Freedom Line Blog

We’ve all heard the horror stories and seen the cringe-inducing statistics about public employee pensions and the unions that make them insolvent.  Now, organized labor provides yet another example of just how bad its leaders are at managing other people’s money; this time, their own members’ dues.

Because Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) did not support a public option in ObamaCare, the dons of American labor decided to make an example out of her to other left-of-center Democrats.  Their hate totaled $10 million of union members’ dues spent to defeat her in the Arkansas Democratic primary.  And they lost.

True to form, they are lashing out.  In fact, the political director of the SEIU issued a warning to other Lincoln-type Democrats:

“We’ll see if Blanche Lincoln is made a better senator for having to answer to working Arkansans over these past few weeks. And if you are [Democrats] Larry Kissell (N.C.-08) or Zack Space (Ohio-18) or Mike McMahon (N.Y.-13) or Michael Arcuri (N.Y.-24) or another candidate who stopped advocating for the needs of working families once elected, the labor movement is going to be at the side of those voters who demand change,” said SEIU national political director Jon Youngdahl.

These people are crazy.  But then again, you’re an American taxpayer so you probably already knew that.

H/T: Politico

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

A few months ago, I noted how Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is shaping up to be one of the most impressive stars in the GOP’s 2012 firmament. Though Daniels has gotten some literary love from a wonky contigent of Washington’s columnist corps, he’s never received quite as extensive a profile as in Andrew Ferguson’s cover story in the new Weekly Standard.

The whole (very lengthy) piece is worth reading for its portrait of Daniels as an unpretentious midwesterner, aggresive manager, and possible antidote to the Age of Obama (the piece — coming close on the heels of his PAC’s first high-profile Washington fundraiser — is an obvious attempt to rollout a campaign narrative). Among the nuggets that make a Daniel’s candidacy worth consideration:

He’s quicker on his feet than a garden-variety pol:

We were having lunch one day at a favorite spot, the St. Louis Street Soda Shop in Vincennes, on the Wabash River. Having resisted the Fried Bologna Sandwich ($3.49, with chips, pickle extra), Daniels was washing down a quarter-pound Coney Island dog with a large butterscotch milkshake—“the best in the state,” he assured Dolly, the delighted owner—when a reporter from the local radio station appeared. She pressed him on the education budget cuts too. She told him the local school board had just laid off nine teachers and an administrator.

“What would you say to those people?” she asked.

He visibly flinched, just as he had on MitchTV.

“I’d say it should have been nine administrators and one teacher. There are 20 things that school board could do before it had to lay off one teacher.”

He has an economic record about as sharply in contrast to Obama’s as is imaginable:

When Daniels took office, in 2004, the state faced a $200 million deficit and hadn’t balanced its budget in seven years. Four years later, all outstanding debts had been paid off; after four balanced budgets, the state was running a surplus of $1.3 billion, which has cushioned the blows from a steady decline in revenues caused by the recession. “That’s what saved us when the recession hit,” one official said. “If we didn’t have the cash reserves and the debts paid off, we would have been toast.” The state today is spending roughly the same amount that it was when Daniels took office, largely because he resisted the budget increases other states were indulging in the past decade.

No other state in the Midwest—all of them, like Indiana, dependent on a declining manufacturing sector—can match this record. Venture capital investment in Indiana had lagged at $39 million annually in the first years of this decade. By 2009 it was averaging $94 million. Even now the state has continued to add jobs—7 percent of new U.S. employment has been in Indiana this year, a state with 2 percent of the country’s population. For the first time in 40 years more people are moving into the state than leaving it. Indiana earned its first triple-A bond rating from Standard and Poor’s in 2008; the other two major bond rating agencies concurred in April 2010, making it one of only nine states with this distinction, and one of only two in the Midwest.

And — most astonishingly — he’s such an effective governor that he even got the DMV (actually BMV in the Hoosier State) transformed into a customer-centered operation:

The state Bureau of Motor Vehicles, another patronage sump that was routinely ranked one of the worst in the country, was drastically reorganized. “He likes metrics,” [Indiana OMB Director Ryan] Kitchell said. “He likes to measure outcomes.” Every line item in the state budget has at least one objective formula attached to it to indicate how well each service is being delivered. Regulatory agencies track the speed with which permits and variances are granted. The economic development agency has to compare the hourly wage of each new job brought to the state with the average hourly wage of existing jobs. In the case of the BMV, the two most important metrics were wait times and customer satisfaction. Now each receipt is stamped with the time the customer arrives and the time his transaction is completed. Wait times have dropped from over 40 minutes to under 10 minutes. Surveys put customer satisfaction at 97 percent.

A new generation of reformers is beginning to develop outside of Washington. Dare we hope for a Mitch Daniels/Chris Christie ticket in 2012 (in either order)?

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

From the Australian Comedy duo of Clarke and Dawe. Sadly this may be more accurate and succint than anything you’ll see on network news:

After letting medical marijuana dispensaries illegally mushroom to about 1,000 within city limits, L.A.’s city council is imposing tough new restrictions designed to reduce that number to between 70 and 130 within six months.  Under the recently passed ordinance, violators could be fined up to $2,500 a day, and possibly face jail time.

Here’s a mind-blowing perspective:

“The sky isn’t going to fall down,” Asha Greenberg, assistant city attorney, told National Public Radio. “LAPD isn’t going to go around kicking down doors, etc. Initially we’re going to be doing information gathering.”

At least there’s one deleterious activity the people running L.A.’s City Council are willing to fight against.  (At least until November…)

It’s amazing in the modern era where information is so plentiful that news pieces more often look like a schizophrenic’s diary entry than a well thought out update on a continuing story.  Today’s example is courtesy of an article in the UK’s The Guardian.  The story begins with the serious, but by no means startling, news that Iran is publicly offering to escort future convoys to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Some readers may remember this is the same regime which sponsored a Holocaust denial conference, maintains a president who promises to destroy the Jewish State, and is the primary supplier of arms and rockets to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.

Iran also doesn’t have much love for the United States.  Neither does one of radical Islam’s most corrupt Western supporters, former British MP George Galloway.  An unrepentant Socialist, Galloway seems like many other A-list apologists for totalitarian governments, having secured his status with a speech praising Saddam Hussein in the dictator’s presence, and excoriating American foreign policy in an appearance before the U.S. Senate.

Given just that bit of information, you might think mentioning him at the end of a news story about the coming flare up between Israel and Iran would be adequate:

George Galloway, the founder of Viva Palestina, announced in London that two simultaneous convoys “one by land via Egypt and the other by sea” would set out in September to break the Gaza blockade. The sea convoy of up to 60 ships will travel around the Mediterranean gathering ships, cargo and volunteers.

The paragraph could have introduced Galloway as “Current Hamas financial contributor George Galloway,” or “Oil for Food profiteer George Galloway,” to give a much clearer understanding of the man organizing the September “solidarity” sailing trip.    At the very least, the article could have quoted the announcement from the Viva Palestina website detailing that the talks to plan the trip occurred in Istanbul, Turkey, with Galloway saying he wanted Egypt to guarantee safe passage for the next convoy.  But instead of linking Galloway to the corrupt groups running various Middle East governments, the article reads like he is unconnected from the people he gets paid to support.

Thankfully, David Horowitz and the folks over at Discover the Networks provide much more background and documentation than The Guardian’s Middle East editor.

So, the next time you read or hear a news story and wonder if you’ve heard the name, place, or group before, run it through Discover the Networks before moving on.  Within ten minutes you’ll be way more informed than most of the information gatekeepers in the MSM.

Following up on our commentary last week that Turkey’s increased malfeasance illustrates the Obama Doctrine’s failure, today’s Wall Street Journal includes a commentary by Eliot A. Cohen entitled With Friends Like the United States…

Cohen points out that even in supposedly Obama-loving Europe, America’s standing has declined, not risen:

When asked about relations with the U.S. under President Barack Obama, 17% of Britons in a recent poll thought they had improved; 25% thought they had deteriorated.”

Cohen also notes Obama’s poor treatment of such friends as Colombia and Israel, alongside his spinelessness toward North Korea, Iran, China and other antagonists.  As he cogently summarizes, “The Obama Administration has managed to convince most countries around the world that we are worth little as friends and even less as enemies.”

More ominously, Cohen concludes, “the administration is making a dangerous world even more so.”

You will if John Eastman wins next Tuesday’s Republican primary.  Eastman is a former law school dean, clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, and appellate litigator with experience in over 50 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.  He is also a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.  His nomination for CA AG would instantly make the race the most important contest going into November for state voters.  Why?  Because unlike any of the gubernatorial candidates, Eastman is laying out a comprehensive strategy to fight for lower taxes, stronger borders, and less federal intrusion in the state’s prison and pension systems – all by suing to enforce existing laws.  It’s not often that the expert most likely to be the principal office holder’s deputy runs for the top job.  If Eastman emerges with the California GOP’s nomination next week, get ready for a full court press of conservative first principles.

Did you hear about the Glenn Beck vs. Ivory Tower tiff?  A California history professor blogged on the Huffington Post that America’s highest profile fan of the Founders needs to get some perspective before spouting off like he knows something.  In particular, Joseph Palermo argues that – consistent with liberal elite opinion – looking to the Founding Generation for any type of guidance is silly because…well, things are different now.  Per Palermo, “The United States Constitution is a ‘living document’ no matter how often Beck and others repeat the lie that it isn’t.”

Forgive this former collegian if Dr. Palermo’s conclusory, unsourced statement leaves a bit much to be desired.

Thankfully, Amity Shlaes came to Beck’s defense.  Since she too (along with Jonah Goldberg) was blamed for misleading millions of Americans about the “goodness” of FDR’s handling of the Great Depression, Shlaes felt the need to explain the main attraction of Beck.  He gets deep into his subjects.  Moreover, he provides a sustained conversation with his audience about an alternative set of books that won’t show up on many university reading lists, no matter how well researched they are.

Every author is glad to sell books. But the victory is far more Mr. Beck’s than any individual writer’s or publisher’s. His genius has been in his recognition that viewers do not want merely the odd, one-off book, duly pegged to news. They want a coherent vision, a competing canon that the regulated airwaves and academy have denied them. So he, Glenn Beck, is building that canon, book by book from the forgotten shelf. Since the man is a riveting entertainer, the professors are correct to be concerned. He’s not just reacting or shaping individual thoughts. He is bringing competition into the Ed Biz.

In a word, Glenn Beck gives people a choice when it comes to getting well written, well researched histories about the people and issues that matter.  If he keeps it up, maybe reading history during college will be as enlightening – and enjoyable – as it is before and after.

Dr. Donald Berwick, the Obama Administration’s nominee to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, once praised Britain at the expense of America by saying, “at last a nation where healthcare is a right and carrying a semi-automatic machine gun is a privilege, instead of the other way around.”

Dr. Berwick had worked with Britain’s National Health Service, and callously wrote in 2002 that “most people who have serious pain do not need advanced methods – they just need the morphine and counseling that have been available for centuries.”

Naturally, the Obama Administration said that Dr. Berwick’s comments were “taken out of context” in attempting to sweep the rising controversy under the rug.  The statements, however, speak for themselves.

Get a good look at the potential future under ObamaCare, America.

In an interview with CFIF, Florida State Senator Don Gaetz discusses the BP oil spill, the government’s response and the potential impact on the environment and economy of Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Listen to the interview here.

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

Lee:  “Guns Is Not the Answer” – Shoot an Armed Home Invader, Invite the Wrath of Chicago’s Mayor?
Ellis:  Will Boston Boycott Massachusetts?
Senik:  “The Boss” Takes Charge in New Jersey
CFIF Staff:  Obama’s Waterloo? Katrina? Iranian Hostage Crisis? Bay of Pigs? Watergate? Killer Rabbit?

Freedom Minute Video:  Unanswered Questions About the Sestak Deal
Podcast:  Florida State Senator Discusses BP Oil Spill
Jester’s Courtroom:  Pedestrian Sues Google for Bad Directions

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 this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the ongoing White House scandal involving Congressman Joe Sestak and key questions that those involved should have to answer before the White House is let off the hook.

As a candidate for the White House, when it was easy to throw rocks at the Bush Administration from afar, Barack Obama falsely attributed international disaccord to Bush’s policies.  Obama famously raised eyebrows in 2007 when he promised to meet such leaders as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il “without preconditions.”  As he sanctimoniously put it, “the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”

At approximately the same time, Obama predicted that not only would Bush’s troop surge strategy in Iraq not succeed, it would somehow make things worse.

The scorecard three years later is not kind to Obama.  The Iraq surge has succeeded beyond anyone’s most optimistic expectations, while Obama’s doctrine of “peace through apology” is failing miserably.

Turkey now provides another vivid illustration of the continuing failure of this Obama Doctrine.

Not long ago, Turkey stood as an important pro-American ally.  Indeed, Turkey was Israel’s most friendly neighbor, and the site for one of Obama’s more disgraceful “Apology Tour” speeches.  Today, however, Turkey has shifted its friendly gestures from Israel to Iran.  Turkey also sanctions the militant group IHH that attacked Israeli commandos and attempted to run the Gaza blockade, and lectured Obama that his condemnation of Israel’s act of self-defense wasn’t strong enough.

Along with North Korea, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Syria, Turkey provides another instructive illustration that Obama’s spineless foreign policy has degraded, not improved, international relations.

With all the attention focused on the aftermath of the Turkish flotilla incident, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey enlarges the picture to encompass Israel’s most lethal foe: Iran.  He pens a sobering essay outlining the similarities between the rise of the Nazis in Germany to the increasing power of Iran’s mullahs.  Both faced restrained opposition from the West due to domestic economic concerns, and elite opinion that a civilized culture cannot produce a totalitarian, neighbor-terrorizing regime.  They’re too smart for that.

Maybe not.  Or rather, perhaps elite opinion shouldn’t run the risk of assuming that all governments represent the will of the people they govern.

So, what’s America to do?  According to Woolsey, there isn’t much time left.

But now, as was the case in the mid-1930s, we may have very little time left. There still may be a chance for the U.S. and at least a few of its allies to do something effective: to impose on Iran crippling economic sanctions orders of magnitude more severe than the modest ones used to date, to provide substantial and effective aid to the Iranian reformers, or otherwise to help bring about a tectonic shift in the nature of the Iranian regime. We may still have an opportunity to keep “engagement” from becoming the “appeasement” of our time, a synonym for “weakness leading to war.” The key determinant is whether our leaders decide to use Chamberlain or Churchill as their model of statesmanship.

Much will hinge on their choice.

Hopefully, President Obama won’t need a Bay of Pigs disaster to serve as a rehearsal for his own Cuban Missile Crisis.

H/T: National Review

So far, President Barack Obama is 0-for-everything when it comes to getting directly involved in any campaign other than his own.  In a three month span, he helped lose Democratic campaigns for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, and the special election for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat.

Now, it looks like he picked losers in two Democratic primaries.  Just when it seemed like the Joe Sestak pay-not-to-play offer couldn’t get weirder, the challenger in Colorado’s contested primary confirms that he too was approached about dropping out.  For those keeping score, Sestak beat Arlen Specter and Andrew Romanoff currently leads 60%-40% over the appointed incumbent Michael Bennet.  Whatever happened to the will of the people?

But what should we expect from a chief executive whose only “win” so far in office is a scandalously passed health care industry takeover that may go down as the most corrupt bargain ever brokered between a president and Congress.  The lesson here is that this president is as hapless at electoral horse trading as he is with legislative deal making.

How much longer ‘til 2012?

For those paying attention to the U.S. Senate race in California, it would be a forgivable sin of omission if one thought that all of Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) campaign opponents sported an “R” after their name.  But apparently, she’s got competition in her Democratic primary next Tuesday: Slate contributor Mickey Kaus.

Surprisingly, Kaus is running to Boxer’s right on issues like firing bad public school teachers (supports), and amnesty for illegal immigrants (opposes).  And for those who would tar and feather Kaus as an ideological heretic, consider his response:

I’d argue these are the positions a liberal who cared about government and inequality would take. Why do Democrats reject them? They increasingly say it’s not so much because of policy, but because of politics: they have to turn out the “base” to win the next election, and the “base” consists of union members and Latinos (plus African Americans, who are badly hurt by illegal immigration but whom the party takes for granted).

Never mind that this theory is nearly unfalsifiable–if the Democrats lose, its proponents will always say that they just didn’t please the base enough. Has base-pleasing ever panned out? Looking back over recent elections, I can only think of one where the “base” was clearly more important than the moderate middle–that was the presidential election of 2004, when George W. Bush turned out millions of new right-wing voters many people thought didn’t exist. But most recent mid-term elections have been preceded by predictions that “Hey, given the low turnout it all depends on mobilizing the base!”–only to be followed by acknowledgments that it was moderate swing voters who swung the result.

If only Senator Boxer would debate this guy…

H/T: Huffington Post

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

Ordinarily, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to President Obama as Spock, as in the Star Trek Vulcan who lacked emotion.  Today, she passes on that appellation, but describes the same manner of dispassion that – if it continues – will likely prove to be the main reason this president serves only one term.

The oil won’t stop flowing, but the magic has.

Barack Obama is a guy who is accustomed to having stuff go right for him. He’s gotten a lot of breaks: two opponents in his U.S. Senate race in Illinois felled by personal scandals; a mismanaged presidential campaign by Hillary Clinton; an economic collapse that set the stage for a historic win, memorably described by the satiric Onion newspaper as “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”

Welcome to the big chair.  The frustration this president is supposedly feeling isn’t any different than a business owner dreaming of growth, but stifled by new regulations; or the family man trying to meet his responsibilities while attempting to make a profitable career transition.  There are two sides to the leadership coin: maintaining a vision, and overcoming obstacles to it.  Unlike a predecessor of his, Obama has “the vision thing.”  Too bad for the Gulf Coast, American economy, and Iranian democracy advocates that their problems are interpreted as annoyances to be minimized rather than challenges to be overcome.

How strange it is to watch a president lauded for his rhetorical prowess appear absolutely powerless to summon the will to roll up his sleeves and take charge of any crisis that occurs outside Washington, D.C.