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Reminder that you can follow me on Twitter at @QuinHillyer. Might have some fun things to say.
Reminder that you can follow me on Twitter at @QuinHillyer. Might have some fun things to say.
Free Market America, a new group operating in partnership with Americans for Limited Government, has a powerful new video out that makes an important point: if one was setting out to intentionally inflict harm on the American economy via energy policy, the resulting strategy would look a lot like what the Obama Administration is proposing.
The point here is not that Obama’s agenda is a covert plot to damage the nation — it’s not — but rather that its effects will be just as calamitous as if it was. Take a look for yourself:
Once upon a time, liberals scoffed at the idea that legislation needed to be constitutional in order to be lawful. Remember then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s infamous response to the question of where in the Constitution did Congress have the power to pass Obamacare: “Are you serious?”
Well, after the U.S. Supreme Court scared the daylights out of the liberal commentariat with pointed questions about Obamacare’s constitutionality, it seems that opponents of Indiana’s recent right-to-work law are trying their hand at interpreting the text instead of the spirit of the document.
The Daily Caller summarizes the argument:
Indiana’s law prohibits employers from making union membership a condition of getting or keeping a job. The union’s February lawsuit claimed the law violated its members’ Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of “equal protection” under the law.
But an amended complaint filed on Wednesday added a Thirteenth Amendment claim as well. The new lawsuit suggests that when nonunion employees earn higher salaries and better benefits because of the union’s negotiation on behalf of its members, the union has been forced to work for those nonunion employees for free.
And being forced to work without compensation, the union suggested in its revised lawsuit, is slavery.
It’s the height of hypocrisy for union leaders who’ve spent decades coercing membership and dues from any worker falling under their legally-sanctioned monopoly to claim that economic enslavement only occurs when its members have to subsidize benefits other people don’t value.
In a sane world, the union’s lawsuit would be thrown out with prejudice as a waste of court time and resources.
But this is the Age of Obama. How much longer can it be before the Department of Justice and the National Labor Relations Board weigh-in with briefs defending the indefensible?
Roll Call has a behind-the-scenes look at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s opposition research team, and the findings aren’t pretty.
As any number of elections have taught us, a candidate’s personal history is just as relevant to voting decisions as his or her policy stances. What makes the profile of the DCCC outfit stomach-churning, however, is the glee staff members exude from discovering the lowest points of other people’s lives:
Diana Asti, a newly promoted research analyst, finished a 204-page book on a target following seven days on the ground, 30 Freedom of Information requests and finding every word from the candidate ever on record. That morning in the DCCC’s second-floor conference room, Asti finally had the opportunity to reveal one of her biggest discoveries about her target: his secret first marriage.
“My head just went in all different directions, like maybe they’ve divorced and he hasn’t paid alimony, or maybe he has a child and he hasn’t paid child support,” exclaimed the 23-year-old Asti afterward in an interview. “I went into a million different directions of what this could possibly be. It was a very exciting moment.”
In case you’re wondering, the reason so few politicians seem “real” is because they live in fear of people like Diana Asti.
And let’s not forget her colleague Jonathan Pullum, a man who confesses the following desire whenever he sees his Republican target:
Occasionally, Pullum still sees his quirky research subject around Capitol Hill. Johnson doesn’t know the 24-year-old from any other young staffer, but Pullum describes his reaction as giddy.
“I have this real desire to be like, ‘How’s it going, buddy? Let’s talk about your diet,’” Pullum said. “It’s all these bizarre things that you know.”
Bizarre, indeed.
Read all about it, and more, here at the site of our friends “Right on Crime.“
U.S. Treasury Secretary and Tax Cheat Tim Geithner and his minions at Treasury, trying to make the Bush-Obama TARP (and other financial-sector) bailouts look good, are cooking the books in a flagrant manner. That is the upshot of this superb bit of reporting and analysis from the incomparable Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg News. Well worth reading. A sample:
On top of that, there’s the current net cost of the government-sponsored housing financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the Treasury pegged at $151 billion. …[T]he report included a White House budget projection showing the net cost of the Fannie and Freddie conservatorships would fall 81 percent to $28 billion by fiscal 2022. Put another way, the projection envisions record profits at the two companies for years to come….As for the declining Fannie and Freddie cost projections, the Treasury is relying on a forecast that in essence has the two companies generating $123 billion of earnings over the next 10 years. This would be nice, except there’s no basis for believing it will happen. The companies have reported losses every year since 2007. During the previous 10-year period from 1997 to 2006, which included the housing boom, their combined earnings were only $82 billion….
This isn’t fuzzy accounting; it’s deeply dishonest accounting. Weil should not be the only journalist reporting it.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
A delightful surprise in my inbox today from the Heritage Foundation:
From the preamble to the 27th Amendment — The Heritage Guide to the Constitution Online is a completely searchable reference tool with leading expert analysis of the Constitution. The site features clause by clause analysis of our timeless reference book, links to essays, as well as a teaching companion.
ConstitutionOnline.com provides clear, concise analysis for users who are trying to further their understanding of the Constitution.
No document is more central to securing “the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” than the United States Constitution, and no website is more thorough than ConstitutionOnline.com.
The links above are hosted by an internal email system, so in case you have trouble accessing the site, use this link ( http://www.heritage.org/constitution ).
When you visit the site check out the bevy of essays explaining “About This Guide,” “What the Constitution Means,” “How It Was Formed,” and “The Originalist Perspective.”
There’s also a link to a “Teacher’s Companion” that’s great for Tea Party meetings and reading groups, as well as formal classroom settings.
With the primary season effectively over, now is a great time to brush-up on the Constitution, its meaning, and history. Goodness knows conservatives will need every argument we can muster come the general election if the Republic is to survive.
Before too much time goes by, I should give a shout-out to Eric Eversole, on the case on behalf of military voters stationed abroad. This is REALLY important reading. Basically, it boils down to this: The Obama/Holder Justice Department still isn’t protecting the interests of military personnel who want to vote. This is awful.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
— Emerson
which, of course, followed this:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, — “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light, —
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”
Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somersett, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack-door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, —
Up the light ladder, slender and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still,
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, —
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
It was twelve by the village-clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.
It was one by the village-clock,
When he rode into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village-clock,
When be came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning-breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British regulars fired and fled, —
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, —
A cry of defiance, and not of fear, —
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.
— Longfellow
The entire continent of Europe may seem most useful these days as an object lesson in how not to conduct public finance, but as a fascinating new piece in the UK’s The Spectator makes clear, Sweden provides at least one unlikely exception. While the rest of the world was clamoring for Keynesian stimulus measures in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, Sweden was following the lead of Anders Borg, its libertarian-leaning Finance Minister. As a result, the country took a drastically different path — one that’s now paying dividends:
While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.
Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. ‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ he says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.
The good news: Sweden provides a success story that drives one more nail into Keynesianism’s coffin. The bad news: We’re living in an age where Scandinavia can muster more enthusiasm for free market economics than the U.S.
Michael Barone has a very wise piece today on why Mitt Romney may go the “white bread” route — or, as he puts it, “double vanilla” — in choosing a vice president. He focuses on Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Rob Portman, and Bob McDonnell, and I agree that all four of them would each be a solid choice.
On the extreme other side of the VP-strategery spectrum is my column today at The American Spectator online about a “Crazy Eight” of potential long-shot choices, which include a mix of ethnicities, genders, ages, and even political parties. I’ll ask you to read it for yourselves… but PLEASE note what I went to great pains to repeat, but which some readers apparently overlooked, which is that this is the first of a multi-part series I am writing on the subject, and thus amounts to a creative list of long-shot outliers, not the likely picks or the ones I think would be best. It is an illustrative list, to show the sorts of creativity Romney should use in analyzing every angle. These are not me recommendations as to who the choice should be, but they are suggestions for the sorts of people who should be on the original, very long, list under preliminary consideration. Subsequent columns will move into more likely, and probably more wise or desirable, territory (although I do think one or two of the Crazy Eight should move up the ranks at least somewhat).
For the record, I think Barone’s list is a mighty fine one.
Michelle Malkin says that while the million-dollar junkets enjoyed by General Services Administration officials at taxpayer expense deserve outrage, the real scandals are the $25 million+ paydays the GSA gives to Big Labor thanks to a rule implemented by President Barack Obama.
As I’ve reported previously, the linchpin is E.O. 13502, a union-friendly executive order signed by Obama in his first weeks in office. It essentially forces contractors who bid on large-scale public construction projects worth $25 million or more to submit to union representation for its employees. The blunt instrument used to give unions a leg up is the “project labor agreement,” which in theory sets reasonable pre-work terms and conditions. But in practice, it requires contractors to hand over exclusive bargaining control, to pay inflated, above-market wages and benefits, and to fork over dues money and pension funding to corrupt, cash-starved labor organizations.
One analyst told Congress that “the adoption of a PLA amounts, in effect, to a conferral of monopoly power on a select group of construction unions over the supply of construction labor.”
Since 85 percent of construction laborers are non-union, Obama’s GSA-enforced PLA is a financial boon to the shrinking unionized sector.
Echoing Malkin, the GSA administration’s luxuriant trips to Las Vegas and other locales should be prosecuted fully, but let’s not be distracted from the crony capitalism wasting several times those amounts just about every time a new federal building gets constructed.
If there’s going to be oversight – and there should be – let’s hope the bulk of it zeroes in on unwinding President Obama’s disastrous PLA.
Politico has a great article grappling with the question, What happens to all the agencies and personnel funded by ObamaCare if the Supreme Court rules the health care reform bill unconstitutional?
Unless the Court spells out in great detail how to unwind a bureaucratic behemoth that has already created 500 new positions in 2 new agencies – with another 3,000 new jobs in the Office of the Health and Human Services Secretary alone – it seems the answer is, no one knows.
Realistically, the issue will boil down to which party has control of the public’s purse:
“The issue you’re looking at here is cash flow,” said Jim Dyer, a former Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, who is now a principal at the Podesta Group.
The federal spending pipeline is complex and secretaries have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. Even if the courts strike down the health reform law, Dyer said, the onus will still be on Congress to fully shut off the tap.
“If I’m an appropriator, … I would want to draw a hard line in the sand,” he said. The committee could immediately demand HHS stop its spending if the court strikes down the law so that it can exert tight control over how it winds the program down. Exactly how that would shake out if a Republican-controlled House committee wanted HHS to stop the spending but a Democratic-controlled Senate did not would be part of the uncertain political terrain.”
Here’s one more reason to ensure that next year’s budget process is dominated by fiscal conservatives.
In my column just up today at this site, one item I mention is the administration’s hijacking of the Common Core educational standards. Well, here’s a WSJ video interview just out, with Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation, that discusses the issue at length. Well worth viewing.
Writing in the Washington Times, Richard Rahn — Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and Chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth — puts the current state of federal spending in rather horrid relief:
The federal government is spending about 24 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Most of it goes for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs. The “discretionary” portion of the budget equals about 9 percent of GDP, with about half going for defense. Until 1930, the federal government normally spent less than 4 percent of GDP, except for the periods during World War I and the Civil War. The Constitution gives the federal government very few tasks for which it is required to spend money — the big item being the “common defense.” Again, up until 1930, the courts forced the federal government to live largely within the confines of the Constitution. Deducting defense spending from the federal budgets before 1930 shows that the federal government lived perfectly well on 2 percent to 3 percent of GDP for the first 140 years of the republic.
What all of this means is that approximately three-quarters of all federal government spending is not required by — and often is contrary to — the Constitution.
Conventional wisdom in Washington increasingly holds that those who wish to see the federal government pare back its expenditures rather than increase the tax burden on the American people are delusional, if not antediluvian. Yet for the majority of American history, the federal government was only a fraction of what it is today — and the Republic did quite well for itself.
Are we really to believe today that spending cuts that would still leave the federal government’s share of GDP several multiples higher than it was less than a century ago mark some civilizational rot? Because by all indicators (Europe comes to mind), the failure to prune seems to be the more perilous course.
Yesterday, Senate Republicans blocked consideration on President Barack Obama’s so-called ‘Buffett Rule’ to impose a minimum federal income tax on some millionaires earning income on certain kinds of investments. As I discussed in my column last week, no tax authority thinks implementing the Buffett Rule will make a scintilla of difference in the federal deficit. So good riddance to a time-wasting distraction.
But before we pivot to the Obama reelection campaign’s next economic inanity, let’s pause to consider what liberal support for the Buffett Rule really says about modern liberalism’s discriminatory use of the tax code.
In a splendid piece published yesterday, former Reagan advisor Richard Rahn explains that the Buffett Rule only hits the type of investment income most used by entrepreneurs, and thus blocks those trying to ascend the personal wealth ladder.
Even if the Buffett tax ever passes, it was crafted by members of Congress to hit few of their own. Very rich members of Congress, such as Sens. John F. Kerry and John D. Rockefeller IV, receive much of their income from tax-exempt state and local bonds and from trust funds, which largely avoid the tax. Members of Congress generally are restricted from entrepreneurial activities. So, of course, they have decided to increase the tax on entrepreneurs — the capital gains tax — which is a tax on becoming rich, not a tax on being rich.
Most people, such as students, are relatively poor by government methodology when they are young but rise through the income ranks as they become more productive and experienced and then fall in relative income as they near and enter retirement, even though they may have considerable net wealth. By increasing the tax on capital gains and marginal rates, the government makes it more difficult to move into higher income brackets, thus actually reducing income-class mobility.
Those who support the Buffett millionaires’ surtax as written reveal themselves either to be economically ignorant or to believe the voters are fools who will not see through their destructive games.
Three cheers for the fiscal conservatives in the Senate who blocked consideration on this atrocious bill. It’s time to get beyond gimmicks, and implement policies that get America back to work without further distorting the tax code.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano may have perjured herself twice in testimony before Congress about what she knew about the Fast & Furious scandal, and when she knew it.
In a new book by Human Events political editor Katie Pavlich, sources tell the author that Napolitano was lying when she told Congress – twice – that she never discussed the illegal gun-walking scandal with Attorney General Eric Holder and Dennis Burke, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona.
According to Pavlich’s sources…
Based on the preview, Pavlich’s book seems like a must-read for anyone appalled by the disregard for the rule of law and basic safety manifested by the Secretary for Homeland Security and the Attorney General.
When all the facts are known, the fall-out from the Fast & Furious fiasco will likely be huge. From Human Events:
Pavlich makes a strong case that when people are finally charged with crimes, Napolitano will have to answer for her perjury to Congress.
“Let me tell you something about Janet,” another source said to the author. “Janet will be lucky not to go to prison.”
Under current British law, only a few factors can keep a member of the House of Lords from office: bankruptcy, conviction on charges of treason, and holding judicial office amongst them. Apart from that short list, removing a peer requires an act of Parliament, something that last happened nearly a century ago, when two members were removed for supporting the U.K.’s enemies during World War I. With that precedent in mind, Parliament should act to remove Lord Nazir Ahmed, who provides a similar set of circumstances. From the Daily Caller:
British Lord Nazir Ahmed put a £10 million ($16 million) bounty on both President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush Friday, according to The Express Tribune, an English language Pakistani newspaper.
Nazir, who is of Pakistani heritage and a member of the British House of Lords, reportedly made the comments while at a reception in Haripur, a Pakistani city 40 miles north of Islamabad. Nazir told the audience that he was putting the bounty out for the capture of the American leaders in response to the bounty placed on Hafiz Muhammad Saeed by the United States.
Saeed, by the way, is the terrorist thought responsible for the gruesome 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, which killed over 160 people. By his words and his actions (he claims that he would sell his home to pay the bounties for Bush and Obama), Lord Ahmed has shown himself an enemy to Britain, the United States, and the forces of civilization throughout the world. He ought not be allowed in the front door of the House of Lords, let alone in a seat there.
Over the weekend at NRO, Andy McCarthy took a verbal Bowie knife to the gut of Attorney General Eric Holder — and deservedly so. I have written about Holder’s thuggish reign here numerous times before. Here’s McCarthy, or part of McCarthy’s summary, of the lawlessness and racialism of Holder:
Eric Holder rode in on the stench of Marc Rich and will ride out on the stench of Al Sharpton. He’s spent the three-plus years in between branding Americans as “cowards” on race matters; investigating the CIA; coddling CAIR and the New Black Panthers; green-lighting voter fraud; swaddling Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the Bill of Rights; and converting the Justice Department into a full-employment program for the Lawyer Left and its Gitmo boutique. But now he’s hit the big time.
This week, our esteemed attorney general canoodled with Reverend Al at the annual convention of the “National Action Network,” home base for the infamous huckster (that would be Sharpton, not Holder — sorry for any confusion). It is difficult to imagine another attorney general in American history sucking up to such a race-mongering charlatan.
Do read the whole thing. This man is a hater. He has no business being in law enforcement.
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