Freedom Line Blog

HT: reason.tv

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez on “Climategate.”

View more of Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website.

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.

George Will – The Country is Uneasy
Thomas Sowell – Jobs or Snow Jobs?
The Hill – Another Stimulus?
Politico – Public Option Deal Takes Place

Fox News – Senate Leader Compares GOP to Supporters of Slavery
Human Events – Department of Almost-Free Enterprise
National Review Online – Climate of Doom
Atlanta Journal Constitution – World Peace First, Global Tax Next

Federal Debt: $12.091 trillion

A new Rasmussen Reports poll out today shows that if the Tea Party movement was an organized political party it would poll second nationally (at 23%, 13 points behind the Democrats).  Many reports on the numbers play up the growing influence of this grassroots force on the right, but that may miss the bigger point: Republicans came in third in the poll, with only 18% supporting the GOP.

Read those numbers closely; with Republicans and Tea Partiers divided, Democrats win (a lesson learned in the congressional race in the New York 23rd).  Thus, if the right hopes to regain political traction it’s going to have to create a fusionist project between the mainstream GOP and the “mad as hell and not going to take it any more” Tea Party movement.

A possible prescription for this kind of Republican renaissance improbably shows up this week’s edition of Newsweek, courtesy of Howard Fineman, whose columns usually tend toward EZ-Bake liberalism.  However, in a piece entitled “Is There a Doctor in the House?”, Fineman perceptively notes that the GOP could do a lot worse than straightening its spine through Ron Paul’s example:

… The GOP needs to study Ron Paul, and learn. No one has better captured the sense of Main Street outrage over secret insider deals and Wall Street bonuses. No one has been more consistent about sticking to core conservative values—including the one that says the government shouldn’t spend more money than it takes in. If the GOP is going to appeal to independent voters, it has to confront its own corporate allies. “Republicans need to find a populist edge again,” says Craig Shirley, the author of Rendezvous With Destiny, a new account of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. “Reagan spoke to the guy who thought he was being screwed by big business, by big government, by the big media.” The good doctor, of all people, is showing Republicans the way. What they need is a candidate who embodies the spirit of Ron Paul. Just so long as it isn’t Ron Paul.

There’s a lot of sense in Fineman’s diagnostic (along with this, a sign of the apocalypse).  On foreign policy, Paul is still peddling ideas long ago discredited by Charles Lindbergh and Bob Taft.  But on the domestic side, his compass is truer than most of the GOP.  When the Republican Party isn’t rooted in notions of small government and individual liberty, it tends towards existential drift.  And we all know where that leads.

In a time of record deficits, most taxpayers would assume that sharks wouldn’t be on the radar of most U.S. Senators.

Well, meet Senator John Kerry (D-MA), who has introduced S. 580, The Shark Conservation Act of 2009.  Not that we don’t all love Shark Week, but the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just estimated that the cost of S. 580 is a cool $5 million over the next five years alone.

To be fair to Senator Kerry, the bill does have several GOP cosponsors, but apparently they are all happy to continue Washington’s merry spending frenzy at a time when the nation is still mired in record deficits and high unemployment.

That seems to be the solution from Senate Democrats seeking to broker a political path toward government-run health care.

With the public option running low on support, Senate Democrats are now floating a plan that would lower the age for Medicare enrollment to as low as 55.

According to Senate Democrats, even though Medicare has $89 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities, adding a few million patients to the ledger shouldn’t be a problem.  Brilliant thinking.

More of CFIF on health care here.

Remember when then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that while Obama’s likening himself to Martin Luther King, Jr., was nice, it was really President Lyndon Johnson who changed civil rights from a rhetorical dream into legislative reality?  As usual, Clinton was criticized for speaking truth in public.  But her observation – and comparison – still rings true today.

Flash forward to President Obama’s remarks to Senate Democrats on Sunday.  While his midday sermon was long on admonishments to find common ground, it didn’t give any direction on how on to find it.  The lack of setting down definitions or benchmarks for success, or even support for moderates needing a safe harbor during tough re-election campaigns, indicates that Obama has no clue how to line up 60 votes in his own caucus.  LBJ never seemed to have that problem.  Hillary Clinton’s recognition of this indicates she may have learned more from her failures as First Lady health czar than Obama has over a lifetime of risk aversion.

This is a trend.  Since at least his time in law school, Obama has studiously avoided even the appearance of a paper trail.  He’s also managed to spend a decade as an elected legislator without authoring a single consequential piece of legislation.  Simply put, the man doesn’t know how to horse trade, cajole, and get a bill on his desk for signature.  One wonders how much less effective he’d be without a majority in both chambers.

With all the attention devoted to health care reform this fall it is little wonder that the federalization of the college student loan system is getting scant notice. As the Wall Street Journal points out, there is a quiet takeover occurring of the student loan market that, if successful, would eliminate private lending companies from competing with the federal government’s alternative.

The typical tale of a free-speech controversy on campus involves administrators landing on some poor undergrad who violates political correctness. But in this story the administrators have been afraid to speak as the Department of Education pressured them to drop private lenders and embrace the department’s own Direct Lending (DL) program. The pending bill, which has passed the House but is stalled in the Senate, would ban private lenders from making federally guaranteed loans after July 1, 2010.

Congress has already enacted regulations in recent years to discourage making loans without a federal guarantee. And many lenders have quit the business. Now the White House and Democrats like California Rep. George Miller want to go further and convert students from private loans largely backed by the taxpayer into government loans made and serviced by government and backed by the taxpayer. Think of this as a prelude to how Congress will rig the rules for any public option in health care.

Sound familiar? It gets worse. Even though the bill requiring a private loan be backed by a federal guarantee is not yet law, the Department of Education (DOE) is already contacting schools to make sure they are in compliance. Thankfully, there is still time to contact your senator while the upper chamber considers amending the House bill to allow private lenders to stay in business. If nothing else, tell them you support the free market, because it’s the only thing supporting Congress’ spending addiction.

The Senate, currently debating health care, held a rare Sunday session.  Beyond the normal bloviating, Senators did take at least one consequential vote.

John Ensign (R-NV) introduced an amendment that would have limited trial lawyer contingency fee amounts in medical malpractice cases.  Predictably, the amendment was overwhelmingly voted down, 32-66.

It appears that the trial lawyer lobby remains strong in the Senate.

Politico – Chances Shrink for Public Option
Newsweek – Is Ron Paul the GOP Savior?
Washington Examiner – Draining the Democratic Swamp
Kansas City Star – The GOP Senate Fight in Kansas

The Hill – ClimateGate Hasn’t Swayed Swing Votes
WSJ Editorial – CEOs and ObamaCare
Bloomberg – Obama to Rally for Health Care
Bjorn Lomborg – Global Warming and Mt. Kilimanjaro

Federal Debt: $12.086 trillion

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.

No surprises here … the U.S. spends more money than it collects.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its monthly budget review and it’s not pretty.

Through the first two months of FY 2010, the federal deficit is already $292 billion.  For perspective (based on my shoddy math skills), if you placed that money ($1 bills) end-to-end, it would stretch from the Earth to the Moon 115 times (placed end-to-end the deficit is over 27 million miles and the distance from the Earth to the Moon is only 238,857 miles).

That’s a long sad debt train.  In addition, that debt train could also carry you to Venus, which is only 23.7 million miles from Earth (at its closest).

This would be a big deficit for a single year, but unfortunately the government has ten more months of taxing and spending left.  Year-to-date, this deficit figure is $11 billion more than the shortfall from last year.  Not good.

The deficit from the month of October alone was $176 billion.  The CBO projects another $115 billion deficit for December.

As the report noted, “Excluding outlays for the TARP and net cash infusions for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, however, spending in 2010 rose by $51 billion (or 10 percent).”

Sooner or later, 269 people (218 in the House and 51 in the Senate) will be elected to Congress who actually care about reducing spending and cutting the deficit.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses “Climategate” and the costly agenda of global warming alarmists.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. For those readers who don’t receive it in their e-mail inboxes or if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, below is a summary of its contents:

Lee:  Does Barack Obama Even Comprehend “Climategate?”
Batkins:  Death, Taxes … and More Taxes
Senik:  Liberals, Despite All Evidence to the Contrary

Freedom Minute Video:  Climategate
Podcast:  The Weaknesses in Obama’s Foreign Policy – Interview with Troy Senik
Jester’s Courtroom:  Lawyer Wants Lights Out at Homeless Center

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update, sign up here.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan seeks to destroy the fundamental principle that “[the] Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers”, judging by her brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Comstock.  The government’s brief demonstrates just how expansive she views federal power under the Constitution.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington, D.C., is challenging a federal criminal statute on the grounds that Congress acted without constitutional authority when it passed the law.

Cato and other challengers in Comstock argue that the federal government cannot use the Necessary and Proper Clause in Article 1 §8 of the Constitution to justify any and all federal action.   The government, on the other hand, argues that the Necessary and Proper Clause and the Commerce Clause in §8 allow the government to enact a range of federal criminal statutes, even if such laws are typically the province of state power.

Of course, by the government’s logic, if the Commerce Clause works to authorize a broad array of criminal laws, then what can’t the government do?  Since the government deems almost any human action to “substantially affect interstate commerce,” then there is nothing that evades federal power.  For example, in this argument audio clip, the government claims federal power is virtually limitless.

The Supreme Court has (unfortunately) already held that growing excess wheat for private consumption falls within the Commerce Clause, and that growing marijuana for private consumption falls within the federal purview as well. (Justices Scalia and Kennedy sided with the government in the latter case.)

As the Cato Institute argued in its brief, “Neither the Necessary and Proper Clause nor the Commerce Clause is a permissible footing for the Act and, therefore, the Act is unconstitutional.  As this Court recognized almost 150 years ago, ‘[no] graver question was ever considered by this court, nor one which more nearly concerns the rights of the whole,’ than the Government’s unconstitutional assertion of power against its own citizens.”

Elena Kagan, in the government’s reply brief, countered, “A commitment under Section 4248 [the act in question] is justified by the Necessary and Proper Clause in combination with whatever enumerated power or powers supported the federal prosecution and custody of the individual in the first instance.”

By June of next year, we’ll learn if the Court would prefer returning to “first principles.”  It could actually limit Congress’ expansive use of Article I § 8, or the justices could continue to allow unbridled federal action whenever the government deems it politically expedient.

Click here for the Cato brief.  For the government’s brief, click here.  For CFIF on the Constitution, click here.

The Wall Street Journal offers some penetrating analysis on the inevitably inverse relationship between government financing of “guns” and “butter.”  When tax receipts dwindle, appropriators often choose between funding social welfare programs (butter) and national defense (guns).  Unsurprisingly, the European welfare state provides a cautionary example.

The overlooked culprit here is the rise of the modern welfare state. Since World War II and especially from the 1960s, Europe has built elaborate domestic income-maintenance programs, with government-run health care, pensions and jobless benefits. These are hugely expensive, requiring high taxes and government spending that is a huge proportion of GDP.

The Europeans’ obsession with income stabilization through higher taxes means there is less economic growth and less money to spend.  These continental priorities mirror the massive increases in social spending enacted or proposed under President Obama – economic stimulus, health care “reform,” cap-and-trade and job creation. 

As the U.S. federal deficit balloons, politicians and bureaucrats will look for ways to balance the books.  And given the current Administration’s and Congress’  love affair with “butter,” unfortunately, they’ll likely look to slash spending on national defense while our nation is at war.

Remember when sub-prime mortgages had Congress demanding more accountability (i.e. oversight) of the housing industry? It seems like a lifetime ago that the spark igniting the current recession (derivatives of risky mortgage deals) was a priority on Congress’s to-do list. That was before health care, cap-and-trade, and Afghanistan moved it to the back burner. Apparently, the issue is still simmering because there’s news of an impending compromise between Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Barney Frank (D-MA). At issue is whether to head the yet-to-be-created “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” (CFPA) with a single director or board of commissioners.

And just what would be the CFPA’s mandate? Here’s a description from the L.A. Times:

To begin with, be aware that the agency’s powers and oversight would extend far beyond mortgages and real estate — into all credit cards, debit cards, consumer loans, payday loans, credit reporting agencies, debt collection, stored-value cards and even investment advisory and financial advisory services, to name only part of the list.

And this from CNN:

The consumer agency would be a brand new regulator whose chief concern is looking out for consumers. It would write rules aimed at ensuring that financial products like mortgages and credit cards are fair, more transparent and more easily understood.

Raise your hand if you remember the last time a government agency made a process, form, or program easier to understand. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if the new regulator is a single director or a board of commissioners. The most direct effect of creating yet another federal agency will be an increase in both taxes to fund it and transactions costs to comply with it. If Democrats really wanted to help consumers and taxpayers, they’d step back and let prosecutors and plaintiffs sue for fraud. After all, no court will enforce a contract that was signed under duress.

Then again, that’s not really the point, is it?

WSJ Editorial – Sarbanes-Oxley on Trial
New York Times – Many Doctors’ Groups Oppose Health Bill
The Hill – Senators Want to Force Congress into Public Plan
National Review Online – The GOP Purity Test

The Weekly Standard – ObamaCare’s Ugly Math
David Broder – Democrats Living Dangerously
Politico – Have the Greens Failed?
David Harsanyi – We-Don’t-Want-to-Talk-About-It-Gate

Federal Debt: $12.073 trillion

The U.S. Senate this afternoon voted 42-58 to reject an amendment, sponsored by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), that would have sent the Senate health care “reform” bill back to the chamber’s Finance Committee with instructions to strip out nearly $500 billion in Medicare cuts.  In other words, 58 Senate Democrats reaffirmed their desire to cut Medicare by nearly a half trillion dollars.

Democrats Jim Webb and Ben Nelson voted with all Senate Republicans in favor of the amendment.

As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement sent out immediately following the vote:

If anyone had any question about the Democrat plan to use Medicare as a piggy-bank to fund their new government programs, those doubts are now gone. 58 Democrats just voted to reject a common-sense proposal to protect senior’s health care from a half-trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare.  Only in Washington would anyone have the nerve to claim that such drastic cuts won’t harm the very program millions of seniors have paid into for years and now rely on.”