Internet Scofflaw

It’s not just tax cheats that get jobs in the Obama Administration, but thieves as well:

Troubles for the man in charge of federal spending and policy on information technology continue to be revealed.

According to Maryland state records, Vivek Kundra, the White House chief information officer who took leave last Thursday — one week after being named to the position, pleaded guilty to a petty theft charge 12 years ago.

Kundra, who was formerly the D.C. technology officer, received supervised probation before judgment in 1997 for pleading guilty to a theft of less than $300. He was also fined $500, which was lowered to $100 after the rest was suspended.

ASIDE: This is separate from the recent FBI raid on Kundra’s office, in an investigation of which we are assured Kundra is not a target.  We’ll see.

One’s first inclination is to blame incompetent vetting, but that might not be right.  We just learned yesterday that the Obama Administration was aware of the tax problems with many of its nominees, but decided to go forward with them anyway.  So it seems possible, even likely, that the vetters were aware that Kundra is a convicted thief, but the White House hired him anyway.

When Australia introduced Internet censorship to stop child pornography, I was not alone in predicting that it wouldn’t be used only against child pornography for long.  Still, I didn’t think that Australia would be blocking political content quite so soon.

It’s happening now.  The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has blacklisted an anti-abortion web site that shows gruesome pictures of aborted babies.  That’s not even the end of the story.  Whirlpool, a web site of discussion forums on the Internet and broadband, was given a takedown notice for linking to the site, according to the Australian.  Had they refused, they would have faced fines of $11,000 (Australian) per day.  (The placeholder for one deleted post can be seen here.)

The anti-abortion activists are not alone.  ACMA has also blacklisted Wikileaks, for including a copy of Denmark’s blacklist.

The current state of affairs of Australian censorship allows the ACMA to censor domestic content, using takedown notices and threats of huge fines.  However, the ACMA has no power (obviously) to take down foreign content.  To correct that “problem”, the Australian government is looking to institute nationwide net filtering.

The Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, assures Australians that:

The Government does not view this debate as an argument about freedom of speech.  Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there has never been any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content.

But, as we have just seen, it already has.

Conroy also asks Australians to have faith in them, adding:

“The Government of Australia is elected,” he said. “If the parliament wants to take this path, the last time I checked, that’s ok.”

Have faith in the censors?  Heh.  Good one.  Anyway, Conroy clearly has forgotten the principles of limited government, if he ever knew them.  An elected government can do anything it wants?  What has become of you, Australia?

(Via Volokh.)

A new White House position.  (Via the Corner.)  Apparently President Obama is serious about making us into Europe.

Obama’s $80 billion exaggeration:

Last week, President Barack Obama convened a health-care summit in Washington to identify programs that would improve quality and restrain burgeoning costs. He stated that all his policies would be based on rigorous scientific evidence of benefit. The flagship proposal presented by the president at this gathering was the national adoption of electronic medical records — a computer-based system that would contain every patient’s clinical history, laboratory results, and treatments. This, he said, would save some $80 billion a year, safeguard against medical errors, reduce malpractice lawsuits, and greatly facilitate both preventive care and ongoing therapy of the chronically ill.

Following his announcement, we spoke with fellow physicians at the Harvard teaching hospitals, where electronic medical records have been in use for years. All of us were dumbfounded, wondering how such dramatic claims of cost-saving and quality improvement could be true.

The basis for the president’s proposal is a theoretical study published in 2005 by the RAND Corporation, funded by companies including Hewlett-Packard and Xerox that stand to financially benefit from such an electronic system. And, as the RAND policy analysts readily admit in their report, there was no compelling evidence at the time to support their theoretical claims. Moreover, in the four years since the report, considerable data have been obtained that undermine their claims. The RAND study and the Obama proposal it spawned appear to be an elegant exercise in wishful thinking.

An object lesson in South America:

As a small, open economy dependent on banking, beach tourism and beef exports, Uruguay ought to be more exposed to the world recession than Argentina, with its large domestic market. Both economies have slowed sharply after years of rapid growth. But Uruguay looks set to fare much less badly than Argentina. . .

That is because the growth in Argentina owed much to expansionary fiscal and monetary polices which caused the economy to overheat. Over the past year prices for its farm exports have fallen, bringing down tax revenues. To keep public spending going, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner nationalised the private pension system in October, destroying what little confidence investors had in her government. Argentines, long inured to such behaviour, responded as they always do, by taking their money out. Capital outflows reached 7% of GDP in 2008.

Much of that money went across the river. Deposits in Uruguay’s banks by non-residents rose by 41% in the 12 months to December. These pesos follow others: during the presidency of Néstor Kirchner, Ms Fernández’s husband and predecessor, some Argentine beef farmers sold their herds rather than submit to export bans and price controls, and ploughed the money into Uruguayan ranches. . .

Uruguay is better placed to mitigate recession than its neighbour. Argentina may struggle to roll over the $23 billion in debt maturing this year and next because of investors’ distrust: its bonds yield 15 percentage points more than American Treasury bonds. Uruguay is charged a premium of only five percentage points, and can thus more easily afford a fiscal stimulus.

A very insightful column by Shelby Steele.

The geniuses who run the Democratic party have determined that this is the perfect time for a trade war:

A long-simmering trade dispute boiled over into sanctions on Monday after Mexico said it would raise tariffs on $2.4bn of US exports in retaliation for ending a pilot programme to allow Mexican trucks on American roads.

The announcement marks one of the first big tests for trade policy under President Barack Obama, who has sought to tread a fine line between assuaging his domestic constituencies and upholding the US’s international obligations.

Mexico said it would increase tariffs on 90 industrial and agricultural goods, likely to include politically sensitive farm products, after Congress last week killed a pilot programme allowing a limited number of Mexican trucks on American highways. Mexico obtained a judicial ruling in 2001 under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) allowing it to impose such sanctions, but has held off since the US introduced the pilot scheme.

The sanctions, which Mexican officials say are set to be imposed later this week, will be one of the largest acts of retaliation against US exports. US goods exports to Mexico totalled $151.5bn last year. On Monday, Gerardo Ruíz Mateos, Mexico’s economy minister, said: “We believe that the action taken by the US is wrong, protectionist and in clear violation of Nafta.”

The White House said on Monday it would seek to create a new programme that would address what it called the “legitimate concerns of Congress” while meeting the US’s Nafta commitments. But Mexican officials said they would not be bought off with promises.

(Via Instapundit.)

You cannot simultaneously support free trade and placate the unions. You have to decide.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has been in financial trouble since I was a child, has finally folded.

The failure of the PI can be seen as an application of Hotelling’s Law. Two newspapers can survive with one slightly left of center and the other slightly right of center.  Then each gets half the market share. With one far left paper (the Seattle Times) and one even further left paper (the PI), the one at the extreme will not survive.

What is the deal with the outbreak in blatantly unconstitutional legislative proposals?  In just the last few days:

• the US Congress has considered a bill giving House representation to a non-state,
• the Connecticut legislature has considered a bill that would dictate the way the Catholic Church governs itself, and
• the Iowa legislature is considering a bill that would limit criticism of politicians and would even limit factual reporting of their votes, and
• the US Congress passed a stimulus bill (which the President signed with much fanfare) that overrides state constitutions, removing the governor’s power of veto if he or she declines to accept stimulus funding.

Wasn’t there a time when our leaders felt a responsibility to obey the Constitution, or am I looking back to a halcyon age that never really existed?  If it ever existed, that time is surely gone now.  Today, many of our leaders (“rulers” might be more apt) have clearly decided that the thankless task of applying the Constitution is the sole provenance of the courts.  Their job, as they see it, is to get away with as much as they can.

The reason so many Obama nominees have had tax problems is the Administration thought it was no big deal, reports the DC Examiner:

It’s been a recurring question about the young Obama administration: Why have so many of its nominees come down with tax problems?

Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle, Ron Kirk, Nancy Killefer, and a number of others who didn’t make it to the nomination stage — all have been felled, or tainted, by unpaid tax bills ranging from a few hundred dollars to more than $140,000. After the first few cases, Republican Rep. Eric Cantor quipped that “it’s easy for [Democrats] to sit here and advocate higher taxes because — you know what? — they don’t pay them.”

For their part, some Democrats have suggested that the Senate Finance Committee, which investigates nominees before confirmation, has gotten so nit-picky in examining tax returns that good candidates have gone down in flames. “The Finance Committee has gone a bit overboard, and I find it a little striking that a Democratic committee is doing this to a Democratic administration,” one anonymous insider told the Politico recently. . .

Now, we find out that neither Cantor nor the unnamed Democrat was correct. The problem is not with Democrats in general, nor with the Finance Committee in particular. The problem is the Obama White House, which, fully aware of its nominees’ tax issues, decided that those problems were trivial, or that the public wouldn’t care about them, and pushed forward with nominations that in the past would have been quietly shelved.

In little-noticed remarks last week, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, gave us a look inside the confirmation process. Irritated by news reports suggesting the committee had been too hard on Obama’s nominees, Grassley pointed the finger back at the White House.

“I want to stress that the Finance Committee is not doing anything different now from what it has always done under the leadership of either Senator Baucus or me,” Grassley said, referring to Democratic chairman Max Baucus of Montana. “We are vetting nominees for the current administration the same way we vetted nominees for the previous administration.”

“The tax issues of the nominees considered by the committee this year came to be public only because the nominees chose to proceed.”

(Via Instapundit.)

Wow.

The New York Times must be finding it harder to find material for negative Iraq stories.  The latest crisis they’ve uncovered (I am not making this up) is stray dogs.  (Via the Corner.)

It might be simplest if the White House announced that all of its campaign rhetoric is “no longer operative.”  To wit: taxing health benefits, formerly the worst idea ever, is now under consideration. James Capretta explains:

Remember this devastating political ad from last year?

Many Americans probably do, as it represented a real turning point in the presidential campaign.

Aired in October, the ad picked up on an exchange from the vice-presidential debate between then-Senator Joe Biden and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin had just explained that the McCain health-care plan would provide refundable tax credits of $5,000 per household to help families buy portable insurance. Biden, who had clearly been waiting for the issue to come up, responded with a scripted attack. What the McCain-Palin folks don’t tell you, Biden warned, is that they would — “for the first time in history” — tax your employer-provided health benefits.

The public, most of whom get their insurance from their workplaces, was taken aback and confused. Why would Republicans want to tax employer-sponsored health-care benefits? Aren’t Republicans for cutting taxes? Aren’t they for private, as opposed to public, health insurance? And how could a tax increase make anyone better off?

It was a devastating blow. The McCain campaign never adequately explained their plan or offered an effective counter-argument — and the Obama-Biden campaign never looked back. They rode the issue for weeks, airing millions of dollars in attack ads. Indeed, the effectiveness of the coordinated attack on the McCain health plan is surely one of the main reasons for Obama’s victory in November.

Well, guess what? Not five months later, having secured the presidency, President Obama has changed his tune. Taxing health-care benefits is not such a bad idea after all, he and his team now say.

If done properly, this could be a good idea.  The preferential tax treatment of benefits (principally health care) has distorted employee compensation, favoring benefits over wages.  In regards to health care, this has an important undesirable second-order effect.  When a large part of employee compensation can be spent only on health care, employees are encouraged thereby to spend more on health care. Supply and demand then tell us that, consequently, the price of health care and the quantity consumed will increase.

Of course, the new tax on benefits ought to be matched with a tax cut, in order to leave taxes unchanged overall.  This was John McCain’s plan.  Once people adjust to the new incentives, the end result is simply more money in your pocket to spend on whatever you want, rather than only on health care.  Unfortunately, President Obama almost certainly will not do it that way, because (unlike McCain) he sees it as a source of revenue, rather than a way to remove a distortion in the marketplace.

And so Obama’s true hypocrisy is revealed.  McCain never planned a tax increase levied on health-care benefits (attack ads notwithstanding).  Obama is considering exactly that.  Thus, the policy that Senator Obama attacked so effectively never was McCain’s policy, but it has now become Obama’s.

The Wall Street Journal makes a provocative observation:

We’re constantly told that taxes don’t matter to business and investors, but listen to that noted supply-side economist, Alec Baldwin. The actor recently rebuked New York Governor David Paterson for threatening to try to help close the state’s $7 billion budget deficit by canceling a 35% tax credit for films shot in the Big Apple.

“I’m telling you right now,” Mr. Baldwin declared, “if these tax breaks are not reinstated into the budget, film production in this town is going to collapse, and television is going to collapse and it’s all going to go to California.” Well, well. Apparently taxes do matter, at least when it comes to filming “30 Rock” in Manhattan.

(Via Dr. Helen, via Instapundit.)

Heh.  Seriously, though, I doubt anyone needs to strike Mr. Baldwin from their dinner party invitation list.  I’m sure that Baldwin is just looking for preferential treatment for his own industry, not to stimulate the economy in general.

Ronald Rotunda (writing for the Chicago Tribune) notices an unconstitutional provision in the stimulus act.  It seems that if a state governor has the temerity to refuse the stimulus funding, the act gives the state legislature the power to override him.  The federal government most certainly does not have the power to override state constitutions like that.

Alas, the provision will surely be found to be severable, so we can’t realistically hope that this will bring down the entire mess.

(Via Instapundit.)

On January 1, 1995, after two years of Republican filibusters, the New York Times wrote it was time to abolish the filibuster:

The U.S. Senate likes to call itself the world’s greatest deliberative body. The greatest obstructive body is more like it. In the last session of Congress, the Republican minority invoked an endless string of filibusters to frustrate the will of the majority. This relentless abuse of a time-honored Senate tradition so disgusted Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, that he is now willing to forgo easy retribution and drastically limit the filibuster. Hooray for him. . . Now is the perfect moment . . . to get rid of an archaic rule that frustrates democracy and serves no useful purpose.

But, by March 2005, when Democrats were the ones employing the filibuster, the New York Times was able to see a useful purpose after all:

In the past we’ve been frustrated when legislators tried to stop important bills from passing by resorting to the same tactic. The filibuster, which allows 41 senators to delay action indefinitely, is a rough instrument that should be used with caution. But its existence goes to the center of the peculiar but effective form of government America cherishes. . .

While the filibuster has not traditionally been used to stop judicial confirmations, it seems to us this is a matter in which it’s most important that a large minority of senators has a limited right of veto. . .

A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the “nuclear option” in eliminating the power of the filibuster. At the time, we had vivid memories of the difficulty that Senate Republicans had given much of Bill Clinton’s early agenda. But we were still wrong. To see the filibuster fully, it’s obviously a good idea to have to live on both sides of it. We hope acknowledging our own error may remind some wavering Republican senators that someday they, too, will be on the other side and in need of all the protections the Senate rules can provide.

As one of the nation’s least consistent, most partisan papers, it seemed likely that the NYT’s opportunistic rediscovery of the filibuster’s value would disappear once the Republicans began using it again. With Democrats in ascendance, it seemed inevitable that the NYT would rediscover the evil of the filibuster.  It’s only been a matter of time.

Nevertheless, I am a little bit surprised.  I thought that they would wait until the Republicans had actually filibustered something.  Nope. Two weeks ago, the NYT ran two op-ed pieces vilifying the filibuster, and this week the NYT’s editorial page launched its pre-emptive strike on the filibuster.  Moreover, it took a strikingly shrill tone:

When President George W. Bush was stocking the federal courts with conservative ideologues, Senate Republicans threatened to change the august body’s rules if any Democrat dared to try to block his choices, even the least-competent, most-radical ones. Filibustering the president’s nominees, they said, would be an outrageous abuse of senatorial privilege. . .

Now that President Obama is preparing to fill vacancies on federal benches, Republican senators have fired off an intemperate letter threatening — you got it — filibusters if Mr. Obama’s nominees are not to their liking. . .

It is particularly strange to see Senate Republicans raising the specter of filibustering nominees. When Mr. Bush was doing the nominating, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and a former Judiciary Committee chairman, warned Democrats that filibusters “mired the judicial-confirmation process in a political and constitutional crisis that undermines democracy, the judiciary, the Senate, and the Constitution.”

A filibuster can be an appropriate response when it is clear that a particular nominee would be a dangerous addition to the bench. The Republicans’ rush to threaten filibusters in the absence of actual nominees is not only at odds with their previous views on the subject, but shows a lack of respect for the confirmation process.

The NYT is clearly conscious of the danger of making itself a laughingstock if it reverses itself a second time, so it tries to find some nuance.  Filibustering an actual nominee, that’s okay (when he or she would be a “dangerous addition” to the bench), but writing a letter saying that you might filibuster a nominee, that is beyond the pale!

Come again?  If filibustering is okay, how can not-yet-filibustering be wrong?

There is a matter of substance to address here, though.  To try to hide its own hypocrisy, the NYT employs a bit of rhetorical jujitsu.  The Republicans are being hypocritical, they argue, because they used to argue that filibusters were bad, and now they plan to use them. Michael Barone’s first rule (all process arguments are insincere) certainly comes to mind, but I think the GOP can actually offer a good defense.

They key point is that the Democrats prevailed on the filibuster. Republicans argued that what the Democrats were doing was wrong, and tried to put a stop to it, but they failed.  If the GOP had exercised the “nuclear option,” abolishing filibusters of judicial nominees, and then demanded them back, they would be hypocrites of the first order.

But they did not.  Filibusters of judicial appointments were not abolished, and were used extensively.  Republicans need to use them now.  If they do not, they accede to an arrangement in which Democrats block nominees and Republicans do not.  That kind of unilateral disarmament would be fatal to all we hold dear, and it is preposterous for the NYT to suggest that the GOP submit to it.

ASIDE: Something very much like this happened in the debate over term limits.  The term-limits caucus failed to enact them for everyone, but far too many of them decided to impose them on themselves.  As a result, the term-limits caucus is largely gone.  All that are left are the “hypocrites” who decided not to impose term limits unilaterally on themselves.

POSTSCRIPT: Beyond its flagrant hypocrisy, Jonathan Adler points out that the NYT editorial also includes a number of factual distortions. There’s also the topic of blue slips, which I’ll leave for another post.

According to Tapped (a lefty blog), negotiators on the foreclosure bill have agreed that the cramdown provision will apply only to mortgages that exist when the bill is passed, not new mortgages going forward. If true, this has to be taken as tacit acknowledgement that mortgage cramdowns are generally bad policy, that would cause mortgage rates to rise on good credit risks in order to subsidize bad ones.

By limiting cramdowns to existing mortgages, the bill would avoid the effect on interest rates going forward.  Except, that is, to the extent that lenders are not fools.  Lenders will learn not to trust the government; what it does now, it will do again.  Any loan they make will ultimately be subject to cramdown the next time there’s a foreclosure bill.

But the primary effect of the bill is still on existing mortgages, and that’s still where it is truly dangerous.  The banking system is still reeling from the impact of a drop in the value of its loans.  Cramdown would be yet another blow to those assets and to the banking system. To do it right now is the apotheosis of stupidity.

Douglas Shoen (a pollster for Bill Clinton) and Scott Rasmussen write that President Obama is not polling well:

It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama’s high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration. Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true. The American people are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives, and most likely support a different agenda and different policies from those that the Obama administration has advanced.

Polling data show that Mr. Obama’s approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. . . Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president’s performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.

A detailed examination of presidential popularity after 50 days on the job similarly demonstrates a substantial drop in presidential approval relative to other elected presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reason for this decline most likely has to do with doubts about the administration’s policies and their impact on peoples’ lives.

(Via Instapundit.)

They go on to show that he polls even worse on the issues.  No wonder they’re attacking commentators like Limbaugh, Santinelli, and Cramer; they want people’s attention anywhere else.

Megan McArdle is dismayed to learn that she is one of the rubes:

Our sister publication asks analysts whether the administration’s economic forecasts are too optimistic. They would have gotten a more interesting discussion if their query had been “Is the Pope Catholic?” Of course they’re too optimistic. In fact, the word optimistic is too optimistic. A better choice might have been “insane”. Like Greg Mankiw, I would love to find a sucker investor who is willing to take the other end of a bet that both growth and revenue will fall short of the administration’s predictions.

Having defended Obama’s candidacy largely on his economic team, I’m having serious buyer’s remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. . .

The budget numbers are just one more blow to the credibility he worked hard to establish during the election. Back then, people like me handed him kudoes for using numbers that were really much less mendacious than the general run of candidate program promises. Now, he’s building a budget on the promise that this recession will be milder than average, with growth merely dipping to 1.2% this year and returning to trend in 2010. . . He has now raced passed Bush in the Delusional Budget Math olympics.

(Via Instapundit.)

The White House is refusing Freedom of Information Act requests for documents regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, on national-security grounds:

“Please be advised the documents you seek are being withheld in full,” wrote  Carmen Suro-Bredie, chief FOIA officer in the White House’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The national security claim is stunning, given that the treaty negotiations have included the 27 member states of the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand, all of whom presumably have access to the “classified” information.

(Via BoingBoing, via Instapundit.)

How can international treaty negotiations be classified?  I’d really like to hear this one justified.

Anyway, so much for President Obama’s ballyhooed commitment to the Freedom of Information Act.

Another municipality busted.  (Via Instapundit.)

John Hinderaker has some useful perspective on the recession.  What it has most in common with the Great Depression is the effort to exploit it.

The Census Bureau will report to the Secretary of Commerce, as always.  Were they stung by public criticism, or did they notice that the plan was illegal?

Connecticut Democrats are now trying to absolve themselves of responsibility for the bill.

(Previous post.)

Eric Cantor nails it:

Just three weeks after President Obama signed his ‘stimulus’ bill into law, Congressional Democrats are already conceding that it will fail to achieve its objective.  As the Speaker knows, the only reason to craft a second stimulus bill would be if the first one failed. Every Republican in the House voted against the first stimulus bill because we believed that Congress could do better, and we had a plan to achieve that goal. America does not need another massive spending bill, what we need is to create jobs.

(Via the Corner.)

Nancy Pelosi, it seems, needs to travel in style. Not only won’t she demean herself by flying commercial, she won’t even demean herself by flying in just any military aircraft, she insists on the Gulfstream G5. Also, she’s made efforts to keep one on-call for herself every weekend, just in case, at considerable taxpayer expense.  This is according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act request:

• In response to a series of requests for military aircraft, one Defense Department official wrote, “Any chance of politely querying [Pelosi’s team] if they really intend to do all of these or are they just picking every weekend?…[T]here’s no need to block every weekend ‘just in case’…” The email also notes that Pelosi’s office had, “a history of canceling many of their past requests.”
• One DOD official complained about the “hidden costs” associated with the speaker’s last minute changes and cancellations. “We have…folks prepping the jets and crews driving in (not a short drive for some), cooking meals and preflighting the jets etc.”
• The documents also detail correspondence from intermediaries for Speaker Pelosi issuing demands for certain aircraft and expressing outrage when requested military planes were not available. “It is my understanding there are no G5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable…The speaker will want to know where the planes are…” wrote Kay King, Director of the House Office of Interparliamentary Affairs.
• In a separate email, when told a certain type of aircraft would not be available, King writes, “This is not good news, and we will have some very disappointed folks, as well as a very upset [s]peaker.”

The NY Post reports the story here.

(Via Hot Air and Instapundit.)

I expect there will be a gold toilet in the Speaker’s office before long.

Ron Kirk, tax cheat and US Trade Representative nominee, looks likely to be confirmed.  (Via Instapundit.)

ABC reports:

The White House Tuesday evening disclosed that almost three weeks ago the Obama administration granted ethics wavers for two additional officials who had previously worked as lobbyists. On February 20 the administration signed waivers for Jocelyn Frye, former general counsel at the National Partnership for Women & Families, and Cecilia Muñoz, the former senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, allowing them to work on issues for which they lobbied.

These two are in addition to deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn, a former Raytheon lobbyist whose waiver was granted two days after President Obama announced on January 21 what he heralded as the most sweeping ethics rules in American history — ones that would “close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely.”

The UAW has announced that it has agreed to concessions with Ford; GM and Chrysler are still negotiating.  This stuff matters, to be sure, but I think it’s really all a side show.  The deciding factor in whether these companies survive is whether they are able to manufacture good cars.  You don’t have to be a car guy (I’m not) to know that Ford is the only major American car company that’s not building crap.

The latest Consumer Reports has graph of car reliability by make. Starting from the worst, the bottom dozen are:

• Land Rover (Easily the worst on average.)
• Saturn (GM)
• Chrysler (They make the worst cars by far — their range bar sticks off the bottom of the graph — but many of their cars are almost average, moving them up to third-worst overall.)
• Cadillac (GM)
• Dodge (Chrysler)
• Pontiac (GM)
• Jeep (Chrysler)
• Mercedes-Benz
• GMC (GM)
• Volkswagen
• Chevrolet (GM)
• Saab (GM)

It’s not hard to see that the automotive crapulence industry is dominated by Chrysler and GM.  After that there are several foreign companies (Audi, Suzuki, BMW, and Porsche) and then Buick, which is by far the most reliable GM brand, being almost average.  On the other hand, all four Ford brands (Lincoln, Mercury, Volvo, and Ford) are above average.  Ford and Volvo are only barely so, but Lincoln actually beats a few Japanese companies.  Ford did own Land Rover for several years, but unloaded it last year.

POSTSCRIPT: Although Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, BMW, and Porsche score poorly in reliability, they do score well in initial quality (especially Porsche).  The same cannot be said of the other makes in the bottom dozen, all but one of which are GM or Chrysler.  On the other end, the most reliable makes are Scion (Toyota), Acura, Honda, and Toyota.

The latest is with the “urban czar”:

President Obama’s new urban czar renovated his Bronx home with help from the architect on a major development that needed his approval, a Daily News investigation has found.

Adolfo Carrión, who last week left his job as Bronx borough president to be director of the White House Office on Urban Policy, hired the architect to design a renovation of his Victorian two-family on City Island.

Weeks after the architect’s work on Carrión’s house was complete, Carrión approved the architect’s project.

Carrión would not say how much he paid the architect, if anything. He also refused to provide copies of checks for the work.

(Via Instapundit.)

Accepting favors in exchange for official action isn’t just a conflict of interest, it’s bribery.  The Wall Street Journal said it about Christopher Dodd, but it applies here: Rare is the politician who could clear his name overnight and chooses not to.

Well, at least he pays his taxes (as far as we know).

POSTSCRIPT: Why on earth do we need an urban czar when we already have a Secretary of Housing and Urban Development?  Robert Byrd was right when he complained:

“As presidential assistants and advisers, these White House staffers are not accountable for their actions to the Congress, to cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but the president,” Byrd wrote. “They rarely testify before congressional committees, and often shield the information and decision-making process behind the assertion of executive privilege. In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability.”

Had this been a cabinet appointment, Carrión would have required Senate confirmation, and would have been questioned on this.

The Connecticut legislature is considering a bill that would dictate the way the Catholic Church governs itself.  Wow.

UPDATE: After a firestorm of public outcry, the bill has been killed in committee. (Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Rick Hills wonders what they were thinking:

The only interesting question suggested by Bill 1098 is why the CT legislature would propose a bill that would serve only to provide some lucky lawyer with some section 1988 “prevailing party” fees during a lean period for the bar. What, in short, is the political function served by an obviously unconstitutional bill? I see three conceivable explanations: (a) The CT Assembly’s leadership is actually innocent of any familiarity with simple constitutional doctrine — even the sort of doctrine that is so basic that it normally percolates into popular culture — and therefore thinks that this bill is a serious legislative proposal; (b) The CT Assembly’s leadership wants to placate some interest group with an empty gesture by proposing a bill that it knows will go nowhere but Injunctionville after it leaves the state house; or (c) The bill was introduced with the secret support of the Catholic hierarchy as a way of exciting sympathy for Catholics by a show of anti-Catholic demagoguery. Both (a) nor (b) tend to re-enforce Fred Schauer’s jaundiced view of legislatures’ interest in honoring constitutional norms, while (c) seems too kookily conspiratorial for a state legislature.

(Via Volokh.)

As everyone piles on over President Obama’s snubs of British PM Gordon Brown, and the State Department’s statement that no special relationship exists between the US and UK, I thought it would be good to recall this statement by then-Senator Obama last year, saying that the special relationship needs to be adjusted to be fairer to the UK:

Barack Obama has called for the “special relationship” between the US and Britain to be “recalibrated” to make it a fairer, more equal partnership, the Guardian has learned.

Senator Obama, who leads the race to be the Democratic candidate for the US presidency, made the remarks in a telephone address to a fundraising event attended by American expatriates in London.

He has long been seen by British officials as the most anglophile of the three remaining presidential candidates, but these latest comments are his first public suggestion that the relationship is unequal and ripe for change.

“We have a chance to recalibrate the relationship and for the United Kingdom to work with America as a full partner,” Obama told more than 200 American expatriates gathered at the Notting Hill home of Elisabeth Murdoch, the head of Shine television production company and daughter of the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

Oops.  As Glenn Reynolds puts it, “As always with Obama, it’s a question of who the rubes really are.”  I guess that makes the entire UK the latest rubes.  Don’t feel bad, John Bull; you’re in good company.

(Previous post.)

Greyhawk takes a look at some peculiar troop deployments that seem calculated to create the impression of a drawdown in Iraq that is not actually happening.  (Via Instapundit.)

It certainly seems stupid to divert a unit to Afghanistan that’s trained for Iraq, when you’re just going to have to pluck another unit to replace it in the rotation.  It’s hard to see why you wouldn’t just send the first unit where it trained for, and then send the second unit to Afghanistan.  But there’s no way to know if it’s really intended as a deception, or if it’s simple incompetence, or if there’s some hidden reason that it’s actually reasonable.  That’s the sort of question you might expect a responsible press to ask.

President Obama’s job approval rating continues to track those of President Bush (before 9/11).  The latest Rasmussen poll puts Obama’s job approval at 56% positive versus 43% negative.  On March 9-11, 2001, Bush’s job approval was at 58% positive versus 29% negative.

As John Hinderaker points out, Democrats may be overestimating their ability to exploit President Obama’s popularity to push through unpopular policies.

According to the New York Times, President Obama misunderstands the legal status of detainees:

The president went on to say that “we don’t torture” and that “we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining an opportunity through habeas corpus to answer to charges.”

Aides later said Mr. Obama did not mean to suggest that everybody held by American forces would be granted habeas corpus or the right to challenge their detention. In a court filing last month, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration position that 600 prisoners in a cavernous prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to seek their release in court.

Instead, aides said Mr. Obama’s comment referred only to a Supreme Court decision last year finding that prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.

(Via the Corner.)

Ah, it’s good that his aides were available to explain that he didn’t mean what he very clearly said.  Otherwise, you might interpret “anybody that we’re detaining” to mean anybody that we’re detaining.

I’m certain that President Obama is aware of the facts at some level, but this exchange makes clear that they haven’t fully penetrated his thinking.  They don’t come to mind when he is speaking off the cuff. Now that he is president, this kind of semi-informed thinking is dangerous.

I’m glad that President Obama has continued most elements of the Global War on Terror, but this makes you wonder if that’s just because he has not been paying much attention.

UPDATE: More evidence that President Obama has simply not been paying attention.

Todd Zywicki has been warning that the mortgage cramdown provision is extremely dangerous because of the effect it could have on the credit market:

Mortgage modifications during bankruptcy will almost certainly increase the losses of mortgage lenders — and this may further freeze credit markets. The reason is that when mortgage-backed securities were created, they provided no allocation of how losses were to be assessed in the event that Congress would do something inconceivable, such as permitting modification of home mortgages in bankruptcy. According to a Standard & Poor’s study, most mortgage-backed securities provide that bankruptcy losses (at least above a certain initial carve-out) should be assessed pro rata across all tranches of securities holders. Given the likelihood of an explosion of bankruptcy filings and mortgage losses through bankruptcy, these pro rata sharing provisions likely will be triggered. Thus, the holders of the most senior, lowest-risk trances would be assessed losses on the same basis as the most junior, riskiest tranches.

The implications of this are obvious and potentially severe: The uncertainty will exacerbate the already existing uncertainty in the financial system, further freezing credit markets.

But have no fear, Congress is on the case.  If mortgage cramdown would trigger the pro rata sharing provisions in existing securities, simply erase those provisions by legislative fiat!  Never mind that those provisions were an integral part of a privately negotiated contract, they’re now gone  “as such provision shall be contrary to public policy.”  It’s hard to predict what the next domino will be, but whatever it is, surely the government can simply prohibit it from falling as well.

The end result of this will be a lessening of trust in the economy. When people can’t trust contracts to stay the way they were written, commerce becomes riskier.  Interest rates (the premium for risk) go up, suppressing the economy, and some enterprises that would have been narrowly profitable simply won’t happen at all.

The good news, for Democrats, is the negative consequences of their folly will take place over the long-term, continuing long after they are out of power, so they’ll be unlikely to take the blame they deserve.

Yuval Levin notes a troubling, but perhaps predictable development in the politics of stem cells.  For years we’ve been told that we need to support federal funding of research using stem cell lines derived from leftover embryos.  Now that that’s on the verge of happening, it’s suddenly not enough.  Now we’re told we need to fund the destruction of embryos that were specifically created for the purpose.

The Democratic House once again displays its high ethical standards:

The House on Thursday night turned back another call to investigate the PMA Group, a once-powerful lobbying firm whose offices were recently raided by the FBI and which has close ties to Pennsylvania Rep. John P. Murtha (D). 

Twenty-one Democrats, including nine freshmen, voted to proceed with debate on the measure offered by Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake (R) calling for an investigation of the lobbying firm. Most of the Democrats represent fiscally conservative districts.

(Via Instapundit.)

Tim Murphy, incidentally, voted with the Democrats.

Scrappleface reports:

Obama to Drop Shield if Russia Helps with Limbaugh

(2009-03-05) — President Barack Obama has reportedly written another private note to his Russian counterpart offering to halt deployment of a defensive nuclear missile shield in Europe, this time in exchange for Russia’s help in dealing with U.S. talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh.

The White House immediately denied the existence of the letter to President Dmitry Medvedev, but acknowledged “ongoing internal deliberations over a measured response using all the tools of U.S. power, including diplomacy.”

Dealing with Mr. Limbaugh has taken the Obama administration’s focus off of other global trouble spots like North Korea, Iran and Chicago.

The rift between President Obama and Mr. Limbaugh started in October when the radio kingpin said of Mr. Obama “I hope he fails.” Tension escalated when Democrat pollsters discovered that Rush Limbaugh is the only remaining divisive Republican with name recognition higher than 10 percent.

(Via Instapundit.)

Understandably, President Obama wants to blame his predecessor for the horrifying state of the Federal budget.  Two days ago, the President’s chief of staff claimed to have inherited a $1.7 trillion deficit:

“First, this is a $1.7 trillion deficit he inherited. Let’s be clear about that. We inherited this deficit and we inherited $4 trillion of new debt,” Emanuel said. “That is the facts.”

Emanuel is claiming that President Obama’s entire proposed 2009 deficit was inherited from President Bush.  “That is the facts.”  The actual numbers tell a somewhat different story.

Washington operates on a bizarre system in which budgets are projected using a moving baseline.  Budget increases are assumed to take place automatically. (Any budget freeze is therefore a cut.)  The Congressional Budget Office’s official projection (pdf) of the 2009 baseline indicates a $1.19 trillion deficit, up from $455 billion in 2008 (actual).  That was in January.  A week ago, numerous news articles were referring to a $1.3 trillion deficit.  I’m not sure what that’s based on (I’m unable to find any CBO estimates more recent than January 2009), but it’s plausible that the budget picture has worsened $100 billion in the last two months.

The White House, through the Office of Management and Budget, does its own calculations.  The OMB’s own calculation (pdf, page 5) puts the baseline 2009 deficit at $1.51 trillion.  So where is Emanuel getting his 1.7 figure?  That’s the deficit in President Obama’s proposed 2009 budget (pdf, page 2) , or $1.752 trillion to be precise.  Blaming President Bush for automatic spending increases might be fair (that’s how Washington operates), but trying to blame him for President Obama’s budget choices is a bit much.

In fact, for 2009 we have a rare opportunity to compare two budgets. President Bush, after all, submitted a 2009 budget to Congress last year.  The Democratic Congress dropped it on the floor, hoping that a Democrat would win the election and propose a new budget more to their liking.  So how do the two budgets compare?

The 2009 Bush budget proposed a $400 billion deficit, but that was based on revenue estimates calculated before the financial crisis.  The situation now is much worse, but we can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see where the Bush budget would be today, had it been enacted.

Bush’s budget — which the Washington Post called “austere” — proposed $3.1 trillion in spending.  That figure didn’t include full funding for the War on Terror, so we need to adjust it.  Let’s assume that the war in 2009 costs what it did in 2008 (with the Surge over, that’s probably high), so that’s $200 billion where the budget only provides $70 billion.  An extra $130 billion bumps the Bush budget up to about $3.2 trillion.

On the revenue side, we’ll throw out the Bush numbers and start from the latest CBO estimate (pdf) of $2.36 trillion.  The Bush budget included a $146 billion stimulus plan (remember when that seemed big?), and if we assume that it was mostly tax rebates, that cuts revenue to $2.21 trillion.  Subtract revenue from spending, and we get a $1 trillion deficit.  That’s a bit more than half of the $1.75 trillion deficit in the Obama budget.

There’s one more interesting calculation we can perform, which I think best expresses the reckless spending we are rushing into.  That’s the deficit as a percentage of revenue.

The Bush budget proposed spending 15% more than revenue, but our calculation shows that it would have come in closer to 46%.  No one can survive for long, spending half-again their income, and severe adjustments would have been required.

The Obama budget proposes $3.9 trillion in spending against $2.2 trillion in revenue.  That’s a staggering overspending ratio of 80%, without even the justification of a world war.

Supply-side economics works in the other direction too.  (Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: More here.

Now that Kathleen Sebelius has been nominated for HHS Secretary, it seems worthwhile to remember her last appearance in the national limelight, falsely blaming the Iraq War for a shortage of heavy equipment needed for tornado recovery.

Joe Biden, our stimulus czar, has no idea what the Louisiana employment figures say — even whether they are increasing or decreasing — but that won’t stop him from making something up:

Wednesday morning on the CBS Early Show, Vice President Joe Biden asked, “But what I don’t understand from Governor Jindal is what would he do? In Louisiana, there’s 400 people a day losing their jobs. What’s he doing?”

But that claim is wrong if you look at the numbers from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

“In December, Louisiana was the only state in the nation besides the District of Columbia, according to the national press release, that added employment over the month,” said Patty Granier with the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

“The state gained 3,700 jobs for the seasonally adjusted employment,” Granier said of the most recent figures.

Those numbers are available on Louisiana’s employment website, laworks.net.

Also available on the site are the state’s latest unemployment statistics, statistics that appear to directly contradict what the vice president said Wednesday morning.

(Via Instapundit.)

This is starting to remind me of how my pre-schooler tells jokes.  She’ll tell any joke that ever drew a laugh over and over again.  Did you hear the one about the Obama nominee that didn’t pay his/her taxes?

The latest tax evader cum public servant is Ron Kirk, President Obama’s nominee for US Trade Representative:

Former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, who is President Obama’s nominee to be the U.S. Trade Representative, failed to pay almost $10,000 in taxes during the past three years because of a series of mistakes, the Senate Finance Committee announced today.

Kirk’s errors involved honoraria from speeches, on which he should have paid taxes; the cost of sports games, for which he deducted too much; and improper treatment of accounting fees on his income taxes. Kirk has agreed to file amended returns.

(Via Instapundit.)

Here’s the updated scorecard:

• Geithner, Treasury Secretary (confirmed)
• Daschle, HHS Secretary (withdrawn)
• Killefer, “Chief Performance Officer” (withdrawn)
• Solis, Labor Secretary (confirmed)
• Emanuel, Chief of Staff (no confirmation required)
• Kirk, US Trade Representative (still nominated)

UPDATE: Solis has already been confirmed.  I’ve corrected the scorecard.

I trust no one is surprised by this:

The White House on Sunday downplayed massive deficit spending and President Barack Obama’s pledge not to sign legislation laden with billions in earmarks amid Republican criticism that he was recanting on a key campaign promise.

The administration’s top budget official, Peter Orszag, said Obama would sign the $140 billion spending bill despite a campaign pledge that he would reject tailored budget requests that let lawmakers send money to their home states. Orszag said Obama would move ahead and overlook the time-tested tradition that lets officials divert millions at a time to pet projects. . .

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, identified almost 8,600 earmarks totaling $7.7 billion; Democrats say the number is $3.8 billion.

The promise was broken already by the “stimulus” bill, so this is actually the second.

A new Susquehanna poll shows that 66% of Pennsylvania Republicans want a new senator, against just 26% that support Specter.  Specter’s best chance might be to switch parties; Pennsylvania Democrats narrowly support him, by a 49-42 margin.  (Via the Corner.)

The “card check” bill being championed by Democrats in Washington doesn’t just abolish the secret ballot for unionization votes, it also gives government bureaucrats the power to set wages in the absence of a contract.

(Via Kausfiles, via Instapundit.)

Joe Biden is not the one who invented the Internet:

During an interview on CBS’ “Early Show” on Wednesday, Biden told viewers to check out a government-run Web site tracking stimulus spending, but admitted he was embarrassed because he couldn’t remember the site’s “number.”

“You know, I’m embarrassed. Do you know the Web site number?” he asked an aide standing out of view. “I should have it in front of me and I don’t. I’m actually embarrassed.”

Biden, who seemed to indicate that he thought the Internet worked like a giant telephone, sounded an unusually Luddite note inside an administration often heralded for its mastery of the Web.

No doubt someone will try to explain that he was referring to the IP address. . .

President Obama, on Inauguration Day:

We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.

We will restore science to its rightful place.

Now:

President Barack Obama is taking the first step toward blocking a nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain by slashing money for the program in his first budget, according to congressional sources.

(Via the Corner.)

Nuclear power is safe, clean, cost-effective, and (not to put too fine a point on it) actually exists.  If the President were serious about green energy, he would be supporting nuclear power.  Instead we’re getting a cynical political payoff to blatant NIMBYism.

The good news is that Yucca is a long-term project.  It’s not due to open until 2017 as it is, so there’s time for a responsible administration to reverse this decision.

(UPDATE APPENDED.) It never ends.  The latest White House tax problem is with the White House Counsel, Gregory Craig.  Ironically, Craig is the one who was put in charge of vetting nominees after the last round of tax cheats were revealed.  (Via Instapundit.)

We’re starting to need a scorecard now:

• Geithner, Treasury Secretary (confirmed)
• Daschle, HHS Secretary (withdrawn)
• Killefer, “Chief Performance Officer” (withdrawn)
• Solis, Labor Secretary (still nominated)
• Emanuel, Chief of Staff (no confirmation required)
• Craig, White House Counsel (no confirmation required)

UPDATE: Craig’s wife contradicts the story, and Gawker being Gawker, it’s easy to imagine they have this one wrong.  At least until someone else picks up the story, I’ll assume it’s not true.

Nancy Pelosi thinks that responsible people should subsidize deadbeats:

The leader of the U.S. House of Representatives said on Monday lawmakers expect to begin debating legislation this week that would let judges erase some mortgage debt for borrowers who file for bankruptcy.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democratic leaders hope to bring mortgage bankruptcy legislation known as the “cramdown” bill to the House floor on Thursday.

(Via the Corner.)

Interest rates are lower on secured debt (such as mortgages) than unsecured debt (such as credit cards) because secured debt can be recovered by foreclosure even in bankruptcy.  Once mortgage cramdown becomes a reality, the advantage of secured debt goes away.  Consequently, mortgage rates will go up.  The net effect is people who pay their mortgages will subsidize cramdowns for those who don’t.

The idea is even worse for existing mortgages, if that’s possible.  For existing mortgages, the effect is to depress the values of those mortgages.  The financial sector is still reeling from a financial crisis that came about because of a crash in the value of mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.  Damaging those assets further is just about the stupidest possible thing to do.

UPDATE: Mortgage cramdowns could also hurt some of the people they are intended to help (in addition to responsible borrowers, banks, and investors).  The possibility of a cramdown gives banks an incentive to foreclose whenever it suspects a bankruptcy might be coming, even when the banks might otherwise have preferred to be lenient.  It’s a terrible idea all around.

The Telegraph reports:

Members of the European Parliament are earning up to £1 million in profit in just one five-year term in office through expenses and allowances, a leaked report has revealed. . . The internal report into the system of allowances – conducted by Robert Galvin, a European Union internal audit official – was kept secret when it was carried out last year.

But a leaked copy of the 92-page document details the full extent of “corruption, dodgy dealing and poor financial controls” in the European Parliament, according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance. It revealed that some MEPs claimed money for assistants that were neither accredited nor registered with the parliament. . .

Mr Elliott said each MEP could save more than £1 million from their expenses and pension benefits over a five-year term at the European Parliament.

Over five years, each MEP can claim this includes a subsistence allowance of 117,000 Euros, staff allowance of 489,840 Euros, office expenses of 243,120 Euros, travel expenses of 60,000 Euros and an accrued pension of £350,000.

This does not include the MEP salary of £63,291, which is set to increase to £73,584 after the European Parliament elections in June 2009.

There was also widespread failure to comply with tax, company and social security laws. Nearly 80 per cent of transactions that should have been subject to VAT displayed no evidence of either VAT payment or exemption.

(Via Power Line.)

ACORN’s criminal activities are branching out from election fraud to breaking and entering.  With a Baltimore TV news crew in attendance, they “reclaimed” a foreclosed home, which is to say that they broke into the home and put a new lock on it.  That home, as it turns out, had already been resold to someone else, who will be contacting the police.

(Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Arrested.

People often talk about closing the barn door after the cows have escaped.  This is more like issuing the cows a stern admonishment to stay inside, and it will do about as much good:

Invoking his own name-and-shame policy, President Barack Obama warned the nation’s mayors Friday that he will “call them out” if they waste the money from his massive economic stimulus plan. . .

“If a federal agency proposes a project that will waste that money, I will not hesitate to call them out on it, and put a stop to it,” Obama said. 

“But I want everyone here to be on notice that if a local government does the same — I will call them out on it as well, and use the full power of my office and our administration to stop it,” he said.

The government(s) will be wasting the money, you can be sure of that. We’ll see how many times President Obama calls anyone out.  He might find a Republican governor or mayor to scapegoat, but apart from that, I’m guessing zero.

Fox News reports:

President Obama’s transportation department slapped down a suggestion by its own secretary Friday that the government tax motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they burn. 

Secretary Ray LaHood floated the idea in an interview with The Associated Press. . .

Asked about the claim, transportation department spokeswoman Lori Irving immediately shot it down. 

“The policy of taxing motorists based on how many miles they have traveled is not and will not be Obama administration policy,” she said. . .

A tentative plan in Massachusetts to use GPS chips in vehicles to charge motorists by the mile has drawn complaints from drivers who say it’s an Orwellian intrusion by government into the lives of citizens.

This part is amusing, by the way:

Among the reasons for the gap [between tax revenues and highway maintenance costs] is a switch to more fuel-efficient cars and a decrease in driving that many transportation experts believe is related to the economic downturn. Electric cars and alternative-fuel vehicles that don’t use gasoline are expected to start penetrating the market in greater numbers. 

The idea that gas taxes encourage conservation is supposedly one of the main justifications for gas taxes.  Was it never expected to work?

AP reports.  With the endorsement of Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas, this was pretty much a forgone conclusion.  A Likud-Kadima unity government looks unlikely, but we’ll see.  Labor says it is definitely going into opposition.

President Obama’s mortgage relief plan has, once again, the responsible subsidizing the irresponsible:

President Obama yesterday announced his plan to prevent home foreclosures, saying he wanted to be “very clear about what this plan will not do: It will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans . . . And it will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford.” We really do wish he were right. In fact, the details released yesterday suggest the President’s plan will do all of the above.

Anyone with mortgages owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be able to refinance to lower rates if his mortgage is between 80% and 105% of the value of the home. This is a sweet deal that is not available, for example, to many renters looking to buy homes now. Sadly for those who deferred the gratification of homeownership, the 20% down payment has now become industry standard. But at least their taxes will allow other people to stay in homes they can’t afford.

Existing borrowers who may not qualify for Fan/Fred refinancing can still receive loan modifications that move their mortgage payments down to 31% of monthly income. In either case, no effort will be made to verify that recipients of aid were truthful on their original mortgage applications. Given that mortgage fraud skyrocketed during the housing boom, and that the Obama Administration intends to assist up to nine million troubled borrowers, we can say with certainty that the unscrupulous will be among those rescued.

Plus there’s this thought:

“Now that those of us who have been making steady, on-time payments on our mortgages for years will be paying off others’ mortgages through our taxes, can we claim a tax-deduction for our neighbors’ mortgage interest too?”
— Edward G. Stafford, responding to “Dukes of Moral Hazard.”

Encouraging responsible behavior?  Why would the government do that?

(Via Instapundit.)

The “stimulus” bill reveals Hurricane Katrina outrage as mere political theater that has finally outlived its usefulness:

The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there’s not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

And there’s no outrage about it.

Democrats who routinely criticized President George W. Bush for not sending more money to the Gulf Coast appear to be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in his first major spending initiative. Even the Gulf’s fiercest advocates say they’re happy with the stimulus package, and their states have enough money for now to address their needs.

“I’m not saying there won’t be a need in the future, but right now the focus is not on more money, it’s on using what we have,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has criticized Democrats and Republicans alike over Katrina funding.

It’s a significant change in tone from the Bush years, when any perceived slight of Katrina victims was met with charges that the Republican president who bungled the initial response to the disaster continued to callously ignore the Gulf’s needs years later.

Just last summer, Democrats accused Bush of putting Iraq before New Orleans when he sought to block Gulf Coast reconstruction money from a $162 billion war spending bill. . .

[Rep. Bennie] Thompson [D-MS] and others say new funding wasn’t necessary in the stimulus largely because billions of federal dollars remain bogged down in bureaucracy or tied up in planning. As a result, they said, Katrina funding doesn’t fit with the quick-spending purpose of the stimulus bill, which is aimed at kick-starting the economy.

Ironically, Bush made similar arguments in recent years as Gulf advocates latched onto nearly any legislation they could find to pursue reconstruction money. For example, he routinely argued that Katrina funding didn’t belong in war spending bills and that new funding wasn’t urgent because unspent billions were already in the pipeline.

(Via Instapundit.)

The NY Times reports:

As a candidate, Barack Obama courted votes in the Rust Belt by suggesting he might renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact he criticized as not “good for America.”

Now Mr. Obama is about to make his first foreign trip as president to Canada, the United States’ largest trading partner — and he is sounding a strikingly different message.

With Canadians up in arms over “Buy America” provisions in President Obama’s economic recovery package, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper warning the United States not to back away from its international treaty obligations, Mr. Obama, who will make a day trip to Ottawa on Thursday, is no longer emphasizing the idea of reopening Nafta.

Since Obama told a different story to each audience (and on one occasion, dishonestly denied doing so), it was never clear what his policy would be once he actually took office.  I’m glad he’s doing the right thing.

The “stimulus” bill isn’t just about the waste, it’s also about blocking investigations of government wrongdoing:

You’ve heard a lot about the astonishing spending in the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, signed into law this week by President Barack Obama. But you probably haven’t heard about a provision in the bill that threatens to politicize the way allegations of fraud and corruption are investigated — or not investigated — throughout the federal government.

The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who are aware of it. The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House.

In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.” . . .

When Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a longtime champion of inspectors general, read the words “conduct or refrain from conducting,” alarm bells went off. The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the inspector general to go after a tempting political target.

(Via Riehl World View, via Instapundit.)

Sen. Grassley goes on to say that he’s looking into how the provision found its way into the bill; no one will admit to putting it there.

AP:

The Obama administration and the new Congress are quickly handing over to Republicans the same “culture of corruption” issue that Democrats used so effectively against the GOP before coming to power.

Freshman Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., is only the latest embarrassment.

Senate Democrats accepted Burris because they believed what he told them: He was clean. Burris now admits he tried to raise money for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who authorities say sought to sell President Barack Obama’s former Senate seat. . .

The political mess for the Democratic Party, however, isn’t Burris’ conduct alone; it’s the pattern that has developed so quickly over the past few months.

_The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is the subject of a House ethics investigation. It’s partly focused on his fundraising practices for a college center in his name, his ownership financing of a resort property in the Dominican Republic and his financial disclosure reports.

_Federal agents raided two Pennsylvania defense contractors that were provided millions of dollars in federal funding by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

_Blagojevich was arrested Dec. 9 on federal charges, including allegations he schemed to sell the Senate seat to the highest bidder.

_Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, abandoned his bid to become health and human services secretary and the administration’s point man on reforming health care; and Nancy Killefer stepped down from a newly created position charged with eliminating inefficient government programs. Both Daschle and Killefer had tax problems, and Daschle also faced potential conflicts of interest related to working with health care interests.

_Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was confirmed after revealing he had tax troubles.

_Obama’s initial choice for commerce secretary, Bill Richardson, stepped aside due to a grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to his political donors.

_While the Senate voted overwhelmingly to confirm William Lynn as deputy defense secretary, Obama had to waive his ethics regulations to place the former defense lobbyist in charge of day-to-day operations at the Pentagon. . .

Democrats, who’ve been in control of both Congress and the White House less than two months now, are lucky on one point. The next congressional election is nearly two years away.

(Via Instapundit.)

I’m not sure why Dodd didn’t make the list, but nevertheless, the list does seem to be growing each day.

President Obama has come out against reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine:

President Obama opposes any move to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine, a spokesman told FOXNews.com Wednesday. 

The statement is the first definitive stance the administration has taken since an aide told an industry publication last summer that Obama opposes the doctrine — a long-abolished policy that would require broadcasters to provide opposing viewpoints on controversial issues. 

“As the president stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com. 

After his staff recently flirted with the idea, this is welcome news.  Good for him.  However, this isn’t the end of the battle for free speech on the radio, as President Obama has endorsed other, subtler ways to attack talk radio.

The Chicago Tribune:

Let’s see if we have it right: Burris had zero contact with any of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s cronies about his interest in the Senate seat being vacated by President Barack Obama— unless you count that conversation with former chief of staff Lon Monk, and, on further reflection, the ones with insiders John Harris, Doug Scofield and John Wyma and, oh yeah, the governor’s brother and fund-raising chief, Robert Blagojevich. But Burris didn’t raise a single dollar for the now ex-governor as a result of those contacts because that could be construed as a quid pro quo and besides, everyone he asked refused to donate.

The story gets worse with every telling.

Enough. Roland Burris must resign.

The Washington Post:

From the moment that Mr. Burris was selected, he strove to portray himself as a blameless public servant. The sad pictures of Mr. Burris being cast out into the rain by the Democratic leadership of the Senate, which initially refused to seat him, turned public opinion in his favor. Mr. Burris got his seat. But this latest revelation makes a mockery of his professions of no quid pro quo. It is a violation of the public trust. The people of Illinois have suffered enough. Mr. Burris should resign.

(Previous post.)

According to the Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency, if this New York Post column is accurate:

Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board of directors during the time that the government-backed lender lied about its earnings, a leading contributor to the current economic meltdown.

The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out the Freddie Mac board as contributing to the fraud in 2000 and 2001 for “failing in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention.” In other words, board members ignored the red flags waving in their faces.

The SEC later fined Freddie $50 million for its deliberate fraud in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Meanwhile, Emanuel was paid more than $260,000 for his Freddie “service.” Plus, after he resigned from the board to run for Congress in 2002, the troubled agency’s PAC gave his campaign $25,000 – its largest single gift to a House candidate.

(Emphasis mine.) (Via Moe Lane, via Instapundit.)