Freedom Line Blog

Greta Van Susteren has the transcript of Rep. Paul Ryan’s keynote address to the Jack Kemp Foundation last night.  For fans of Kemp and his notion of The American Idea (i.e. broad-based economic growth, equal opportunity, and cultural renewal), Ryan’s speech is an inspiring formulation of Kemp’s program for the 21^st century.  An excerpt:

Americans are a compassionate people. And there’s a consensus in this country about our obligations to the most vulnerable. Those obligations are beyond dispute. The real debate is how best we can meet them. It’s whether they are better met by private groups or by government – by voluntary action or by government action.

And I would add that it’s about finding the most cost-effective way to meet those obligations so that they are financially sustainable.  This is critically important for at least three reasons.  First, it means that promises made to today’s beneficiaries can be kept.  Second, it means that tomorrow’s taxpayers won’t be left with the short end of the stick, being made to pay more than they receive in benefits.  And third, it frees up money; both in the federal budget for other worthy spending, and as a greater share of income retained by taxpayers.  Long-term federal entitlements are the real social contracts in our nation, and Americans owe it to ourselves – through our elected representatives – to reform the entitlement system to ensure its stability and fundamental fairness.

NBC News quotes U.S. Senator-Elect Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) from a campaign debate on what she would say to President Barack Obama about his energy policy:

“You’re wrong on energy. You’re headed in the wrong direction. You made bad decisions,” she said, according to The Associated Press. “You promised that you would promote clean coal technologies, that you would be a champion of coal, and you haven’t done it.” She also urged the president to replace Energy Secretary Steven Chu and EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

Certainly, that kind of independence helped Heitkamp eke out a win in a state Mitt Romney won by 20 points.  Now that she’s earned the right to speak her mind in the U.S. Senate, let’s see if she’s willing to make good on her promise.  With the coal industry staring at death by a thousand regulations, the sooner the better.

Forget the fiscal cliff negotiations.  If you’re a high-earning worker wondering if your taxes will go up in January, Reuters spotlights two new taxes coming your way courtesy of Obamacare:

The 3.8 percent surtax on investment income, meant to help pay for healthcare, goes into effect in 2013. It is the first surtax to be applied to capital gains and dividend income.

The tax affects only individuals with more than $200,000 in modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), and married couples filing jointly with more than $250,000 of MAGI.

The tax applies to a broad range of investment securities ranging from stocks and bonds to commodity securities and specialized derivatives.

The 159 pages of rules spell out when the tax applies to trusts and annuities, as well as to individual securities traders.

Released late on Friday, the new regulations include a 0.9 percent healthcare tax on wages for high-income individuals.

…

Together, the two taxes are estimated to raise $317.7 billion over 10 years, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis released in June.

These two new taxes take effect January 1, regardless of whether President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans agree to raise other taxes on high-earning Americans.

As the saying goes, if you want less of something, tax it.  You’d think liberals could see that taxing high-earners into extinction very quickly guts the very social programs Big Government types love.

Newt Gingrich nails the messaging misdirection being pushed by the fiscal cliff talk dominating Washington, D.C., right now:

The Left, both the politicians and the news media, have created a mythical threat which can only be solved by Republicans surrendering their principles and abandoning their allies.

Yet the fiscal cliff is entirely a manufactured threat.

The same people who are now negotiating worked two years ago to create the mess which they say is such a threat.

At any point they wanted to, the President and the Congress could reduce the “cliff” to a series of foothills by breaking the problem into ten or twenty component parts.

They could then focus on solving each problem on its own merits and out in the open with public hearings, public understanding and public involvement.

Public understanding, however, would limit the level of waste, favoritism, and special interests which could be funded.

That is exactly the opposite of what the Washington establishment wants.

Which is why the political process is so broken in our nation’s capitol.

Politico excerpts some of an intriguing speech by U.S. Senator-Elect Ted Cruz (R-TX) to a conservative audience last night in Washington, D.C.:

While the 41-year-old Cuban-American warned that Republicans need not abandon their principles in order to rebound electorally, he did suggest the party should retool its rhetoric on economic and cultural issues.

“We need to embrace what I call ‘Opportunity Conservatism.’ We need to conceptualize, we need to articulate conservative domestic policy with a laser focus on opportunity, on easing the means of ascent up the economic ladder,” he said.

While he conceded the party’s harsh tone on immigration was undoubtedly a factor, Cruz cited Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” comment as the main reason the president performed so well with Hispanics.

“I think far more important was 47 percent. … Republicans nationally, the story we conveyed was that 47 percent are stuck in a static world. We don’t have to worry about you, what that clip famously said. I cannot think of an idea more antithetic to the American principle,” Cruz said.

“We embraced in that comment, and in the narrative we made to this country, the Democrat notion that there is a fixed and static pie. … The rich are the rich, the poor are the poor, and all that matters is redistributing from one to the other. The essence of the conservative message should be we want a dynamic nation where anybody with nothing can achieve anything,” he added to cheers from the audience. “We did an incredibly poor job at articulating the message of opportunity.”

If Cruz jumps into the 2016 presidential contest with other possibilities like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan, the GOP – and the conservative movement that animates it – will be better for it.

Another day of congressional testimony for Susan Rice comes with more indications the Ambassador to the United Nations will not become the next Secretary of State.

But do pity Ms. Rice, at least a smidge.  With the finger-pointing circus around the Benghazi, Libya fiasco, it’s hard to keep the story straight on what exactly happened and who was responsible for hiding that information from the American people.

To clarify things, The Blaze website (quoting Buzzfeed) lists at least five official versions of the truth from the Obama Administration:

1. References were removed to not tip off al-Qaeda and were substituted with “extremists,” according to David Petraeus.
2. The links to al-Qaeda were too “tenuous” to make public by the Directorate of National Intelligence because the source wasn’t trusted.
3. “The talking points were debated and edited by a collective of experts from around the intelligence community,” not just DNI, according to a DNI spokesman.
4. The CIA told Senators McCain, Graham, and Ayotte the FBI removed references to al-Qaeda from the talking points “to prevent compromising an ongoing criminal investigation.”
5. The CIA later called Senators McCain, Graham, and Ayotte back, saying they had misspoken to them and that they – not the FBI – had edited the talking points.

On the bright side for Ambassador Rice, so far none of the misrepresentations have implicated her or her office as the source of the misinformation.  At most (so far), we’ve got diplomatic (Rice and Hillary Clinton) personnel parroting information from the intelligence community whose job it is to resource diplomats.

As I understand it, it’s the DNI, CIA, etc.’s job to gather, interpret, and communicate information so that the diplomatic arm of the federal government can use it.  Sure, more and better questions seemingly should have been asked by Clinton and Rice, but ultimate responsibility for knowing and articulating what happened in Benghazi rests somewhere in the alphabet soup of the intelligence community.  Those lines of responsibility won’t change if Rice replaces Clinton at State.

Cold comfort, though, since it looks like scuttling Rice’s nomination will be the only chance the Administration’s critics get to actualize their displeasure.  Welcome to Washington.

Tony Lee over at Breitbart.com highlights some interesting divergences between the Republican and Democratic caucuses in the U.S. House of Representatives:

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) on Wednesday said to “take a good look when the House convenes after this next Congress is sworn in” to see that the Republican party has gotten “white and more male,” while Democrats are “majority minority and female.”

But a University of Minnesota study found that when the 113th Congress convenes, a whopping 29.4% (59 of 201) of Democrats in the House will hail from California (38 members) and New  York (21 members).

As any number of post-election analyses has shown, liberals have been very successful at defining politics in terms of gender and ethnic identities.  What is striking about the Minnesota study is how much those identities – and the ideology of government activism that supports them – are anchored in America’s two most populous coastal states.

Remember this reality the next time you hear an MSNBC talking head decry the Southern hegemony in the GOP.  As always, the parties are defined by powerbases that offer a glimpse into what each group’s policy goals might look like if the candidates promoting them are successful at the ballot box.

The Democratic Party is becoming increasingly defined by high-tax, high-spending states like California and New York.  Like European socialism, that model isn’t sustainable.  It remains to be seen if a Southern-oriented conservative can articulate not only the reasons to reject a statist future, but also the rational benefits of limited government.

Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation shows the depths sunk to by opponents of school choice:

Last Tuesday, Oklahoma’s special-needs students received a pre-Thanksgiving win. The state’s Supreme Court ruled that two school districts that had challenged the legality of the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Program—a voucher program for special-needs students—were out of line in bringing the lawsuit.

The school districts had challenged the scholarship program on the basis that it violated the state’s Blaine Amendment by allowing scholarship money to be used at religious schools. Other opponents of school choice programs have time and again brought similar claims to the courts.

Eric Baxter of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty said that the Supreme Court’s decision in this case “is a great victory for both religious freedom and the disabled.”

“Let’s hope the school districts drop their paranoia that allowing disabled kids to go to a private religious school of their choice somehow creates an official state church for Oklahoma,” said Baxter. “The message from the Supreme Court today is unequivocal: These school districts should stop spending taxpayer dollars suing their most vulnerable students and focus on what they are supposed to be doing—teaching kids.”

Here, here!

No one seriously thinks that allowing a college freshman to spend taxpayer money on tuition at a religious university violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.  The same holds true when a high school senior attends a sectarian primary or secondary school.  That school choice opponents would try to deny disabled children the same freedom of choice available to able-bodied adults shows how badly the public sector wants to maintain its monopoly on students.

As you gather round the turkey with family, may this remembrance of blessings past enkindle joy and peace for those being enjoyed now.

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

H/T: Heritage Foundation

With Fox News reporting that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will “stay around” for another year before stepping down, names are already circulating about his possible replacement.

Among those mentioned is Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, the official told Fox News.

Other names being mention on Capitol Hill are Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a former state attorney general.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s name also has been mentioned, a source told Fox News.

Of these, my bet would be on Deval Patrick.  In his second term as Massachusetts’ governor, he’s probably looking for something else to do now that he’s put Romneycare on the way to bankruptcy.  Also, as a former Clinton era Department of Justice official, Patrick’s resume checks the right box to lead DOJ.

Most importantly, would Patrick be worse than Holder?  That’s hard to imagine.  In the Obama Administration, that’s a potential improvement worth supporting; the sooner the better.

If you’re a conservative looking for reasons to be thankful this November, don’t read Amity Shlaes’ column at Bloomberg today.  In it, the author of books on Calvin Coolidge and the Great Depression identifies four factors that make 2013 seem like 1937 – a pre-election government spending spree; talks of deficit reduction thereafter; presidential attacks on high-income earners; and the economic fallout from first-term “comprehensive reforms” like Social Security and Obamacare.

According to Shlaes, the combination caused “the depression within the Depression.”  Not something one wants to think about this time of year.

Recently, Quin argued that Obamacare’s medical device tax would be a huge job-killer if implemented.  A story from Fox News about massive layoffs at medical supply giant Stryker confirms his grim prediction:

The company will cut 1,170 jobs, or five percent of its worldwide workforce…

A “medical device excise tax” included in the mandate imposes a 2.3 percent levy on medical device manufacturers and suppliers, which critics say will raise prices on everything from pacemakers to prosthetics to stents. Companies will be required to pay the tax regardless if they have a profit or loss for the year. The tax is estimated to cost the medical device industry $20 billion.
…

“Here we are, one of the greatest industries in the country, and we’re staring down on Jan. 1, 2013 and the addition of a 2.3 percent excise tax, while meanwhile on the other side all the discussion in Washington is about creating jobs,” Stryker President and CEO Stephen McMillian said during a national conference of medical device manufacturers in Washington, D.C. last September.

Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller summarizes the main proposals in the ACHIEVE Act, a Republican version of the Obama-approved DREAM Act:

Essentially, the proposal involves several tiers: W-1 visa status would allow an immigrant to attend college or serve in the military (they have six years to get a degree). After doing so, they would be eligible to apply for a four-year nonimmigrant work visa (also can be used for graduate degrees.)

Next, applicants would be eligible to apply for a permanent visa (no welfare benefits.) Finally, after a set number of years, citizenship “could follow…”

Then follows a laundry list of criteria for securing citizenship that – surprise! – is much less generous to children of illegal immigrants than the DREAM Act.

I applaud the GOP Senators and staff who are trying to deliver a coherent response to the Democrats’ backdoor amnesty proposal.  But the conservative contribution to comprehensive immigration reform won’t be made by low-balling benefits to an ethnic voting bloc.

Instead, conservatives need to put together a package of border security and visa reforms that seizes control of United States immigration policy.  If those reforms are agreed to only then should they seriously consider swallowing hard on the DREAM Act.

Conservatives aren’t any good at concocting government giveaways.  That’s a liberal’s skill set.  Rather, it would be much better, as a matter of integrity and competency, for conservatives to hold out for real border security and real money to fund it.  At least then we could point to a real achievement instead of being outbid yet again.

Commentary from the National Rifle Association says new gun control legislation could be just around the corner:

…not long after Obama floated the idea of banning semi-automatic firearms, we learned that California Senator Dianne Feinstein was working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to draft new legislation that would ban semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and handguns, so-called “high capacity” magazines, and rifles and shotguns with pistol grips. Reportedly, Feinstein wants to make it illegal not just to sell your guns and magazines, but to leave them behind in your will.

Taking a step back, I can see the ATF’s point.  After walking more than 2,000 guns into the arms of Mexican drug lords, they need a new source for weapons.  What better way to get them than from the cold dead hands of law-abiding Americans?

A story in the Houston Chronicle on being careful what you wish for:

When the White House promised that any online petition getting more than 25,000 signatures would get a thorough review and an official response, officials probably weren’t thinking about requests for secession.

But on Monday – less than a week after President Barack Obama‘s re-election – a petition on the White House website calling for Texas to secede from the union has received more than 35,000 signatures, far more than similar requests from other states.

Peter Beinart says the GOP’s “Hispanic problem” is about more than just immigration reform and competing forms of amnesty:

Hispanics do feel that the economic system is “stacked against them” and they do “want stuff” like health care, college-tuition assistance, and other government benefits that might help them get ahead. According to Pew, while only 41 percent of Americans as a whole say they want a bigger government that provides more services, a whopping 75 percent of Hispanics do.

Food for thought for those thinking Marco Rubio’s version of the DREAM Act or another legal quick fix will suddenly flip Hispanics from Democrats to Republicans.

The reason given is that the married general-turned-Director of the CIA had an affair.  That’s horrible.  But if this is a smokescreen to dodge responsibility for the Benghazi fiasco, the story – and David Petraeus’ reputation – will get worse.

This summer’s UN gun control treaty collapsed once the United States decided to reject text that would have opened the door to global restrictions on the right to bear arms.

But now that Barack Obama survived his reelection bid, gun control advocates at the UN are hoping he’s more flexible if given another chance to vote on the treaty.

…the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee moved quickly after Obama’s win to approve a resolution calling for a new round of talks March 18-28. It passed with 157 votes in favor, none against and 18 abstentions.

Heaven help us.

H/T: Reuters

Sounds like the Contempt of Congress citation and ongoing Fast and Furious litigation is getting to the Attorney General:

“That’s something that I’m in the process now of trying to determine,” Holder said. “I have to think about, can I contribute in a second term?”

…

“[I have to] really ask myself the question about, do I think there are things that I still want to do? Do I have gas left in the tank? It’s been an interesting and tough four years, so I really just don’t know,” Holder told [a group of law] students.

If Alberto Gonzalez can be hounded into resigning for firing federal prosecutors who work for him, then Eric Holder can be shown the door for hiding his role in a gun-walking program that killed dozens of Mexicans and at least one American Border Patrol agent.

Assuming Holder leaves, the next question is whether Obama can find his version of Michael Mukasey to replace him.

If so, it would be one of a series of smart moves the President could do to get his second term off to a bipartisan start.

H/T: CBS News

Like I said last week, the lame duck Congress will be very active:

Confident that Republicans would retain their majority in the House, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told POLITICO that GOP lawmakers would reject any new taxes on households in the highest income tax bracket.

“We’re not raising taxes on small-business people,” Boehner said. “Our majority is going to get re-elected … We’ll have as much of a mandate as he will — if that happens — to not raise taxes.”

That anti-tax mandate would be shared by the White House if Mitt Romney wins tonight, of course.

H/T: NBC News