pfizer quietly created a board of "notables" to advise it on policy. A top recruit: Andy Stern, fiery head of the Service Employees International Union. (It also includes Newt Gingrich.)

With health care "reform" coming undone, where will Pfizer and the other drugmakers turn?  Stay with their new friends, many of whose fondest wish is to turn pharmaceuticals into public utility? Or turn back to the Republicans, who have no incentive to be nice to industries which actively pushed to further nationalize American health care?

If the drugmakers try the latter, the GOP should enjoy a good laugh and suggest that the pharmaceutical producers check back with Nancy Pelosi & Co.  There's no reason to take political bullets defending an industry that refuses to defend itself.

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Al-Qaeda-Linked Radical in London Sees Terrorist Attacks "Even Bigger Than in 2001"

Posted by Philip Klein on 2.9.10 @ 11:34AM

CBN's Erick Stakelbeck has an eye-opening new report in which he interviews some of London's leading Islamic radicals. Several of them are wanted on terrorism charges in other nations, but free to live in Britain -- in some cases receiving government welfare benefits.

Among the anecdotes:

CBN News recently conducted an off-camera interview with al-Faqih in his London home.

He was designated by the U.S. and U.N. as a global terrorist in 2004 for alleged links to al Qaeda but maintains his innocence. Al Faqih says he meets with British government officials regularly and that they respect his work.

He believes there will be more confrontation between the West and the Muslim world, including terrorist attacks "even bigger than in 2001."

British officials have pushed to deport men like al-Faqih and Yasser al-Sirri back to their home countries. But the European Union and a number of British judges have blocked these efforts over human rights concerns.

Full story writeup here. Video below.

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Daily Must-Reads

Posted by Brian O'Connell on 2.9.10 @ 11:25AM

• $3 million of stimulus money going towards constructing a high school football stadium in Mississippi (Hattiesburg American)
• Minnesota drivers are puzzled as to who paid for a billboard that has a photo of Bush with the caption "Miss Me Yet?" (NPR)
• Taliban leader says it will "shake hands" with Americans when they come into Helmand province, say the Taliban are gone, and then start waging guerrilla war (MSNBC)
• Swedish court rules that a Muslim man who refused to shake hands with a woman in the company was guilty of employment discrimination (NY Daily News)

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New Hampshire Not So Blue

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.9.10 @ 11:14AM

Like Virginia, New Hampshire was a red state -- in fact, the Granite State had been Republican longer -- that dramatically turned blue in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles. Also like Virginia, it is showing some signs of shifting back, though not as dramatically.

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Nelson Will Join GOP Filibuster of Union Lawyer Nominee

Posted by Philip Klein on 2.9.10 @ 10:39AM

Sen. Ben Nelson has announced he would support a Republican filibuster of the nomination of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, putting his Senate confirmation in serious doubt.

As I've note in previous posts, Becker has served as a lawyer to SEIU and the AFL-CIO. He has also written that "card check" -- which would deny workers a secret ballot on unionization, and thus enable labor to rapidly add members through intimidation -- could be enacted on the regulatory front by the NRLB, which he has been nominated to chair. 

“Mr. Becker’s previous statements strongly indicate that he would take an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB, and that he would pursue a personal agenda there, rather than that of the Administration," Nelson said in a statement. “This is of great concern, considering that the Board’s main responsibility is to resolve labor disputes with an even and impartial hand. In addition, the nominee’s statements fly in the face of Nebraska’s Right to Work laws, which have been credited in part with our excellent business climate that has attracted employers and many good jobs to Nebraska. Considering these matters, I will oppose the upcoming cloture motion and the nomination.”

The vote on Becker was originally scheduled for Monday and then got pushed back until today, but given the forecasts of yet another blizzard in DC that has shut down the federal government again, it isn't clear when it will actually take place.

If Becker cannot get confirmed by the Senate, President Obama could still use a recess appointment, a strategy that Majority Leader Harry Reid has already floated.

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Wieseltier Takedown of Sullivan

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 2.9.10 @ 10:26AM

Leon Wieseltier has a brilliant takedown of Andrew Sullivan at Sullivan's old outlet, the New Republic.

Hardly a day goes by when I don't stop myself from posting a rebuttal of some argument Sullivan's made or some falsehood that he's promoted. And that's true of everyone here at TAS: if you didn't hold back, the blog would devolve into a catalogue of his errors and misstatements. Especially when Sullivan writes about the pope or Catholicism, I, as someone who knows the first thing about it, am always shocked by his craziness. Wieseltier's topic is Sullivan's treatment of Israel and American Jews, and it's pretty damning.

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Tom Campbell's Anti-Israel Voting Record

Posted by Philip Klein on 2.9.10 @ 9:59AM

U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell, currently leading in polls for the Republican primary in California and perhaps more famous as the target of Carly Fiorina's "demon sheep" ad, is coming under fire for his anti-Israel voting record in Congress.

Over at Contentions, Jennifer Rubin uses Fiorina's call for tougher sanctions on Iran as a jumping off point to note that:

One of her opponents, Chuck Devore, has in the past voiced strong support for Israel’s right of self-defense.

Tom Campbell, who has zipped into the lead in early polls, is quite another story. During his time in the House, Campbell was one of the few Republicans with a consistent anti-Israel voting record. In 1999, he introduced an amendment to cut foreign aid to Israel. This amendment, titled the Campbell Amendment, was defeated overwhelmingly on the House floor by a vote of 13-414. In 1999, Campbell was one of just 24 House members to vote against a resolution expressing congressional opposition to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. In 1997, Rep. Tom Campbell authored an amendment (also titled the Campbell Amendment) to cut foreign aid to Israel. The resolution failed 9-32 in committee. In 1990, Campbell was one of just 34 House members to vote against a resolution expressing support for Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.  The resolution passed the House 378-34. But Campbell has taken positions on more than just aid that have raised concerns about his views on Israel. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2000, Campbell, in his losing race against Dianne Feinstein, “told numerous crowds–including Jewish groups–that he believes Palestinians are entitled to a homeland and that Jerusalem can be the capital of more than one nation.”

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President Obama's Poll Ratings Underwater

Posted by Doug Bandow on 2.9.10 @ 8:20AM

The latest Marist Poll has bad news for the president.  Reports the New York Daily News:

President Obama's job approval rating has taken another dive, putting him underwater for the first time in the latest Marist poll.

Just 44% of the country approve of the work Obama is doing, while 47% don't like what they see.

The tough reviews come as Americans still find the commander in chief likable, with 50% rating him favorably, and 44% viewing him negatively.

And they still blame former President George W. Bush for the dismal economy.

Only 29% of voters say the poor economy is Obama's fault; 62% agree that Bush left the problem on Obama's desk.

"With this part of voters' mind-set, it's no wonder the White House would like to make 2010 a choice between President Obama and past GOP policies," said Lee Miringoff, director of The Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

Still, people think Obama's policies are not change they can believe in.

Forty-seven percent of voters say Obama has not lived up to their expectations, with just 42% saying he has.

A narrow plurality - 38% - think Obama's change has been bad, and 37% think it's been good.

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Islamic Censorship in Europe

Posted by Doug Bandow on 2.9.10 @ 7:48AM

Free speech in Europe is dying.  On January 20 the Netherlands, once thought to be a tolerant, liberal country, opened criminal proceedings against Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party.  He is accused of religious hate speech for his film Fitna, which pointed out the obvious, that Islam ain't the most tolerant of religions, as well as statements made in support of proposals to limit Muslim immigration and ban the Quran just as the Netherlands bans Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Paul Marshall of the Hudson Institute worries:

The American media's silence about the Geert Wilders trial is puzzling - the trial is explosive, much more so than most of America's perennial "trials of the century." Wilders, leader of the Freedom party, is arguably the Netherlands's most popular politician, but for years he has had to live in safe houses, including on military bases. He now faces the possibility of imprisonment on charges of "group insult" and "incitement to hatred," as defined by articles 137 (c) and (d) of the Dutch penal code, for his public speeches and op-eds criticizing Islam.

Apart from its direct and immediate threat to free speech, the trial exposes the growth of political violence and repression in the Netherlands, long lauded as the most tolerant country in Europe, if not the world. Thirty years ago, I interviewed then-prime minister Dries van Agt simply by strolling into his unguarded parliamentary office and asking his secretary if he could spare me a couple of minutes. Now it is a country where politicians and artists are targeted by vigilantes and the state.

In 2002, popular Dutch politician and gay activist Pim Fortuyn was murdered by an environmentalist who took offense at Fortuyn's criticism of Islam. In 2004, one of the country's leading documentarians, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered, and almost beheaded, on the streets of Amsterdam in retaliation for a film he made about Islam (Submission). In 2006, a gathering of scholars and commentators critical of Islam and Islamism led the Dutch security service to invoke an alert level just short of "national emergency." In 2008, the prospective release of Wilders's film Fitna led to special sessions of the Dutch cabinet. The country's best-known member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for many years had to live in hiding, and even briefly fled the country. This is the situation in the heart of liberal Europe.

The worst religious persecutors abroad are Islamic states--think Saudi Arabia, for instance.  Persecuting Islamic states like Pakistan are leading the campaign against the "defamation" of religion through the United Nations.  And even more ominously, as evidenced by the Wilders case, intolerant Islamic extremists are turning European governments into their de facto agents. 

One does not have to agree with every proposal and statement made by Wilders to recognize the danger posed by his prosecution.  Americans have to remain on alert to ensure that this sort of outrageous political correctness is not allowed to curb free speech in America, including the right to criticize Islam and Islamic extremists.

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Sacre Bleu: French Loses Ground!

Posted by Doug Bandow on 2.9.10 @ 4:25AM

Will the indignity never end?  The new European Union foreign minister, a Brit, speaks French badly!  Ever more countries are inclined to drop the language from diplomatic discourse!  It is time for action!

Reports the Financial Times:

Senior French officials are mounting a rearguard action to defend the use of French at the UN and other international institutions as a language of diplomacy, in the face of the inexorable rise of English.

Paris has renewed its efforts to secure the future of French in international circles, partly prompted by the appointment of Britain's Lady Ashton to head the European Union's foreign policy in November.

Her faltering French, once unthinkable in a senior EU official, has been seized upon by the French media, reflecting concerns in Paris that the diplomatic machinery she is building will be Anglophone.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the former prime minister who is President Nicolas Sarkozy's special envoy to promote French, was in New York at the end of last week to insist that its status as one of the two working languages at the UN must be respected.

The French démarche is the latest attempt to halt the rising tide of English as the dominant medium of diplomatic discourse. Mr Raffarin told journalists at a French-only briefing at his country's New York mission: "President Sarkozy has asked me to approach international organisations to ensure the presence of French and to express, positively but firmly, a certain intransigeance francophone that the rules must be respected,"

Tragic, isn't it.  The rest of the world just doesn't understand the grandeur, the sheer majesty, of the French language.  But Paris came up with the answer:  A bureaucrat must be dispatched to the UN!

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They're Getting One Thing Right

Posted by Nicole Russell on 2.8.10 @ 8:40PM

As much as I'm loathe to admit (Minnesota) Star Tribune reporters are right about anything, the Strib's reporter in D.C., Kevin Diaz, does get one thing right about what locals are calling snowpocalypse. And what we Minnesota natives call winter. In a blog post on the Strib's "Hot Dish Politics," he describes the differences between this snowfall and the great snowfall of 1991 in Minnesota.

The Washington area, once slammed by John F. Kennedy for its “southern efficiency and northern hospitality,” is basically clueless about snow.

(Point 2, subparagraph 1: The nation’s capital is a veritable Tower of Babel of driving styles, with a lot of folks at the wheel who, let’s just say, don’t know a lot about winter driving technique in the First World; Point 2, subparagraph 2: There’s no Minnesota Nice ethic here that gives any reassurance that once you dig your car out on the street you’ll ever get to park there again).

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John Murtha and Abscam

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.8.10 @ 4:48PM

Here is Dave Holman's scoop for The American Spectator in the fall of 2006. Don't expect this to make it into many obituaries.

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How Murtha's Death Could Make It Harder to Pass a Health Care Bill

Posted by Philip Klein on 2.8.10 @ 3:55PM

As the Capitol reacts to the death of Jack Murtha and remembers his legacy, it's worth pointing out that the news will make it even harder for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to secure the 218 votes needed to pass health care legislation.

Back in November, the House passed its health care bill by a narrow 220 to 215 margin, with 39 Democrats voting against it. Since then, the one Republican who voted for it -- Joseph Cao -- has indicated that he would not support the bill a second time around given the weaker language on abortion in the Senate version. In addition, Florida Rep. Robert Wexler already retired prematurely. Factor in Murtha's death today, and Pelosi is down to 217 votes. This doesn't even take into account the pro-life Democrats led by Bart Stupak who are prepared to vote "no." While there's been talk that Pelosi had some votes in reserve the first time around, the point is that those members felt they needed to vote against the bill -- and the political environment has deteriorated substantially for Democrats since then. 

With Murtha's death, the Cook Political Report has now moved his Pennsylvania district to the "toss up" category. If Republicans can field a good candidate and gain the seat, it would further reinforce the fears among Democrats in swing districts and make them less likely to jump on board with Pelosi. Chris Cillizza suggests the most likely date for the special election would be May 18. The special election to replace Wexler is scheduled for April 13, and is expected to go Democrat.

UPDATE: Another complicating factor is Rep. Neil Abercrombie. The Hawaii Democrat announced early last month that he would resign Feb. 28 run for governor. However, in his statement announcing his resignation, he said that he had ensured Pelosi that he’d be around to continue supporting the health care bill. Back when he made that statement, Scott Brown hadn’t won yet, and thus the end of this month seemed like plenty of time to finalize the health care bill. Now that the timeline has been pushed back, perhaps he’d postpone the effective date of his resignation if Pelosi still needed his vote.

UPDATE II: An earlier version of this post suggested that Democrats would be unable to pass the bill with 217 votes, but as a reader points out there's still the theoretical chance of passing it 217-216. So I changed the wording.

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BREAKING: John Murtha Has Died

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.8.10 @ 3:19PM

Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a leading House Democrat, has died. A special election will have to be held in his district no later than 60 days after the seat is officially declared vacant. Murtha's district went for John McCain in 2008 and only narrowly for John Kerry in 2004, making it a possible Republican pickup opportunity.

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Democrats Trying to Say Good-Bayh to Coats

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.8.10 @ 3:12PM

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza wonders if the Democrats are trying to dissuade Dan Coats from challenging Sen. Evan Bayh in Indiana. Cillizza details the Democratic assault on the new candidate:

First came a detailed dossier from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee running through the clients Coats represents as a federal lobbyist -- including PhRMA and Goldman Sachs.

Then the DSCC released a video from 2008 in which Coats tells a Republican audience he and his wife are planning to move to North Carolina -- not Indiana -- when he retires. (Coats currently lives in the D.C. area.)

And, finally, there was today's report that Coats had lobbied for a number of foreign governments including Yemen.

Why might any of this make Coats reconsider his candidacy? Cillizza continues:

First, Coats hasn't been involved in a competitive political campaign since the early 1990s -- a time when things like You Tube weren't even a glint in their creators' collective eyes. By hammering Coats before he even becomes a candidate, national Democrats want to make sure the former Senator understands what he is in for over the course of the next nine months (or so) and how much the media environment -- when it comes to politics -- has changed.

Second, assuming Coats is committed to run no matter what Democrats throw at him, the goal of the string of negative stories is to change the narrative from "Bayh draws a serious challenge in Coats" to "Coats, former lobbyist, returns home to Indiana to run."

Sounds like a lot of effort to go through to protect what had been thought to be a safe Democratic seat. Of course, I've argued that the seat isn't necessarily safe even if Bayh has to face John Hostettler instead.

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