Freedom Line Blog

Great piece today by the unfairly fired former IG of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Gerald Walpin, and his former top aide Jack Park, also a longtime former assistant Attorney General in Alabama. Walpin and Park explain why it is a very suspicious thing, and against the public’s interest, that the Obama administration is hobbling Inspectors General throughout many parts of the federal government. This should be a bigger issue than it has been so far. It’s important.

Yes, well, the revolution always eats its own after all. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Attorneys for three Occupy Oakland protesters charged with hate crimes for allegedly using a gay slur during a skirmish with a counterprotester said Monday that police were smearing the activists to try to discredit their movement.

Police said the protesters – Michael Davis, 32, Nneka Crawford, 23, and Randolph Wilkins, 24 – stole the woman’s purse during a confrontation last month outside a Wells Fargo bank on Piedmont Avenue and called her a “dyke” during the incident. But attorneys for two of the defendants said the exchange had turned ugly only after the counterprotester used a racist epithet against their clients.

Well, what do you know? It turns out that enlightened left-wing activists can be just as bigoted and ugly as they imagine conservatives are. And now they’ll be prosecuted under the hate crimes laws that are their legacy.

This case underscores how ludicrous those laws are. What makes this trio of miscreants reprehensible is that they stole a woman’s purse — not that they stole a gay woman’s purse. Does their victim deserve more protection under than law than a middle-aged white man would have if this same group had stolen his wallet? Of course not. But the left has attempted to systematically disassemble those principles of equality before the law over the past several decades. Don’t look now, but that boomerang is spinning back around.

At The American Spectator, I posted this report about what a sleepy election day this is in Virginia. One further thought: Virginia is being ignored in this election. No candidate visits. No national press spending money in the VA hinterlands. Thus, Virginia suffers from its absurdly high hurdles against candidate qualifying. Virginia and other states should learn a lesson from this: Rigging the game in favor of the establishment is counterproductive.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is absolutely right to vow to try to convince the VA legislature to change the law for the future. The hurdles against candidacy should not be so high, and perhaps write-in balloting ought to be allowed……

Politico explains why if Democrats win control of Congress in 2012 it won’t be with President Barack Obama’s help:

[Obama campaign leaders Jim] Messina and [David] Plouffe told the two Hill leaders that there would be no cash transfers to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from OFA or the DNC, at least not before Election Day, the sources said.

…

Hill Democrats won’t be seeing much of Obama at their own fundraisers this year, either. Obama has offered to do one money event each for the DCCC and DSCC. OFA officials suggested Vice President Joe Biden do two fundraisers for each campaign committee. Obama will instead send out an email and fundraising letter solicitations for both committees.

Nor, for that matter, have Obama or Biden committed to do events for individual Democratic lawmakers. That’s true even though 23 Democrat-held Senate seats are up for grabs in a competitive battle for control of that chamber. And no fundraisers have been scheduled yet for House and Senate Democrats with Cabinet officials, usually a staple of an election-year calendar for incumbent presidents looking to boost their party’s prospects.

No surprise here since the President is just a typical liberal: a spendthrift with other people’s money but a miser with his own.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 (CST)/5:00 pm (EST):  Sarah Torre, Research Assistant at The Heritage Foundation:  Obamacare;

4:30 (CST)/5:30 pm (EST): Vern McKinley, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute:  “Financing Failure: A Century of Bailouts”;

5:00 (CST)/6:00 pm (EST):  Jennifer Ponson, Pensacola State College:  Florida Skills Competition and Worlds Career Expo;  and

5:30 (CST)/6:30 pm (EST):  Troy Senik, CFIF Fellow:  Energy and Gas Prices

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

Tomorrow voters in Ohio’s new 9th congressional district will decide whether America will get another two years of the Dennis Kucinich experience.  Pitted against fellow Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur, Kucinich has raised nearly twice as much money ($406k) as Kaptur ($204k) since the start of the year, but is trailing with one important constituency – other Democratic members of Congress.

From Roll Call:

Earlier this week, Rep. David Price’s (D-N.C.) re-election committee and [Senate Majority Whip Dick] Durbin’s Prairie political action committee each donated $1,000 to Kaptur. The Congresswoman also received a $1,000 check from Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s (D-Conn.) campaign at the start of this year, according to online fundraising records. Both Price and DeLauro serve with Kaptur on the Appropriations Committee. Durbin, also an appropriator, was first elected to the House in 1982, the same year as Kaptur.

Earlier in the redistricting process Kucinich flirted with running in a newly created seat in Washington State, though much like his ill-fated presidential campaigns, the groundswell of support Kucinich needed to move states never materialized.

Thankfully for politicos, the winner of the member vs. member tussle tomorrow won’t fade into obscurity since the likely Republican nominee will be Sam Wurzelbacher, aka, “Joe the Plumber” from the 2008 presidential campaign.

Only in Ohio.

In my column last week, I focused on how the Obama Administration’s energy policies harm the economy by subsidizing “clean fuels” that are not viable at market while handicapping the energy sources that actually work (and are affordable) in the here and now. An editorial in today’s Washington Examiner drives the point home:

The number of approvals for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico — which accounts for a third of all U.S. oil production — under Obama has plunged from more than seven per month to only three. Measured in terms of how long is required for the government to consider a permit application, the average for the five years before Obama was 60.6 days. The average is now almost 110 days, according to the Institute for Energy Research. Viewed in terms of the percentage of all permits sought that are approved, the five-year average before Obama was 73 percent. Today under Obama, it is 23 percent and falling. In other words, it is almost certain that the oil-drilling rig count will head back down in coming months, but it will be in response to government interference rather than as a result of price fluctuations. And the price of gas at the pump will continue to go higher.

Read that again. A 2/3 reduction in the number of permits issued and a doubling of the time it takes to get said permits. And the president really wants us to believe he doesn’t have any “silver bullets” for gas prices?

Newsweek’s Robert Samuelson on what the MSM’s conventional wisdom may be missing with all its Obama-the-invincible chatter:

All in all, the conventional wisdom seems compelling. As a card-carrying member of the mainstream media — a group that creates and sustains the conventional wisdom — I’m inclined to accept it. And yet there’s one conspicuous gap in the-election-is-already-over story: the polls. While the Republicans have been destroying each other and embarrassing themselves, the polls for a general election should have shown a collapse in Republican support. They haven’t — at least so far.

Go to Real Clear Politics (www.realclearpolitics.com) for the latest figures. The average of the polls it follows shows (for the period from Feb. 10 to Feb. 29) Obama beating Romney by 4.6 percentage points (49 percent to 44.4 percent). Obama’s margin of victory over Santorum is slightly larger (49.3 percent to 44.2 percent).

…

So it’s a puzzle. Logic and most evidence suggest the election is over. But the polls seem to dissent. Could it be that the real story is that Obama’s not a shoo-in even when he should be?

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.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Senik:  Obama’s “Cold Fusion” Presidency
Ellis:  The Critical ObamaCare Law the Supreme Court Won’t Decide This Term
Lee:  New Survey: 73% Favor Lower Corporate Taxes
Hillyer:  The Theme, Again, is Freedom

Podcast:  Where the Jobs Are – Interview w/CEI’s John Berlau
Jester’s Courtroom:  Bounced out of Court

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 by e-mail, sign up here.

In an interview with CFIF, John Berlau, director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discusses his recent testimony at a hearing entitled “Where the Jobs Are” before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, and how Congress can eliminate barriers to job growth by reducing regulations that harm young firms.

Listen to the interview here.

Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation makes a compelling argument in a Fox News op-ed that conservatives in Congress must adopt a more confrontational posture in resisting President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional, non-recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

There is also no evidence that the House or Senate will take any of the other actions available, such as cutting the NLRB’s budget or passing legislation banning any federal funds from being used to enforce any orders or regulations issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until the president voids his unconstitutional appointments. The House needs to do more than just hold hearings to enforce its constitutional decision not to consent to a Senate recess.

As for the Senate, it operates almost entirely on “unanimous consent.”

Moreover:

It would take only one senator standing up for constitutional principles and the rule of law to get the ball rolling and shame his colleagues into joining him to fight the president’s tyrannical actions.

He could hold up all of the president’s nominations and bring the Senate to a standstill through quorum calls and continuous objections to unanimous consent motions.

Challenging the President’s lawless attempts to fill powerful regulatory agencies with liberal ideologues should be a no-brainer for any Republican in Congress.  That none of von Spakovsky’s straight-forward recommendations is gaining traction shows that some GOP Members of Congress haven’t learned the Tea Party lesson yet – either defend the Constitution early and often or get ready for a primary challenge.

Fred Barnes has a terrific column in today’s Wall Street Journal explaining the origin, structure and philosophy of Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform proposal.  The most intriguing paragraph explains how Ryan’s reform ideas went from minority alternative to majority consensus in just two years.

But House passage alone was a milestone. When Mr. Ryan first proposed premium support in 2008, 14 House Republicans signed on as co-sponsors. But when his budget cleared the House in 2011—with Medicare reform its most controversial provision—only four of the 241 Republicans voted against it. Of the 87 GOP freshmen, only one voted no. In the Senate, all but five of the 47 Republicans declined to back Mr. Ryan’s plan.

After weathering some resistance in the beginning:

Premium support is now Republican orthodoxy. But absent a GOP landslide this fall, that’s not sufficient to win congressional approval. Besides, entitlements are best enacted on a bipartisan basis. Otherwise, they may wind up like ObamaCare—unpopular, under legal challenge, and the target of endless partisan attacks.

Barnes is right that entitlement reform is best enacted on a bipartisan basis, but there’s every indication that a conservative victory this year that keeps the House and wins the Senate, supplemented with smart liberal support from the likes of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and others, would certainly be considered bipartisan.

According to Barnes, a handful of Democrats in the Senate and House have told Ryan they are willing to go public with their support for Medicare reform after the 2012 elections.  Momentum is building for real reform of the largest deficit driver in the federal budget.  This should be a motivator for every fiscal conservative to make this election the year Ryan’s reforms become law so America can get its finances in order.

From The Blaze:

According to the Office of Management and Budget, a mere 1 percent of NASA’s portable devices and laptops have been encrypted this year.

“Until NASA fully implements an Agency-wide data encryption solution, sensitive data on its mobile computing and portable data storage devices will remain at high risk for loss or theft,” [NASA Inspector General Paul] Martin said.

This wouldn’t be a big deal except that:

An unencrypted NASA laptop computer complete with command codes to control the International Space Station was stolen last year, according to congressional testimony by NASA’s inspector general.

In a statement given to a House committee on the security challenges facing NASA, Paul K. Martin said the computer was actually not an isolated incident but was in fact one of 48 taken between April 2009 and April 2011.

But who cares about cyber security so long as the Obama Administration is making sure “dominantly Muslim nations… feel good about their historic contribution to science… and math and engineering”?

A nefarious trend coming out of Washington, as reported by Politico:

Democrats on K Street are warning their corporate clients: Give to Republican challengers in the 2012 election, and you’ll regret it come tax reform time.

Lobbyists are getting that message from allies of powerful Democrats such as Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is closely watching support for Rep. Denny Rehberg, a Republican challenging Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). Baucus supporters fear that if Rehberg ousts Tester, Baucus could be next to face a serious Republican challenge in the state.

One K-Streeter close to the Baucus operation said the senator considers a gift to Rehberg a contribution against him. Another Democratic lobbyist told a client to take his name off a Rehberg fundraising event because it would be hurtful to his company, according to sources.

The case K-Streeters are making to their clients: It will be a hard sell next year to get Baucus’s support on business-friendly tax perks set to expire or the Bush-era tax cuts that must get through his committee.

Old D.C. hands that they are, the folks at Politico are quick to note that this is routine procedure on Capitol Hill, where the nexus between campaign contributions and favorable policy outcomes is an implicit rule of the game. That’s all true, of course, and Republicans have committed precisely these kinds of sins in the past. It doesn’t follow, however, that we have to accept it.

One of the most heartening aspects of the rise of the Tea Party has been the fact that there is now a powerful political coalition organized around a philosophy rather than a pecuniary interest. That philosophy is stripping power from Washington. And it’s precisely what’s needed here.

These kind of abuses are a powerful argument for the sagacity of a flat tax. Conservatives generally tend to focus on the economic benefits of a single income tax rate (which, because it eliminates so many distortions, are legion), but they may not pay enough attention to its virtues as a matter of political science. Having a single, across-the-board rate would keep politicians from turning the tax code into a byzantine apparatus meant to subsidize their friends and persecute their enemies. At that point, our elected officials might actually have to find an alternative to scaring their constituents into submission.

Ashton is right on target on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and the Goldwater Institute deserves a lot of credit for challenging it. I think the challenge has a great deal of merit. I wrote on it here.

Condolences to the family and friends of one of the conservative movement’s leading figures, Andrew Breitbart.  His contributions and innovations are innumerable, but he was also a man who was genuinely gracious, personable and selfless even at times when nobody was watching and he stood to gain nothing of import personally.  Truly a nice, brilliant father, husband and leader.

About the only thing that Dr. Steven Chu, President Obama’s Secretary of Energy, deserves credit for these days is honesty. Testifying before Congress yesterday, Chu was asked by Republican Congressman Alan Nunnelee of Mississippi whether the Obama Administration’s energy goal is to reduce the cost of gasoline. Chu’s response, according to Politico:

“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”

… “We agree there is great suffering when the price of gasoline increases in the United States, and so we are very concerned about this,” said Chu, speaking to the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. “As I have repeatedly said, in the Department of Energy, what we’re trying to do is diversify our energy supply for transportation so that we have cost-effective means.”

In other words, “We’re perfectly content to see oil prices shoot through the roof if it means all you knuckle-draggers will start driving Smart Cars.” Should we really be that surprised from the man who once told the Wall Street Journal, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,”? Chu’s intransigence represents a broader liberal pathology: an ideological allergy to economic growth.

I can only say that the Air Force senior acquisition executive, David Van Buren, is not satisfied with the quality of the documentation supporting the award decision.”

That was U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley yesterday, regarding the USAF decision to vacate a $353 million attack aircraft contract awarded late last year to Brazilian manufacturer Embraer, and to investigate the process by which the contract was awarded.

We at CFIF monitored and criticized that process and voiced our concerns directly to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. 

By way of background, two defense companies competed for the contract to provide military aircraft to Afghanistan:  Hawker Beechcraft of Wichita, Kansas, and Brazil’s Embraer.  Disturbingly, Embraer receives subsidies from the Brazilian government, which has publicly opposed the War on Terror and American efforts against Iran and Venezuela, but nevertheless shamelessly sought to profit from U.S. foreign policy.  Additionally, a provision within the potential Embraer contract known as the “Golden Share” clause would allow the Brazilian government to shut down the operation at any time during the production or maintenance of the aircraft.  Alarmingly, the United States would possess no recourse in the matter. 

Hawker Beechcraft would sustain an estimated 1,400 domestic jobs, whereas Brazil’s Embraer would offer only 50 final domestic assembly positions.  Moreover, the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 is based upon an aircraft already in wide use by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and other American allies.  Consequently, that familiarity and logistical infrastructure advantage would allow for substantial cost savings over the new aircraft’s life cycle.  This is particularly important at a time when the Defense Department seeks cost control measures.

Although this situation remains unresolved, the USAF decision to overrule and investigate the dubious award to Embraer is a very encouraging step in the right direction.

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.