Democrats trying to work out a compromise (among themselves) on health care reform have a new proposal:
They may still call it a “public plan,” but private insurers — not the government — would offer coverage under a compromise Democrats are considering to win Senate passage of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
The latest idea bears little resemblance to the original vision outlined by liberals, and embraced by Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign. That called for the government to sell insurance to workers and their families in competition with industry giants like UnitedHealthcare.
But instead of Medicare-for-the-masses, it would be Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser Permanente, albeit with a government seal of approval from the department that handles the health plan for federal employees, including members of Congress. . .
Five moderates and five liberals tapped by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., planned to work on the compromise Tuesday as the Senate debated the 10-year, nearly $1 trillion bill.
One is tempted to call this a victory. If the “public option” is limited to placing a stamp of approval on some private plan, it probably can’t do much harm.
But let’s not be hasty. These people cannot be trusted, so we need to wait and see what the proposal actually says. There will likely be some fine print that makes this just as bad as the public option. Here’s a hint what the fine print might be:
Liberals are trying to extract a price for any compromise. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has proposed allowing people 55 and over to buy into Medicare. Others would further expand the Medicaid health program for low-income people. Finally, if private insurers don’t step up to submit bids to OPM, some liberals want to authorize the federal agency itself to set up a plan.
So there are at least two gotchas. First, they want to drastically expand Medicare/Medicaid. Medicare enrollment would expand 69% (according to the 2000 census) and Medicaid by an undetermined amount. This would be a concrete step toward the socialists’ goal of putting everyone on Medicare.
But the second is the kicker. If private insurers want nothing to do with the scheme, the government would go ahead and create a government plan. Thus, the socialists can obtain their government plan simply by setting the standards for government endorsement unacceptably high. Considering the bad faith with which they have acted at every step in this debate, this has to be their plan.
Officials said Democrats had tentatively settled on a private insurance arrangement to be supervised by the federal agency that oversees the system through which lawmakers purchase coverage, with the possibility of greater government involvement if needed to ensure consumers of sufficient choices in coverage.
Additionally, the emerging agreement calls for Medicare to be opened to uninsured Americans beginning at age 55, a significant expansion of the large government health care program that currently serves the 65-and-over population.
(Emphasis mine.)
They’re trying to bring the public option in the back door. I hope people see through this.
Here’s a poser: Suppose a public official is accused of recommending his girlfriend for a promotion, though he was the one who first flagged the potential conflict of interest and officials had refused to let him recuse himself from decisions about the woman. Should he lose his job?
That’s precisely what happened in 2007 to Paul Wolfowitz, who was run out of the World Bank on the pretext that he had given his girlfriend a raise. In fact, Mr. Wolfowitz had made bank officials aware that his girlfriend already worked at the bank before he accepted the job as president, and bank officials had raised no objection to the job change that removed his girlfriend from any direct reporting to Mr. Wolfowitz. The ethical uproar was a politically convenient excuse, fanned by the media, to oust Mr. Wolfowitz when his real offense was that he was too hard on corruption.
So it’s going to be fascinating to see how the press corps and political class react to the news that Montana Senator Max Baucus recommended a staff member who was his girlfriend for the plum job of U.S. Attorney. Mr. Baucus disclosed the attempted sweetheart deal early Saturday after media inquiries made clear the story was breaking.
I wouldn’t expect consistency from these folks. After all, Wolfowitz was fighting corruption, which made him the enemy. Baucus is promoting corruption.
Sen. Jon Tester said Sunday he had limited involvement with fellow Montana Democrat Max Baucus’s decision to float his girlfriend as a possible nominee for a top prosecutor position in Montana.
In an interview with POLITICO, Tester said “no” when asked if he was aware that Melodee Hanes and Baucus were engaged in a romantic relationship when he interviewed Hanes for the position of U.S. attorney in Montana earlier this year.
Tester called Hanes “well-qualified” but said “it was Max’s call” to include her name with two others on a list for the White House to consider before choosing a nominee for the position.
Is this New York Times op-ed saying what I think it’s saying?
Anti-tax zealots denounce all taxation as theft, as depriving citizens of their right to spend their hard-earned incomes as they see fit. Yet nowhere does the Constitution grant us the right not to be taxed. Nor does it grant us the right to harm others with impunity. No one is permitted to steal our cars or vandalize our homes. Why should opponents of taxation be allowed to harm us in less direct ways?
He seems to be saying that opposing taxes is like theft or vandalism, but surely no one would say something so stupid.
Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench (a provincial appeals court), has overturned the astonishing lifetime speech ban against Stephen Boissoin, a pastor who wrote a letter to editor of his local paper criticizing the “wicked” homosexual agenda. The Alberta “Human Rights” Commission had ordered that Boissoin refrain from any disparaging remarks about homosexuals in any venue, including the pulpit.
I’d like to call this a big victory for freedom of speech and religion in Canada, but I think the chilling effect is already in place, particularly since it took over a year for the court to overturn the travesty. Still, at least we can say that freedom of speech and religion aren’t dead in Canada yet.
A year ago I noted that Columbia University was abusing eminent domain to try to steal property adjoining the university. Basically, they were buying up property in the area, letting that property fall into disrepair, and then seeking to condemn the whole neighborhood as blighted. The scheme was shockingly cynical, as well as immoral and short-sighted.
Now a New York State appellate court has blocked the scheme, ruling that there is no evidence of any real blight. I’m glad to see it.
To be sure, the press corps are due a lot of mockery, but calling a member of the White House press corps a child to her face doesn’t seem like good politics. (Via Instapundit.)
We last heard of Kevin Jennings, the president’s “safe schools czar” when it was revealed that, years before as a teacher, he was informed by a student of an incident of statutory rape and he failed to report it. This was not only unconscionable, but apparently illegal under Massachusetts law. Yet Jennings did not lose his job as safe schools czar.
Now Jennings is in the news again. It seems that the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, the organization that Jennings founded and led for many years until last year, has a recommended reading list for students K-12. That list is full of obscene material, including explicit depictions of sex acts performed on children.
Will Jennings repudiate his own organization? If, as seems likely, he does not, this is material that the safe schools czar would recommend that students read.
U.S. Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan dismissed published reports that the level of death threats against President Obama are four times greater than typical threat levels against recent presidents — claiming the current volume of threats is comparable to that under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
“It’s not [a] 400 percent [increase],” Sullivan said during a heated exchange with Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who suggested the service needed additional agents to protect the first African-American president.
“I’m not sure where that number comes from,” he said, adding that the number of threats against Obama “are the same level as it has been [against] the last two presidents.”
“It is well known, it’s been in the press over and over again, that this president has received far more death threats than any president in the history of the United States,” Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, said at today’s hearing.
The Boston Globe reported in October that “unprecedented” threats against the president, among other things, have put a strain on the Secret Service’s resources.
“Mr. Obama, who was given Secret Service protection 18 months before the election – the earliest ever for a presidential candidate – has been the target of more threats since his inauguration than his predecessors,” the Globe reported.
This myth (as we now know it to be) has been plastered all over the left-wing blogosphere. As far as I can tell, it all tracks back to just two sources: the Boston Globe story and a book about the Secret Service. The Globe story cites an internal Congressional Research Service report. Now that we know the story isn’t true, it would be interesting to learn what the CRS report actually says.
The stimulus package didn’t work, so let’s do another one! The administration is prepared to use $265 billion in unspent and repaid TARP money to fund a new stimulus package. Even the president’s treasury secretary is against it, but Nancy Pelosi is for it, so I guess that settles it.
Apart from the main point (wasting more money), another thing that is frustrating about this is the way it is being discussed. Secretary Geithner and the GOP favor “[dedicating] much of the unspent TARP money to reduce the national debt”. Yes, in other words, they favor not spending it! But the media seems to talk about it as though “debt reduction” is just another way to spend the money.
An interesting comment on the White House’s decision to invoke executive privilege for the White House social secretary:
I love this story.
Of course, every time you are in power, you invoke executive power if you don’t want to be embarrassed. And the opposition declares itself shocked and outraged at the hiding of information and obstruction of justice.
What is comical about this is it’s being invoked for a social secretary in a circumstance where, in the original Supreme Court rulings, it was intended for high officials with important state secrets. What was the state secret here — the nature of the flower arrangements at the head table? You know, it is as if somebody is invoking the Fifth Amendment in a dispute over a parking ticket.
But there was one real piece of news in this hearing, and that was that the head of the Secret Service was asked if there has been an increased level of threats against President Obama – [important] because, you know, there was a rumor in the summer that [with Obama, the threats] had increased by a large percent, perhaps doubled or even worse. Mark Sullivan said that the level of threat against President Obama is the same as against Bush and Clinton, which I think is heartening. It refutes a lot of the rumors and the insinuations that we heard this summer when there was a lot of opposition to Obama policies.
UPDATE: More on the non-increased threat level here.
It’s not just Rasmussen any more. The latest CNN poll finds that 48% approve of the president’s job performance, against 50% disapproving. Unlike Rasmussen, who polls likely voters, CNN’s poll is of registered voters.
Responding to President Obama’s address on Afghanistan yesterday, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the following statement:
“In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response.”
“I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public. The President’s assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.”
“In the interest of better understanding the President’s announcement last night, I suggest that the Congress review the President’s assertion in the forthcoming debate and determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied.”
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) is a little confused about Afghanistan:
We took our eye off the ball. Instead of moving in on [Bin Laden] at Tora Bora, the previous administration decided to move its forces to Iraq.
I know “we took our eye off the ball” has been the favorite Democratic talking point since John Kerry’s presidential campaign, but this doesn’t even make sense. The invasion of Iraq was in March 2003. The battle of Tora Bora was in December 2001. In December 2001 we were moving forces into Afghanistan, not out. (Remember that we defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan largely with special forces and air power.)
Is it too much to expect the chairman of the armed services committee to know something of the war we’re currently fighting? Tora Bora was just eight years ago; it’s not like we’re talking about the Punic Wars here.
Wasn’t health care reform supposed to make health insurance more accessible to those who don’t get it from their employer? The CBO’s analysis of the Reid bill finds that it would increase the pre-subsidy premiums of such people 10 to 13 percent. It’s only the government subsidy that would do them any good.
So here’s a thought. If the subsidy is the only aspect of the bill with a positive effect (if you want to call it that), why not just scrap the rest of the bill? You’ll still be blowing an enormous hole in the budget, but at least you won’t be screwing up the health care system in the bargain.
Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. . .
The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.
Last month, Robert Gibbs fired back at Dick Cheney’s (inarguable) accusation that President Obama is dithering about Afghanistan, saying:
The vice president was for seven years not focused on Afghanistan. Even more curious given the fact that an increase in troops sat on desks in this White House, including the vice president’s, for more than eight months, a resource request filled by President Obama in March.
Obviously Gibbs’s effort to tie in the vice president is rubbish, since the vice president is not in the chain of command. But what about the central accusation that the request sat on President Bush’s desk for more than eight months?
The St. Petersburg Times’s “Truth-o-meter” rates the accusation true, observing that Gen. McKiernan (apparently) started issuing requests for more troops when he took over in Afghanistan, about eight months before the end of President Bush’s term, and those requests were not fully fulfilled during the Bush administration.
If “sat on desks” meant the same thing as “was not fully fulfilled”, then Gibbs and the St. Petersburg Times would have a strong case. (Of course, by that definition, Gen. McChrystal’s request will probably be sitting on Obama’s desk forever, since all indications are that it will not be fully granted.) But that’s not what the phrase means. To “sit on a desk” means that no decision was made. That is not at all the case with Gen. McKiernan’s requests for troops.
As ABC News explains, McKiernan made several requests for troops over his months in command, totaling about 30,000 troops. Some of the requests were granted, but most were not, as the Surge in Iraq was making heavy demands. Instead, the Bush administration tried to get NATO to fill the gap. By the fall of 2008 it was clear that NATO was not going to come through, and with the Surge winding down, more US troops were available for Afghanistan and were sent. In March 2009, with Iraq quiet and troops withdrawals underway, the balance was sent by President Obama.
So what you saw from President Bush is the normal process of allocating scarce military resources where they are most needed. In other words, you saw decision-making. In March you saw the same from President Obama. But now, on the other hand, you see Obama unable to make a decision. Dithering.
ABC put it bluntly:
So Gibbs’s claim that for “eight months” McKiernan’s request for troops “sat on desks” isn’t accurate.
It’s no surprise that Gibbs is wrong; he usually is. But so, it seems, is the St. Petersburg Times. Last month I noted that the “Truth-o-meter” rated several true criticisms of the Obama administration as false. Here it rated a false defense of the Obama administration as true. What use is a fact checker that sides with the administration regardless of the facts?
A new Rasmussen poll shows that the health care debate has shifted public opinion dramatically over the last year-and-a-half:
Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters nationwide now rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent. That marks a steady increase from 44% at the beginning of October, 35% in May and 29% a year-and-a-half ago.
They say you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone, but in this case it appears that the American public is coming to appreciate what it has just before it’s gone. It may be too late to save it, though. We’ll see.
According to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, over half of New York’s soup kitchens were not able to distribute enough food to meet demand. At the same time, New York’s soup kitchens have been required by law to throw out perfectly good food because it contains trans fat.
I’m sure everyone who remained hungry is thankful that Mike Bloomberg is looking out for them.
According to the latest Rasmussen poll, independents now favor the GOP over the Democratic party by 24 points (44-20).
Also, a majority (53%) fears that the government will do too much to the economy (gee, where could they get that idea?), only 37% fear it won’t do enough.
According to the latest Rasmussen poll, support for the Democratic plan has fallen to just 38%. Opposition is at 56%, which matches the old high. Other indicators are strongly against the plan as well:
Those who feel strongly oppose the plan by a two-to-one margin (43-21).
The vast majority of both Republicans (83%) and independents (70%) oppose the plan.
Seniors oppose the plan by a near two-to-one margin (60-34).
A majority of every age group except the young-and-stupid (under 30) opposes the plan.
By a four-to-one margin (60-16), the public believes that the plan will increase costs rather than reduce them.
A majority (54%) believe the plan will hurt health care.
Two-thirds (66%) recognize that free-market competition will do more than government regulation to reduce costs.
Less than a third (31%) believe that Congress understands the reform it is considering.
Democrats have lost the debate, but seem ready to press on with a “reform” plan that the public does not want.
In the Carter presidency, the optics were not exactly robust, and Ronald Reagan rode that to a big victory in 1980. Is the Obama White House sending some Carteresque signals these days?
Barack Obama, who once had his own electric book tour testing the waters for a campaign, could learn a thing or three from Palin. On Friday, for the first time, his Gallup poll approval rating dropped below 50 percent, and he’s losing the independents who helped get him elected. . .
The animating spirit that electrified his political movement has sputtered out. . .
Obama showed a flair for the theatrical during his campaign, and a talent for narrative in his memoir, but he has yet to translate those skills to governing.
Of course, neither of them actually admits there is anything wrong with the president’s principles. But they do see that he is failing to convey to the people why his disastrous policies aren’t as disastrous as they seem.
Also, Saturday Night Live cuts loose on Obama in a funny skit that is actually only slightly too long.
I think Obama’s “charisma” was based on voter narcissism — people excited not just about electing a black President, but about themselves, voting for a black President. Now that’s over, and they’re stuck just with him, and emptied of their own narcissism there’s not much there to fill out the suit. As Ann Althouse says, “I think what Obama seems to have become, he always was.”
The real problem may be Obama’s friends — or rather, those among his formerly most enthusiastic supporters who are now having second thoughts.
The doubters are suddenly stretching across a broad section of the Democratic party’s natural constituency. They include black congressional leaders upset by the sluggish economy; women and Hispanics appalled by concessions made to Republicans on healthcare; anti-war liberals depressed by the debate over troops for Afghanistan; and growing numbers of blue-collar workers who are continuing to lose their jobs and homes.
Obama’s Asian adventure perceptibly increased the murmurings of dissent when he returned to Washington last week, having failed to wring any public concessions from China on any major issue.
Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage
When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it’s not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming.
ASIDE: If only he conducted all our foreign policy with the “nice guy act” we would be a little better off. The hallmark of the Carter/Obama foreign policy is softness with hostile regimes but toughness with friends. Softness with everyone would be stupid, and so would toughness with everyone, but either would still be better than what we have now.
Even the New York Times can manage only a lukewarm defense:
President Obama has faced a fair amount of criticism for his China trip. He was too deferential; he didn’t speak out enough on human rights; he failed to press Beijing firmly on revaluing its currency; he achieved no concrete results. The trip wasn’t all that we had hoped it would be, but some of the complaints are premature.
[Allentown’s] top union boss decided to attack a young man for organizing an effort to improve a city park pathway as a way of becoming an Eagle Scout. . .
”We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” council was warned by Nick Balzano, head of the local Service Employees International Union.
”There’s to be no volunteers,” Balzano thundered, because such work must be done by union types, even if they normally were disinclined to do it before some of them got laid off by the city in July.
When the SEIU members were still on the job, they let a 1,000-foot section of a walking and biking path in Kimmets Lock Park along the Lehigh River become choked with vegetation and trash. . . With city Parks Department permission, Eagle Scout candidate Kevin Anderson, 17, a member of Center Valley’s Boy Scout Troop 301, organized work details to clear brush and trees, poison ivy, old tires and other debris from the path.
The Boy-Scout-bashing angle is so outrageous, it’s easy to miss the broader picture of what was happening here. As leverage against the city, union workers were refusing to do their job, and they were trying to keep anyone else (such as the Scouts) from doing it either. They wanted the path to stay impassable.
They were sending a message: give us what we want or we will screw up the city. Although the SEIU hung Barzano out to dry for sending the message stupidly, I don’t see any indication that they’ve repented their broader extortion.
The National Union of Healthcare Workers is alleging that the SEIU engaged in illegal tactics — including intimidation and ballot tampering — in an election in which workers were choosing which of the two unions would represent them. If true, and the allegations seem solid, this shows that the SEIU will not only use illegal tactics against (evil capitalist) businesses, but also against other labor unions.
A report Friday by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general revealed that ACORN won approval for nearly $200,000 in Justice grants since 2002 and mismanaged some of the money.
The Senate Ethics Committee has “admonished” Roland Burris (D-IL) for the lies he told (under oath) about the circumstances of his Senate appointment, but did not recommend any penalty. Well, I guess we already knew that perjury is no big deal any more.
It all depends on whose ox is getting gored. Ordinarily, the editorial board of the Tartan — CMU’s student newspaper — will reliably support the entire liberal agenda, including higher taxes. Ah, but a tuition tax, that would be a tax on them! The Tartan is against a tuition tax. Taxes, you see, are for other people.
I am against the tuition tax, and I hope to see it defeated. But I am delighted to see the Tartan getting mugged by reality.
Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have.
Do you think Breitbart is bluffing? He’s had the goods every single time so far.
It was just misappropriation of funds, now it’s also sexual misconduct and hush money. And President Obama has placed himself at the middle of the scandal by firing the government’s investigator.
According to the latest Fox poll, President Obama’s approval rating has dropped from 50-41 (favorable-unfavorable) at the end of last month to 46-46 today. The average approval rating of a president at this point in his term is 56, so Obama is underperforming by 10 points.
The sharp slide in Obama’s popularity is due to independents. Opinions of Democrats and Republicans shifted no more than a point during the period. Independents, however, went from 49-34 (i.e., +15) to 34-51 (i.e., -17). That’s a staggering 32-point shift in just three weeks.
POSTSCRIPT: Lest the Fox poll be considered an outlier, the president is actually doing better in the Fox poll than the Rasmussen poll, which has him at 46-53 overall.
In O’Keefe and Giles’s last ACORN video (#7 if you’re counting) on the Los Angeles office, they encountered an ACORN staffer who actually refused to assist them with their feigned scheme of child prostitution and human trafficking. He did not, however, throw them out of the office. (Recall that Los Angeles is one of the five cities in which ACORN claimed — falsely in at least three cases — that it threw out O’Keefe and Giles.)
ACORN claimed in a message to the LA Times that O’Keefe and Giles were thrown out of a different office:
In an email, ACORN disputed O’Keefe’s claim, saying that the filmmaker earlier had gone to an ACORN office on South Grand Avenue in L.A. with the scenario and was turned away.
Anyone who has followed the ACORN scandal has to be skeptical about this claim, as ACORN has repeatedly lied at every turn. I commented, “Why anyone would still put any credence in ACORN’s stories at this point is beyond me.” And I was right.
The latest ACORN video is out, and it’s from — you guessed it — the ACORN office on South Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. Not only does it show O’Keefe and Giles not being thrown out of the office, it shows an ACORN staffer engaging in the most inexcusable behavior yet.
The staffer advises them to “hook up with somebody who is on that international sex business level” and offers to do research for them. She also makes additional remarks that, if their context is fairly represented (and O’Keefe and Giles have given us no reason to doubt them), seem to condone trafficking in minors.
This latest video is amazing because it shows ACORN engaging in its worst behavior yet in the very office that ACORN cited in its defense. Clearly ACORN is irredeemably corrupt, but it’s becoming hard to escape the conclusion that it is also stupid.
At every stage of the scandal, O’Keefe, Giles, and Andrew Breitbart have had the goods to disprove ACORN’s repeated lies. And yet ACORN keeps lying. And keeps getting busted. It is unfathomable to me that they haven’t figured this out yet. How is it possible that an organization of corrupt, immoral idiots can be so influential?
The state-picked Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority today unanimously rejected Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s budget, saying that the inclusion of $16.2 million he hopes to get from a tuition tax doesn’t comply with state law.
“Existing tax legislation does not yet exist” to support what would be a first-in-the-nation tuition levy, said ICA Chair Barbara McNees.
The rejection puts the process of passing a 2010 budget into uncharted waters. Mr. Ravenstahl said he may ask city council to pass the 1 percent tuition tax despite the ICA’s vote.
Ah yes, why let the law gets in the way of a good tax increase?
POSTSCRIPT: Ravenstahl’s proposal is not only illegal, it is also impressively cynical, even from him. He proposed it just days after he was re-elected, knowing that most current students will have graduated when he next faces re-election in four years.
You can’t put the Democrats’ flawed thinking on terrorism any more crisply than this:
If the U.S. captures Osama bin Laden, there’s no need to interrogate him, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of that committee, said that arguments raised by Republican senators about whether bin Laden would be afforded Miranda rights if he were captured amount to a “red herring.” . . .
“For one thing, capturing Osama bin Laden — we’ve had enough on him, we don’t need to interrogate him,” Leahy added.
Leahy seems to think that the reason we interrogate terrorists is to get information on them for prosecution. We don’t. A captured terrorist is already out of the picture. We interrogate terrorists so that we can get better information on other terrorists: who and where they are, what they are doing, and how we can stop them. It’s about preventing future atrocities, not prosecuting past ones.
The worst aspect of the upcoming Khalid Sheikh Muhammed trial isn’t the foolishness about Miranda warnings. The deeper problem with trying KSM is the question of what happens if he is acquitted. If he is acquitted, will he be released? If so, then they are insane. The man was the mastermind of 9/11; he can’t be released. (Furthermore, every future atrocity perpetrated by KSM would become the personal responsibility of President Obama and AG Holder, so a purely political calculation indicates that he can’t be released.) But if not, the whole trial is a sham. Rather than upholding the rule of law, the trial is a mockery of it.
And it’s no use to argue that the evidence against KSM is so strong that he wouldn’t be acquitted. Holder makes precisely that argument in this video, although he makes it in regards to Bin Laden rather than KSM. Firstly, you never know what will happen in a court of law. (Remember OJ Simpson.) Secondly, even if it were true, the certainty of conviction not only fails to address the matter of principle, it aggravates it. Holder is saying that civilian trials for terrorists are okay because they will certainly result in conviction. In other words, we will hold show trials in civilian court, all in the name of upholding the rule of law!
UPDATE: Eric Posner seems to agree broadly that this is a show trial, but he sees it as a positive rather than a negative. He suggests that we are creating a two-tiered system: civilian trials for strong cases and military trials for weak cases. Doing so, Posner says, will improve the system’s credibility, since we won’t be using “low-quality” trials for everyone.
This makes no sense to me at all. How is holding a few “high-quality” trials going to do anything to improve credibility for the rest? If a “low-quality” trial lacks credibility, how is it going to gain credibility from a “high-quality” trial for someone else? All it proves is at least some of the accused terrorists are guilty, and, frankly, anyone who would otherwise think that not one of them is guilty isn’t going to believe the “high-quality” trials either.
Plus, whatever minute credibility might be obtained by holding a few “high-quality” trials will be forfeit the first time a terrorist is acquitted but not released.
In this video, Lindsey Graham absolutely demolishes Eric Holder on the KSM trial:
In it, Graham presses Holder on whether Osama Bin Laden or other terrorists would have to be given a Miranda warning at the time of capture. A fanciful idea? Apparently not. He says that it would depend.
But it can’t! Bin Laden could be captured tomorrow. He probably won’t, but the one thing we can be sure is, when he is captured, we will not have a few weeks advance notice to make the necessary legal determination. Our soldiers need to now, today, what to do when they capture a terrorist on a foreign battlefield.
It’s now clear why the Recovery.gov information on created/saved jobs is so comically, awesomely bad. It turns out that the data is collated from whatever the recipients of stimulus funding happened to type into a web form:
According to Ed Pound, director of communications for recovery.gov, the Web site relies on self-reporting by recipients of the stimulus money. They are required to fill out an online form with federalreporting.gov, identifying how much money they have received and how many jobs they have created or saved in the process. A drop-down menu requires them to fill in the number of their congressional district, and apparently some recipients of Recovery Act funds entered incorrect congressional district numbers in their reports.
Pound said the information from federalreporting.gov is then simply transferred to recovery.gov. . .
“We’re not certifying the accuracy of the information,” said Pound. Federal agencies can and do sometimes notice mistakes, he said, and call it to the attention of recipients, but only recipients can correct the information. . .
Asked why recipients would pluck random numbers – 26, 45, 14 – to fill in for their congressional district, Pound replied, “who knows, man, who really knows. There are 130,000 reports out there.”
So this highly-touted exercise in government transparency and accountability is basically an on-line poll. Good grief.
Senate Democrats are prepared to move forward on Lael Brainard’s nomination, despite her history as a tax cheat. She’ll have plenty of company in this administration.
Everything is political with these guys (especially Eric Holder), so I think Ann Althouse’s theory linking Guantanamo and the Khalid Sheikh Muhammed trial is very plausible:
Maybe what came first was the realization that Guantanamo would need to remain open, and then something was needed to placate those who put their hope in Obama that he would close the place. Oh, what will we do? I’ve got an idea! Let’s put on a show! Let’s try KSM in NYC!
President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.
Obama refused, however, to set a new deadline.
In an interview in the Chinese capital with Major Garrett of Fox News, Obama said he was “not disappointed” that the Guantanamo deadline had slipped, saying he “knew this was going to be hard.”
Why I found most hilarious is how the credulous press reported the closure of the Guantanamo prison as a done deal the very day it was announced. Never mind that they had no idea whatsoever how to accomplish it. The president had announced that we would figure out a way so it was as good as done. It was as if the press had reported moon landings the day after President Kennedy’s speech in May 1961.
In 2006, during Barack Obama’s brief tenure in the Senate, he gave a speech in which he indicated his approval of a military trial for Khalid Sheikh Muhammed. The C-SPAN video is here.
The context is interesting. Obama was arguing that we did not need to worry about giving detained terrorists access to US courts, and that it is “not true” that to do so would “give all kinds of rights to terrorist masterminds like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed.” It seems that such worries were well-justified after all.
The Democrats want to take the $200 billion unused TARP allocation and blow it on more stimulus. Amazingly, they claim that to do so would create 6 million jobs, even though the $789 billion stimulus was promised to create only 3.5 million jobs, and failed to do so.
A report from the inspector general of the TARP program holds Timothy Geithner, then head of the New York Federal Reserve and now Treasury Secretary, responsible for the disaster of the AIG bailout:
A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner — then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation’s Treasury Secretary — responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs. . .
Instead of bargaining with AIG’s numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring derivatives contracts, Geithner’s team ended up paying top dollar for toxic assets — “an amount far above their market value at the time,” the report notes.
“There is no question that the effect of FRBNY’s decisions — indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG — was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG’s counterparties,” the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said.
Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia got full value for their derivatives contracts with AIG, and taxpayers got the bill. In total, $27.1 billion of public money was transferred to companies that did business with AIG.
Throughout the bailout of AIG, the report says, the New York Fed failed to develop appropriate contingency plans; failed to properly assess the impact of its decisions; and generally engaged in negotiation strategies that were doomed to fail.
Then, after Geithner’s team paid off AIG’s counterparties on Wall Street, it imposed “onerous” terms on the troubled insurer, the report says.
(ASIDE: That’s a Huffington Post summary, but it all seems to be backed up by the report.)
The report also blasts the New York Fed’s deliberate lack of transparency:
The now familiar argument from Government officials about the dire consequences of basic transparency, as advocated by the Federal Reserve . . once again simply does not withstand scrutiny. Federal Reserve officials initially refused to disclose the identities of the counterparties or the details of the payments, warning that disclosure of the names would undermine AIG’s stability, the privacy and business interests of the counterparties, and the stability of the markets.
After public and Congressional pressure, AIG disclosed the identities. Notwithstanding the Federal Reserve’s warnings, the sky did not fall; there is no indication that AIG’s disclosure undermined the stability of AIG or the market or damaged legitimate interests of the counterparties. The lesson that should be learned — one that has been made apparent time after time in the Government’s response to the financial crisis — is that the default position, whenever Government funds are deployed in a crisis to support markets or institutions, should be that the public is entitled to know what is being done with Government funds.
The House Democrats’ health care bill does not do anything to constrain health care costs, and in fact makes them worse, according to a new non-partisan government analysis:
Democrats have promised that health reform would reduce health care costs, but legislation the House passed last week would increase costs over the next decade by $289 billion. By 2019, health costs would rise to 21.1 percent of GDP compared to 20.8 under current law, according to an actuarial report prepared by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“With the exception of the proposed reductions in Medicare payment updates for institutional providers, the provisions of H.R. 3962 would not have a significant impact on future health care cost growth rates. In addition, the longer-term viability of the Medicare update reductions is doubtful,” the report said.
In other words, outside of Medicare payment cuts to hospitals, the bill doesn’t curb increasing health care costs. And even the Medicare payment cuts will be difficult to sustain.
A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.
The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether. . .
More generally, the report questions whether the country’s network of doctors and hospitals would be able to cope with the effects of a reform package expected to add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the insured, many of them through Medicaid, the public health program for the poor.
So the bill increases costs and hurts health care, but aside from that it’s great. (No, not really.)
The Obama administration once again shows its strong commitment to free speech:
Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked as lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in its San Francisco office for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.
Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade — a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade — as a means to fight climate change.
On their own time, Williams and Zabel made a video expressing these opinions. . .
Their bosses in San Francisco approved the effort by Williams and Zabel to release the tape, but after an editorial they wrote appeared in the Washington Post, EPA Director Lisa Jackson ordered the pair to remove the video or face disciplinary action.
Specifically, the administration’s chief environmental official did not want Williams or Zabel mentioning their four decades with the EPA — time spent studying cap and trade.
What you have here is the EPA director, a presidential appointment, silencing career EPA employees who speak publicly in their area of expertise. The administration is insisting that the couple not tell the viewer the one thing that sets their video apart from countless others, the fact that they have relevant expertise in the field.
This sounds like a straightforward extension of Chicago politics. If nonexistent people can vote, why shouldn’t they contribute to job growth:
The government Web site that promised to show exactly where the $787 billion in stimulus spending was going to “create or save” jobs is allocating billions of tax dollars to hundreds of congressional districts that don’t exist.
Researchers at the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity found 440 “phantom districts” listed on Recovery.gov, consuming $6.4 billion and creating or saving nearly 30,000 jobs. . .
For example, Recovery.gov shows 12 districts, using up more than $2.7 billion, in Washington, D.C, which only has one congressional district.
Recovery.gov also shows 2,893.9 jobs created with $194,537,372 in stimulus funding in New Hampshire’s 00 congressional district. But, there is no such thing.
The site also shows $1,471,518 going to New Hampshire’s 6th congressional district, $1,033,809 to the 4th congressional district and $124,774 to the 27th congressional district. In fact, New Hampshire only has two congressional districts; inviting confusion about where the money listed for the 00, 4th, 6th and 27th districts is going.
The latest ACORN video is from Los Angeles, and it’s the first in which ACORN behaved with half a shred of decency. In the video, the ACORN worker has no problem with the prostitution scheme, but he draws the line at underage prostitution. He doesn’t kick O’Keefe and Giles out, but he does refuse to help. According to O’Keefe, he is the only ACORN worker they met during their entire investigation who refused to assist. For this, O’Keefe proclaims him the ACORN Employee of the Year:
Los Angeles is, incidentally, one of the five offices that ACORN claims threw out O’Keefe and Giles. The others were San Diego, Miami, New York and Philadelphia. Three of the five claims (San Diego, New York, and Philadelphia) have already been shown to be lies. It now appears that Los Angeles is a lie as well, although ACORN still claims to have thrown them out of a different Los Angeles office. Why anyone would still put any credence in ACORN’s stories at this point is beyond me.
Leftist opinion makers like Thomas Friedman have been promoting the idea that tea party protesters, by vociferously opposing the Democratic agenda, are creating an atmosphere that will lead to violence from the far right. Never mind that whatever violent talk there is on the right comes from random yahoos, whereas on the left violent talk is coming from the media and political establishment.
More importantly, when you look where the actual violence is coming from, it’s coming from the left. I’ve noted here a few cases of unionviolence in the recent past. The latest incident comes not from the unions but from the communist “anti-racist” left. This time, there’s video:
The recent shootings at Ft. Hood and the resignation of top Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh demonstrate how even our military officers are opposed to US strategy in Afghanistan.
I never thought that Codepink was smart, but I would not have thought that they would be so stupid as to cite Nidal Hasan in support of their case.
President Obama is offended by the suggestion that his dithering looks like dithering:
President Barack Obama made no effort to conceal his irritation when his press corps used the first question of his maiden Far East trip to ask what was taking him so long on Afghanistan.
UPDATE: The LA Times: “Obama must rethink rethinking Afghanistan. His strategy deliberations are starting to look like dangerous indecision.” Starting? (Via Instapundit.)
I’m stunned by this graph of earned income versus effective income:
A typical family has to get its income over $50k per year before they start seeing any significant return on their labor. If you set out to design a policy to discourage work, could you do any better than this?
Here’s a graph of the implicit tax rate:
The implicit marginal tax rate peaks at nearly 150% for people making a little over $20k per year. That means that earning an additional dollar actually sets you back almost fifty cents. Absolutely appalling.
Newly obtained documents show that, despite claims to the contrary, former NEA communications director Yosi Sergant, did not act alone in using the NEA to solicit political propaganda.
An Instapundit reader makes an interesting observation: Kabul fell to allied forces on November 13, 2001, just 63 days after 9/11. General McChrystal delivered his report to President Obama on August 30. That was 74 days ago. And counting.
Officials said that no decision was expected from Mr. Obama on Wednesday, but that he would mull over the discussions at the meeting during a trip to Asia that begins Thursday. Mr. Obama is not due back in Washington until next Thursday. Officials said that it was possible that he could announce his decision in the three days before Thanksgiving, which is on Nov. 26, but that an announcement in the first week of December seemed more likely.
If you believed all the talk from Chrysler about how our tax dollars would help finance its fast-track electric-vehicle future, you’re in for a big disappointment.
Chrysler has disbanded the engineering team that was trying to bring three electric models to market as a rush job, Automotive News reports today. Chrysler cited its devotion to electric vehicles as one of the key reasons why the Obama administration and Congress needed to give it $12.5 billion in bailout money, the News points out.
If you take the money that Chrysler invested in electric car make-believe development and weigh it against the billions it got from the government, Chrysler made a handsome profit on the venture. That’s pretty much the only profit that Chrysler has made recently.
Is a whitewash underway in California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s investigation of ACORN? An ACORN spokesman told the East County (San Diego) Democrats Club that Brown is “a political animal” and has indicated that “the fault will be found with the people that did the video — not with ACORN”. Big Government has audio.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) questioned President Obama’s nominee to lead the nation’s airport security agency Tuesday about a censure he received from the FBI in 1988.
Erroll Southers, who was serving as an FBI special agent at the time of the censure, asked a co-worker’s husband who worked for the San Diego Police Department to run a background check on his ex-wife’s boyfriend.
There is no independent auditor overseeing the federal agency responsible for some $6 trillion in home mortgages, because the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel ruled that the agency’s inspector general didn’t have authority to operate, according to internal memos obtained by the Huffington Post.
The ruling came in response to a request from the Federal Housing Finance Agency itself — which means that a federal agency essentially succeeded in getting rid of its own inspector general.
The FHFA is home to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks.
Obviously, Fannie and Freddie’s oversight was already too weak (thank you Barney Frank!). Now, thanks to the Justice Department, they have even less. What could go wrong?
The House Democratic Whip says the Stupak amendment is a ruse and it won’t be in the final bill:
The health bill approved by the House will likely see its abortion amendment stripped, the House’s third-ranking Democrat stressed Tuesday.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said he believes that the amendment restricting federal funding for abortion will eventually be removed during conference with the Senate’s bill. . .
Clyburn said that he and many other House Democrats supported the amendment to pass the legislation in the House, with the expectation that it would eventually be removed.
“That’s certainly why I voted for it,” Clyburn explained. “I agree that the language approved by the House is unacceptable. We were doing what was necessary to do to put the bill on the floor in about 12 hours.”
Four years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. New London that the government can use eminent domain to take away your property and give it to another private party. Susette Kelo’s house has been torn down but the property remains undeveloped. The 3,169 new jobs and the $1.2 million annual tax revenue have not materialized.
And they never will. In an appropriate conclusion to the sordid story, Pfizer, the company that received the confiscated property, has announced it is pulling out of New London.
Well, I’ve got to give him credit for chutzpah. President Obama simultaneously says that the health care bill should not fund abortion, and calls for the removal of the Stupak amendment that keeps it from funding abortion:
President Obama said today that Congress needs to change abortion-related language in the health care bill passed by the House of Representatives this weekend.
“I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill,” Obama said. “And we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.”
Without a provision like the Stupak amendment, the bill will cover abortion. The president says that the provision should be removed, and that he’s not looking to cover abortion. He also says a bill that covers abortion would be a “health care bill”, but one that does not cover abortion is an “abortion bill”. George Orwell would be impressed.
Right on the heels of the police report on the Gladney beating comes another story of SEIU violence:
A state worker is recovering after a bloody brawl at a union hall. He says members of the local SEIU 1000 beat him up and sent him to the hospital all because he wanted to expose alleged corruption within the union.
Big Government has obtained the police report from the incident at a Russ Carnahan (D-MO) town hall in which Kenneth Gladney was attacked by SEIU thugs. The report puts the lie to the spin put out by the SEIU and its enablers in the blogosphere left. It shows that Gladney was attacked viciously and without provocation:
As I walked up to the crowd, several people approached me and were saying the above suspects, McCowan and Molens, had just assaulted a black male who was still around the back side of the school. . . Suspect Molens had his back to me and I observed him yelling and pointing at several individuals. . .While waiting for additional units to make it to my location I attempted to detains Suspects Molens and McCowan for a further investigation into the incident. I had to tell Suspects Molens and McCowan to remain in front of me several times, as they tried numerous times to get lost in the crowd and get past me.
The three above listed witnesses contacted me and stated that they would wait until the scene was brought under control prior to providing me with witness information. . .
I then contacted Witness #1, Harris Himes. Witness H. Himes stated that as he was leaving the school gymnasium, he saw Suspect McCowan talking to Victim Gladney. He stated that he saw Suspect McCowan reach over the table and punch Victim Gladney in the face. This assault knocked the victim off balance. Suspect Molens then went around the table and pulled Victim Gladney over the table backwards by the back of his shirt collar. He began to punch and kick Victim Gladney. Witness H. Himes added that while Suspect Molens was kicking and punching Victim Gladney, Suspect McCowan then joined in on the assault.
Witness #2’s, Sandra Himes’, statement of the incident concurred with Harris’ account of the incident. She did add that Victim Gladney did nothing to provoke this assault.
At this time I was contacted by the victim, Kenneth E. Gladney. . . Victim Gladney appeared shaken and his clothes were in disarray. . .
Gladney stated that he was handing out pens and buttons outside the gym. He stated that is when Suspects Molens and McCowan, along with a third suspect who is unidentified at this time, walked by his table. Suspect McCowan picked up one of the buttons from Gladney’s table and said, “Who’s sellin this shit?” Victim Gladney stated, “I’m not selling anything. It’s free.” At this time Suspect McCowan said, “What kind of nigger are you?” Suspect McCowan then reached across the table and punched Victim Gladney in the face. Victim Gladney added that Suspect Molens grabbed him from behind, at which time he was struck several times and taken to the ground. At this time he was struck several more times. . .
I was then contacted by Witness #3, [redacted], gave a similar account of the original assault. I would like to add that when I originally walked up to the crowd, Witness [redacted] was one of the individuals being yelled at by Suspect Molens. . .
Suspects Molens and McCowan were arrested for the charges of Assault 3rd and Interfering with the Duties of a Police Officer. . .
This case will be presented to the St. Louis County Counselor’s Office for consideration reference the above noted criminal charges.
It’s clear from the report that these two men perpetrated a vicious and unprovoked assault. Why haven’t they been prosecuted? Unfortunately, the St. Louis district attorney, Bob McCulloch, has a history of abusing the power of his office for political purposes. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Bob McCulloch joined the “Barack Obama Truth Squad“, a coalition of Missouri law enforcement formed “to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading television ad during the presidential campaign”. As we’ve seen clearly during the past year, “misleading” is very much in the eye of the beholder.
THE PRESIDENT: Tonight I want to address some of the key controversies that are still out there. Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. . .
There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus object to a provision in the Senate legislation — backed by the White House — that bars illegal immigrants from buying health insurance within a proposed new marketplace, or exchange, even if they use their own money to buy from private companies.
Illegal immigrants can buy private health insurance now, so some lawmakers say the White House position goes too far. The House bill doesn’t have that language, and several members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus met with Obama at the White House on Thursday to tell him that if that changed, he could lose as many as 20 votes.
“I think that he got our message,” Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., head of the Hispanic Caucus, said afterward.
House leaders said that, in keeping with the Hispanic Caucus’ demands, there was not likely to be any prohibition added to the House bill against illegal immigrants shopping in the exchange.
Note that the bill passed the House 220-215, so it only would have taken three of the threatened twenty votes to defeat the bill. In other words, the inclusion of illegal immigrants is an essential part of the bill.
Now, I haven’t read the bill (obviously, it’s two thousand pages long), so I concede it’s barely possible that it creates an option for illegal immigrants to shop in the exchange without receiving the subsidy that is the entire purpose for the exchange to exist. Perhaps it’s even possible that the bill contains an enforcement mechanism to ensure that illegal immigrants use that hypothetical no-subsidy option. I don’t believe it for an instant.
President Obama invoked the Fort Hood shootings in an emotional appeal to Democrats to pass health care reform today, contrasting the sacrifices of soldiers with political positioning.
The impassioned pitch to the entire Democratic caucus came hours before the House vote tonight on the signature issue of Obama’s presidency, with Democratic leaders struggling to keep members from conservative districts on board.
“He was absolutely inspiring. In a very moving way, he reminded us what sacrifice really is,” said New Jersey Rep. Rob Andrews, estimating the persuader-in-chief turned several votes.
Exploiting the Fort Hood shootings to pass health care. Wow.
I’m trying to imagine the political environment that Washington Democrats occupy. A President glibly lays out that analogy, and it is received — without any wincing or taint of disgust — as awesome inspiration.
At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration. . .
One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.
The message was, “We better not see you on again,” said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that “clients might stop using you if you continue.”
In urging Democratic consultants to spurn Fox, White House officials might be trying to isolate the network and make it appear more partisan. A boycott by Democratic strategists could also help drive the White House narrative that Fox is a fundamentally different creature than the other TV news networks.
The White House is denying the story, but not very convincingly. They cite the fact that White House is now trying to scale back its war against Fox News as proof that this couldn’t have happened, which strikes me as a complete non sequitur.
Anderson Cooper’s sexual-innuendo-laden slur for the Tea Party movement has reached the Oval Office. The New York Times reports:
Mr. Obama, during his private pep talk to Democrats, recognized Mr. Owens election and then posed a question to the other lawmakers. According to Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who supports the health care bill, the president asked, “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care?
(Emphasis mine.)
In offensiveness, this is basically on a par with a hypothetical Republican president adopting Rush Limbaugh’s “feminazi” slur for extreme abortion supporters.
The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios.
and:
I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC and OTS. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.
and:
I believe there has been more alarm raised about potential unsafety and unsoundness than, in fact, exists.
and finally:
Rep. Frank: Let me ask [George] Gould and [Franklin] Raines on behalf of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, do you feel that over the past years you have been substantially under-regulated?
Mr. Raines?
Mr. Raines: No, sir.
Mr. Frank: Mr. Gould?
Mr. Gould: No, sir. . . .
Mr. Frank: OK. Then I am not entirely sure why we are here.
Oh, well, if Fannie and Freddie say they don’t need to be regulated, how could there be any argument?
If it’s a private company, Barney Frank wants to regulate it down to the shape of its paper clip holders. But if it’s a government-sponsored enterprise, with the taxpayer on the hook for its losses, Frank leaves them free to do whatever they like. For them, there ought not be a focus on safety and soundness.
Freddie Mac, the second largest provider of U.S. residential mortgage funding, on Friday posted a loss of $5 billion in the third quarter and predicted it would need more government support amid a “prolonged deterioration” in housing. . .
Including a $1.3 billion dividend payment on senior preferred stock bought by the Treasury in previous quarters, Freddie Mac’s third-quarter loss increases to $6.3 billion. . .
Its larger rival Fannie Mae on Thursday said it would need $15 billion from the U.S. Treasury after a whopping $18.9 billion third-quarter loss.
Under the arrangement, Democratic Reps. Bart Stupak of Michigan, Brad Ellsworth of Indiana and other abortion opponents were promised an opportunity to insert tougher restrictions into the legislation during debate on the House floor. . .
But the amendment drew criticism from Planned Parenthood.
“Planned Parenthood strongly opposes the Stupak/Pitts amendment which would result in women losing health benefits they have today,” the group’s president, Cecile Richards, said in a written statement.
What? How can anyone lose health benefits they have today? The president has promised that no one will lose her current coverage.
The answer is, like most people, Planned Parenthood doesn’t believe it. Most on the left find it useful to pretend they believe it, since they don’t mind single payer. Indeed, many actively want it. But a single-payer regime without abortion coverage is not in the interest of the abortion industry.
If the Stupak/Pitts amendment passes, it will be very interesting to see if the abortion lobby comes out against the entire bill. This might expose a seam in the liberal coalition.
Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.
The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments — which substitute for or supplement medical treatments — on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against “religious and spiritual healthcare.”
A violation of the separation of church and state? Quite possibly. Idiotic? Definitely.
Unfortunately, idiocy doesn’t stop legislation these days, particularly when the idiocy is bipartisan.
Unemployment soared in October to 10.2%, the highest rate in over 26 years. The 0.4% jump was much larger than the slight 0.1% increase expected by analysts. Non-farm payrolls shed 190k jobs, also larger than the 175k expected.
The Democratic stimulus plan is a complete and utter disaster. Here’s the update of the graph comparing reality to the Administration’s projections (light blue is the administration’s no-stimulus projection):
This no-stimulus scenario is looking pretty good now. Also, recall what President Obama himself said last January about the economy and his stimulus plan:
Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don’t act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double digit unemployment and the American Dream slipping further and further out of reach.
That’s why we need an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that not only creates jobs in the short-term but spurs economic growth and competitiveness in the long-term. And this plan must be designed in a new way—we can’t just fall into the old Washington habit of throwing money at the problem.
Of course, later the president embraced throwing money at the problem:
So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That’s the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That’s the point. (Applause.)
To get a picture of how badly the president’s policy has failed, let’s take a trip down memory lane. In 2004, President Bush was running for re-election and was being savaged for the “jobless recovery”. Tom Daschle made it the centerpiece of his response to Bush’s 2004 State of the Union address.
But what were the actual figures? Between January 2001 and November 2004, seasonally adjusted non-farm payrolls cut 274 thousand jobs. This is according to the establishment survey, which the media preferred because it made Bush look worse. According the more-complete household survey — which includes self-employment — the economy actually added 2.5 million jobs.
Between January 2009 and today, we have already lost 3.5 million non-farm jobs (3.8 million in the household survey). If we start the clock six months into Obama’s term (a courtesy generally not afforded to Bush), which happens to be when the recession ended, we have lost 867 thousand non-farm jobs. On the household survey, we have lost 1.9 million.
People are stillcriticizing the administration’s jobs-created-or-saved numbers, and justly so. But I think criticizing the numbers misses the point a bit. The very idea that we can count the jobs created or saved is nonsense, and undermines the entire theory supporting of the stimulus.
The stimulus is based on the idea of the Keynes multiplier. According to the theory, when workers get paid for their work on stimulus-sponsored projects, they turn around and spend that money on other things, generating more income for other workers, who spend the money on still other things, and so on. Thus, the economy grows by a multiple of the stimulus.
ASIDE: This is all bunk. The story above fails to account for the economic activity that is suppressed when the government taxes or borrows to fund the stimulus. (In fact, Keynes’s theory relies on a more complicated analysis that I won’t get into.) In all but very exceptional circumstances that certainly do not prevail today, the positive and negative effects cancel. All that happens is economic activity shifts from the private sector into the public sector. Robert Barro has estimated the multiplier to be “insignificantly different from zero”.
Anyway, there is obviously no way of tracking what happens to the stimulus money once workers get paid. Consequently there is no way to count any jobs that might be created after the first round. So when the White House claims that it can actually count the jobs created by the stimulus, it is tacitly conceding that there is no multiplier. Without the multiplier, there is no “stimulus”, only a massive spending boondoggle.
Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL) explains where the Constitution empowers Congress to impose health insurance mandates:
“Well, that’s under certainly the laws of the–protect the health, welfare of the country,” said Burris. “That’s under the Constitution. We’re not even dealing with any constitutionality here. Should we move in that direction? What does the Constitution say? To provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.”
The actual Constitution reads a little bit differently than Burris seems to think:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States . . .
(Emphasis mine.) Note the lack of any mention of “health”. In fact, the word appears nowhere in the entire Constitution.
The State of Florida tried out a public option in property insurance. It was supposed to be an “insurer of last resort”, but it eventually began to compete with private insurance and quickly became the largest insurer in the state, insuring 30% of homeowners. Florida’s public option is backed by the government: it does not maintain sufficient reserves to cover its potential losses, and instead relies on the taxpayer in the event of a disaster. The state’s largest private insurer, State Farm, is now pulling out of the state. The government plan is not a monopoly yet, but these things take time.
In other words, the public option in property insurance has had exactly the same effect that critics say it would have in health insurance. It drives private insurers out of business.
A new Rasmussen poll find that more people still blame President Bush than President Obama for our current economic woes, but just barely. While 49% still blame Bush, 45% blame Obama. The difference falls within the margin of error. This is a significant shift since last month, when Bush-blame led Obama-blame 55-37.
The statute of limitations on blaming the predecessor is expiring. Before the month is out, Obama will own the mess he’s created.
Over a dozen videos of school children singing or reciting praises to Obama have now come to light. What previously might have been dismissed as a few bad apples is now a troubling phenomenon.
About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.
That type of accounting was found in an earlier AP review of stimulus jobs, which the Obama administration said was misleading because most of the government’s job-counting errors were being fixed in the new data.
The administration now acknowledges overcounting in the new numbers for the HHS program. Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery office, said the Obama administration was reviewing the Head Start data “to determine how and if it will be counted.”
But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.
“If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job,” HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.
It’s not so remarkable that they’re doing this. The remarkable thing is they’re actually defending doing so.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has leaked, and it’s as bad as many have suspected. BoingBoing summarizes:
ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
The whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM).
This treaty is being negotiated in secret by the Obama administration, citing national security, if you can believe that:
Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes copyrights.
Now President Obama’s White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are “classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.”
Got that? An international treaty is classified due to national security. If that weren’t already a load of crap, the negotiations aren’t so sensitive that they couldn’t invite comment from 42 outside lawyers.
Here’s the best available indication of what the press thinks will happen at the polls today:
For Republicans, an election win of any size Tuesday would be a blessing. But victories in Virginia, New Jersey or elsewhere won’t erase enormous obstacles the party faces heading into a 2010 midterm election year when control of Congress and statehouses from coast to coast will be up for grabs.
If the AP were calling this a referendum on President Obama, you could be pretty sure they expected a good night for Democrats.
UPDATE: A pretty good night nationally, with big wins in Virginia and New Jersey and a near sweep in Pennsylvania judicial races. Still, the loss in NY-23 is sad, if meaningless in practical terms.
Nancy Pelosi’s release of the House Democrats health care reform bill has had a distinct impact on the debate. Last week, sentiment on the Democratic plan had closed to only a six-point gap (51% opposed, 45% in favor). Now, with the publication of the Pelosi plan, the gap is back to double-digits, 54-42. The twelve-point gap is close to the all-time low (15 points) at the end of September.
PPP’s polling on the closely watched races tomorrow is very promising for Republicans (McDonnell by 14, Christie by 6, Hoffman by 14), but some have questioned how reliable PPP is. So, for another estimate, here’s Intrade’s latest prices:
Virginia: McDonnell 98.5, Deeds 1.5
New Jersey: Christie 55, Corzine 45, Daggett 1.1
NY-23: Hoffman 70, Owens 33, Scozzafava 4.4
If the traders are right, and they almost always are, the only election in doubt is New Jersey, and Christie has the edge there.
I don’t know what impact this will have on the NY-23 race, but it does prove that we were right to oppose Scozzafava.
UPDATE: According to the PPP poll, the endorsement boosted Owens, but not nearly enough. It was 54-31 immediately before, and 52-38 after. A nine-point shift is nothing to sneeze at, but Hoffman is still left with a double-digit lead. (Via the Corner.)
Posting its results late this afternoon at Recovery.gov, the White House claimed 640,329 jobs have been created or saved because of the $159 billion in stimulus funds allocated as of Sept. 30.
Officials acknowledged the numbers were not exact, saying that states and localities that reported the numbers have made mistakes. . .
The White House argues that the actual job number is actually larger than 640,000 — closer to 1 million jobs when one factors in stimulus jobs added in October and, more importantly, jobs created indirectly, such as “the waitress who’s still on the job,” Vice President Biden said today.
So let’s see. Assuming their number is right — 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?
Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that “calculator abuse.”
“Calculator abuse”? That’s all they’ve got?
POSTSCRIPT: By the way, I’m reminded of an incident from 2003 in which Paul Krugman tried to do a similar calculation for President Bush’s tax cuts. But unlike ABC, Krugman didn’t do the calculation honestly. Krugman took a ten-year cost figure, divided it by the number of jobs that were projected to be created (none of this “jobs saved” nonsense) within the first year, and presented that meaningless quotient as if it were the annual cost per job.
A City Council hopeful won’t cough up documents related to whether the Working Families Party is scamming the campaign finance system — because the case could involve “criminal liability,” according to documents released yesterday.
The bombshell development was revealed at a court hearing where lawyers for the WFP and the campaign of Staten Island candidate Debi Rose tried to get a suit against them tossed. . .
The WFP and Rose had tried Thursday to buck a discovery request saying they had to produce documents and campaign finance records.
A lawyer for the campaign said Rose’s treasurer, David Thomas, wouldn’t produce them because they “may implicate criminal liability and his client would therefore have Fifth Amendment rights protecting him from having to make any such compelled disclosure,” according to the affidavit, which quoted a deputy clerk in the Appellate Division.
The “Working Families Party” is one of the organizations in the ACORN network.
The bad business environment in Washington State has pushed Boeing to put its second 787 assembly line in Charleston, South Carolina, rather than Everett, Washington.
Mark Steyn on Valerie Jarrett’s risible sloganeering:
You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to “speak truth to power” to. But I suppose if you’re as eager to do so as his Senior Advisor, there’s always somebody out there: The Supreme Leader of Iran. The Prime Minister of Belgium. The Deputy Tourism Minister of the Solomon Islands. But no. The Senior Advisor has selected targets closer to home: “I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we’re going to speak truth to power. When we saw all of the distortions in the course of the summer, when people were coming down to town-hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death. . . . ”
Ah, right. People “putting up signs.” Can’t have that, can we?
In light of the Obama administration’s sponsorship of a UN “human rights” resolution that exempts criticism of religion from free speech protection, Eugene Volokh wonders what the Obama administration will say when foreign officials start citing the resolution to press for action against Americans who criticize Islam. I don’t know what the answer will be, but I’m sure it will be revealing.
The House Democratic health care plan would essentially make it illegal for health insurers to charge more for higher risk customers. So if you are young, healthy, and/or avoid risk behaviors, you get to subsidize those who do not. Plus, moral hazard will encourage risk behaviors, making coverage more expensive for everyone.
Frank Luntz, the famous Republican pollster/strategist, recommended last May that Republicans confine their attacks to Congressional Democrats. Attacking President Obama was politically dangerous. Five months later, matters have changed. Although Luntz says Congress is still a riper target than Obama, attacking Obama no longer carries any risk.
Posted by K. Crary 
Internet Scofflaw 
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