Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > October
October 2008
It’s truly vital that we keep Chambliss
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We fiscal conservatives may indeed find ourselves in the wilderness after Tuesday. If so, the first duel will be why we were uncompromising when the consequences were so severe.
A filibuster-proof Senate, if combined with a Barack Obama presidency and a Nancy Pelosi-led majority in the House, will lurch this nation to the left with consequences that may take decades, if not generations, to undo.
Some conservatives part ways with U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss because they believe him insufficiently pure on spending, on offshore drilling and on immigration, areas where he’s inclined to find compromise with Democrats.
Admittedly, he’s not Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the Senate’s Dr. No on earmarks. Nor is he South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, ranked by the National Journal as the most conservative senator. But neither is he in the company of Republicans Gordon Smith of Oregon and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, all of whom are dead-center. With announced and expected departures, the Senate moves even further leftward — how far depends on Tuesday.
By Wednesday morning, we could have a mystery man elected president, one with a history of associating with radicals without seeing or hearing their extremism; an untested mystery man who declares he was always right yesterday but never seems to make a decision when it matters. He’s a mystery man with a running mate, Joe Biden, who is fully knowledgeable about foreign policy, but, as John McCain noted, doesn’t necessarily reach sound conclusions. “In Iraq,” said McCain of Biden, “he had this cockamamie idea about dividing Iraq into three countries” and on national security issues, “he’s been wrong on a number of the major ones.”
Given the possibility that we’ll elect a president who can’t judge character and a vice president who, with knowledge and experience, can’t get it right, the Senate race in Georgia is enormously important.
We will come to know Barack Obama only after he is in the White House. We’ll know whether he’s able to resist pressure from interest groups and liberals who believe they should go for broke quickly.
In that milieu, Chambliss’ contest is huge. Give the left a filibuster-proof Senate, and in addition to a legislative tsunami, there will be a concerted effort to pack the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, with activist judges who’ll carry out the left’s agenda long after liberals again lose political power.
“The Democrats have not been letting us get either district or circuit court judges approved over the last seven to nine months, as promised,” said Chambliss from his road tour of Georgia last week. “If there’s a filibuster-proof Senate, from the Supreme Court on down, he would be able to appoint very, very liberal judges, and there would be nothing [Republicans in] the Senate could do to stop that.” He continued:
The biggest fear that you have is that they get that filibuster-proof Senate, even though it is a long shot. If they do, Barney Frank has said the first thing they’ll do is slash defense by 25 percent. They’ll pass the Employee Free Choice Act and write a secret ballot away from everybody” in the workplace.
He spells out the consequences. In addition to increasing taxes, Democrats will “increase spending on social domestic programs like we have never seen before.” He is not exaggerating. Our grandchildren and theirs could be paying for the excesses of an unchecked Obama administration pushed by the Angry Left.
Purists among conservatives find themselves drawn to the Libertarian message that urges us to be adult, be responsible, pay the bills. The reality is, however, that about half the country has become vested in Big Government. They’re addicted. The task now is to find a way to wean them and to nurture them back to self-reliance.
There’s too much ground to cover to play petty games now. A Libertarian vote in the U.S. Senate race is a vote for the Obama agenda. No question.
“A vote in protest is really a vote for the Democrats,” Chambliss said, stating the obvious. “I have never cast a vote to raise taxes. I have made sure our defense community is strong and robust.” When you look at the positive things out there, the things all conservatives agree on, Chambliss notes that he’s with the purists 80 percent to 90 percent of the time.
A protest vote in 1992 got us Bill Clinton. A protest vote now could get us a filibuster-proof Senate.
Permalink | Comments (179) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Gitmo; Fulton sheriff; MARTA’s bailout request
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Fresh outlook” is said to trump “experience” when two education workplace unions endorse Democrats for the Board of Education. When Teamsters endorse CEOs who hire Teamsters, it’s not so much a matter of qualifications to run the company. The same can be said when the Gwinnett Association of Educators, a union, and the United School Employees Union, offer endorsements in school board races. Don’t know the incumbents, Louise Radloff, Carole Boyce and Mary Kay Murphy, but if the unions don’t like them, they must be looking out for taxpayers.
One at a time the bad guys are offered alternatives that avoid the long stays at Gitmo. Latest to be offered the Gitmo alternative was Abu Ghadiya, one of al-Qaida’s most prominent smugglers from Syria into Iraq. He’s now among the departed, thanks to U.S. Special Forces troops who reached out to him inside Syria.
The Georgia School Boards Association has wimped out on Amendment No. 2, taking no position. As long as it’s up to local boards to decide whether to give future education tax dollars to developers, “we’re fine with it,” said a spokesman. If they wimp out from the start, there’s no reason to think local boards can stand up to the pressure later. Don’t try to build them backbones. Make the decision yourself. Vote No on Amendment No. 2.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agrees that it’s OK for Cobb County to open commission meetings with a prayer. So where is the check from the American Civil Liberties Union compensating the taxpayers of Cobb for the money we spent fighting a frivolous suit? Pay up. And throw in a few dollars, maybe lots of dollars, for pain and suffering. And then some punitive damages to keep them from doing it again.
How stupid can you be, returning inmate Willie Tiller unprotected to Fulton County jail just after he testified against Brian Nichols? Five other inmates, including some charged with murder, beat him upon his return. In my book, he’s entitled to financial compensation from the taxpayers who hired the sheriff.
Fulton badly needs a new sheriff, which it’ll get since incumbent Myron Freeman was defeated in the primary. The choice candidate to replace him is Republican Mike Rary, the county’s former chief marshal and an experienced administrator with innovative ideas for fixing the jail. He’s taken some trash-talk containing untruths, but such is the currency of today’s campaigns. Check him out.
MARTA, in begging to be included in any federal bailout, demonstrates just how rotten the nation’s financial system had become — with Congress at the core of the problem. MARTA “sold” track and equipment built and purchased with public tax dollars to private companies and investors to use as a tax dodge. Then it leased the track and equipment back, paying rental for 20-25 years. The IRS finally clamped down. But now MARTA may be on the hook for $400 million because of the troubles of the insurance giant AIG. It’s asking the feds to ride to the rescue. Congress is the root cause of everything bad that’s happened in the financial world — and not because of too little regulation, but because of too much mutual back-scratching, as occurred with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Boy, I do hope the United States and Iraq are able to negotiate questions such as whether the United States is to be prohibited from launching attacks on other countries from its territory and on how and when Iraqi courts could try U.S. contractors and soldiers accused of committing major crimes off duty and off base. These are not questions I want left to Angry Left if, by chance, it comes to power here.
A news story informs us that golfer John Daly has been found drunk outside Hooters. Isn’t that the news equivalent of reporting that Sonny Perdue and Joe Frank Harris had been found sober outside Sunday School?
If government is the solution to your prosperity, you’ll know how to vote Tuesday. If it isn’t, you will, too.
Permalink | Comments (123) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
The Obama Infomercial
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Does anyone know if Ron Popeil’s Ronco knives set as good as advertised in the Infomercial?” a potential purchaser asked on Yahoo.
The response was vague. Sort of: If you have doubts, that answers your questions.
Spending an estimated three million dollars on a Ginsu-knife-like Infomercial, Barack Obama reminded America that he’s an over-the-top kind of guy, excessive, pompous and eminently phony. The Oval Office-like set for Wednesday night’s Infomercial is, in the manner of Barack Obama, entirely too much. It’s cheesy.
The narratives, too, are Hollywood goes presidential. The story-line here is that if you can tell a story memorably, people can be led to any emotion or any action — including voting for the narrator as President of the United States.
This is an example of what happens when there’s too much money in politics. Obama spent an estimated three million dollars on a phony Oval Office Infomercial to convince the nation that he’s as capable as anybody on West Wing of leading the nation.And that’s probably true.
There’s way too much money in politics. He’s a guy who may spend three-quarters of a billion dollars or more on politics, on a campaign to win public office, a guy who has so much money that he can afford to spend $3 million on an Infomercial set in a pretend Oval Office.
Are we headed for the Ronco Presidency, the ginsu-knife Infomercial to sell the presidency in the same way we sell Chinese kitchen gadgets? Heaven help us if this is what the national debate over the Future of America has become.
The guy with the fake Presidential Seal has addressed the nation from the fake Oval Office in a Infomercial fake. God save us.
Permalink | Comments (349) | Post your comment |
Go, Ted. Go John!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
UPDATE: See new post on the Obama Infomercial
OK, Ted, go.
Quit. The Bridge to Nowhere Republican from Alaska is a reminder to all fiscal conservatives of what’s been wrong with the Republican Party. When it governs, it fails to delineate a clear difference between itself and the party of favors and pork that is now the majority in the House and Senate. Ideally today or tomorrow at the latest, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, convicted on seven counts of taking gifts in the form of unbilled improvements on his chalet in Alaska, will promise to resign if he wins reelection next Tuesday.
Otherwise, it’s a Democrat win and a possible filibuster-proof Senate.
But, hey, if Democrats come to power by ousting corrupt and/or pork-barrel Republicans, I’ll wave them in graciously and with good cheer.
Stevens does need to declare promptly, as John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin have asked. Quit. Go. Take the Road to Nowhere. And soon.
McCain can win. The Obama campaign and its media supporters have begun to treat an Obama landslide as inevitable. A new Gallup poll of likely voters puts the gap at two percentage points, 49-47. Zogby has it at four, 49-45, with a 2.9 percent margin of error.
If, in fact, undecides are locking down now in the days leading up to next Tuesday, it could be good news for McCain-Palin.
In the last days, it’s becoming obvious —- Joe Biden even acknowledges it — that the tax consequences for ordinary Americans of the Obama spending proposals will be far greater the campaign has previously admitted.
Biden said Tuesday in an interview with a Pennsylvania television station that Obama’s not trying to redistribute wealth, he’s trying to change the Bush tax cuts. “What we’re saying is that $87 billion tax break doesn’t need to go to people making an average of $1.4 million. It should go…to middle-class people — people making under $150,000 a year.”
“At this rate,” McCain responded, “it won’t be long before Sen. Obama is right back to his vote that Americans making just $42,000 a year should get a tax increase. We can’t let that happen. We won’t let it happen.”
The best summary of the impact on all of us of Obama’s tax and spending proposals is still the explanation delivered by former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson at the GOP convention. Said Thompson:
“We need a president who understands that you don’t make citizens prosperous by making Washington richer, and you don’t lift an economic downturn by imposing one of the largest tax increases in American history.
“Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases.
“They tell you they are not going to tax your family.
“No, they’re just going to tax “businesses”! So unless you buy something from a ‘business,’ like groceries or clothes or gasoline, or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small ‘business,’ don’t worry, it’s not going to affect you.
“They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the ‘other’ side of the bucket! That’s their idea of tax reform.”
Permalink | Comments (110) | Post your comment |
McGuire best pick for Court of Appeals
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two suspected conservatives are among the seven running for the Georgia Court of Appeals.
It is possible that there are others. But with the interpretation many judicial candidates have chosen to apply a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that gives them more freedom in campaign speech than the old school wants, voters will not know before casting ballots on Nov. 4.
One can say with some certainty that Perry McGuire “holds rule-of-law, strict constructionist judicial views” and, furthermore, “believes that judges should interpret the law, not create them from the bench.” One can say that with some certainty because he says it of himself.
While the Georgia Court of Appeals does not address constitutional disputes — that’s the purview of the state Supreme Court — it is important to salt the judicial mines with those who express McGuire’s view.
The other suspected conservative in the race is Mike Sheffield, a Gwinnett County lawyer who had a heartbreak loss for the Court of Appeals in 2004 when he first made the runoff by 382 votes before a challenge to the results forced a rerun. He lost.
Whether he is or not, Sheffield is amply experienced with about 300 jury trials and 65 appeals as a prosecutor, public defender and private-practice lawyer.
If you’re just looking for somebody who can do the job, throw a dart. They’re all capable. Vote for long names, vote for short names. Vote the alphabet. Each of them has something to offer.
McGuire, a former Republican state senator from Carrollton, also served as a corporate counsel for Chick-fil-A before becoming a partner in a business and corporate law firm in Cobb County. While trial lawyers tend to support Democrats and therefore find reason to oppose McGuire, for other Georgians having a strict constructionist with expertise in business law on the Court of Appeals would be useful. Most incumbents have trial-related backgrounds, either as judges or as prosecutors.
McGuire, it’s worth noting, has been endorsed by an assortment of legislative leaders who are themselves conservative, including Congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville, Georgia Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson of Savannah, and a number of others.
Candidates clearly are allowed to state their personal views on disputed public policy issues, obviously without making promises or implying commitment to rule one way or another on issues to come before the court. Most judicial candidates either declare or imply that they are ethically bound to silence on such issues, an interpretation of the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White that is at odds with the majority opinion. Elections are required under the state constitution and, as such, voters should be given responses beyond those lawyers and judges think proper. In Minnesota before the Supreme Court decision, voters were only allowed to ask approved questions. Candidates could offer opinions on cameras in the courtroom, how to reduce caseloads, what they thought about administrative costs, and how women and minorities could be treated more fairly.
The Minnesota decision caused many lawyers and judges great angst. In Georgia, a self-selected group composed mostly of lawyers formed a group calling itself the Georgia Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaign and invited candidates to take a pledge that they would not make misleading statements in judicial campaigns. It’s a pledge I wouldn’t sign on a dare, not because I’d be inclined to misleading utterances but because liberals and conservatives tend to see the world differently. Self-styled groups have biases that aren’t evident. What a group of conservatives and what a group of liberals think is misleading are often entirely different.
No candidate for judicial office should ever surrender to an unelected and non-official group the right to declare which speech is acceptable and which is not in an election. Most of the seven candidates in this race have unwisely signed the pledge giving outsiders authority over their campaigns. The two suspected conservatives haven’t.
McGuire has said, as have others, that he’ll rule strictly on the law as written and not on the basis of personal beliefs or on the outcome he might have advocated as a legislator. A judge on the Court of Appeals “must be impartial and fair, but most importantly must honor the law as written,” he said. “We play the role of an umpire, applying the rules, not making them.”
The seven running for the open seat on the Court of Appeals are all qualified. It’s hard for voters to distinguish one from another. A runoff is certain. Perry McGuire should be one of those left standing.
Permalink | Comments (99) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
What can John McCain do?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama enters the final week of the presidential campaign with supporters and the media propelling the inevitability of his coronation a week from Tuesday.
What can John McCain do? He has six work days and a weekend to convince the nation that the election is not a referendum on the economy now or the Bush Administration as it was. It is instead about where the two candidates will take this country.
With a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and full control of the House — both a possibility, according to pollsters — the spending agenda Obama has spelled out in the campaign will pass unchecked. Between the election and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2010 — or earlier, if Democrats choose — wealth in this country will take flight to safer havens, into financing government debt, for example. And jobs won’t be far behind. Giving organized labor the legislation it wants to mandate wages and to make unionization of the workplace easier by essentially eliminating the secret ballot will give employers incentive to move jobs overseas. Attempting to impose U.S. environmental and labor law on other countries will stop any movement toward the elimination of trade barriers in its tracks.
For those who see their wealth as coming from somebody else’s taxes, it won’t matter as much as it does to those who pay the tab. But there is an economic consequence still, as the higher cost of new taxes, regulation and mandates get built into the price of goods and services.
John McCain has one week remaining to convince working Americans that the taxing and spending promises of an unchecked Obama presidency could turn the subprime financial crisis into something far worse and more lasting.
For conservatives put out with John McCain because of his propensity to wander, it’s time to come home. However far afield you think McCain may wander from core conservative believes, the alternative is far worse. It’s not the time to be purists.
Permalink | Comments (174) | Post your comment |
This spread is too thin to cover costs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Spread the wealth? Thanks, but for me and other ordinary Americans, spreading the wealth is an individual prerogative, not a pocketbook authority we’d willingly hand over to a spendthrift Congress led by a like-minded Barack Obama administration.
As late as Friday morning, in an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, Obama reminded us yet again of what we can expect over the next four years if he is elected president. Such is his arrogance that careless rhetoric becomes policy. Asked by Roberts whether he regretted telling Joe the Plumber that his plan was to spread the wealth around, Obama replied, “Not at all.”
Reality is that this election is a tipping point, the point at which there are more people fully invested in government as its beneficiaries than those who count themselves as government’s burden-bearers. Economist Gary Shilling concluded last year that 52.6 percent of the nation now receives “significant income from government programs,” up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and 28.3 percent in 1950.
The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, meanwhile, found that in 2005, only 90.6 million of the 134.4 million Americans who filed income tax returns paid anything at all to support the burden of government. Some 44 million, therefore, either paid nothing or got a gift back. That’s 32.6 percent of those who filed. At the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term in 1988, that percentage was 20.6.
The top 50 percent of taxpayers, who provide 97 percent of the revenue from individual income taxes, cover both the cost of government and the checks sent to those who get more back than they pay in.
What’s happening here is that the segment of the population that has a financial interest in containing the growth of government is dwindling, while the one that sees politicians as an income source grows. Under those circumstances, it’s virtually impossible to sell fiscal discipline as an agenda.
Adam Lerrick, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting scholar at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, spoke to the tipping point in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal. He noted that in 2006, “220 million Americans were eligible to vote and 89 million — 40 percent —paid no income taxes.” Relying on conclusions from the Tax Policy Center in Washington, a joint venture of two liberal-leaning think tanks (Brookings and Urban Institute), Lerrick reported that tax credits proposed by Obama will remove 18 million more potential voters from the tax rolls, increasing the percentage of nonpayers to 49 percent. An additional 24 million, or 11 percent of potential voters, will pay less than $1,000 in taxes, Lerrick wrote.
“The plunder that the Democrats plan to extract from the ‘very rich’ — the 5 percent that earn more than $250,000 and who already pay 60 percent of the federal income tax bill — will never stretch to cover to expansive programs Mr. Obama promises,” he finds. Bob Irvin of Atlanta, a management consultant and former Republican minority leader of the Georgia House, observes that Obama “is trying to convince voters that his new taxes will only hit” those at the top.
“But do the rough math for yourself,” he continues. “Suppose he took a hundred million dollars a year from every Fortune 500 CEO. That’s $50 billion. If you add $100,000 from each of the top 1 percent, that’s 3 million people times $100,000 and that totals $300 billion.”
Continues Irvin: “You’re still less than halfway to the annual amount he proposes to increase spending, which is $800 billion a year. To get there, he’ll have to raise taxes on everybody else an average of $1,500 a year,” including illegal immigrants and those who pay no taxes now.
The promise of spending cuts is an illusion.
When a majority of voters become convinced that somebody else is paying for their happiness and any effort to cut taxes deprives them of pleasure, fiscal conservativism as public policy is dead. We are at that tipping point.
Permalink | Comments (143) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Evil is Nichols; playing homeless
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
– I’ve walked the corridors of death row in Florida and Georgia. I’ve seen evil. It’s Brian Nichols.
– Kennesaw State College of Humanities and Social Service students play “homeless” for a week. They sleep outdoors on campus “to teach students about poverty, substance abuse, hunger, mental illness and homelessness.” If they play shot-dead for a week, does that teach them about the crime of murder?
– Declared death penalty opponent John Paul Stevens, expressing his personal opinion, criticizes the way the Georgia Supreme Court considers death penalty appeals. The 88-year-old Stevens, one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s consistent liberals, could be the first retiree if Barack Obama is elected president. If it’s John McCain, he could serve until the age of 96. Or 104 if Sarah Palin follows McCain. And please don’t call it a “high-court rebuke for Georgia.” It’s no such thing. It’s one guy’s personal opinion.
– Retired teachers may complain about the effort to eliminate automatic cost-of-living raises in favor of discretionary raises. The fact is, however, that automatic raises were never built into the funding formula. This is a case where adults, not politicians, are managing the nest egg for the next generation.
– Well, bless pat, there’s a Coke CEO willing to stand his ground against the Obesity Squad. You knew that just as soon as the tobacco wars were won, the Lifestyle Police, Obesity Squad, would be moving on the potato-chip makers and soft-drink companies. (The Thinking Right Police never allow soft drinks to be called “sodas.” We’re very stern about that, and in the example of the Lifestyle Police, humorless.) Anyway, CEO Muhtar Kent told industry leaders in Las Vegas that: “People need to understand that obesity is not about a beverage or a candy bar or a restaurant meal or a PlayStation game or about working longer hours” or, he could have said, sidewalks in suburbia. It’s about self-indulgent foodies over-eating and under-exercising.
– Barack Obama’s money drowns out John McCain’s access to the airwaves. McCain, who foolishly agreed to public financing, spent $37 million in September, leaving him with $47 million, while Obama’s September take was $150 million, leaving him with almost $134 million. McCain’s being outspent 4-1 or 5-1. And yet, Obama’s just up by 1 percentage point in the Battleground and in the Associated Press polls, though others are wider, possibly confirming that it’s risky for a candidate to leave opposition commercials unanswered.
– The Philadelphia Inquirer notes that it criticized Barack Obama for flip-flopping on public financing. “The damage has been done,” the paper editorializes, “the next president and the new Congress must commit to restoring the presidential funding system.” Fixed? Can the Titanic be fixed?
– Obama’s shake-and-bake helper, Joe Biden, is doing his part to sink the campaign, reminding voters why they’re worried about his inexperience at the helm. If Obama’s elected, he’ll be tested within six months by the bad guys on the world scene, Biden predicts… “Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama, like they did John Kennedy. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” Think they’ll generate a crisis to test McCain? Me, neither.
– Hmmmm. The American Enterprise Institute is labeled “conservative,” which it is. But the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of two left-of-center think tanks, Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, is described only as “nonpartisan.”
– Kudos to Big Oil, Little Oil and the corner gas station. Most have been as quick to mark gas prices down as they were to mark them up. Even before the Angry Left could fix the problem by perp-walking a few oil executives around in orange jump-suits and chains, the marketplace has worked.
– Progress in Iraq, this one-paragraph story notes. Their government has taken security responsibilities for Babil province, making it 12 of 18 turned over. The Left no longer finds Iraq to be an important conversation. We’re winning.
Permalink | Comments (161) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
McCain news more negative
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recently while reading an Associated Press story reporting on a campaign event where John McCain had raised questions about Barack Obama’s ties to former Weatherman radical William Ayers, I was jolted by a sentence the writer had chosen to add.
The sentence was the the AP and other news organizations had reported that Obama and Ayers were “not close.” That’s it. Flat out, an assertion by a major news organization without attribution or qualifiers that the two are not close — something the reporter or the news organizations couldn’t possibly have known to be true. The two may or may not be close, but the asserting news organizations are not the court of last resort on that question.
A study just released by the Pew Research Center documents something other researchers had found: McCain gets more negative media coverage than Obama. Pew’s study examined 2,412 campaign stories from 48 news organizations, covering the period from the end of the conventions through the final presidential debate, a period of six weeks.
The two got roughly equal amount of attention, but 59 percent of the McCain stories were “decidedly negative in nature” and only 14 percent were positive. Pew found 36 percent of the Obama stories were clearly positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative. I would add, too, that without knowing the political preferences of those who categorized the stories, it’s impossible to know how they might have classified the AP story, for example.
The message of that particular story is that McCain’s a liar or that he’s making much to do about nothing. I’d count that as positive Obama, negative McCain.
A rule of thumb about this: If you can detect a reporter’s point-of-view in a story, it’s careless editing — or editing by a like-minded person who fails to recognize the reporter’s bias. If I assert in writing about the Pew study that “Obama hasn’t exactly been fawned over by media,” a statement not attributed to the authors, is that fact or opinion? I say it’s largely opinion.
The authors say that the question of whether the media are pro-Obama is not answerable.
Permalink | Comments (114) | Post your comment |
Public campaign financing is dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s fitting in a sense that John McCain may be the most prominent victim of campaign finance idealism — or, depending on one’s point of view, campaign finance folly.
His McCain-Feingold legislation, more properly called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, sought to curtail political speech and to corral the participation of monied interests in the two months prior to the general election.
Now the poor guy’s drowning in a sea of money raised and spent on campaign advertising by his opponent, Barack Obama. Obama’s political commercials are more pervasive than infomercials once were on late-night TV. He’s set new records, having raised well over half a billion dollars and has so much money that he’s able to buy half an hour of national television just before election day to give him a chance to address any concern that seems to be taking hold with voters — like, for example, his relationship with Bill Ayers or whether he is, indeed, trying to buy the election.
Obama, you will recall, first pledged to accept public financing if John McCain did, which would have limited his campaign to about $84 million. McCain, the idealist of “straight-talk express” fame, foolishly did.
Obama has raised $605 million, with $150 million coming in September alone. McCain entered October with about $47 million remaining.
It is true, as we all know, that had the roles been reversed McCain would have been eaten alive by partisan cartoonists, commentators and political reporters goaded by Democrats. That’s because wealth is part of the stereotype affixed to Republicans.
The New York Daily News reported Tuesday on research done by Campaign Media Analysis Group showing that in one week Obama aired 50,000 30-second spots on national, local and cable television. In the battleground state of Florida, Obama aired 1,120 in Miami last week, McCain none.
Without doubt, we are seeing the end of public financing in presidential campaigns. When this election rolls around, the money raised and spent by the Obama campaign will have rolled it into the morgue with Prohibition.
Permalink | Comments (181) | Post your comment |
Approach Amendment 2 with great caution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you have the least bit of concern that government and business are too cozy, you should approach Amendment 2 on the November ballot in Georgia with great caution.
If you believe, as I do, that property tax dollars levied to educate Georgia’s children should not be spent for other purposes — as the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously declared on Feb. 2 — you should stand in long lines, if necessary, to vote “No” on Amendment 2.
The shame of the Georgia General Assembly is that no sooner had the Supreme Court spoken than did legislators swing into action, passing a proposed amendment that invites you to negate their opinion.
This was not, in the least, judicial activism. It was, in fact, the opposite. It was a Georgia Supreme Court strictly interpreting constitutional language. Conservatives should have rejoiced. Instead, led by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, they found bipartisanship and invite taxpayers to revise the State Constitution to allow education dollars to be handed over to developers. No.
Politicians, in rushing to negate the unanimous Supreme Court ruling, demonstrate the lack of fiscal discipline that on the local level will turn this into a on-demand giveaway. It is corporate welfare.
Amendment 2 is the worst of the proposed state constitutional amendments on the November ballot statewide. The other two, whether desirable or not, depend on your perspective.
Amendment 1 also has a cost that affects all of the state’s taxpayers.
At present, all agricultural holdings of less than 2,000 acres are eligible for property tax breaks if individuals and family owners agree not to subdivide or develop their land for 10 years. This proposal affects forest land and about 150 individuals and corporations who own more. It extends breaks, with no acreage cap, to those who agree to keep forest land in what is called the “conservation use valuation assessment” program for 15 years.
Counties and schools would lose money. The proposed amendment contains language that partially protects them. If the total county tax digest is reduced by 3 percent or less, the state’s taxpayers will reimburse the locals for half of their loss. Anything about 3 percent will be covered by the state. Projected cost is about $40 million per year.
The decision for voters is whether the preservation of large tracts of timberland for wildlife, environmental and possibly biofuel purposes justifies the cost. You decide. There’s no right or wrong answer.
Amendment 3 is the most interesting of the lot.
It allows the creation of what are called “Infrastructure Developing Districts.” The argument is that they’ll be a boon to poor rural counties. It’s far more likely that they’ll speed development along the coast and in the mountains, but in theory they could speed large-scale housing developments in counties without the financial base to develop the infrastructure needed for them.
The attraction of such districts for developers and for potential home buyers is that they allow the first wave of buyers to get far more in amenities than they could otherwise afford.
In the typical subdivision, a developer borrows money from the bank, paying market rates, to build homes, golf courses, tennis courts, community centers and other infrastructure. Those costs are built into the mortgages of home buyers. IDDs allow developers to borrow money at lower rates and to charge fees to homeowners until the bonds are paid off that were issued to provide the infrastructure and amenities.
This started off as lousy legislation and was considerably improved in terms of disclosure and other protections afforded the first and subsequent home buyers.
The districts are probably a good deal for the first wave of home buyers. They get more amenities than are built into the price of their homes.
The disadvantage is that they are forced to pay for their own schools, fire stations and other infrastructure as well as those provided elsewhere in the county. In that sense, they pay twice. Those who buy in the development in later years could be paying fees to cover maintenance and initial construction costs for aged facilities. But disclosure is such that purchasers should know what they’re getting into.
Amendment 3 is an amendment that started out giving virtually all power to developers; it was changed in the process to add disclosure and to give greater protections to homeowners. It’s unlikely that I’d buy into any such development, but to each his own.
Here, as well, there’s no right or wrong answer.
The worst of the lot, by far, is Amendment 2. It should be defeated.
Permalink | Comments (108) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Trashing Joe the Plumber
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Joe the Plumber” helps to explain why Americans are so turned off by politics — and why they are so reluctant to run for office, even against incumbents who deserved to be kicked to the curb.
Joe Wurzelbacher, a plumber from Holland, Ohio, complains that the media has invaded his personal life and made it difficult for him to work. “The media’s worried about whether I’ve paid my taxes, they’re worried about any number of silly things that have nothing to do with America,” Wurzelbacher said on Mike Huckabee’s Fox News talk show Saturday. He was also demeaned, he said, by criticism posted online.
The Left tore into Wurzelbacher after he expressed concerns that Obama’s tax proposals could keep him from buying the small plumbing company where he worked. John McCain mentioned him in the final debate with Obama, setting up the feeding frenzy into whether he’d paid his taxes, whether he was really a licensed plumber and anything else that might have diminished his appeal — the same thing that had been done to Sarah Palin. Palin, by accepting the vice presidential nomination, asked for the attention. Joe didn’t.
“You know, I am a plumber,” said Joe the plumber, “just a plumber…when you can’t ask a question of your leaders anymore, that gets scary.”
On two other political notes:
Pray that Barack Obama wins or loses Ohio by more than 200,000 votes. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to let the Democratic Secretary of State take a pass on verifying about that many new voter applications containing discrepencies means another close election there will keep this campaign going for four more years.
Obama first agreed to abide by public campaign finance limitations and then changed his mind. Good political decision. He’s now raised more than $605 million and is able to outspend McCain 4-1 and 5-1 buying commercials in battleground states. The “dam has broken” for future White House races, said John McCain.
Permalink | Comments (289) | Post your comment |
Making the case for John McCain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ultimately, the question in this election for president is which of the two candidates is best prepared to lead America in a perilous world where indecision conveys weakness and false signals can have catastrophic consequences.
What voters must decide is which candidate makes us feel more secure, both in terms of our family’s financial outlook and in our ability to enjoy life unmolested by the evil that terrorists brought, and can bring, to our shores.
Unfortunately, presidential campaigns trade in deception. In this election, partisans have locked down. Trying to penetrate closed minds within three weeks of an election is futile.Advocating on John McCain’s behalf then is not an effort aimed at committed Republicans or Democrats. It’s to those who are genuinely in doubt and to those receptive to another view.
And it is, finally, a question of whether you are so enamored with the agendas Barack Obama and Democrats will pursue in Congress that you are willing to forgo any effective checks and balances on their power.A prospect exists that Democrats could build a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to go with the dictatorial majority in the House.In that event, the angry rhetoric of the left becomes the public policies that govern our lives and our paychecks.
There is no question that the nation and families would be more secure with John McCain in the White House. And just as clearly, a check on the excesses of Washington partisans represents another form of security, a protection against radicalism and agendas that are destructive to the economy and to our relationship to government.
Bernie Marcus, one of the founders of Home Depot, expressed depression about the economy and projected it will get worse if a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law.It’s Big Labor’s top push in Congress. It would allow companies to be unionized without a secret ballot, guaranteeing that the fate of the auto industry in America will befall other industries. “Every businessman says it’s going to kill the economy of this country,” he said.
Troubling, too, is thetenor of the populist rhetoric coming from both candidates. Great care is needed to avoid creating law and regulation on the basis of anger and a retributive desire topunish corporations, especially those in the financial sector, for obscenely compensating some CEOs. Angry law and misguided regulation could be ruinous. Of concern, too, is that while it is necessary to stabilize the financial markets, government is on the verge of a dangerous “partnership” with banks that could open the door to unhealthy involvement in other industries.
Liberals and conservatives disagree on the cause of the debacle that has just befallen the financial industry. In my view, the effort by Congress to create social policies — “affordable housing” — without appearing to grow government caused Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy riskier and riskier mortgages, which were then packaged and sold to others. A symbiotic relationship between politicians and the two corporations planted the seeds of this debacle. Yes, greed was a factor from Main Street to Wall Street.
Unchecked power in Washington can be extraordinarily consequential to this economy. That is even before one considers the impact of Obama’s tax proposals and promised new spending. A Heritage Foundation analysis of his tax proposals and McCain’s finds job growth over 10 years would be twice as high under McCain’s and that McCain’s would lead to more vigorous growth. A family of four would, likewise, have more disposable income under McCain’s proposals, Heritage finds.
Obama is more clever than most when he promises that he’ll cut taxes for all but the top 5 percent of earners. Meanwhile, he has proposed new spending amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. This is an instance where the good common sense of ordinary Americans should kick in.We have heard promises before.Costs always trickle down. Just as Democrats tried to mask new social programs by passing them off to businessObama tries to mask the cost of them by passing them off as “tax credits.”
Because the credits go to individuals regardless of tax liability, they amount to a transfer from taxpayers to those who pay no income tax.”Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut,” writes the Wall Street Journal. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were efforts to hide and shift government programs to the private sector. This is an effort to disguise more spending as tax cuts. It’s an approach that can be passed off as tax cuts for the middle class, but there’s not enough of the rich in America to finance the spending Obama proposes. You are the rich. This is a partisan debate.
If, however, the undecideds are yearning for a post-partisanship era in Washington, the clear choice — again, not even close — is John McCain. His record is replete with examples of efforts to join with Democrats to pass legislation. On any day of the week, with any utterance, he’s just as liable to take on his party’s right wing as he is to strike a partisan chord.Obama rarely, if ever, reflects that quality.
The world is dangerous still. No potential adversary will misread John McCain. He’s a serious, experienced leader who on national security concerns does not send false signals. The economy is regaining its footing, but a vengeful congressional majority without checks and balances from the White House can wreak havoc.
John McCain is the change America wants. He’s different and sometimes confounding to his supporters, but he’s the steady hand the nation needs in a high-risk world.
Permalink | Comments (149) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
New Ohio voters, Troy Davis ruling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Exposing American troops to Iraqi justice when they are accused of crimes unrelated to war, as proposed in a draft agreement, is a tolerable compromise. Never should troops under U.S. military command be subjected to prosecution by international courts or by other countries. But if you rape the barmaid at a downtown hangout or murder a shopkeeper in a dispute over the tab, it’s a crime unrelated to military service. Fair enough.
John McCain did make a good point when he said to Barack Obama in Wednesday’s debate: “I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.” Obama is a Monday morning quarterback, an expert on what the team should have done yesterday. His strong suit is that he was far wiser yesterday than those who actually had to make decisions.
The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute is a group dedicated to more spending on social programs. It’s concerned that, although Georgia has spent $90 million on anti-smoking programs since 2001, it’s less than the CDC-recommended amount of $116.5 million annually. Georgia, as is its option, chooses to spend the bulk of the $1.5 billion tobacco settlement riches on cancer-related research and treatment, as well as other health-care programs, and on OneGeorgia grants.
Smoking here has declined at about the same level it has nationally. Every dime of the tobacco money should go into the general fund to be spent on priorities specified by the governor and General Assembly.
Condolences to John F. Collins of DeKalb County, a former statewide political candidate, whose gracious and beloved wife of 63 years, Ina, died on Oct. 4. Sixty-three years.
No surprise that children’s health improves as income rises, as discovered by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Solutions identified by one expert: better access to prenatal care, stopping smoking during pregnancy, requiring physical education in schools and providing “appropriate” school lunch programs.
One other suggestion: Encourage marriage. It would achieve far more for children than a dozen more government programs. Wonder why all solutions to what’s ailing children point to more government and never to irresponsible adults changing a destructive behavior. Unless it’s smoking, of course.
Before you buy-in to the Troy Anthony Davis PR campaign, go to the source. Read for yourself the Georgia Supreme Court decision handed down March 17 that dealt with quality of the alleged recantations in the murder of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Cut out the spin. Read Justice Harold Melton’s majority opinion.
A third of recent Atlanta Police Academy graduates have been arrested or cited for a crime. More than a third had been rejected by other law enforcement agencies. And half admitted using marijuana. Holy Toledo! What a commentary on the state of the city’s recruiting efforts. On the bright side, far less training should be required on crime scene investigation and how to recognize suspicious behavior.
The Atlanta Regional Commission is weighing whether to recommend to Congress that it end the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, perhaps replacing it with a tax on miles driven. Next suggestion, please? The better recommendation is to give that taxing capacity back to the states so that gas-tax revenues can be used to add capacity and reduce traffic gridlock in places like Metro Atlanta.
Look, I can spot a tax increase disguised as something else a mile away. And I assure you Alpharetta’s policy requiring reimbursement from cops who use their patrol cars on off-duty jobs is not, as one officer alleges in a complaint, a tax on public safety employees. Nobody anywhere should have a license to use public property for private gain.
Ohio has 200,000 presumed residents its Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, planned to let vote despite discrepancies in the information they provided on registration forms. A federal appeals court has, quite properly, intervened and directed her to verify their eligibility by Friday. Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel was clearly right to insist on clearing up discrepancies before newly registered voters get a ballot.
Permalink | Comments (126) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
John McCain lives!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Joe the plumber may turn out to be the most memorable non-candidate of the political season.
John McCain, speaking to Joe, a plumber who had questioned Barack Obama’s tax proposals, explained to Joe the differences in his tax and health care proposals and Obama’s. “I want to tell you,” McCain said to Joe, “I’ll keep your taxes low…I will not stand for tax increases.”
His use of Joe to offer a narrative on the impact of Obama’s policies was among his most effective approaches of the campaign. Finally, he may have communicated in a meaningful way with the voters who don’t pay much attention to politics.
The last of the debates was easily to best of them. The format allowed the two to stay on a topic long enough to have revealing exchanges — even to the point of giving McCain an opportunity to point out to viewers the nuances of language that the eloquent Obama uses to mislead.
McCain did it effectively in a couple of instances — once when Obama declared that he would “look at” offshore drilling, while repeating the misleading assertion that oil companies have 68 million acres under lease that they’re not tapping. The missing element is, of course, that those tracts most likely contain little or no recoverable oil. McCain used that as a teachable moment on the deceptions of political rhetoric.
He did it again on abortion, where Obama said he favored a “health” of the mother exception. As McCain noted, that’s a huge loophole favored by pro-choice supporters. It can be interpreted to mean anything.
It remains to be seen whether this debate helps McCain recover in the polls. But whether he does or not, this was his best performance and, for the viewer, it was the best opportunity yet to get beneath the surface of the talking points.
Two asides here: One is that the moderator asked two questions that reflect the Washington media perspective. One was to explain “why the country would be better off if your running mate is President rather than his running mate?” That’s clearly directed at Sarah Palin and the left’s view that she is not qualified to be President. The second was asked more directly: “Do you think (the vice presidential candidate) is qualified to be President?”
Permalink | Comments (283) | Post your comment |
The McCain we need to see tonight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s the final Presidential debate of the season tonight and John McCain needs to take the gloves off.
It’s high risk. He’s down as much as 14 percentage points nationally in the latest CBS/New York Times poll (53-39) and as little as 3 and 4 points in two others.
The townhall-meeting debate was a snoozer and gave undecided voters no real reason to vote for either candidate. Independents are split roughly down the middle. That advantages Barack Obama, since registered Democrats outnumber Republicans.
The problem for McCain tonight is that he has to develop a strategy and stick to it. Importantly, he has to make the case that he’s better prepared to deal with economic issues, something beyond cracking down on earmarks, and that he is the outsider who can change the culture in Washington. It would be a good night, too, to announce that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will join his administration as Treasury Secretary.
It’s a good time to remind voters of — or more precisely, introduce them to — Herbert Hoover, a Republican who occupied the White House during the 1929 stock market crash, which ushered in the Depression. “The last president to raise taxes and restrict trade in a bad economy as Sen. Obama proposes was Herbert Hoover,” McCain said earlier this week. “That didn’t turn out too well. They say those who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Well, my friends, I know my history lessons, and I sure won’t make the mistakes Sen. Obama will.”
That’s the stuff. This debate needs some pizzazz. McCain, during the weeks of the financial crisis, has often sounded like the warm-up act for the Democratic agenda, including lines such as this: “We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change” He should leave that material on the campaign bus.
McCain’s reputation is as a fighter. That’s the John McCain who needs to show up tonight.
Permalink | Comments (170) | Post your comment |
Democrats’ tactics frighten
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just as certain as the dog days of August or the arrival of September’s harvest moon, the staple of every election cycle arrives at our doorstep. It’s called: Scare the ignorant.
Frighten the fragile while concocting another fantasy for the conspiracy-minded that those mean old Republicans want to rob social security, spoil the rich and erect barriers to keep black voters, the most loyal of the Democratic constituencies, from the polling places.
This is why appeals to the inattentive are so effective. Just as the immigration fight was never about legal entry, the issue with voter identification is not suppression of legally-qualified voters. It’s suppression of fraudulent voting — as in illegal votes that steal the votes of those who play by society’s rules.
In 11 battleground states, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN), an organization long associated with Barack Obama, is being investigated for fraudulent activities for submitting phony voter registration applications. The first 2,100 of 5,000 applications they submitted in the Indiana county where Gary is located were bogus. “All the signatures looked exactly the same,” said one election official. “Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same.”
In the Indianapolis area, 105 percent of the adult population has been registered to vote.
Meanwhile here in Georgia, Secretary of State Karen Handel, a Republican, is being vilified by activist Democrats for her efforts to guarantee that the election is honest, that the people who vote are indeed legally eligible. It’s legal vs. illegal. It has nothing in the world to do with voter suppression — and, frankly, the partisans of the left know that.
The left always has wanted same-day registration and voting because it serves their political interest. The problem with running a bus down the street on Election Day is that you pick ineligible felons and those who have been too lazy to register and are, furthermore, too disengaged with the world beyond Jerry Springer to have a clue about the issues or the candidates.
If it’s possible just to round them up, hand them the voting card and drop them off at the polls, the left’s version of democracy would be a whole lot easier to effect.
The problem, however, is that a majority of Americans recognizes the perils of that approach.
Handel took a beating from Democratic partisans because she insisted in honoring the Voter ID law, just as she has taken a beating from some of them for her insistence on verifying the eligibility of submitted applications.
She was sued last week by a group seeking to halt the state’s efforts to verify the citizenship of registered voters when there’s a question — as, for example, a new citizen who previously was identified on driver’s license records as a non-citizen. It’s the routine of honest government. No hidden agendas. No conspiracies.
The suing group contended that efforts to verify the eligibility of those who previously had declared themselves not to be citizens required pre-clearance under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“We didn’t come up with that on our own,” she said. It’s required under the Help Americans Vote Act. “It is federal law. I don’t think the Department of Justice gets to pre-clear Congress. We’re doing precisely what the federal law tells us to do.”
The reality is that there are groups, like ACORN, determined to gum up the works or to slip ineligibles past the verification process.
There’s a full-scale effort on to intimidate Handel by representing legitimate verification as suppression and by accusing her, in advance, of responsibility for any Election Day glitches if everybody who shows up is not voted, eligible or not.
She is not intimidated — nor should she be. For any election you want to have a safeguard in place, she says. Once upon a time, nobody would have disagreed with such a common-sense assertion.
Ah, but then, once upon a less-partisan time nobody would have disagreed with Voter ID, either.
But since the left’s effort to scare the old folks on Social Security is not around this cycle, it’s scaring minorities, trying to frighten them to the polls.
It’s not about voter suppression or Voter ID. It’s about voter turnout.
Until they get same-day registration and voting for all adults, fright is the way the left wins elections.
Permalink | Comments (245) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
My advice to McCain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
John McCain starts the new week down in the polls and with a base that’s growing antsy about the mixed messages he’s sending voters.
His newly aggressive efforts to highlight Barack Obama’s association with Wiliam Ayers, the 60s radical is useful, but some Republicans are questioning whether such efforts turn off the Independents and moderate women who are needed to close the gap.
The Wall Street Journal has done a marvelous job in unraveling Obama’s promises on tax cuts. “There are several sleights of hand,” the newspaper reports, “butg the most creative is to redefine the meaning of ‘tax cut.”
What it amounts to is a huge new welfare program represented as tax cuts. Now, as the Tax Foundation reports, 44 percent of all filer, or 63 million, have no tax liability and under Obama’s tax proposals by 2011, that would grow by 10 million. The cost, meanwhile, would skyrocket from $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to researchers. Those filers get checks back. It’s a huge welfare program and is another of those creative ways that liberals grow government by hiding its expansion — or in the case of Obama, by misrepresenting it as tax breaks for the middle class.
My advice to McCain is to let Governor Palin take on Obama on the character issues. He should focus on educating Americans on the deceit in Obama’s tax proposals, the impact of his health care proposals and the contributions Obama’s party has made to the economic woes the country is facing.
That’s my advice. What’s yours?
Permalink | Comments (214) | Post your comment |
Maverick, yes, but still choice for recovery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
John McCain can be maddening sometimes. Independents and undecideds who may be concerned that he parrots the conservative line need not worry.
He is unquestionably the maverick, subject to bolting from the conservative reservation at the most unexpected times.
Take, for example, Tuesday night’s debate in Nashville. Investors are in full panic. The week’s sell-off on Wall Street was brutal. Cash on the sidelines is at record levels. Anxiety is feeding anxiety, as President Bush reminded the nation Friday. The market will recover.
The real question, however, is the impact of November’s election. Business leaders are not among the undecided. Chief Executive magazine polled 751 of them and found that 80 percent support McCain. “More to the point,” the magazine reports, “a thundering 74 percent majority say they fear the consequences of an Obama presidency, compared to only 19 percent who fear a McCain presidency.”
The angry mob wishes to lynch them all, starting with those whose compensation is obscene.
But the fact is that when the panic abates, these are the people whose decisions will determine when and where jobs are added and the pace of the recovery.
McCain, rather than using the debate to hammer home the message that the spending and tax policies advocated by Barack Obama will be disastrous to the economy, opted instead to unveil a mortgage buy-up program straight from left field and to jump on the Democrats’ Wall Street Greed bandwagon.
Furthermore, he failed to offer a narrative explaining that the housing bubble that precipitated the troubles in financial markets started in Congress with Democrats determined to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as instruments of their social policy. He offered bullet points, and later in the week tried to flesh them out, but a prime opportunity was missed.
The mortgage bailout is contrary to all conservative principles. Granted, in times of financial crisis, the first obligation is to stanch the panic and to stabilize the market. In the short term, conservative principles may be sacrificed. But as quickly as possible, government has to retreat and let the free market work. It’s not taxpayers’ obligation to save companies or to spare executives and stockholders from financial ruin. Nor, incidentally, is it useful to turn well-compensated CEOs over to mob justice. There’s time to get the crooks, though the tragedy of the scapegoating is that politicians who had even larger roles in this financial disaster — Barney Frank, for example — escape accountability. Always.
The decision by Congress to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy home loans made to uncreditworthy borrowers is the root cause of this disaster. The symbiotic relationship between politicians and the two mortgage-bundlers is and was a cancer on government. Never again should Congress imply that any private-sector company, as the two of them are, has debt backed by taxpayers.
Under-the-gun conservatives are not purists in time of crisis, but they do avoid abandoning those principles altogether. McCain’s mortgage proposal effectively says to those who have managed their financial affairs prudently, who played by the rules, who sacrificed pleasures in the interest of their family’s long-term good, that you were a dunce. Had you bought more than you could afford, had you speculated in mortgages, had you gambled irresponsibly, there’s a reward to come. The government will bail you out and, as a prize, give you a better rate.
Suddenly, we’re not putting principles aside temporarily to arrest panic. We’re setting up a massive new social program that rewards the precise behavior that is destructive to families and to their well-being.
What McCain proposes is a version of the social policies that essentially eliminate the difference between responsibility and irresponsibility espoused and implemented for decades by Democrats.
Despite McCain’s occasional venture into strange territory, saddling this economy with higher taxes and $850 billion in new spending, as Obama proposes, would be disastrous.
Given a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate with the will to implement his tax and spending policies, an Obama presidency could ruin recovery and further move this nation toward socialism. That’s the case McCain should be making, defining the consequences of their differences, not offering me-too rhetoric and social programs.
Permalink | Comments (116) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Voodoo, manners, Guantanamo
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
I’ve long since given up the effort to deny accusations that aren’t criminal in nature. But that rule now has the Annette Kesting Exception. Accuse me of paying a voodoo “priestess” for any reason, and I categorically deny it, just as defeated Cobb Commissioner Kesting did.
The competition to fill Kesting’s seat will surely be the most mannered and polite in metro Atlanta. Democrat Woody Thompson is a gentlemanly guy; Republican Barbara Hickey owns the Etiquette School of Atlanta. Question for Hickey: For some services, is it bad form to pay by check — or merely stupid?
Swell. A federal judge in Washington orders 17 detainees at Guantanamo released into the United States. They’re Chinese Muslims, but because they’re members of a restive Muslim minority in western China, that government doesn’t want them back. Fortunately, a higher court intervened, temporarily at least. More to come?
Connect the dots. … A Friday story reports findings by the Pew Hispanic Center that illegal immigration is slowing, with 11.9 million illegals here in March, down 500,000 from a year earlier. A story five days later reports that 300 suspected illegals were arrested at a chicken processing plant near Greenville, S.C. Earlier this year, 12 supervisors were arrested, including a human resources manager indicted for filing false federal ID forms. Employers are being targeted “because the promise of employment draws illegal workers across our borders,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Kenneth Smith of Atlanta. “By holding employers accountable, we are diminishing the magnet and discouraging others from breaking the law.” Admit immigrants, sure. By the boatload, even. But as legals. Breaking the law can’t be the first step.
There may be some doubt whether a new tax, amounting to $112 million, can be levied as “fees” on companies that operate HMO insurance plans in Georgia to pay for Medicaid and PeachCare, but there shouldn’t be. The answer should be no — and certainly not until the General Assembly makes that decision. All money collected in Georgia should be by act of the Legislature, should go in the General Fund — no earmarks ever — and spent based on competing needs and priorities. Fees, in this instance, ain’t fees. They’re taxes levied on one group to pay for something that’s everybody’s obligation. If the program’s badly designed, change it. But don’t hide tax increases to avoid facing the design or tax questions.
Congress has done with elections what Wall Street (and Congress) did with debt. They’ve taken something simple and straightforward, and turned it into a high-risk gamble played by arcane rules designed to enrich insiders. All of their registration “reforms” increase the likelihood of fraud and an outcome that leaves losers embittered.
Yea, right. A voter registration effort conducted by the Coalitions for the Peoples’ Agenda is described as “nonpartisan.” The same can be said of the Democratic convention in Denver, since at least one person there had probably voted for a Republican in his or her lifetime. “Nonpartisan” and “bipartisan” are abused adjectives.
A golden retriever from Atlanta that shows up months later 425 miles south in St. Petersburg is like the turtle resting on the top of a fence post.
Price-gouging gas stations prompted 1,500 complaints to the state; 150 stations are being investigated. In my area, one station tried that during the last round of gasoline shortages. Within three months it was out of business. Customers remember those who exploit them in times of difficulty. The free market regulates bad commercial behavior.
Ed Wall, the former MARTA board chairman, has been hired to help Clayton County invest its money. That’s his profession. Does it matter that he was arrested for public indecency for an alleged act involving adults? Not in this context. He has a right to get on with his life and to work for any individual, business or government that values his advice.
The General Assembly should get rid of the stupid law that requires Public Service Commissioners — statewide officials — to live in districts. It’s nothing but trouble. There’s no redeeming value whatsoever. It’s junk law.
Permalink | Comments (95) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
A Democrat not on this blog
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Thinking Right blog is often attacked by liberal hackers polishing their hurtful invective on the well-informed, kind and intelligent conservatives who gather here to share ideas and insights on how to create a stronger and better America. It’s brutal sometimes. The abuse heaped by frightened liberals on my conservative brethren and sisteren causes the genial host to wince — until, lo and behold, the good conservative Dusty or one of her many conservative friends on the blog rises up to smite them down with an irrefutable truth incisively delivered.
But now I’m left to wonder: Which of liberal contributors here might have been the son of the Democratic state legislator in Tennessee who hacked the e-mail account of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin? Oh, I have suspicions but, as is the predisposition to fairness that is the hallmark of conservatives, I’ll let justice run its course.
But there he was in federal court in Knoxville, Tenn., young David Kernell, 20, son of veteran Tennessee Democratic lawmaker Mike Kernell of Memphis, accused of being the Palin hacker.
Oh, Democrats said in response to the invasion of Palin’s privacy, the hacker was most likely some non-political campus computer geek. They were part right. Kernell is an economics student at the University of Tennessee, who incidentally can profess his loyalty to the Tennessee Volunteers by wearing the orange jump suit taxpayers provide to those who rob the privacy of others.
The alleged hacker’s father is chairman of the Government Operations Committee in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Don’t look for him here, though, if indeed he ever was one of the Democratic partisans who visited Thinking Right. Part of the judge’s order is that he cannot own a computer and his Internet usage is limited to checking e-mails and doing class work.
So our homework assignment for the next class is to find the missing blogname on Thinking Right. Could it be that one of our liberal contributors was so frustrated by the strengths of arguments offered by intelligent and well-prepared conservatives here that he was driven to dirty tricks directed against our beloved Sarah? Who’s not here today and possibly dressed in orange and banned from participating, not by the genial host, but by order of the court?
Permalink | Comments (275) | Post your comment |
The ‘must win’ debate winner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama came off the TelePrompTer and committed no major gaffe. Score one for Obama.
John McCain needed by words or performance to inspire confidence that he is the President America wants in time of crisis. On the whole, he succeeded — especially in the debate about whether Obama as President would respect the sovereignity of Pakistan and whether Obama is the green wet-behind-the-ears kid who would telegraph his intentions to friends and enemies alike as commander in chief.
The debate had no sparkling moment. McCain did exceptionally well in explaining his views on taxes and spending and in defending his health care proposals. Obama at one point referred to tax cuts as money that’s “out of the system.”
Obama insisted, too, that although he proposes $860 billion in new spending “actually I am cutting more than I am spending.” Unless in the new language of Washington a tax increase is a cut, the statement is an absurdity.
This debate was not a game changer. Obama’s strong suit is that bad economic news and a rough day on Wall Street hands him an issue, which he exploited well.
Conclusion: No real winner or loser. Few of the undecided likely heard anything to push them one way or another.
Permalink | Comments (189) | Post your comment |
Amendment No. 2 not good for future
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is not about Atlanta. It’s about an issue on the statewide ballot in November. Atlanta, as the state’s largest mature city, is relevant because it offers a glimpse of the future for those who live elsewhere.
The ballot issue is a proposed constitutional amendment. It is listed as Amendment No. 2. The ballot language is this: “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to authorize community redevelopment and authorize counties, municipalities, and local boards of education to use funds for redevelopment purposes and programs?”
It’s there because the people who get rich by getting government in debt came up with a neat new way to make long-term debt attractive to local politicians. It’s a means of converting tomorrow’s tax revenues into spendable money today. Politicians, of course, love it. The route to the amendment you’ll see on the November ballot started with an opinion by the Georgia Supreme Court on Feb. 11. The court ruled unanimously that taxes levied to educate school children cannot be turned over to private developers and businesses to be spent for other purposes. The other purposes are development, presumably of blighted areas. The concept is not totally without merit.
The law at issue allows the creation of Tax Allocation Districts or TADs. The presumption is that developers won’t go to certain blighted areas without financial inducements from taxpayers. If taxpayer subsidies lead them to redevelop blighted areas, higher property tax revenues will flow. So governments freeze property values for say, 25 years, borrow money on the expectation that higher property taxes from the improvements made will pay off the debt, and hand the cash over to preferred developers.
That’s the concept.
The problem is, though, that there’s no good definition of blight. So the definition includes areas in the path of growth that’s already occurring — around Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, for example. When not used in a truly blighted area, it’s corporate welfare given by politicians who pretend, to themselves and each other, that they’re moving and shaking, making things happen.
The further problem is that somebody has to pay for educating the school children brought into TAD developments. The Supreme Court declared unequivocally that property taxes intended for that purpose can’t be handed over to developers for something else. Politicians, under pressure from developers and bond lawyers, invite you to change the Constitution to negate the Supreme Court ruling. But again: Somebody has to pay for those children. That somebody is others who own homes and businesses in the city or county. You.
The cost of any increase in demand for city or county services is also borne by those outside the districts.
Now to the Atlanta example. Owing to irresponsible choices Atlanta city and school officials made, its public pension funds are a mess.
The city’s budget is $570 million. Decisions made in 2002 increase police pensions by 50 percent. Three years later the city did the same for firefighters; other city employees got a 25 percent increase. The effect of those decisions were to raise the pension debt on Atlanta’s taxpayers from $620.5 million to $1.2 billion.
A school system pension fund that covers only 2,400 current employees and 1,000 former employees is in the hole by $510 million. It’s one of the most poorly funded in the state.
Meanwhile, Atlanta proposes to take $40 million from future tax revenues to jump-start a proposed $125 million Center for Civil and Human Rights near Centennial Olympic Park.
The city has horrendous debt. But for 25 years, the residents and businesses in TAD areas won’t share that burden except to the extent of today’s frozen property tax values. And while taxpayers may well wish to contribute $40 million to a Center for Civil and Human Rights, or any other project, the availability of money from anticipated-revenue bond sales makes it an easy call for politicians. The old-fashion way is to ask for voter permission first.
As with anything government does at any level, an OK idea for use in special circumstances becomes welfare for business and something politicians quickly abuse in their moving-and-shaking.
Much of what happened on Wall Street — like, for example, inviting people to buy homes they couldn’t afford — had some merit in limited circumstances.
Solve tomorrow’s problem today. Vote No on Amendment No. 2.
Permalink | Comments (155) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Vote better food, softer mattresses
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Working people had better be registered to vote. Today’s the deadline. Otherwise, those who are in the wagon being pulled by their taxes may decide to vote themselves better food and softer mattresses.
Pulling out all stops in a presidential race that Barack Obama just can’t seem to put away, a group identified with the national Democratic Party is scouring the jails of Georgia in search of new voters. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference hopes to register a million of the jailhouse gang as voters.
In DeKalb County, 441 inmates were registered and another 376 were signed up for absentee ballots as of Friday, Sheriff Thomas Brown said. About two dozen were registered in Athens and 15 more were assisted with absentee ballot applications.
Efforts are frantic throughout the country to register every known and suspected Democrat. The latest Zogby poll explains why. Despite circumstances and events in the economy that constitute a gift to the Democratic nominee, Obama cannot put it away. His lead in the polls is 4 percentage points, 48-44. The economy is the top concern to two-thirds of the likely voters. As a measure of how quickly concerns change, the war in Iraq is now the top concern of just 4 percent of likely voters in the Zogby poll.
As we all knew they would, the Hillary Clinton voters remain loyal Democrats; 88 percent of Democrats support Obama. Among Republicans, 87 percent support McCain.
Based on Governor Palin’s observation that Obama has been palling around with bad company, Republicans are expected to return to the character issue. But they still have not made the case, as they should, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might have been reformed earlier had it not been for Democrats. It’s let up to others to make the case. (Some of the best political commercials of this cycle have been on YouTube.)
Zogby’s finding on the Sarah Palin-Joe Biden debate is that while most though he won, only 4 percent said they changed their minds on which ticket to support. One recent poll in Georgia has just 2 percent undecided. Quick question: When was the last time you met somebody you thought was actually undecided on this race? I don’t think they exist.
Permalink | Comments (149) | Post your comment |
Who’ll be hit by tax surge? You, of course
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you listened closely to two exchanges in Thursday night’s vice presidential debate, you’ll know precisely what those of us in Middle America most despise about Washington.
One was on taxes. You don’t have to be smarter than a fifth-grader to know that Barack Obama’s campaign promises add up to a massive amount of new spending, probably in the range of $800 billion. Maybe more. Maybe far more.
Nor do you have to be very smart to understand the pretense behind the claim that “the rich and greedy corporations and Big Oil” will pick up the tab. The thing about the left is that they’re convinced you won’t mind getting soaked if “the rich” are getting wetter. It’s that class warfare that, election after election, is the primary weapon in the arsenal of the Democratic Party.
Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) had the Obama Democrats nailed in his GOP convention speech. They tell you, he said, “not to worry about their tax increases. They tell you they are not going to tax your family.” And then he zinged: “No, they’re just going to tax business. So unless you buy something from a business, like groceries or clothes or gasoline, or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small business, don’t worry. It’s not going to affect you.” He went on.
“They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the other side of the bucket. That’s their idea of tax reform.”
Sarah Palin can’t be Thompson or any other experienced Washington insider. Her job Thursday night was to talk directly to the people in Middle America, to convince them that she understands their problems and can represent them as an outsider in Washington.
While she could have used a few more of Thompson’s distillations of the effects of an Obama presidency, the next-day consensus was she had met the challenge. The elitists who were dead certain she would come off like a South Carolina beauty queen in her responses were dead wrong. She passed the third, and probably final, test of this political season. She held her own in debate with a 35-year veteran of the U.S. Senate. She aced the first two tests — her initial introduction and her first major address to the nation at the GOP convention. And she held her own on the third, confounding the critics who were poised to capture the responses they thought would cause her to destroy herself. Didn’t happen. And in that sense, she won.
The first of the two exchanges that reminded us of what we hate about Washington had to do with Senate votes to raise taxes. “Barack Obama and Senator Biden voted for the largest tax increases in U.S. history. Barack had 94 opportunities to side on the people’s side and reduce taxes, and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a reduction, 94 times,” Palin said.
Biden, the stern lecturer, experienced in the games of Washington, set the record straight, explaining to the young newcomer from the Alaskan frontier the processes and procedures of the insiders. “The charge is absolutely not true,” Biden declared. “The vote she’s referring to, John McCain voted the exact same way. It was a budget procedural vote. It did not raise taxes. Using the standard that the governor uses, John McCain voted 477 times to raise taxes. It’s a bogus standard.”
Ah, that’s Washington. They may indeed propose $800 billion in new spending programs, but it takes a forensic audit to find their fingerprints.
The same is true on Iraq. Obama voted against funding troops there after promising that he would not do so, Palin said. “And Sen. Biden, I respected you when you called him out on that. You said that his vote was political, and you said it would cost lives. And Barack Obama at first said he would not do that. He turned around under political pressure and he voted against funding the troops.”
To which Biden replied: “John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops. Let me say that again. John McCain voted against an amendment containing $1 billion [for] those things that are protecting the governor’s son and pray God my son and a lot of other sons and daughters.” He did it, Biden acknowledged, because of an amendment to set a withdrawal deadline.
What America saw Thursday night was the consummate Washington insider lecturing the hockey mom on why this doesn’t mean that — and why nobody there can ever be held accountable. They spend without fingerprints. They tax without fingerprints. Yes means no.
Biden gave America an insider’s explanation of why nothing works there. Give me the Washington outsider any day.
Permalink | Comments (123) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Election shenanigans, gas debacle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
If Election Day voting is chaotic, don’t automatically blame Secretary of State Karen Handel, who’s in charge. The McCain-Palin campaign expects mischief, stemming from voter registration efforts by a group called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). In Colorado, a battleground state, some individuals were registered as many as 40 times. Registration duplication and fraud were noted in other battleground states, too.
Memo to Charlie Crist, governor, state of Florida: Just a hunch, but all those 112,000 ex-felons being registered to vote under a law you signed last year, legislation pushed by People for the American Way, ACORN, the NAACP and the Brennan Center for Justice, are probably not voting Republican. But no need to be partisan to think restoring the voting privilege to ex-felons is not a good idea. Potential criminals should know that some choices have lasting consequences.
The collapse of Columbus-based Bill Heard Enterprise and its 15 dealerships in seven states undoubtedly had multiple causes. But trying to sell cars in volume to people with bad credit is a suicidal business undertaking. If the bad-debt crisis doesn’t get you, the predatory-lending police will. You can’t put bad-credit risks in homes, cars or anything else and expect to be able to charge for the risk incurred.
A tax on car insurance to pay for a statewide trauma network, being considered by Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, a 2010 candidate for governor, is a quick way to take himself out of competition. His reasoning is that wrecks feed emergency rooms. Yes, but so do heart attacks, falls from ladders, bad guys using knives, guns and sticks, and plane crashes. Should we tax health insurance, accident insurance and criminal court dockets, too?
The gas debacle in metro Atlanta is why you never want to turn decisions about any aspect of our lives over to bureaucracies except in the direst of circumstances — like, for example, a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. The utter waste of time and money is appalling. The standard rule should be: When a hurricane heads toward the oil rigs and refineries, suspend boutique gasoline requirements for metro Atlanta. Automatically. Let us use any gas we can get.
You have to hand it to U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Macon). He’s in a close race in a competitive district — and he was one of two Georgia congressmen to vote in favor of the $700 billion bailout package. He was right.
The Chinese are about one tainted-food scandal away from banishment from my food cupboard. Latest is Chinese-made Cadbury chocolate, none of which was sold in this country, recalled because some factories there added melamine, a chemical used to make plastics, to milk. Melamine, rich in nitrogen, was apparently added to watered-down milk to fool quality-control tests for protein.
Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings, an impeached former federal judge, apologizes for remarks made on a panel discussion sponsored by the National Jewish Democratic Council. Said Hastings: “If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention. Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through.” The observation is too incoherent and idiotic for the untrained intellect to decipher.
The left finally gets one of its goals: same-day registration and voting. Judges in Ohio uphold the one-week register-and-vote process that runs through Monday. The dream of the left has long been to run a bus sweeping up people off the street to vote. The problem now is that they register, but then don’t go to the trouble of voting.
In nonpartisan races, especially judicial, the law affecting ballot listing should be changed. Now candidates are listed alphabetically. Since, in the absence of meaningful debate, voters often choose the first name on the ballot, placement should be random or by lottery. Give the “W’s” a fair shot. One race for the Georgia Court of Appeals has seven candidates. A Fulton County Superior Court race has eight.
Headline: “Lithonia mayor recalled.” Not fondly, as it turns out. The word should be fired, as she was by voters.
Boy, get these lefties off the ledge. If Sarah Palin wins, they’ll jump.
Permalink | Comments (48) | Post your comment |
Not a good night for Palin’s team
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You have to give it to Joe Biden. No question he had the far better grasp of details of legislation that has gone through Congress in the 35 years he has been there. You have to give it to him, too. He succeeded in something Sarah Palin should have done more effectively, and that’s targeting the top of the other party’s ticket.
Biden’s experience in Senate debate and in running for President allowed him to distill his talking points and he delivered them very effectively.
To be honest, Palin missed a number of opportunities to draw distinctions between her team and the other party’s. She also acquiesced to Biden’s insistence that greed and corruption on Wall Street were the major cause of the financial meltdown that has occurred.
Her strategy was to talk straight to the American people. Did it work? Maybe, had she stayed more consistently on message. She didn’t.
She pretty much gave Biden free rein to lambast McCain. Not a good night for her team.
Permalink | Comments (402) | Post your comment |
Last minute advice for Sarah
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Joe Biden’s job is to show up, keep the smirks to a minimum, and try not to be himself.
Sarah Palin’s is to be herself, be disciplined in her responses, and ignore Joe Biden.
He doesn’t matter. Her target is Barack Obama. This debate is about her. And it’s about Obama. Her inexperience is his inexperience, except that she’ll be in training to be the decision maker and he’ll be learning on the job. Plus, she’s done it — made decisions that matter — and he hasn’t. His speciality is Monday morning quarterbacking.
Palin’s target audience is the people who don’t live and die by the day’s polls or those who join advocacy groups. It’s Middle America. They like her. They identify with her. She’s the one person on either ticket they’d like to have over for Sunday dinner.
Last minute advice: Be upbeat, Describe the stakes in the election and the difference that she and McCain represent. Joe’s not there. He’s Washington furniture. Biden’s talked for decades sounding intelligent, but as with Obama, nothing’s come of it.
People are looking for somebody they want to be in their lives for the next four years, somebody they like, somebody whose character and judgment inspires confidence.
In short: Be Sarah.
Permalink | Comments (38) | Post your comment |
Mission: Destroy Sarah Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Every Lefty in America will be gathered around the television set tonight waiting for the Gotcha Moment. If it comes, not a one of them would consent to die before they can get to the office tomorrow to compare hoots on her performance. Such is the anticipation of the Left.
Sarah Palin is their most hated and feared woman in America. Her politics are frightening to them — frightening in the sense that she has what has been called a Reagan-like ability to connect with ordinary Americans. They hate her, even more than they hate George Bush, because she’s not “progressive,” meaning she’s not in their camp on abortion. She’s pro-life. She handles guns. She talks openly about her faith. She’s an outsider. She didn’t wait her turn.
Her turn would come after Hillary had blazed the trail by occupying the White House for eight years and after liberals had made it clear to all women in America that they should think alike, with the women of the Left are their role models.
That ain’t Sarah.
While the Left is watching Sarah waiting for something they can put on YouTube, the Right will be watching Gwen Ifill, the moderator. She’s writing a book, “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama” scheduled for publication on the day he is inaugurated as President of the United States. When chosen to moderate tonight’s panel, she neglected to mention her certainty that this is the “Age of Obama” and that her publisher’s preparing to release it on Jan. 20, 2009.
Impartial? She’s clearly not, but her questions could be.
The “Age of Obama.” The Left is certain it’s here and is on the verge of predicting a landslide affirmation from all across America. All they need is to marginalize Sarah. Tonight, they pray, will give them their material.
Permalink | Comments (170) | Post your comment |
Congress is a Dead Zone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The inability of Congress to function, even in time of crisis, tells us all we need to know about the future of bipartisanship. It’s dead — and that’s certainly true so long as Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House.
The Senate will take a crack today at reviving the bill her rhetoric caused to be killed on Monday. One element certain to be added would increase Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. protection of bank accounts from the $100,000 set in 1980 to $250,000. That should be done. It was among the approaches recommended by House Republicans and both John McCain and Barack Obama favor it.
Another provision they recommend would address the regulatory problem that has fueled the panic. Financial institutions are required to write down the value of assets to market values, even when they intend to hold them long-term. Accounting rules require them to adjust the book value even when the market is in chaos. Some modification is warranted to keep the rule from pushing companies over the edge when the mob is in stampede.
The Senate will also add provisions from a tax bill that now won’t get through Congress because of the wasted days earlier in the year. The trick is to keep it from becoming a Christmas tree for pet projects and special interests. That’s often what “bipartisanship” means: Both parties agree to their own treats.
And then there’s the Pelosi House still to act. In Pelosi’s view, no crisis is too pressing or severe to bypass the opportunity for a partisan cheap shot. Any chance the House had of passing the bailout earlier failed with Pelosi at the helm offering partisan commentary such as this:
“[W’hen was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion? It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies: policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.”
Democrats, she continued, “believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital. But left to its own devices, it has created chaos.” And to prevent that, the wise and loving hand of government regulators will pick the winners and losers and apportion the blessings throughout America, as Democrats see as fair and just.
Pelosi is certainly no authority on what conservatives or Republicans believe. Nevertheless, her inability to discipline herself at a crucial time did undoubtedly drive Republicans into opposition. It could have passed anyway, had she spent the time railing against the evil Bush in trying to persuade some of the 95 Democrats who voted against it to vote yes.
The point though, really, is that Congress and the House especially is a dead zone, so deeply mired in partisan politics that it has ceased to function. That’s been the hallmark of Pelosi’s “leadership.”
.JPG)
Services »
