Freedom Line Blog

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – Nevada) appeared on the verge of tears on the Senate floor yesterday, lamenting criticisms lodged against him.

His complaint?  That those big, bad, meanie Republicans had the audacity to question his personal judgment in scooting off to a Louisiana fundraiser, even while he threatens to keep the Senate in session into the holidays to address healthcare legislation.  Voice cracking, he feigned heartbreak that criticisms against him could become so “personal.”  He professed an inability to fathom how supposed “friends” from across the aisle could “embarrass or denigrate” him in such a cruel, cruel manner.

This is the same Harry Reid who, just three days earlier, compared opponents of his healthcare legislation to those who defended slavery and opposed the Civil Rights Act.  Never mind that the Republican Party originated from opposition to slavery, or that Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act in higher proportions than Democrats.  Factual realities are apparently no more relevant to Harry Reid than is a sense of personal decorum and judgment.

In this way, he is like the proverbial boy who murdered his parents only to later plead for mercy as an orphan.  He started a fight, but didn’t like it when his targets fought back.  In less than one year, Nevada voters will have their opportunity to render judgment on Reid’s plea.  According to the latest polls, they are apparently unamused.

Was Chicago-style political thuggery the type of “hope and change” for which Americans voted in 2008?

Either way, that’s the White House’s emerging modus operandi.

Intially, the Obama Administration at least paid lip service to bipartisanship, even if the reality behind closed doors was quite different.  But with the EPA’s recent determination that everyday carbon dioxide constitutes a “dangerous pollutant,” Obama has abandoned even that pretense.  According to an anonymous White House source quoted by Fox News, the EPA’s absurd ruling is a bald political tactic to bludgeon the Senate and the business community into accepting carbon cap-and-tax legislation:

If you don’t pass this legislation, then … the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area.  And it’s not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.”

The House of Representatives passed a cap-and-tax bill by razor-thin margins, but its prospects in the Senate appeared slim.  Meanwhile, many business coalitions have refused to play ball in the White House’s game of global warming hysteria.  Enter the team of Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, with their ugly form of Chicago politics.

As Obama’s popularity falls to record lows for a President at this stage, and with his extremist agenda in increasing jeopardy, we should prepare for more.

What do Obamanomics and global warming hysteria have in common?

A numbers hoax.

As anyone outside the deepest redoubts of the Daily Kos and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann knows, the foundation underlying the global warming agenda is crumbling.  This is the result of revelations of politically-correct climate scientists explicitly attempting to distort data, blacklist opposing viewpoints and redefine what constitutes scholarly publication on the subject.  Even the shameless Al Gore has been embarrassed enough to avoid the climate change summit taking place in Copenhagen this month.

In a similar manner, the data trumpeted by the Obama White House to justify its “stimulus” efforts has been exposed.  Last week, the chief of the board tracking stimulus spending announced that inspectors will review the data underlying Obama’s claim that he “saved or created” approximately 650,000 jobs.  This number was announced in October of this year, only to be quickly refuted.  Among other things, the estimate included non-existent Congressional districts, and dozens of jobs purportedly created by grants of less than $1,000.

Although these two news items have received well-deserved attention, few people have connected them.  The simple fact is that two of the greatest icons of liberal thought – global warming and government spending – have been exposed as reliant upon fraudulent data.  When the White House wonders why its poll numbers continue to plummet to unprecedented lows and voters begin to smell the coffee, perhaps they merely need to read the news.

“Nothing to see here, folks…  Move along.”

That was the convenient and laughable conclusion of a self-serving ACORN-supported investigation.

You remember ACORN…  It recently became famous for being caught red-handed on hidden video on multiple occasions and at multiple sites sharing advice on how to use government largess to engage in child prostitution.  Well, ACORN’s executives hired former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to investigate.  The conclusion?  “We did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff involved.  In fact, no action, illegal or otherwise, was ever taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers.”

Other than dispensing advice for all the world to see with their own eyes, that is.

Tellingly, ACORN and Mr. Harshbarger refused to admit how much his law firm was paid for his “investigation.”  ACORN’s CEO Bertha Lewis conveniently demurred, saying that its board would have to determine at some later date whether to disclose that amount.

Perhaps that’s a subject for the next undercover investigation…

The Obama Administration increasingly resembles an oceanliner captain who stubbornly responds to iceberg alarms by shifting to full speed ahead.

Ignoring recent news of declining global temperatures and the Climategate scandal that has shaken global warming activism to its core, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday declared carbon dioxide a “dangerous pollutant.”

That’s right – the gas that we all exhale and that plants inhale is suddenly a toxin.

The political cynicism behind this maneuver is obvious.  Barack Obama and climate change alarmists (notice, by the way, how they dropped the term “global warming” when the temperature data became too inconvenient) know that passing draconian carbon cap-and-tax legislation in the foreseeable future is nearly impossible.  Consequently, they have used the EPA to arrogantly shove their agenda through, or at least as a threat to Senators and big business lobbyists that the alternative to Congressional cap-and-tax is even worse.

Fortunately, the EPA’s reckless, mindless and arrogant maneuver will be challeneged in court.  But in the meantime, we’re left to wonder whether there’s any limit to the destructive efforts the Obama White House will shove down Americans’ throats in order to placate the extremist left wing.

The nation’s unemployment rate dipped slightly last month, and Barack Obama predictably trumpeted this seemingly-postitive “trend.”

Unfortunately, we can’t pop the champagne corks just yet.

A one-month decline isn’t a “trend” (the unemployment rate has dipped slightly in recent months only to resume its increase, and remains high), and the longer-term prospect of improvement under current leadership is troubling.  As noted by The Wall Street Journal’s Mark Gongloff, the nation still shed 125,000 jobs last month.  Additionally, the portion of unemployed Americans on permanent layoff reached an all-time high of 55.1%, a record 9.3 million remain underemployed, over one million have abandoned the workforce altogether and employers “show little inclination to rehire, even though the recession has supposedly been over for five months now.”

The bottom line is that unlike previous recessions, there is a much dimmer light at the end of the tunnel due to the ominous prospect of new healthcare burdens, skyrocketing deficits, a weakened dollar, draconian carbon cap-and-tax burdens, tax increases, more federal regulations and bald negation of common-law contract rights by the government.  Until Obama, Reid and Pelosi smell the coffee and recognize the gloom that they’re casting over the nation’s economy and employment picture, the prospect of dramatic rebound remains thin.

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship (SBE) Council this week released its annual ranking of individual states by business friendliness, and the results aren’t surprising to anyone who understands the importance of lower taxes, less regulation and fewer labor burdens.

After noting the inhospitable business environment cultivated by the Obama White House and the Pelosi-Reid Congress at the national level, SBE Council chief economist Raymond Keating highlights the critical role played by individual states in fostering small business growth.  As Mr. Keating notes, “small businesses, of course, drive innovation, economic growth and job creation.  If we want to get our economy back on a solid, robust growth track, then we need pro-entrepreneur policies at the federal, state and local levels.”

The study incorporates some 36 government-related factors, including tax rates, regulatory costs, state government spending, property rights and energy costs.  And the results are not shocking.  Pro-growth states like Texas, Florida and South Dakota lead, whereas notoriously basket-case states like California and New York sink toward the bottom.

It’s often said that the states serve as policy test laboratories in our federal system, so here’s hoping that someone directing our national levels of government learn the simple lessons offered by the SBE Council’s latest report.

Desperate to fend off challenges from both his left and right in his campaign to perpetuate a seemingly-endless Senate tenure, Senator Arlen Specter (Fair Weather Party – PA) has introduced legislation amounting to a trial lawyers’ bill of rights.

Last year, the United States Supreme Court issued an important but underreported decision requiring plaintiffs to state a plausible claim in order to proceed with burdensome litigation.  Namely, according to Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority, there must be “factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”

That doesn’t sound like too much to ask of a litigant, does it?

After all, anyone who has found themselves individually named in a lawsuit after some ambulance-chasing plaintiffs’ attorney has cast the widest imaginable net in naming potential defendants can attest to the oft-abusive nature of our judicial system.  Even when the likelihood of ultimate liability is almost nonexistent, the sheer cost in terms of dollars, time and emotional energy to defend frivolous suits can be steep.

But even that minimal requirement is apparently intolerable to Senator Specter.  Or, more accurately, to the plaintiffs’ lawyers who can help save his hide from the electoral fire through campaign support.  He has therefore introduced the “Notice Pleading Restoration Act of 2009,” which would require a court to establish absolute metaphysical certainty that a claim won’t prevail before dismissing it.

Specter’s proposed bill is very, very dangerous, particularly at a time when tort reform and restraining unnecessary litigation costs are critical to our economic recovery and national well-being.  But to Senator Specter, that’s apparently a small price to pay to retain Senatorial privileges six more years.

In an uncharacteristically heated exchange last week at the House Joint Economic Committee, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner astonisingly denied any responsibility for financial decisions that helped trigger our current downturn.

Representative Kevin Brady (R – Texas) recited a litany of Geithner’s errors and concluded, “the public has lost all confidence in your ability to do the job.”  Peering from behind his oversized forehead and beady little eyes, Geithner replied, “what I can’t take responsibility for is the legacy of crises you’ve bequeathed this country.”

On what planet is Geithner living?

This is the man who, in addition to failing to pay federal income taxes, served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  Let’s see…  Chief of the Federal Reserve, driver of the loose money monetary bubble,  in the city that is the financial center of the world, whose speculation and ensuing meltdown sparked the economic downturn… Perhaps he was asleep at his desk throughout his tenure, thereby absolving him from responsibility?

Come to think of it, that might also explain his blatant failure to pay taxes.

Gee, if only poor Barack Obama could have known that actually being President would prove this difficult when he rattled off easy promise after promise as a candidate.  Back then, it was quite fun to throw rhetorical rocks and thunder commitments from behind his teleprompter with his trademark raised chin.  But he wants us to know that the reality of living in the White House is just so…  hard.

The particular occasion for Obama’s lamentation was his admission that he won’t be able to fulfill his promise of closing Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center by January 2010 after all.  In an interview with Fox News’s Major Garrett (which is iteself another monumental capitulation to hard reality), Obama said that he is “not disappointed” that he can’t make good on his written closure order, because doing so is “just technically hard.”

Well, gosh, President Obama.  Who knew that closing Guantanamo, balancing the budget, winning the war in Afghanistan, persuading Iran and North Korea to forego their nuclear ambitions and achieving Middle East peace would be so tough?  It all looked so easy when someone else was in charge.

Here’s an exercise:  ask a liberal to identify a single commentator from the left who rivals such conservative commentators as George Will or Charles Krauthammer.  Their usual answer?  The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr.  This is very revealing, because it appears that Dionne has difficulty counting, let alone rivaling his conservative counterparts in intellectual stature.

In his column today, Dionne attempts to excoriate Senate Republicans for their obstructionism, including their alleged tendency to filibuster.  In one passage, he states that, “the extra-constitutional filibuster is being used by the minority, with extraordinary success, to make the majority look foolish, ineffectual and incompetent.”

No, Mr. Dionne, the Democrats are doing a splendid job of that themselves.  But regardless, this commentary raises a larger question:  can Dionne even count?  After all, does he not realize that the Republicans don’t even possess the number of members sufficient to filibuster?

Somebody send this man a calculator.

It’s sad when American leaders must look to “Old Europe” for economic wisdom, but that’s where we stand with this Obama White House.

Speaking this week to media, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that the worldwide recession demands tax cuts, not higher taxes and redistribution, to jump-start economic growth.  Impressively, she’s standing firm even in the face of fierce opposition, saying, “the government has opted for growth.  I indeed face very critical treatment, as does the whole government, regarding the course that we have chosen.”  A spokesman for Merkel’s partner Free Democrats added, “this is the right path.  This will create jobs and this is the condition for healthy public finances.”  Meanwhile, Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi offer more government, higher taxes and more regulation to somehow “stimulate” America out of recession.

Hmmm…  Perhaps this recent trend of economic sense out of Germany helps explain why Obama was so reluctant to visit Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall this month?

Since he was inaugurated last January, Barack Obama has broken almost all of the promises he earnestly made as a candidate, from pledges of bipartisanship to not raising taxes on anyone earning under $250,000.  Indeed, he even gave a preview to his future behavior when he jettisoned his pledge to abide by public campaign finance limits as soon as he secured the Democrats’ nomination.

But not all of Obama’s broken promises are bad.

Last November, he promised immediate action to impose climate change hysteria as official federal policy, saying, “now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all.  Delay is no longer an option.”

Well, maybe not.  This past weekend, Obama announced that there would be no international carbon cap-and-tax accord when world leaders meet in Copenhagen, Denmark next month.  That’s good news for strapped American taxpayers and businesses, but unwelcome news for sniveling Europeans, who are doing their left-wing Joe Wilson imitation by branding Obama a liar.

We would’ve preferred that Obama join Europeans in celebrating the Berlin Wall’s demise last week, but we can at least be thankful for the small blessing that he’s also offending the Euro global-warming alarmists.

Apparently, Iran never received Barack Obama’s “Hope and Change” memo.  Or, more worrisome, they did and opted to play him for a Jimmy Carter-like fool.

Yesterday, the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that Iran may be constructing multiple covert nuclear facilities in addition to the Qom site disclosed two months ago.  Moreover, Iranian representatives have brazenly announced that they intend to commence operating the exposed Qom facility by 2011.  Making matters even worse, Iran is also wavering on its commitment following exposure of the Qom plant to ship its uranium to other nations for benign reprocessing.

The Obama State Department and IAEA reacted with their usual impotence, with the State Department saying that “now is the time for Iran to signal that it wants to be a responsible member of the international community.”  No, that time passed decades ago.

This endless cycle of Iranian duplicity and feckless response is beyond farce.  Obama brought false “hope” to international relations, but where’s the “change?”

This is rich.  Barack Obama told Chinese students yesterday that an uncensored society is healthiest.

“I’m a big supporter of non-censorship,” Obama said with an apparent straight face, because “it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”  He added, “I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger society becomes,” and “they can begin to think for themselves.”

This is the same Barack Obama who admonished anyone who opposes his policy agenda to “get out of the way,” expresses support for the “Fairness Doctrine” and whose White House hit men orchestrated a campaign to silence and marginalize Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce and health insurers who had the audacity to actually communicate critical information to their members.  One can only infer that Obama stands more willing to advocate freedom of speech for the Chinese than his own citizens.

One of the more frustrating aspects of debunking worldwide climate change hysteria is the false notion that a consensus exists that global warming is man-made.

On that front, there’s good news to report for those of us who prefer sobriety to fashionability.  According to a new Rasmussen Reports public opinion poll, a 47% to 37% plurality believes that climate change results more from long-term planetary causes than human activity.  Considering the fact that temperatures have declined since eleven years ago, and that global cooling was the trendy hysteria just thirty years ago, it’s refreshing to know that Americans are on to the scam.

And dangerously for Barack Obama, Americans by 50% to 20% believe that he still considers global warming man-made.  Thus, like ObamaCare, this means that more Americans view his agenda as one opposing theirs, creating a precarious phenomenon for him.  As he prepares to travel to Copenhagen to once again bow before the false international gods of global warming at the expense of America’s economy and taxpayers, it’s something of which his bumbling staff had better become aware.

As the worldwide economic downturn drags on, why are European regulators arbitrarily stifling Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, causing harm to the latter’s business?  One would think we’d want to encourage beneficial mergers during these lean times. right?

Apparently not in the sclerotic European Commission (EC).  After notoriously blocking such other synergistic mergers as General Electric and Honeywell, EC bean-counters are formally objecting to the Oracle/Sun agreement.  Even the suddenly-activist Obama Justice Department had already approved the deal and said it wouldn’t harm competition, but it apparently troubles the European status quo too much for Euro tastes.  As a result, Sun’s sales have plummeted some 25%, and Oracle could ultimately be forced to abandon the deal and pay a $260 million breakup penalty. Oracle’s software focus doesn’t even compete with Sun in the consumer marketplace, and the agreement was reached back in April.

Meanwhile, EC bureaucrats navel-gaze, and consumers again pay the price.

During a week in which Nancy Pelosi force-fed her job-killing healthcare bill to America, it was timely that the Kauffman Foundation released a report on how jobs are created in this country.

According to their study released last week, two-thirds of jobs created as recently as 2007 came from enterprises less than five years old.  Indeed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost all of America’s net job creation since 1980 came from new businesses.  This stands to reason in our dynamic economy, where giant firms tend to become complacent and wither, whereas new innovators with novel ideas rapidly expand and create new jobs.  Think of General Motors and Microsoft, for instance.   Before that, the horse-and-buggy industry lost employees to the auto makers.  This is the nature of our economic system.

With this in mind, what are Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid doing to create jobs?  We’re not referring to temporary work funded by dollars borrowed from future generations or wrenched from more productive uses via taxation – actual jobs?  Stated differently, what entrepreneur in his or her right mind would consider this a promising moment to take risks and hire new employees?  From healthcare “reform” to carbon cap-and-tax legislation to higher taxes to financial regulation, Obama, Pelosi and Reid see employers as mere scapegoats who should be saddled with even higher costs of employment.  They bail out dinosaurs like GM and Chrysler, but leave smaller entrepreneurs to suddenly subsidize ObamaCare and the ever-expanding federal government.

The unemployment rate just jumped to 10.2% despite Obama’s promise that it wouldn’t exceed 8% if we swallowed his “stimulus” medicine.  At what point does he wake up and smell the real-world coffee?  Will he ever?

Although lost amidst news of last week’s elections, the Ft. Hood shooting and Nancy Pelosi’s healthcare abomination, President Obama pays a visit to China next week.  What awaits him might not be the fawning foreign crowds to which he is accustomed in his overseas travels.

As noted by The Wall Street Journal, Obama’s behavior in office has already created friction in a nation where President George W. Bush was actually quite popular.  Whereas Bush expanded and improved trade and diplomatic relations, Obama has engaged in destructive trade protectionism over such things as low-cost tires.  Considering China’s importance as a trade partner, economic force and strategic antagonist, it is critical that Obama deal with them intelligently.  Unfortunately, so far, he appears less adept at achieving successful relations with China than he does in wooing anti-American audiences in the Middle East and socialist portions of Europe.

But hey – at least the denizens of Parisian salons love him.

Remember when the Obama Administration promised that, if we only passed his potent “stimulus” plan, unemployment would top out at 8%?  In contrast, according to Obama, if the American people foolishly refused his master plan, unemployment might rise as high as 10%?

Well, this morning, the U.S. Department of Labor provided yet another wakeup call and simple math lesson to Mr. Obama.  Unfortunately, the unemployment rate has now risen to 10.2%.  Worse, Obama’s ineffective “stimulus” has only exacerbated the problem by adding to our unsustainable federal debt and creating a forward-looking business climate that is inhospitable to creation of new employment and enterprises.  Something to keep in mind as Obama issues new promise after promise regarding his healthcare, carbon cap-and-tax and other agenda items.