America’s political, social, and economic system is still by far the most resilient in the world.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, October 30, 2008
After the September financial meltdown, many abroad, and some at home, immediately — and with undisguised glee — blamed America’s problems on cowboy excess and forecast the end of American global influence.
But while those opportunistic critics had a point that reckless Americans had taken on far more debt than they should, the growing global economic downturn may well hurt others far more than the United States.
We got into this mess not because the American political system was flawed or because its free-market system was stagnant. The problem was that after some six years of uninterrupted growth, human greed drove us to demand even more than we had earned.
Republicans let fast-talking Wall Street gurus gamble their firms into oblivion. Democrats allowed politically correct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bureaucrats to siphon off bonuses while guaranteeing loans to millions who had no business taking out a mortgage.
We, the people, ran up credit cards, borrowed for overpriced houses, and drove gas-guzzling cars fueled by high-priced imported fuel. The result was a national-debt flu — but not a depression cancer — that sickened an otherwise healthy host.
Why then would America in recession still be in better shape than others?
First, oil prices are crashing. That will soon save us hundreds of billions in imported-fuel expenses, while denying our overextended enemies — in Russia, as well as in Iran, Venezuela, and others in the OPEC cartel — half of their accustomed cash to cause trouble.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is increasing natural-gas production; is likely to increase drilling offshore; will all but certainly soon build more nuclear-power, wind, and solar plants; and is sitting on the world’s largest coal reserves. A new generation of hybrid, electric, and flex-fuel cars are on the horizon that could even shave off more from our imported-fuel bills.
Second, we are already way ahead of the rest of the world in dealing with toxic debt. Western Europe is discovering that its banks lent more against their reserves than did their American counterparts. European real estate was often more inflated than our own. Bankers in Frankfurt, London, and Paris are looking at trillions of dollars in uncollectible Euro loans throughout Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Most of our toxic debt was at least owed as mortgages by fellow Americans; far more of Europe’s is owed by those outside the European Union.
Even when the United States is reeling from financial panic, foreign investment continues to flow into America; the dollar, meanwhile, is climbing against the Euro. China’s export-driven and Russia’s energy economies are in crisis. They may have hundreds of billions in dollar reserves, but as the world energy and consumer economies slow, both countries lack our institutions, infrastructure, and broad flexibility to easily rebound.
Third, the United States is still growing as the population of Europe shrinks. The populations of Japan and China both age at a faster rate than America’s does. Russia faces the perfect storm of a declining, aging, and increasingly unhealthy population. The result is that America can much more easily grow itself out of a housing glut.
Fourth, the war in Iraq is no longer even a war in a traditional sense. In July, four times as many Americans were murdered in the city of Chicago in peacetime than were killed in Iraq at war in the same period. The cost of deploying American troops in Iraq is nearing the expense to station them elsewhere abroad. As Iraqis continue to take over additional provinces, the American presence will shrink further.
There are also long-term reasons to believe the United States will better weather the current storm. We are a transparent society that blares out problems, affixes blame, and then fights publicly over solutions. Japan’s real estate meltdown of the 1990s took years to correct, given the emphasis on secrecy and shame within Japanese financial circles.
The 50 states of a federal United States — some of them individually among the world’s top 20 economies — are also far better integrated than the 27 countries of the European Union. American banks are subject to uniform national policy and are forced to act in concert. In contrast, British, French, and German lending institutions are often unwilling to bail out other countries, and compete with each other to attract scarce capital in times of crisis.
The United States military remains far stronger — and more battle-hardened — than the rest of the world’s armed forces combined. Rogue nations and terrorists try to take advantage of economic uncertainty, but America remains the best-defended democracy in the world.
The current financial crisis has startled America from a hypnotic trance of self-indulgence and irresponsibility. But as we return to American fundamentals, we may discover that our political, social, and economic system — despite all the current election-cycle hysteria — is still by far the most resilient in the world.
How odd that it took a financial catastrophe to remind us of that.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Redistribution You Can Believe In
American workers should beware the siren song of “the Redistributor.”
By Rich Lowry
Friday, October 31, 2008
The growing cast of characters at McCain rallies includes Joe the Plumber, Tito the Builder and now “Barack the Redistributor.”
John McCain is keying off Barack Obama’s comment to Joe the Plumber about “spreading the wealth around,” and his 2001 rumination in a Chicago Public Radio interview about the Supreme Court “redistributing the wealth.” Cautious even then, Obama didn’t commit himself on whether the Court should force “redistributive change,” but his use of the R-word was enough to make it his moniker at McCain events.
Obama is an exotic bird — a self-described tax-cutter for “95 percent of working Americans,” with a predilection toward socialistic language and concepts. The key to the riddle is the nature of his tax program.
Obama proposes a dog’s breakfast of tax credits, including a $500 refundable work credit that applies even to people who owe no income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service would cut them a $500 check every year. This essentially is a government payment dressed up as a tax cut. It will be partly funded by new taxes on the top 5 percent. So Obama is redistributing wealth, but in an eminently salable way. Call it “redistributive change we can believe in.”
Obama’s plan wouldn’t, like cuts in marginal tax rates, increase the incentive to work, invest or save. In fact, the opposite. As tax credits phase out, they increase marginal tax rates. But for Obama, his plan is a matter of justice rather than economics.
When in a Democratic primary debate Charlie Gibson of ABC News pointed out to Obama that increasing the capital-gains rate in the past has initially reduced revenue, Obama replied that he wanted the increase “for purposes of fairness.”
But how unfair is the American tax system? It’s already steeply progressive. IRS data show that the top 1 percent of filers paid 40 percent of federal income taxes in 2006. The top 5 percent paid 60 percent. The top half paid 97 percent.
According to the congressional Joint Economic Committee, these are the highest tax shares paid by these income groups since 1986. The bottom half of filers, in contrast, pays 3 percent. Millions of these people have an income-tax liability less than zero, because they receive already-existing refundable tax credits.
Obama couches his work credit as relief from the payroll tax funding Social Security. Even here, the system is already redistributive. American Enterprise Institute economist Andrew Biggs points out that low earners get a roughly 4 percent rate of return on their Social Security taxes, while high earners get a 1.5 percent rate. Obama would heighten the disparity, “pushing it closer toward a welfare-program approach.”
None of this means average workers aren’t under stress or that tax credits in themselves are nefarious. Rising health-care costs have eroded wages, and McCain has a well-considered policy — including a tax credit — to help workers cope with these costs. An intelligently crafted increase in the per-child tax credit, meanwhile, would counteract the perverse redistribution of our entitlement system — from households with children to childless adults.
But Obama’s tax program pursues a foolhardy goal — redistribution for its own sake — in an unworkable manner. As Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute has written, between his tax credits and other proposals, Obama is seeking to balance some $4.3 trillion of new spending over the next 10 years on the top 5 percent of earners.
Experience shows that raising taxes on these earners doesn’t produce as much revenue as expected, thanks to what economists call “the elasticity of income” — i.e., people find ways around the Tax Man. Regardless, there’s simply not enough money to be had from “the rich.” This is why socialistic European countries have tax systems arguably less progressive than ours. To fund their extensive welfare states, they must resort not only to onerous income-tax rates, but to high payroll and sales taxes paid by everyone.
American workers should beware the siren song of “the Redistributor.”
By Rich Lowry
Friday, October 31, 2008
The growing cast of characters at McCain rallies includes Joe the Plumber, Tito the Builder and now “Barack the Redistributor.”
John McCain is keying off Barack Obama’s comment to Joe the Plumber about “spreading the wealth around,” and his 2001 rumination in a Chicago Public Radio interview about the Supreme Court “redistributing the wealth.” Cautious even then, Obama didn’t commit himself on whether the Court should force “redistributive change,” but his use of the R-word was enough to make it his moniker at McCain events.
Obama is an exotic bird — a self-described tax-cutter for “95 percent of working Americans,” with a predilection toward socialistic language and concepts. The key to the riddle is the nature of his tax program.
Obama proposes a dog’s breakfast of tax credits, including a $500 refundable work credit that applies even to people who owe no income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service would cut them a $500 check every year. This essentially is a government payment dressed up as a tax cut. It will be partly funded by new taxes on the top 5 percent. So Obama is redistributing wealth, but in an eminently salable way. Call it “redistributive change we can believe in.”
Obama’s plan wouldn’t, like cuts in marginal tax rates, increase the incentive to work, invest or save. In fact, the opposite. As tax credits phase out, they increase marginal tax rates. But for Obama, his plan is a matter of justice rather than economics.
When in a Democratic primary debate Charlie Gibson of ABC News pointed out to Obama that increasing the capital-gains rate in the past has initially reduced revenue, Obama replied that he wanted the increase “for purposes of fairness.”
But how unfair is the American tax system? It’s already steeply progressive. IRS data show that the top 1 percent of filers paid 40 percent of federal income taxes in 2006. The top 5 percent paid 60 percent. The top half paid 97 percent.
According to the congressional Joint Economic Committee, these are the highest tax shares paid by these income groups since 1986. The bottom half of filers, in contrast, pays 3 percent. Millions of these people have an income-tax liability less than zero, because they receive already-existing refundable tax credits.
Obama couches his work credit as relief from the payroll tax funding Social Security. Even here, the system is already redistributive. American Enterprise Institute economist Andrew Biggs points out that low earners get a roughly 4 percent rate of return on their Social Security taxes, while high earners get a 1.5 percent rate. Obama would heighten the disparity, “pushing it closer toward a welfare-program approach.”
None of this means average workers aren’t under stress or that tax credits in themselves are nefarious. Rising health-care costs have eroded wages, and McCain has a well-considered policy — including a tax credit — to help workers cope with these costs. An intelligently crafted increase in the per-child tax credit, meanwhile, would counteract the perverse redistribution of our entitlement system — from households with children to childless adults.
But Obama’s tax program pursues a foolhardy goal — redistribution for its own sake — in an unworkable manner. As Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute has written, between his tax credits and other proposals, Obama is seeking to balance some $4.3 trillion of new spending over the next 10 years on the top 5 percent of earners.
Experience shows that raising taxes on these earners doesn’t produce as much revenue as expected, thanks to what economists call “the elasticity of income” — i.e., people find ways around the Tax Man. Regardless, there’s simply not enough money to be had from “the rich.” This is why socialistic European countries have tax systems arguably less progressive than ours. To fund their extensive welfare states, they must resort not only to onerous income-tax rates, but to high payroll and sales taxes paid by everyone.
American workers should beware the siren song of “the Redistributor.”
Thirty Reasons to Vote for John McCain
John Hawkins
Friday, October 31, 2008
1) John McCain doesn't believe we should raise taxes on anybody during a recession. Obama does and that will prolong our economic woes.
2) John McCain has been endorsed by the NRA. Barack Obama once supported a complete ban on the manufacture and ownership of handguns in America.
3) John McCain co-sponsored a bill to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2005. Had it passed, we wouldn't have had a bailout crisis. Obama took in the 2nd largest amount of money from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. In other words, McCain tried to fix the problem while Obama was in the back pocket of the shady operators who cost the American people over 700 billion dollars.
4) Barney Frank has promised a 25% cut in defense spending if Barack Obama gets into office. John McCain would not support that policy.
5) Both Barack Obama and John McCain publicly pledged to take public financing for their campaigns. McCain kept his word. Obama lied. If he will lie to the American people about that, what else is he lying about?
6) Barack Obama has received hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks, including a million dollar earmark for his wife's hospital. John McCain has never taken an earmark.
7) John McCain's health care plan will make health care more affordable, cover more people, and will keep the market in control. Barack Obama's plan for socialized medicine will put government bureaucrats in charge, will lead to long wait times for operations and lead to a poorer quality of health care. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see how much it costs under Barack Obama when it's "free."
8) Barack Obama says he doesn't want his daughters "punished" with a baby and that abortion is "above my pay grade." Do you think a baby is punishment? Do you think abortion is above Sarah Palin's pay grade?
9) Sarah Palin is a conservative reformer who has taken on oil companies and her own party as a mayor and a governor. Joe Biden is a career Washington insider with no executive experience who's most famous for gaffes, making things up, and being on the wrong side of almost every foreign policy issue from Vietnam to the surge.
10) Barack Obama spent twenty years going to an anti-white, anti-American church run by Jeremiah Wright. He didn't go to that church for so long because he disagreed with the message.
11) John McCain once fought for our country in Vietnam. Barack Obama has never fought for anything but his own career.
12) John McCain has literally had to decide whether to go home from a POW camp or stay and be tortured. He made the right decision. Barack Obama's first tough decision will be made in the White House.
13) John McCain pals around with Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, Sarah Palin, and Phil Gramm. Barack Obama has "pal'd" around with Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, Frank Davis, and Tony Rezko. What does that say about each man's character?
14) John McCain always holds his hand over his heart for the national anthem and has never refused to wear a flag pin after calling it a "substitute for, I think, true patriotism." Do we really want to have the first President in our history who doesn't love his country?
15) For good or ill, John McCain is a moderate, but Barack Obama was the most liberal senator in America in 2007. Do you trust someone that liberal to run the country?
16) When there's an international crisis at 3 A.M. and the phone rings, you can't vote "present."
17) This is what Barack Obama thinks of Americans who live in small towns,
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
How can someone, who thinks so little of people who don't live in big cities, truly represent all Americans in the White House?
18) Do you really want to spend the next four years listening to Barack Obama's supporters cry "racism" every time somebody criticizes or disagrees with him?
19) The mainstream media has been more biased than at any time in our lifetimes for Obama and they've launched an absolutely unprecedented smear campaign against Sarah Palin -- and worse yet, Sarah Palin's family. Do you want to reward and encourage more of that kind of behavior in the future by putting Barack Obama in the White House?
20) Barack Obama is a socialist who wants to "spread the wealth around." John McCain wants to spread the opportunity around instead of making people dependent on government.
21) John McCain has promised no more bailouts. Barack Obama has not.
22) John McCain favors judges who will stick to the Constitution. Barack Obama says he wants judges with "empathy." Would you want an umpire of a baseball game who sticks to the rules or one who has "empathy?"
23) McCain has promised to balance the budget in four years and whether he makes it or not, he will undoubtedly cut spending. Obama will run trillion dollar deficits. You do the math.
24) We have the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world and it is driving our companies overseas. John McCain wants to cut the tax to keep businesses in the U.S. and create jobs. Barack Obama does not.
25) Barack Obama will sign the Union Card Check Bill that will end the right to secret ballots for union members, thereby crippling more American industries via unionization. The unions are destroying the Big 3 automakers and the airline industry -- and under Obama, they'll be a further drag on the American economy. Furthermore, since when do we give up the right to have a secret ballot in America? John McCain opposes the Union Card Check Bill.
26) Barack Obama will sign the Fairness Doctrine into law, which is solely designed to drive conservative radio hosts off the air. When did we start trying to win political contests in this country by preventing our political opponents from being heard? John McCain opposes the Fairness Doctrine.
27) Barack Obama wants to force gay marriage on the whole country via the court system, which is why he favors overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. John McCain thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman, which is why he supports leaving DOMA in place.
28) John McCain favored the surge. Barack Obama did not. So, if Barack Obama had been President over the last four years, we would have already lost the war in Iraq.
29) Barack Obama wants to leave Iraq in 16 months, whether we win or not. John McCain doesn't want to risk seeing the victory our troops have bled and died for thrown away for politics' sake.
30) It would literally be dangerous to the future of our country to have a large Democratic majority in the House, a large majority in the Senate, and Obama in the White House.
Friday, October 31, 2008
1) John McCain doesn't believe we should raise taxes on anybody during a recession. Obama does and that will prolong our economic woes.
2) John McCain has been endorsed by the NRA. Barack Obama once supported a complete ban on the manufacture and ownership of handguns in America.
3) John McCain co-sponsored a bill to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2005. Had it passed, we wouldn't have had a bailout crisis. Obama took in the 2nd largest amount of money from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. In other words, McCain tried to fix the problem while Obama was in the back pocket of the shady operators who cost the American people over 700 billion dollars.
4) Barney Frank has promised a 25% cut in defense spending if Barack Obama gets into office. John McCain would not support that policy.
5) Both Barack Obama and John McCain publicly pledged to take public financing for their campaigns. McCain kept his word. Obama lied. If he will lie to the American people about that, what else is he lying about?
6) Barack Obama has received hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks, including a million dollar earmark for his wife's hospital. John McCain has never taken an earmark.
7) John McCain's health care plan will make health care more affordable, cover more people, and will keep the market in control. Barack Obama's plan for socialized medicine will put government bureaucrats in charge, will lead to long wait times for operations and lead to a poorer quality of health care. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see how much it costs under Barack Obama when it's "free."
8) Barack Obama says he doesn't want his daughters "punished" with a baby and that abortion is "above my pay grade." Do you think a baby is punishment? Do you think abortion is above Sarah Palin's pay grade?
9) Sarah Palin is a conservative reformer who has taken on oil companies and her own party as a mayor and a governor. Joe Biden is a career Washington insider with no executive experience who's most famous for gaffes, making things up, and being on the wrong side of almost every foreign policy issue from Vietnam to the surge.
10) Barack Obama spent twenty years going to an anti-white, anti-American church run by Jeremiah Wright. He didn't go to that church for so long because he disagreed with the message.
11) John McCain once fought for our country in Vietnam. Barack Obama has never fought for anything but his own career.
12) John McCain has literally had to decide whether to go home from a POW camp or stay and be tortured. He made the right decision. Barack Obama's first tough decision will be made in the White House.
13) John McCain pals around with Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, Sarah Palin, and Phil Gramm. Barack Obama has "pal'd" around with Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, Frank Davis, and Tony Rezko. What does that say about each man's character?
14) John McCain always holds his hand over his heart for the national anthem and has never refused to wear a flag pin after calling it a "substitute for, I think, true patriotism." Do we really want to have the first President in our history who doesn't love his country?
15) For good or ill, John McCain is a moderate, but Barack Obama was the most liberal senator in America in 2007. Do you trust someone that liberal to run the country?
16) When there's an international crisis at 3 A.M. and the phone rings, you can't vote "present."
17) This is what Barack Obama thinks of Americans who live in small towns,
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
How can someone, who thinks so little of people who don't live in big cities, truly represent all Americans in the White House?
18) Do you really want to spend the next four years listening to Barack Obama's supporters cry "racism" every time somebody criticizes or disagrees with him?
19) The mainstream media has been more biased than at any time in our lifetimes for Obama and they've launched an absolutely unprecedented smear campaign against Sarah Palin -- and worse yet, Sarah Palin's family. Do you want to reward and encourage more of that kind of behavior in the future by putting Barack Obama in the White House?
20) Barack Obama is a socialist who wants to "spread the wealth around." John McCain wants to spread the opportunity around instead of making people dependent on government.
21) John McCain has promised no more bailouts. Barack Obama has not.
22) John McCain favors judges who will stick to the Constitution. Barack Obama says he wants judges with "empathy." Would you want an umpire of a baseball game who sticks to the rules or one who has "empathy?"
23) McCain has promised to balance the budget in four years and whether he makes it or not, he will undoubtedly cut spending. Obama will run trillion dollar deficits. You do the math.
24) We have the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world and it is driving our companies overseas. John McCain wants to cut the tax to keep businesses in the U.S. and create jobs. Barack Obama does not.
25) Barack Obama will sign the Union Card Check Bill that will end the right to secret ballots for union members, thereby crippling more American industries via unionization. The unions are destroying the Big 3 automakers and the airline industry -- and under Obama, they'll be a further drag on the American economy. Furthermore, since when do we give up the right to have a secret ballot in America? John McCain opposes the Union Card Check Bill.
26) Barack Obama will sign the Fairness Doctrine into law, which is solely designed to drive conservative radio hosts off the air. When did we start trying to win political contests in this country by preventing our political opponents from being heard? John McCain opposes the Fairness Doctrine.
27) Barack Obama wants to force gay marriage on the whole country via the court system, which is why he favors overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. John McCain thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman, which is why he supports leaving DOMA in place.
28) John McCain favored the surge. Barack Obama did not. So, if Barack Obama had been President over the last four years, we would have already lost the war in Iraq.
29) Barack Obama wants to leave Iraq in 16 months, whether we win or not. John McCain doesn't want to risk seeing the victory our troops have bled and died for thrown away for politics' sake.
30) It would literally be dangerous to the future of our country to have a large Democratic majority in the House, a large majority in the Senate, and Obama in the White House.
The Reasons to Vote for McCain
Emmett Tyrrell
Thursday, October 30, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Though I cannot recall ever endorsing a presidential candidate I am going to do so in this column. In this, I am following the lead of the dean of conservative columnists, the excellent Charles Krauthammer. Last week he endorsed Sen. John McCain. Count me for McCain, too.
Our country is at war with terrorists. It faces a grave financial crisis. On both issues McCain is infinitely more experienced than his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama. Perhaps it is because McCain is a retired naval officer and a gentleman, but he remains disappointingly reticent about his personal achievements. Sure, he modestly declares that throughout his adult life he has never flinched from answering his country's call, but there is much more to his life's accomplishment than that. I wish he had allowed his campaign to air more of the videos showing him in that cruel North Vietnamese prison. And there is also footage of his leaping out of a burning fighter on the deck of an aircraft carrier, the back of his flight suit aflame. People who have seen these videos have understood that McCain's commitment to duty is more substantial than the inflated claims of the average campaigning pol.
McCain might have made more of the fact that he rebuilt his broken body after being tortured in prison, defied the pessimistic medical prognostications, and flew combat aircraft again. Then he took command of the Navy's largest air squadron, which he revived to flight readiness. That is an act of executive prowess no one else in this presidential race can claim. Next, he became naval liaison to the Senate and helped rebuild the American military by working with senators on both sides of the aisle. As a congressman and a senator, he has continued this sort of bipartisan reform. Some of the reforms I have opposed, but no other candidate in this race has his record of constructive legislation and leadership.
In the area of national security, he has demonstrated that he knows things that Obama, a novice with but four years on the national stage, can only imagine. McCain knew the surge in Iraq would work, and he had the grit to support it when few would. Once again he was putting his country before his own political ambitions. Nonetheless, McCain is no soft touch for the military. Over the years he has demanded efficiency and economy at the Pentagon and throughout the federal budget. Now in a time of financial crisis he has opted for a proven strategy for economic recovery: low taxes, free trade, and budgetary prudence. Obama's alternatives are the proven recipe for protracted recession. On health care McCain's policies promise expanded coverage with costs under control. Obama's alternative promises the efficiencies of the Post Office, with the citizenry standing in long lines and costs spiraling ever upwards.
McCain then is a true American hero, probably the most heroic to come this close to the presidency. He is a seasoned political leader. He is the model for good citizenship.
Alternatively, there is Obama's record. People who have worked with him tell me he is a decent man. Yet, all he has ever done is run for office, though he has only held two: a seat in the Illinois senate and the U.S. Senate seat he won in 2004. Though he is new to politics, his policies are not as new as he boasts. They are a rerun of the failed Great Society with some latter-day left-wing extravagances thrown in.
That he has not been honest about this is disturbing, and he has established a pattern of deceit in this election that is still more disturbing. His claim that he offers a tax cut for "95 percent" of the citizenry is an obvious deceit. So far as I can ascertain it means sending government checks to some 40 percent of the citizenry who pay no taxes and raising taxes on the rest of us -- yes, tax increases in the midst of recession! More disturbing is that Obama has not been honest about the radical figures he has associated with. William Ayers is an unrepentant left-wing radical who actually bombed government facilities and caused the injury and death of fellow Americans. That is a cold fact. Obama's association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger put him in company with angry anti-American fringe figures, who, were they on the far right, would have ended Obama's political career long ago. Again, he has not been honest about these associations, and McCain -- officer and gentleman that he is -- has not held Obama to account.
Now we hear that there is at least audio of a 2003 dinner held for Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi (a spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization when it was recognized by Washington as a terrorist organization) with Obama in attendance. Reportedly the Illinois state senator was praising Khalidi. Though the audio is being withheld by the Los Angeles Times, Americans ought to hear it before the election. At this dinner speakers allegedly denounced the United States and Israel. By 2003, Khalidi was a neighbor and friend of Obama at the University of Chicago. Again Obama has been deceptive about this dinner and his relationship with this former spokesman for Yasir Arafat.
I actually know a good bit about people such as Ayers, Pfleger, Wright, and now Khalidi. They are the kind of anti-Americans who thrive on the outer fringes of the left. Whether they really hate America as they boast or are just attitudinizing, I do not know. But the consequence of their behavior has endangered this country. By 2003, Obama, green as he is, should have known this. More to the point, he should have been forthright when these friendships were revealed.
At best an Obama presidency would be a return to the Carter years. At worst it would place this country in a condition of peril that we have never experienced in modern times. McCain will protect the country and put it on the road to recovery. He has protected America all his adult life and deserves another tour of service.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Though I cannot recall ever endorsing a presidential candidate I am going to do so in this column. In this, I am following the lead of the dean of conservative columnists, the excellent Charles Krauthammer. Last week he endorsed Sen. John McCain. Count me for McCain, too.
Our country is at war with terrorists. It faces a grave financial crisis. On both issues McCain is infinitely more experienced than his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama. Perhaps it is because McCain is a retired naval officer and a gentleman, but he remains disappointingly reticent about his personal achievements. Sure, he modestly declares that throughout his adult life he has never flinched from answering his country's call, but there is much more to his life's accomplishment than that. I wish he had allowed his campaign to air more of the videos showing him in that cruel North Vietnamese prison. And there is also footage of his leaping out of a burning fighter on the deck of an aircraft carrier, the back of his flight suit aflame. People who have seen these videos have understood that McCain's commitment to duty is more substantial than the inflated claims of the average campaigning pol.
McCain might have made more of the fact that he rebuilt his broken body after being tortured in prison, defied the pessimistic medical prognostications, and flew combat aircraft again. Then he took command of the Navy's largest air squadron, which he revived to flight readiness. That is an act of executive prowess no one else in this presidential race can claim. Next, he became naval liaison to the Senate and helped rebuild the American military by working with senators on both sides of the aisle. As a congressman and a senator, he has continued this sort of bipartisan reform. Some of the reforms I have opposed, but no other candidate in this race has his record of constructive legislation and leadership.
In the area of national security, he has demonstrated that he knows things that Obama, a novice with but four years on the national stage, can only imagine. McCain knew the surge in Iraq would work, and he had the grit to support it when few would. Once again he was putting his country before his own political ambitions. Nonetheless, McCain is no soft touch for the military. Over the years he has demanded efficiency and economy at the Pentagon and throughout the federal budget. Now in a time of financial crisis he has opted for a proven strategy for economic recovery: low taxes, free trade, and budgetary prudence. Obama's alternatives are the proven recipe for protracted recession. On health care McCain's policies promise expanded coverage with costs under control. Obama's alternative promises the efficiencies of the Post Office, with the citizenry standing in long lines and costs spiraling ever upwards.
McCain then is a true American hero, probably the most heroic to come this close to the presidency. He is a seasoned political leader. He is the model for good citizenship.
Alternatively, there is Obama's record. People who have worked with him tell me he is a decent man. Yet, all he has ever done is run for office, though he has only held two: a seat in the Illinois senate and the U.S. Senate seat he won in 2004. Though he is new to politics, his policies are not as new as he boasts. They are a rerun of the failed Great Society with some latter-day left-wing extravagances thrown in.
That he has not been honest about this is disturbing, and he has established a pattern of deceit in this election that is still more disturbing. His claim that he offers a tax cut for "95 percent" of the citizenry is an obvious deceit. So far as I can ascertain it means sending government checks to some 40 percent of the citizenry who pay no taxes and raising taxes on the rest of us -- yes, tax increases in the midst of recession! More disturbing is that Obama has not been honest about the radical figures he has associated with. William Ayers is an unrepentant left-wing radical who actually bombed government facilities and caused the injury and death of fellow Americans. That is a cold fact. Obama's association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger put him in company with angry anti-American fringe figures, who, were they on the far right, would have ended Obama's political career long ago. Again, he has not been honest about these associations, and McCain -- officer and gentleman that he is -- has not held Obama to account.
Now we hear that there is at least audio of a 2003 dinner held for Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi (a spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization when it was recognized by Washington as a terrorist organization) with Obama in attendance. Reportedly the Illinois state senator was praising Khalidi. Though the audio is being withheld by the Los Angeles Times, Americans ought to hear it before the election. At this dinner speakers allegedly denounced the United States and Israel. By 2003, Khalidi was a neighbor and friend of Obama at the University of Chicago. Again Obama has been deceptive about this dinner and his relationship with this former spokesman for Yasir Arafat.
I actually know a good bit about people such as Ayers, Pfleger, Wright, and now Khalidi. They are the kind of anti-Americans who thrive on the outer fringes of the left. Whether they really hate America as they boast or are just attitudinizing, I do not know. But the consequence of their behavior has endangered this country. By 2003, Obama, green as he is, should have known this. More to the point, he should have been forthright when these friendships were revealed.
At best an Obama presidency would be a return to the Carter years. At worst it would place this country in a condition of peril that we have never experienced in modern times. McCain will protect the country and put it on the road to recovery. He has protected America all his adult life and deserves another tour of service.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Why the Left Wants to Change America
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
If you ask most supporters of Sen. Barack Obama why they so fervently want him to be elected president, they will tell you about their deep yearning for "change."
And that, of course, has been the theme of the Obama campaign from its inception -- "change." It is the word found on nearly all the placards at Obama rallies. It is the word most often cited by the candidate himself.
But for all its ubiquity and for all the passion of its advocates, what this change is about is not entirely clear.
Of course, Obama himself often has spoken about the overriding need for change from eight years of President George W. Bush's policies. But this is not what he or most of his supporters really mean when they talk about change. In fact, it cannot be. This is easy to show: All candidates for president run on a platform of change from the party in power. If they don't stand for change, why vote for them?
George W. Bush wanted a change from Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton wanted a change from the first George Bush. And so on back to the first candidate for president to run from a party other than that of the prior president.
If change in policies from those of George W. Bush were all Barack Obama meant by change, "change" would not elicit anywhere near the passion it does. Nor would it be the basis of the depth of his appeal to his left-wing supporters. Surely John Kerry wanted as much of a change from George W. Bush in 2004. Yet he did not run on a platform of "change."
What Barack Obama is tapping into with the word "change" is nearly eight years of the left's constructing a description of an America that has been made so awful that "change" means changing America, not just changing policies.
The truth is that aside from the Iraq war, which is turning out to be quite successful, George W. Bush's policies have not been particularly controversial or even particularly right-wing. But the left has constructed for itself a view of America that, if you subscribe to it, makes radical change imperative.
The left, from The New York Times to MoveOn.org, has led itself and others to believe that:
--George W. Bush lied America into war.
--Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,000 Americans have been killed in a war waged in order to line the pockets of Vice President Dick Cheney's friends.
--The Constitution has been trampled on.
--America has become a torturing country.
--America's poor have become far more numerous and far more downtrodden.
--American troops in Iraq repeatedly have engaged in atrocities against innocent civilians.
--The opportunity for economic self-improvement has ceased for most Americans.
--Racism is endemic to American society.
--Republican rallies are hate-fests.
--John McCain has run a racist campaign against Barack Obama.
--Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, is a religious zealot and an idiot.
--Christian fundamentalists are on the verge of taking over America and turning it into a theocracy.
--The world is getting closer and closer to catastrophic and irreversible damage caused by human beings; and George W. Bush and energy interests are standing in the way of preventing universal destruction.
--America is on the road to fascism.
Now, as it happens, none of those things is true. But the left believes them all. That is why radical "change" becomes mandatory -- or America will collapse (and the world, too, which is why Barack Obama often mentions changing the world, as well as America).
Of course, many Americans who do not consider themselves leftist also will vote for Barack Obama and left-wing Democratic congressional candidates. They do so because they are lifelong Democrats who do not realize how far left their party has strayed and think they still are voting for the party of Truman and JFK; or because they personally benefit from Democratic largesse (e.g., government workers); or because they are active in their unions; or because they have come to believe the media and the Democrats, who have been telling them for almost a decade about how George W. Bush and the Republicans have ruined their country.
But as for the left, it lives in a bubble of its making. That is why most leftists live in places where nearly everyone shares their fantasies -- bubbles such as Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, the west side of Los Angeles, and the most hermetically sealed of the bubbles: universities. They interact almost only with other people who share their fantasy world of America Made Bad.
From Karl Marx to today's Democratic Party, the left everywhere has manufactured villains to slay -- starting with the bourgeoisie and land owners to today's "special interests" (though not, of course, left-wing special interests, such as labor unions, teachers unions and the trial bar), "the rich," drug companies, oil companies, neocons, evangelical Christians and, of course, the myriad racists, sexists, Islamophobes, homophobes and xenophobes.
That's why the left is so passionate about "change." In fact, if I believed America had become what the left believe it has become, I would be, too. But what they believe about America is not true; America remains the greatest country in the world. It needs to be fixed where broken, but not changed. Those who want to change it will make it worse. Perhaps much worse.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
If you ask most supporters of Sen. Barack Obama why they so fervently want him to be elected president, they will tell you about their deep yearning for "change."
And that, of course, has been the theme of the Obama campaign from its inception -- "change." It is the word found on nearly all the placards at Obama rallies. It is the word most often cited by the candidate himself.
But for all its ubiquity and for all the passion of its advocates, what this change is about is not entirely clear.
Of course, Obama himself often has spoken about the overriding need for change from eight years of President George W. Bush's policies. But this is not what he or most of his supporters really mean when they talk about change. In fact, it cannot be. This is easy to show: All candidates for president run on a platform of change from the party in power. If they don't stand for change, why vote for them?
George W. Bush wanted a change from Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton wanted a change from the first George Bush. And so on back to the first candidate for president to run from a party other than that of the prior president.
If change in policies from those of George W. Bush were all Barack Obama meant by change, "change" would not elicit anywhere near the passion it does. Nor would it be the basis of the depth of his appeal to his left-wing supporters. Surely John Kerry wanted as much of a change from George W. Bush in 2004. Yet he did not run on a platform of "change."
What Barack Obama is tapping into with the word "change" is nearly eight years of the left's constructing a description of an America that has been made so awful that "change" means changing America, not just changing policies.
The truth is that aside from the Iraq war, which is turning out to be quite successful, George W. Bush's policies have not been particularly controversial or even particularly right-wing. But the left has constructed for itself a view of America that, if you subscribe to it, makes radical change imperative.
The left, from The New York Times to MoveOn.org, has led itself and others to believe that:
--George W. Bush lied America into war.
--Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,000 Americans have been killed in a war waged in order to line the pockets of Vice President Dick Cheney's friends.
--The Constitution has been trampled on.
--America has become a torturing country.
--America's poor have become far more numerous and far more downtrodden.
--American troops in Iraq repeatedly have engaged in atrocities against innocent civilians.
--The opportunity for economic self-improvement has ceased for most Americans.
--Racism is endemic to American society.
--Republican rallies are hate-fests.
--John McCain has run a racist campaign against Barack Obama.
--Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, is a religious zealot and an idiot.
--Christian fundamentalists are on the verge of taking over America and turning it into a theocracy.
--The world is getting closer and closer to catastrophic and irreversible damage caused by human beings; and George W. Bush and energy interests are standing in the way of preventing universal destruction.
--America is on the road to fascism.
Now, as it happens, none of those things is true. But the left believes them all. That is why radical "change" becomes mandatory -- or America will collapse (and the world, too, which is why Barack Obama often mentions changing the world, as well as America).
Of course, many Americans who do not consider themselves leftist also will vote for Barack Obama and left-wing Democratic congressional candidates. They do so because they are lifelong Democrats who do not realize how far left their party has strayed and think they still are voting for the party of Truman and JFK; or because they personally benefit from Democratic largesse (e.g., government workers); or because they are active in their unions; or because they have come to believe the media and the Democrats, who have been telling them for almost a decade about how George W. Bush and the Republicans have ruined their country.
But as for the left, it lives in a bubble of its making. That is why most leftists live in places where nearly everyone shares their fantasies -- bubbles such as Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, the west side of Los Angeles, and the most hermetically sealed of the bubbles: universities. They interact almost only with other people who share their fantasy world of America Made Bad.
From Karl Marx to today's Democratic Party, the left everywhere has manufactured villains to slay -- starting with the bourgeoisie and land owners to today's "special interests" (though not, of course, left-wing special interests, such as labor unions, teachers unions and the trial bar), "the rich," drug companies, oil companies, neocons, evangelical Christians and, of course, the myriad racists, sexists, Islamophobes, homophobes and xenophobes.
That's why the left is so passionate about "change." In fact, if I believed America had become what the left believe it has become, I would be, too. But what they believe about America is not true; America remains the greatest country in the world. It needs to be fixed where broken, but not changed. Those who want to change it will make it worse. Perhaps much worse.
Obama's Media Landslide
Brent Bozell III
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The election results aren't in yet, but there is one set of surveys with an unmistakeable conclusion. Everyone should be forced to admit that the publicists formerly known as the "news" media have worked themselves to the bone this year to elect Barack Obama.
Polls have found it. The Pew Center for the People and the Press documented a landslide: "By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4."
The Center for Media and Public Affairs found it. Measuring for comments that are either measurably positive or negative -- and dropping out the neutral remarks -- comments about Obama on the three network evening newscasts have been two-thirds positive (65 percent) since the party conventions. Comments about John McCain have been about one-third positive (36 percent) in the same time frame.
The cultural landscape is no different. CMPA also found that the late-night comics launched seven times as many jokes on the Republican ticket than they did the Democrats, perhaps in the knowledge that comedians are going to face an awful backlash from their liberal peers should they utter a single mocking word about the ticket of Hope and Change. Leftist "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart can't be any tougher on Obama than to call him a "hope-ronaut."
Even the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), run by liberal former reporter Tom Rosenstiel, found it. In the last two election cycles, Team Rosenstiel labored mightily to find a shred of evidence to support the theory of a pro-George Bush bias in the press. They weren't going to risk mockery for a flat-earth survey suggesting an anti-Obama tide this year.
They found coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable, and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to one. Nearly six in 10 of the stories studied were decidedly negative in nature (57 percent), while fewer than two in 10 (14 percent) were positive.
Obama's coverage was more balanced, with 36 percent positive in tone, 35 percent neutral and 29 percent negative.
But how can that be? How do you find that 29 percent of Obama mentions are negative? That's why people should put an asterisk on Mr. Rosenstiel's results. Unlike other surveys, PEJ isn't just studying the "news" media, the ones mandated to demonstrate balance and objectivity. PEJ included cable TV talk show hosts from Bill O'Reilly to Keith Olbermann and talk-radio hosts from Rush Limbaugh to Randi Rhodes -- all commentators, mandated to express an opinion.
PEJ's surveys also only included partial samples, looking at two out of four listed newspapers every day, sampling just the first half-hour of network morning shows, rotating NPR and PBS programming, and studying the first half-hour of Limbaugh every other day. That's like painting half a picture instead of a whole one. And still, after all that conservative commentary, it was still a net positive for Obama.
We at the Media Research Center found something else: The media hated McCain's commercials. Between the end of the primaries and Tuesday, network news broadcast 84 stories criticizing McCain ads, while only 32 had a negative tone toward Obama ads. Moreover, McCain was on the receiving end of nearly three times as many stories scolding his supposed negativity (66) as Obama (26).
Any Republican who thought that nominating the more centrist, media-gladhanding McCain would make for an easier road with the press were obviously proven wrong. Even he must acknowledge the fallacy in the belief that the media were "his base," just as Hillary Clinton, whose allegedly invincible carbon footprints still haunt the campaign trail, was forced to conclude. Given the way journalists turned on former favorites McCain and Clinton, is it any surprise that fresh, young, dynamic and conservative Gov. Sarah Palin was greeted by the media the way a school of piranhas greet lunch?
Polls showed the public saw that trend, too. Rasmussen reported that over half of U.S. voters (51 percent) agreed that reporters were trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and just five percent thought reporters were trying to help her.
It wasn't enough for the media that Obama rejected public funding and its attending limits, insuring that Obama's tidal wave of cash sloshed through battleground state TV markets and hammered McCain with a massive advantage in advertising time. The media's utter failure to make the campaign-finance imbalance an issue -- as they certainly would have if the roles were reversed -- only underlined the awesome one-sidedness.
Pundits talk about the "steep uphill climb" the Republicans have faced in this election cycle. But that hill was built with a landslide of media mud.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The election results aren't in yet, but there is one set of surveys with an unmistakeable conclusion. Everyone should be forced to admit that the publicists formerly known as the "news" media have worked themselves to the bone this year to elect Barack Obama.
Polls have found it. The Pew Center for the People and the Press documented a landslide: "By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4."
The Center for Media and Public Affairs found it. Measuring for comments that are either measurably positive or negative -- and dropping out the neutral remarks -- comments about Obama on the three network evening newscasts have been two-thirds positive (65 percent) since the party conventions. Comments about John McCain have been about one-third positive (36 percent) in the same time frame.
The cultural landscape is no different. CMPA also found that the late-night comics launched seven times as many jokes on the Republican ticket than they did the Democrats, perhaps in the knowledge that comedians are going to face an awful backlash from their liberal peers should they utter a single mocking word about the ticket of Hope and Change. Leftist "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart can't be any tougher on Obama than to call him a "hope-ronaut."
Even the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), run by liberal former reporter Tom Rosenstiel, found it. In the last two election cycles, Team Rosenstiel labored mightily to find a shred of evidence to support the theory of a pro-George Bush bias in the press. They weren't going to risk mockery for a flat-earth survey suggesting an anti-Obama tide this year.
They found coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable, and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to one. Nearly six in 10 of the stories studied were decidedly negative in nature (57 percent), while fewer than two in 10 (14 percent) were positive.
Obama's coverage was more balanced, with 36 percent positive in tone, 35 percent neutral and 29 percent negative.
But how can that be? How do you find that 29 percent of Obama mentions are negative? That's why people should put an asterisk on Mr. Rosenstiel's results. Unlike other surveys, PEJ isn't just studying the "news" media, the ones mandated to demonstrate balance and objectivity. PEJ included cable TV talk show hosts from Bill O'Reilly to Keith Olbermann and talk-radio hosts from Rush Limbaugh to Randi Rhodes -- all commentators, mandated to express an opinion.
PEJ's surveys also only included partial samples, looking at two out of four listed newspapers every day, sampling just the first half-hour of network morning shows, rotating NPR and PBS programming, and studying the first half-hour of Limbaugh every other day. That's like painting half a picture instead of a whole one. And still, after all that conservative commentary, it was still a net positive for Obama.
We at the Media Research Center found something else: The media hated McCain's commercials. Between the end of the primaries and Tuesday, network news broadcast 84 stories criticizing McCain ads, while only 32 had a negative tone toward Obama ads. Moreover, McCain was on the receiving end of nearly three times as many stories scolding his supposed negativity (66) as Obama (26).
Any Republican who thought that nominating the more centrist, media-gladhanding McCain would make for an easier road with the press were obviously proven wrong. Even he must acknowledge the fallacy in the belief that the media were "his base," just as Hillary Clinton, whose allegedly invincible carbon footprints still haunt the campaign trail, was forced to conclude. Given the way journalists turned on former favorites McCain and Clinton, is it any surprise that fresh, young, dynamic and conservative Gov. Sarah Palin was greeted by the media the way a school of piranhas greet lunch?
Polls showed the public saw that trend, too. Rasmussen reported that over half of U.S. voters (51 percent) agreed that reporters were trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and just five percent thought reporters were trying to help her.
It wasn't enough for the media that Obama rejected public funding and its attending limits, insuring that Obama's tidal wave of cash sloshed through battleground state TV markets and hammered McCain with a massive advantage in advertising time. The media's utter failure to make the campaign-finance imbalance an issue -- as they certainly would have if the roles were reversed -- only underlined the awesome one-sidedness.
Pundits talk about the "steep uphill climb" the Republicans have faced in this election cycle. But that hill was built with a landslide of media mud.
Obama's Not "New"
Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
There's an old saying: The oldest word in American politics is "new." Only in that sense is there anything new to Barack Obama.
Obama prefers the word "progressive" to "liberal" because it makes it sound like he's shedding old liberal ideas. But if he is, it's only to embrace older ones.
America first encountered the vision Obama espouses under Woodrow Wilson, the first progressive president and the first to openly disparage the U.S. Constitution as a hindrance to enlightened government. His new idea was to replace it with a "living constitution" that empowered government to evolve beyond that document's constraints. The Bill of Rights, lamented the progressives, inhibited what the government can do to people, but it failed to delineate what it must do for people.
The old conception of individualism needed to be replaced by a new system in which the citizen would "marry his interests to the state," in Wilson's words. This would allow the state to fulfill the progressive pledge to "spread the prosperity around." Obama shares Wilson's faith in a living constitution and has argued that Supreme Court judges should be confirmed based on their empathy for the downtrodden.
In a vital essay in the current Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler notes that Obama mentions Franklin Roosevelt in his book, "The Audacity of Hope," more times than any living Democratic politician. That's not surprising, given that FDR -- a veteran of the Wilson administration -- carried the progressive vision of government much further than Wilson himself.
In 1944, FDR proposed updating the Bill of Rights with a new "economic bill of rights" that would define freedom not as liberty from government intrusion but as the possession of goodies provided by government. "Necessitous men are not free men," FDR proclaimed. It's a statement Obama surely agrees with; his advisor, Cass Sunstein, wrote a book saying FDR's "second bill of rights" should become the defining principle of American politics.
Wilson, Roosevelt and now Obama -- all their ideas sprung forth from the work of John Dewey, the most important liberal philosopher of the 20th century. Dewey held that "natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology," and that "organized social control" via a "socialized economy" was the only means to create "free" individuals. Dewey proposed that statism be taught as a kind of civic religion in our schools so that Americans could be raised to see the government as the solution to all of our problems.
Dewey lives on in the education reform ideas espoused by former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, often invokes Dewey when justifying his own dream of indoctrinating public school students in "social justice." Obama doesn't condone Ayers' '70s-era bombings, but he certainly subscribes to Ayers' educational vision. In fact, Ayers' educational work is the primary defense for the candidate's association with an unrepentant terrorist.
Much has been made of Obama's comment to "Joe the Plumber" that things are better when we "spread the wealth around." The Obama campaign has rebuffed charges of "socialism" or "radicalism" with the usual eye-rolling.
But Obama's words that day in Ohio were consistent with his past statements.
A just-unearthed 2001 interview with Obama on Chicago public radio reveals as much. Then a law school instructor and state legislator, Obama offered an eloquent indictment of the Warren Court for not being radical enough. While the court rightly gave blacks traditional rights, argued Obama, "the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth." Unfortunately, according to Obama, "it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."
Officially, Obama says he is not advocating single-payer health care. That would seem too un-moderate. But in 2003, Obama told the AFL-CIO, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. ... But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
Note: If Obama wins next week, all three of his preconditions will have been met, and his colleagues in the House and Senate are itching like junkies for a new New Deal. Only in a country of amnesiacs could one claim that socialized medicine is a "new idea."
Blowing away the dust and cobwebs from ancient wares doesn't make them new. Save for his skin color, Obama doesn't represent anything novel. Rather, he symbolizes a return to an older vision of the United States that was seen as the "wave of the future" eight decades ago.
I for one have no desire to go back to that future.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
There's an old saying: The oldest word in American politics is "new." Only in that sense is there anything new to Barack Obama.
Obama prefers the word "progressive" to "liberal" because it makes it sound like he's shedding old liberal ideas. But if he is, it's only to embrace older ones.
America first encountered the vision Obama espouses under Woodrow Wilson, the first progressive president and the first to openly disparage the U.S. Constitution as a hindrance to enlightened government. His new idea was to replace it with a "living constitution" that empowered government to evolve beyond that document's constraints. The Bill of Rights, lamented the progressives, inhibited what the government can do to people, but it failed to delineate what it must do for people.
The old conception of individualism needed to be replaced by a new system in which the citizen would "marry his interests to the state," in Wilson's words. This would allow the state to fulfill the progressive pledge to "spread the prosperity around." Obama shares Wilson's faith in a living constitution and has argued that Supreme Court judges should be confirmed based on their empathy for the downtrodden.
In a vital essay in the current Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler notes that Obama mentions Franklin Roosevelt in his book, "The Audacity of Hope," more times than any living Democratic politician. That's not surprising, given that FDR -- a veteran of the Wilson administration -- carried the progressive vision of government much further than Wilson himself.
In 1944, FDR proposed updating the Bill of Rights with a new "economic bill of rights" that would define freedom not as liberty from government intrusion but as the possession of goodies provided by government. "Necessitous men are not free men," FDR proclaimed. It's a statement Obama surely agrees with; his advisor, Cass Sunstein, wrote a book saying FDR's "second bill of rights" should become the defining principle of American politics.
Wilson, Roosevelt and now Obama -- all their ideas sprung forth from the work of John Dewey, the most important liberal philosopher of the 20th century. Dewey held that "natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology," and that "organized social control" via a "socialized economy" was the only means to create "free" individuals. Dewey proposed that statism be taught as a kind of civic religion in our schools so that Americans could be raised to see the government as the solution to all of our problems.
Dewey lives on in the education reform ideas espoused by former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, often invokes Dewey when justifying his own dream of indoctrinating public school students in "social justice." Obama doesn't condone Ayers' '70s-era bombings, but he certainly subscribes to Ayers' educational vision. In fact, Ayers' educational work is the primary defense for the candidate's association with an unrepentant terrorist.
Much has been made of Obama's comment to "Joe the Plumber" that things are better when we "spread the wealth around." The Obama campaign has rebuffed charges of "socialism" or "radicalism" with the usual eye-rolling.
But Obama's words that day in Ohio were consistent with his past statements.
A just-unearthed 2001 interview with Obama on Chicago public radio reveals as much. Then a law school instructor and state legislator, Obama offered an eloquent indictment of the Warren Court for not being radical enough. While the court rightly gave blacks traditional rights, argued Obama, "the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth." Unfortunately, according to Obama, "it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."
Officially, Obama says he is not advocating single-payer health care. That would seem too un-moderate. But in 2003, Obama told the AFL-CIO, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. ... But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
Note: If Obama wins next week, all three of his preconditions will have been met, and his colleagues in the House and Senate are itching like junkies for a new New Deal. Only in a country of amnesiacs could one claim that socialized medicine is a "new idea."
Blowing away the dust and cobwebs from ancient wares doesn't make them new. Save for his skin color, Obama doesn't represent anything novel. Rather, he symbolizes a return to an older vision of the United States that was seen as the "wave of the future" eight decades ago.
I for one have no desire to go back to that future.
Bias Is as Bias Does
Rich Galen
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Long time readers know that I have a high - very high - regard for professional reporters. Print reporters, especially, are underpaid and overworked. They are generally bad dressers (with the exception of Newsweek's Howard Fineman) but generally good people. I enjoy their company and a few apparently enjoy mine.
It is dogma in Republican and Conservative circles to abhor all reporters and all of their reports because, we know, they are biased against Republicans and Conservatives.
This has become such an issue during the current campaign that the newspaper Polico's editor-in-chief, John Harris and executive editor, Jim VandeHei wrote an analysis of the problem in yesterday's on-line edition.
Both Harris and VandeHei are first rate reporters. They quote a Pew study showing that
"John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.
"What's more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain - and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent)."
Not only that, but they cite their own (admittedly unscientific) study that McCain is not going to be the choice at the polls for most reporters: "Based on a combined 35 years in the news business we'd take an educated guess - nothing so scientific as a Pew study - that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election."
Then there is the issue of McCain's choice of Sarah Palin. She is the Governor of the State of Alaska which is far, far away from Washington, DC and thus an unknown to the national press corps which dines, dances and drinks with Washington-based politicians.
Harris and VandeHei dismiss reportorial bias on ideological grounds out of hand, although they provide this to dispute their own conclusion: "McCain's decision to limit media access and align himself with the GOP conservative base was an entirely routine, strategic move for a presidential candidate. But much of the coverage has portrayed this as though it were an unconscionable sellout."
If reporters are saying bad things about the McCain campaign because he has tilted to the right (although H & V properly point out that most of McCain's issue stands for most of his public career have been smack in the middle of Conservative dogma) then isn't that bias based on ideology?
There's more. H & V point out a bias toward momentum. If reporters believe Obama's campaign is going better than McCain's then they write that and, because they read each other's stuff, they report that other reporters are saying the same thing.
Harris and VandeHei say that reporters have a love of palace intrigue and internal turmoil. The Obama campaign has virtually no leaks - a trait they properly compare to the two George W. Bush campaigns which will probably cause an angry e-mail or two from the Obama camp.
Every reporter in the history of reporters has skated by simply taking a call from someone who says something ugly about someone else, then calling that someone else and telling him or her what the first person said.
You write down what the second person says in his or her own defense - and if you're at all good at this you get him to say something equally ugly about the first person. You call person A and report on what person B said about them and you can go through a full week filing thousands of words while doing no real reporting.
Where was I? Oh, yes, the non-bias of the modern political press corps.
The final point in all this is the bias toward assuming anything negative about Obama or his campaign carries "an out-of-bounds racial subtext. That's why," they write "Obama's long association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was basically a nonissue in the general election."
In the end, however, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush suffered from the same biases and they, collectively, won four Presidential elections.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Long time readers know that I have a high - very high - regard for professional reporters. Print reporters, especially, are underpaid and overworked. They are generally bad dressers (with the exception of Newsweek's Howard Fineman) but generally good people. I enjoy their company and a few apparently enjoy mine.
It is dogma in Republican and Conservative circles to abhor all reporters and all of their reports because, we know, they are biased against Republicans and Conservatives.
This has become such an issue during the current campaign that the newspaper Polico's editor-in-chief, John Harris and executive editor, Jim VandeHei wrote an analysis of the problem in yesterday's on-line edition.
Both Harris and VandeHei are first rate reporters. They quote a Pew study showing that
"John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.
"What's more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain - and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent)."
Not only that, but they cite their own (admittedly unscientific) study that McCain is not going to be the choice at the polls for most reporters: "Based on a combined 35 years in the news business we'd take an educated guess - nothing so scientific as a Pew study - that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election."
Then there is the issue of McCain's choice of Sarah Palin. She is the Governor of the State of Alaska which is far, far away from Washington, DC and thus an unknown to the national press corps which dines, dances and drinks with Washington-based politicians.
Harris and VandeHei dismiss reportorial bias on ideological grounds out of hand, although they provide this to dispute their own conclusion: "McCain's decision to limit media access and align himself with the GOP conservative base was an entirely routine, strategic move for a presidential candidate. But much of the coverage has portrayed this as though it were an unconscionable sellout."
If reporters are saying bad things about the McCain campaign because he has tilted to the right (although H & V properly point out that most of McCain's issue stands for most of his public career have been smack in the middle of Conservative dogma) then isn't that bias based on ideology?
There's more. H & V point out a bias toward momentum. If reporters believe Obama's campaign is going better than McCain's then they write that and, because they read each other's stuff, they report that other reporters are saying the same thing.
Harris and VandeHei say that reporters have a love of palace intrigue and internal turmoil. The Obama campaign has virtually no leaks - a trait they properly compare to the two George W. Bush campaigns which will probably cause an angry e-mail or two from the Obama camp.
Every reporter in the history of reporters has skated by simply taking a call from someone who says something ugly about someone else, then calling that someone else and telling him or her what the first person said.
You write down what the second person says in his or her own defense - and if you're at all good at this you get him to say something equally ugly about the first person. You call person A and report on what person B said about them and you can go through a full week filing thousands of words while doing no real reporting.
Where was I? Oh, yes, the non-bias of the modern political press corps.
The final point in all this is the bias toward assuming anything negative about Obama or his campaign carries "an out-of-bounds racial subtext. That's why," they write "Obama's long association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was basically a nonissue in the general election."
In the end, however, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush suffered from the same biases and they, collectively, won four Presidential elections.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Why America’s Best Option for President is John McCain
Terry Paulson
Sunday, October 26, 2008
If you or others you know still have doubts on Obama’s readiness to lead, here are reasons to make Senator John McCain your choice for president:
In one word—Trust! His ‘Straight Talk Express” is more than a slogan. He promised to join Obama in taking public funds; only McCain kept his promise. When Senator Biden talks of our enemies testing a President Obama’s strength, we know past enemies have already tested McCain as a POW. He passed with flying colors. You can trust McCain to do what he believes is right for the country-- “I’d rather lose an election than lose a war!” He has the maturity, integrity and proven character that only experience can affirm.
With the world facing the worst economic challenge in decades, McCain’s plan to reduce corporate taxes will keep more companies here, encourage economic growth and generate more American jobs. Only Hoover and Carter increased taxes as a cure for a bad economy; it made matters worse. While Obama wants to transfer wealth from the very Americans who fund capital investment and economic growth, McCain promises to keep the Bush tax cuts that helped our economy and jobs rebound after 9/11. McCain pledges to keep taxes low on all and raise them on none.
McCain’s energy independence plan is an “all of the above” plan—Drill and Diversify Now! It’s a call for action—he’d free states to allow off-shore exploration and drilling, encourage more clean-coal, speed processing and approval for more nuclear energy plants and refineries, and incentivize without subsidizing alternative energy innovation. That means jobs and a change you can believe in.
McCain complains, “Government has grown by 60 percent in the last eight years. That is simply inexcusable.” He promises to reclaim “our good name as the party of spending restraint.” He’s promised a “top-to-bottom” review of federal spending and promised to veto any bill that earmarks money to pet projects of members of Congress. In addition to eliminating government waste, he wants government to shrink, not grow.
In a dangerous world where we finally have the extremists on the run in Iraq and the Iraqi leaders beginning to make progress, John McCain’s vision for peace through victory makes room for a strong, necessary commitment and the flexibility to adjust strategy as needed! McCain remains the president most Americans would want called at 3 AM to deal with an international crisis!
McCain is a proven maverick who has put America first in taking on his own party leadership. While the Congressional Quarterly's Voting Studies indicate that he voted with Bush as much as 95% in 2007, he voted as low as 77 percent in 2005. Americans have seen his independence in action; he’s no Bush clone.
McCain does more than talk about being a “uniter:” He has delivered—McCain-Feingold on campaign finance, McCain-Lieberman on Global Warming, and the McCain-Edwards-Kennedy Patient Bill of Rights. Bill Clinton said this of John McCain, “He loves his country every bit as much as we do. As a Senator, he has shown his independence of right-wing orthodoxy on some very important issues.”
McCain is a proven reformer committed to taking on corruption wherever it appears. In 2005, while Obama was collecting contributions from PAC groups and leaders associated Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, McCain co-sponsored legislation that called for more scrutiny and controls. McCain has promised investigations into business executives and Washington insiders who profited while citizens and investors took the fall.
To McCain, Americans don’t need renegotiated trade agreements or protection from competition; they just need freedom to compete in a free-trade, global economy! Americans can out-invent and out-perform anyone in a fair global competition. Obama’s plan to renegotiate NAFTA and increase tariffs will only increase our economic difficulties; McCain supports our longstanding commitment to free enterprise!
If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until it’s managed by the government. McCain’s plan for healthcare takes the responsibility and choices away from the government and employers and gives it to every American adding portable policies they own, tax credits and saving account options.
He’s also promised to pick Supreme Court Justices in line with Roberts and Alito. That same wisdom is shown in his bold selection of his kindred spirit, Governor Sarah Palin as VP. Palin brings her dynamic presence, her passion for reform, and her energy and executive experience onto his administrative team!
Finally, instead fueling class envy and using the government to “spread the wealth around,” McCain believes in “equal rights” and equal opportunity. His optimism is based on his trust in you, American citizens, not bigger government. He’s committed to preserving the “American Dream” based on personal freedom and individual responsibility no matter what a person’s race, gender or age. Instead of glamorizing the victimhood of the “middle class,” he supports enabling, celebrating and learning from true achievement to make all Americans more successful! McCain trusts us. Now, it’s our turn to trust him to lead.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
If you or others you know still have doubts on Obama’s readiness to lead, here are reasons to make Senator John McCain your choice for president:
In one word—Trust! His ‘Straight Talk Express” is more than a slogan. He promised to join Obama in taking public funds; only McCain kept his promise. When Senator Biden talks of our enemies testing a President Obama’s strength, we know past enemies have already tested McCain as a POW. He passed with flying colors. You can trust McCain to do what he believes is right for the country-- “I’d rather lose an election than lose a war!” He has the maturity, integrity and proven character that only experience can affirm.
With the world facing the worst economic challenge in decades, McCain’s plan to reduce corporate taxes will keep more companies here, encourage economic growth and generate more American jobs. Only Hoover and Carter increased taxes as a cure for a bad economy; it made matters worse. While Obama wants to transfer wealth from the very Americans who fund capital investment and economic growth, McCain promises to keep the Bush tax cuts that helped our economy and jobs rebound after 9/11. McCain pledges to keep taxes low on all and raise them on none.
McCain’s energy independence plan is an “all of the above” plan—Drill and Diversify Now! It’s a call for action—he’d free states to allow off-shore exploration and drilling, encourage more clean-coal, speed processing and approval for more nuclear energy plants and refineries, and incentivize without subsidizing alternative energy innovation. That means jobs and a change you can believe in.
McCain complains, “Government has grown by 60 percent in the last eight years. That is simply inexcusable.” He promises to reclaim “our good name as the party of spending restraint.” He’s promised a “top-to-bottom” review of federal spending and promised to veto any bill that earmarks money to pet projects of members of Congress. In addition to eliminating government waste, he wants government to shrink, not grow.
In a dangerous world where we finally have the extremists on the run in Iraq and the Iraqi leaders beginning to make progress, John McCain’s vision for peace through victory makes room for a strong, necessary commitment and the flexibility to adjust strategy as needed! McCain remains the president most Americans would want called at 3 AM to deal with an international crisis!
McCain is a proven maverick who has put America first in taking on his own party leadership. While the Congressional Quarterly's Voting Studies indicate that he voted with Bush as much as 95% in 2007, he voted as low as 77 percent in 2005. Americans have seen his independence in action; he’s no Bush clone.
McCain does more than talk about being a “uniter:” He has delivered—McCain-Feingold on campaign finance, McCain-Lieberman on Global Warming, and the McCain-Edwards-Kennedy Patient Bill of Rights. Bill Clinton said this of John McCain, “He loves his country every bit as much as we do. As a Senator, he has shown his independence of right-wing orthodoxy on some very important issues.”
McCain is a proven reformer committed to taking on corruption wherever it appears. In 2005, while Obama was collecting contributions from PAC groups and leaders associated Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, McCain co-sponsored legislation that called for more scrutiny and controls. McCain has promised investigations into business executives and Washington insiders who profited while citizens and investors took the fall.
To McCain, Americans don’t need renegotiated trade agreements or protection from competition; they just need freedom to compete in a free-trade, global economy! Americans can out-invent and out-perform anyone in a fair global competition. Obama’s plan to renegotiate NAFTA and increase tariffs will only increase our economic difficulties; McCain supports our longstanding commitment to free enterprise!
If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until it’s managed by the government. McCain’s plan for healthcare takes the responsibility and choices away from the government and employers and gives it to every American adding portable policies they own, tax credits and saving account options.
He’s also promised to pick Supreme Court Justices in line with Roberts and Alito. That same wisdom is shown in his bold selection of his kindred spirit, Governor Sarah Palin as VP. Palin brings her dynamic presence, her passion for reform, and her energy and executive experience onto his administrative team!
Finally, instead fueling class envy and using the government to “spread the wealth around,” McCain believes in “equal rights” and equal opportunity. His optimism is based on his trust in you, American citizens, not bigger government. He’s committed to preserving the “American Dream” based on personal freedom and individual responsibility no matter what a person’s race, gender or age. Instead of glamorizing the victimhood of the “middle class,” he supports enabling, celebrating and learning from true achievement to make all Americans more successful! McCain trusts us. Now, it’s our turn to trust him to lead.
More Unsolved Mysteries
Burt Prelutsky
Monday, October 27, 2008
When it comes to books and movies, I am a big fan of mysteries. For one thing, I like the use of logic, perseverance and moral clarity, to come up with solutions. There is great comfort in knowing that even the cleverest, most evil, ne’er-do-well will eventually meet his match and get his comeuppance, thanks to the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Wallander, Sam Spade, Lew Archer and Lincoln Rhyme.
In real life, however, I am not nearly so partial to mysteries. Too often, the crimes go unsolved and the perpetrators go unpunished. But not all mysteries involve jewel thefts and murders. For instance, I have long wondered why, if God only created woman after Adam complained he didn’t have a date for Saturday night, God included reproductive organs in His original design.
These days, I am perplexed in a similarly frustrating fashion by the rapture induced by Barack Obama. I know for a fact that not every single Democrat is an ignoramus, that not every last liberal has the emotional instability of a giddy teenage girl in the presence of a rock star, and that not all left-wingers actually believe that the junior senator is a messiah who will make the blind see and the lame dance a jig. For that matter, I’m certain they realize he will not bring the dead to life, although his disciples in ACORN will try to make sure they get to vote.
All that being said, why the heck do millions of Americans carry on the way they do? Why is it, to take an obvious example, that only Republicans make fun of Chris Matthews when he announces that Obama sends a tingle up his leg? That’s far more embarrassing than anything Sarah Palin has said. Plus, the man has a lisp, so he’s made to order to be ridiculed on Saturday Night Live, as are Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, Al Franken, Rosie O’Donnell and Joe (Hair Plugs) Biden.
Why is it that people who should know better -- adults, I’m talking about, not the kids being indoctrinated on college campuses by tenured Communists and former terrorists -- are falling for Obama’s call for class warfare? Why are so many Americans so eager to accept that corporations are the enemy when corporations not only provide employment, but pay dividends to tens of millions of middle-class Americans either directly or through their pension funds? Why are the same folks who are waging war on corporate America so reluctant to utter even an unkind word about Islamic terrorism?
I realize that a lot of people get upset when CEOs get paid a ton of a money, particularly when it comes in the form of a golden parachute. But why don’t they get equally upset when a movie actor who’s generally a liberal gets paid $20 million to star in a movie that tanks? Do you think Sean Penn gave back the millions he received for “All the King’s Men” or that George Clooney tore up his check when “Leatherheads” went straight to video?
Liberals have even stooped to cheap scare tactics. They keep insisting that there will be riots in the streets if Obama loses the election. Well, as we all know, hooligans have rioted for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes, it’s because a hometown basketball team has lost a championship game, but sometimes it’s because the team has won. If I have to choose, I’d prefer a post-election riot of anger and frustration to one of joy and jubilation.
Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is why anyone would want more money and more power in the hands of the federal government, which is really the basis of Obama’s campaign.
Recently, a reader sent me an e-mail which read: “Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada because of tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze.”
Actually, it’s a joke. The IRS did in fact seize the joint following the conviction of the bordello’s manager and the parent company in a fraud and racketeering case, but they simply closed it down.
That’s the federal government for you. They won’t run a brothel for a profit, but they’ll gladly screw the American taxpayer just for the heck of it.
Monday, October 27, 2008
When it comes to books and movies, I am a big fan of mysteries. For one thing, I like the use of logic, perseverance and moral clarity, to come up with solutions. There is great comfort in knowing that even the cleverest, most evil, ne’er-do-well will eventually meet his match and get his comeuppance, thanks to the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Wallander, Sam Spade, Lew Archer and Lincoln Rhyme.
In real life, however, I am not nearly so partial to mysteries. Too often, the crimes go unsolved and the perpetrators go unpunished. But not all mysteries involve jewel thefts and murders. For instance, I have long wondered why, if God only created woman after Adam complained he didn’t have a date for Saturday night, God included reproductive organs in His original design.
These days, I am perplexed in a similarly frustrating fashion by the rapture induced by Barack Obama. I know for a fact that not every single Democrat is an ignoramus, that not every last liberal has the emotional instability of a giddy teenage girl in the presence of a rock star, and that not all left-wingers actually believe that the junior senator is a messiah who will make the blind see and the lame dance a jig. For that matter, I’m certain they realize he will not bring the dead to life, although his disciples in ACORN will try to make sure they get to vote.
All that being said, why the heck do millions of Americans carry on the way they do? Why is it, to take an obvious example, that only Republicans make fun of Chris Matthews when he announces that Obama sends a tingle up his leg? That’s far more embarrassing than anything Sarah Palin has said. Plus, the man has a lisp, so he’s made to order to be ridiculed on Saturday Night Live, as are Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, Al Franken, Rosie O’Donnell and Joe (Hair Plugs) Biden.
Why is it that people who should know better -- adults, I’m talking about, not the kids being indoctrinated on college campuses by tenured Communists and former terrorists -- are falling for Obama’s call for class warfare? Why are so many Americans so eager to accept that corporations are the enemy when corporations not only provide employment, but pay dividends to tens of millions of middle-class Americans either directly or through their pension funds? Why are the same folks who are waging war on corporate America so reluctant to utter even an unkind word about Islamic terrorism?
I realize that a lot of people get upset when CEOs get paid a ton of a money, particularly when it comes in the form of a golden parachute. But why don’t they get equally upset when a movie actor who’s generally a liberal gets paid $20 million to star in a movie that tanks? Do you think Sean Penn gave back the millions he received for “All the King’s Men” or that George Clooney tore up his check when “Leatherheads” went straight to video?
Liberals have even stooped to cheap scare tactics. They keep insisting that there will be riots in the streets if Obama loses the election. Well, as we all know, hooligans have rioted for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes, it’s because a hometown basketball team has lost a championship game, but sometimes it’s because the team has won. If I have to choose, I’d prefer a post-election riot of anger and frustration to one of joy and jubilation.
Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is why anyone would want more money and more power in the hands of the federal government, which is really the basis of Obama’s campaign.
Recently, a reader sent me an e-mail which read: “Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada because of tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze.”
Actually, it’s a joke. The IRS did in fact seize the joint following the conviction of the bordello’s manager and the parent company in a fraud and racketeering case, but they simply closed it down.
That’s the federal government for you. They won’t run a brothel for a profit, but they’ll gladly screw the American taxpayer just for the heck of it.
Freedom of Choice in Health Care
George Will
Monday, October 27, 2008
WASHINGTON -- On Election Day, Arizonans can give the nation the gift of a good example. They can enact a measure that could shape the health care debate that will arrest or accelerate the nation's slide into statism. Proposition 101, "The Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act," would put the following language into Arizona's Constitution:
"Because all people should have the right to make decisions about their health care, no law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type. No law shall interfere with a person's or entity's right to pay directly for lawful medical services, nor shall any law impose a penalty or fine, of any type, for choosing to obtain or decline health care coverage or for participation in any particular health care system or plan."
What do those people favor who oppose Proposition 101? Some support legislation sponsored by the Democratic leader in the state House of Representatives. It would establish a severe single-payer system, proscribing private health insurance in the state and requiring almost everyone not on Medicare to enroll in a state health care program. Under that program, a state commission would stipulate the menu of services and medications, and could even decide which hospitals could add which technologies.
A similar bill reached the desk of California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vetoed it, partly because it lacked a funding mechanism. Such legislation essentially aims to replicate Canada's system, under which, generally speaking, medically necessary physician and hospital services are available only from the government health insurance system.
Opponents of Proposition 101 are against what it would guarantee, including the right of individuals to pay directly for medical services without needing the permission of a third party. Proposition 101 would emancipate service providers from requirements that they either charge fees set by the state, or charge nothing.
Proposition 101 would prevent employer or individual mandates of the sort imposed in Massachusetts. That is, it would prevent "pay or play" systems, under which employers must either pay for employees' health insurance or pay into a state pool that finances insurance for them.
In the name of cost control, but actually in the service of self-serving crony semi-capitalism, some opponents of Proposition 101 want to restrict access to alternative services. These opponents include some government bureaucrats who run Arizona's Medicaid system, and some hospitals, established health insurers and physicians groups who understand that it is easier to lobby for government contracts than it is to persuade individuals to purchase this or that product.
Proposition 101 would protect Arizonans not only against abridgements of their liberties by their state government, but also perhaps against comparable actions by the federal government. Clint Bolick, director of the Goldwater Institute's Center for Constitutional Litigation, believes that if Washington were to enact a national health insurance program of prescriptive regulations, Proposition 101 would trigger an epochal constitutional clash "between state sovereignty and national power."
In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court said: "The Constitution established a system of 'dual sovereignty.' ... It is an essential attribute of the states' retained sovereignty that they remain independent and autonomous within their proper sphere of authority." Therefore, says Bolick, any national health insurance scheme would be vulnerable to constitutional challenge because it would impermissibly command actions by state officials. Furthermore, Bolick says: "It is a bedrock principle of constitutional law that the federal Constitution established the floor for the protection of individual liberties; state constitutions may provide additional protections."
Now, Proposition 101's language leaves ample room for litigation about what would constitute an impermissible abridgment of an individual's right to "make decisions" about health care. Still, if Arizonans pass Proposition 101, residents of other states will have a template for resistance to contemporary liberalism's next lunge toward its unvarying goal -- enlargement of government supervision of our lives.
Proposition 101's premise is: "The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production" and "there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally." So The New York Times was told in August by Barack Obama who, no stickler for consistency, said in 2003, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan." As an earlier occupant of the Senate seat Obama occupies -- Everett Dirksen -- said: "I live by my principles, and one of my principles is flexibility."
Monday, October 27, 2008
WASHINGTON -- On Election Day, Arizonans can give the nation the gift of a good example. They can enact a measure that could shape the health care debate that will arrest or accelerate the nation's slide into statism. Proposition 101, "The Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act," would put the following language into Arizona's Constitution:
"Because all people should have the right to make decisions about their health care, no law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type. No law shall interfere with a person's or entity's right to pay directly for lawful medical services, nor shall any law impose a penalty or fine, of any type, for choosing to obtain or decline health care coverage or for participation in any particular health care system or plan."
What do those people favor who oppose Proposition 101? Some support legislation sponsored by the Democratic leader in the state House of Representatives. It would establish a severe single-payer system, proscribing private health insurance in the state and requiring almost everyone not on Medicare to enroll in a state health care program. Under that program, a state commission would stipulate the menu of services and medications, and could even decide which hospitals could add which technologies.
A similar bill reached the desk of California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vetoed it, partly because it lacked a funding mechanism. Such legislation essentially aims to replicate Canada's system, under which, generally speaking, medically necessary physician and hospital services are available only from the government health insurance system.
Opponents of Proposition 101 are against what it would guarantee, including the right of individuals to pay directly for medical services without needing the permission of a third party. Proposition 101 would emancipate service providers from requirements that they either charge fees set by the state, or charge nothing.
Proposition 101 would prevent employer or individual mandates of the sort imposed in Massachusetts. That is, it would prevent "pay or play" systems, under which employers must either pay for employees' health insurance or pay into a state pool that finances insurance for them.
In the name of cost control, but actually in the service of self-serving crony semi-capitalism, some opponents of Proposition 101 want to restrict access to alternative services. These opponents include some government bureaucrats who run Arizona's Medicaid system, and some hospitals, established health insurers and physicians groups who understand that it is easier to lobby for government contracts than it is to persuade individuals to purchase this or that product.
Proposition 101 would protect Arizonans not only against abridgements of their liberties by their state government, but also perhaps against comparable actions by the federal government. Clint Bolick, director of the Goldwater Institute's Center for Constitutional Litigation, believes that if Washington were to enact a national health insurance program of prescriptive regulations, Proposition 101 would trigger an epochal constitutional clash "between state sovereignty and national power."
In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court said: "The Constitution established a system of 'dual sovereignty.' ... It is an essential attribute of the states' retained sovereignty that they remain independent and autonomous within their proper sphere of authority." Therefore, says Bolick, any national health insurance scheme would be vulnerable to constitutional challenge because it would impermissibly command actions by state officials. Furthermore, Bolick says: "It is a bedrock principle of constitutional law that the federal Constitution established the floor for the protection of individual liberties; state constitutions may provide additional protections."
Now, Proposition 101's language leaves ample room for litigation about what would constitute an impermissible abridgment of an individual's right to "make decisions" about health care. Still, if Arizonans pass Proposition 101, residents of other states will have a template for resistance to contemporary liberalism's next lunge toward its unvarying goal -- enlargement of government supervision of our lives.
Proposition 101's premise is: "The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production" and "there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally." So The New York Times was told in August by Barack Obama who, no stickler for consistency, said in 2003, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan." As an earlier occupant of the Senate seat Obama occupies -- Everett Dirksen -- said: "I live by my principles, and one of my principles is flexibility."
Obama and "The Left"
Thomas Sowell
Monday, October 27, 2008
Although Senator Barack Obama has been allied with a succession of far left individuals over the years, that is only half the story. There are, after all, some honest and decent people on the left. But these have not been the ones that Obama has been allied with-- allied, not merely "associated" with.
ACORN is not just an organization on the left. In addition to the voter frauds that ACORN has been involved in over the years, it is an organization with a history of thuggery, including going to bankers' homes to harass them and their families, in order to force banks to lend to people with low credit ratings.
Nor was Barack Obama's relationship with ACORN just a matter of once being their attorney long ago. More recently, he has directed hundreds of thousands of dollars their way. Money talks-- and what it says is more important than a politician's rhetoric in an election year.
Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions. They are reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort-- and both are recipients of money from Obama.
Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist, who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools-- an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed.
Nor has the help all been one way. During the last debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, Senator McCain mentioned that Senator Obama's political campaign began in Bill Ayers' home. Obama immediately denied it and McCain had no real follow-up.
It was not this year's political campaign that Obama began in Bill Ayers' home but an earlier campaign for the Illinois state legislature. Barack Obama can match Bill Clinton in slickness at parsing words to evade accusations.
That is one way to get to the White House. But slickness with words is not going to help a president deal with either domestic economic crises or the looming dangers of a nuclear Iran.
People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute "the real issues" that we should be talking about, instead of Obama's track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.
Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.
Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called "real issues."
A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone.
If Ronald Reagan had attempted to run for President of the United States as a liberal, the media would have been all over him. His support for Barry Goldwater would have been in the headlines and in editorial denunciations across the country.
No way would he have been able to get away with using soothing words to suggest that he and Barry Goldwater were like ships that passed in the night.
If Barack Obama had run as what he has always been, rather than as what he has never been, then we could simply cast our votes based on whether or not we agree with what he has always stood for.
Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is "pragmatic" rather than ideological.
But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.
Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Although Senator Barack Obama has been allied with a succession of far left individuals over the years, that is only half the story. There are, after all, some honest and decent people on the left. But these have not been the ones that Obama has been allied with-- allied, not merely "associated" with.
ACORN is not just an organization on the left. In addition to the voter frauds that ACORN has been involved in over the years, it is an organization with a history of thuggery, including going to bankers' homes to harass them and their families, in order to force banks to lend to people with low credit ratings.
Nor was Barack Obama's relationship with ACORN just a matter of once being their attorney long ago. More recently, he has directed hundreds of thousands of dollars their way. Money talks-- and what it says is more important than a politician's rhetoric in an election year.
Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions. They are reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort-- and both are recipients of money from Obama.
Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist, who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools-- an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed.
Nor has the help all been one way. During the last debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, Senator McCain mentioned that Senator Obama's political campaign began in Bill Ayers' home. Obama immediately denied it and McCain had no real follow-up.
It was not this year's political campaign that Obama began in Bill Ayers' home but an earlier campaign for the Illinois state legislature. Barack Obama can match Bill Clinton in slickness at parsing words to evade accusations.
That is one way to get to the White House. But slickness with words is not going to help a president deal with either domestic economic crises or the looming dangers of a nuclear Iran.
People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute "the real issues" that we should be talking about, instead of Obama's track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.
Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.
Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called "real issues."
A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone.
If Ronald Reagan had attempted to run for President of the United States as a liberal, the media would have been all over him. His support for Barry Goldwater would have been in the headlines and in editorial denunciations across the country.
No way would he have been able to get away with using soothing words to suggest that he and Barry Goldwater were like ships that passed in the night.
If Barack Obama had run as what he has always been, rather than as what he has never been, then we could simply cast our votes based on whether or not we agree with what he has always stood for.
Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is "pragmatic" rather than ideological.
But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.
Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
An Open Letter to Black Obama Supporters
Kevin McCullough
Sunday, October 26, 2008
As a man who has fathered a son whose skin is darker than the average African American, and has mild special needs on top that, I am guided in this election by more than just economics, security, and the right of all innocent human beings to life. This election I am burdened deeply by the manipulation of race, the impact of social justice, and the absolute disparity and reproach that an Obama administration would have in store for the African American families of this nation. Understanding this to be the case:
To Black Obama supporters across America,
The election of 2008 is tightening. Those who have followed it since it began over two years ago knew this was coming. Neither candidate will win by a Reagan-esque landslide, regardless of how much the nation's media has rooted for one side. America remains strongly divided over two different philosophical centers, and while neither is perfect--not even ideal, one will have a dramatically worse effect on black homes, black families, black churches, and black communities. And it is you--America's most historically ill-treated--who will suffer most.
Under the Obama administration there will be a calculated effort to reduce the already low number of jobs in most urban centers.
He has been promising it from the beginning. He's just been untruthful in its total effect. He has claimed that he will tax "big business" and "CEO's" in his speeches. But in the fine print of his policy proposal he is threatening to shut down your local grocer, force lay-offs in your business enterprises and head start areas of commerce. Perhaps no one has explained how--so allow me.
Businesses never pay taxes. (It's impossible to make them do so.)
When Mr. Obama wishes to tax the prosperous middle class Barber Shop on the near South Side of Chicago that barely eeked across the finish line with revenues at $265,000 for the year, it will not be the owner of that shop who pays Obama's tax. The one who will pay the biggest cost will be the newest barber on the team. The owner was happy to be able to give that new kid a chance in 2007. There was much pride in him having the chair closest to the window. But because the owner must now spend nearly 45% of his revenue in payment to the Obama administration, he will no longer be able to pay that young man his $20,000 a year base pay and tips.
But cutting jobs won't get the owner of this barber shop down to what he still owes the Obama administration. So now, there must be new revenue generated, which means that this barber will have to increase his prices in the economically depressed area that have been coming to him for decades for their styles. Thus the tax load is not really shouldered by the business. It never is. Businesses do not pay taxes. And in business it's the customer and the worker that pays for all of them.
Under the Obama administration there will also be a calculated effort to create greater poverty.
In two previous notably liberal administrations, socialist ideas were entertained: Bloat government to it's largest degree and cause people to become dependent upon it for their livelihood. Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt the longest lasting experiment with Socialism was instituted. Social Security has now become what people think of as a stream of money flowing from the government. Perhaps in Urban America you know a number of people who get Social Security benefits who aren't even retired (which is what it was originally intended for) or disabled, or even in legitimate need of it. Every check of Social Security that goes to an undeserving recipient plunges Black America into deeper poverty. Since my son is both African American and special needs I've seen some of those abuses up close.
But the result of both the FDR "Great Society" and Lyndon Baines Johnson's "War on Poverty" were both identical. Within a decade, those living off the government were doing worse, and those who had broken free from the government dependency were prospering.
No society has ever taken taxes from one group of its workers, and unjustly given them to those who were not working, and ended up assisting the overall growth of that nation's wealth--especially for the poor and middle class. There is only one way to grow wealth in America: equal education, hiring practices, and social justice for all. To remain dependent upon government to pay your bills, cover your food and rent, and to "take care of" your family is dehumanizing, degrading, and causes shame to the one accepting it. Which is why, the two different times I have been laid off from my jobs, I was then and always will be, highly motivated to work, earn, and grow my way out of economic downturns. There is nothing to be ashamed of in accepting help. There is everything to feel guilty about in living off of it indefinitely.
Lastly - under the Obama administration there is already an effort underway to reshape the values you hold dear.
Black America is not pro-abortion. I know this. In many ways your personal belief that life is sacred is more devout than many "white" sectors of society. Unfortunately, the rest of America doesn't understand this because your "civil rights leaders" of recent years have made deals with devils to keep the racist operation of Planned Parenthood active in your inner city communities where your daughters are now ending seven out of every ten pregnancies with abortion.
Black America do you not know, have you not heard that your ethnic group is the only segment of the population in the United States that is shrinking in number? It has been exactly the policies of Senator Obama and the back-room deals they have brokered with Planned Parenthood that have caused this travesty.
I also know that Black America is especially opposed to "partial birth" abortion, where a baby is sliced, mauled, and mashed at the point of delivery. Yet Senator Obama has been this procedure's biggest advocate in votes in the Illinois Senate and in the United States Senate.
But let's put those forms of death aside. Senator Obama even advocates the allowing of discrimination and starvation of an especially vulnerable class of people: disabled children who were aborted, but had the audacity to survive the procedure! You see, as the father of a black special needs son, I can't tell you all the ways this hardened pragmatism towards the death of children horrifies me...
And lastly, under an Obama administration black churches would be silenced under new laws to ban the preaching of scripture--especially as it relates to sexual purity. His administration and those who support him have already made clear their intention to censor air-waves of anything they find disagreeable. They have also promised to train their fire on pastors, churches, and Christians who believe the full gospel.
My friends, brothers, and fellow citizens in Black America: Barack Obama seeks office to institute radical policies that will make you fiscally, emotionally, and spiritually impoverished for generations to come. And while his stump speech has been rhetorically impressive, it has not dealt honestly with you as to his true intentions. And in the end if Obama is elected, he may very well be the most negative influence upon the totality of the Black American community this nation has ever seen.
This country IS ready for a president of any race. But race alone is not nearly a good enough reason to put into office a man who will enjoy overwhelming, veto-proof power to change the entire landscape of everything you hope for and dream of.
Hoping you choose well on November 4th,
Kevin McCullough
Sunday, October 26, 2008
As a man who has fathered a son whose skin is darker than the average African American, and has mild special needs on top that, I am guided in this election by more than just economics, security, and the right of all innocent human beings to life. This election I am burdened deeply by the manipulation of race, the impact of social justice, and the absolute disparity and reproach that an Obama administration would have in store for the African American families of this nation. Understanding this to be the case:
To Black Obama supporters across America,
The election of 2008 is tightening. Those who have followed it since it began over two years ago knew this was coming. Neither candidate will win by a Reagan-esque landslide, regardless of how much the nation's media has rooted for one side. America remains strongly divided over two different philosophical centers, and while neither is perfect--not even ideal, one will have a dramatically worse effect on black homes, black families, black churches, and black communities. And it is you--America's most historically ill-treated--who will suffer most.
Under the Obama administration there will be a calculated effort to reduce the already low number of jobs in most urban centers.
He has been promising it from the beginning. He's just been untruthful in its total effect. He has claimed that he will tax "big business" and "CEO's" in his speeches. But in the fine print of his policy proposal he is threatening to shut down your local grocer, force lay-offs in your business enterprises and head start areas of commerce. Perhaps no one has explained how--so allow me.
Businesses never pay taxes. (It's impossible to make them do so.)
When Mr. Obama wishes to tax the prosperous middle class Barber Shop on the near South Side of Chicago that barely eeked across the finish line with revenues at $265,000 for the year, it will not be the owner of that shop who pays Obama's tax. The one who will pay the biggest cost will be the newest barber on the team. The owner was happy to be able to give that new kid a chance in 2007. There was much pride in him having the chair closest to the window. But because the owner must now spend nearly 45% of his revenue in payment to the Obama administration, he will no longer be able to pay that young man his $20,000 a year base pay and tips.
But cutting jobs won't get the owner of this barber shop down to what he still owes the Obama administration. So now, there must be new revenue generated, which means that this barber will have to increase his prices in the economically depressed area that have been coming to him for decades for their styles. Thus the tax load is not really shouldered by the business. It never is. Businesses do not pay taxes. And in business it's the customer and the worker that pays for all of them.
Under the Obama administration there will also be a calculated effort to create greater poverty.
In two previous notably liberal administrations, socialist ideas were entertained: Bloat government to it's largest degree and cause people to become dependent upon it for their livelihood. Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt the longest lasting experiment with Socialism was instituted. Social Security has now become what people think of as a stream of money flowing from the government. Perhaps in Urban America you know a number of people who get Social Security benefits who aren't even retired (which is what it was originally intended for) or disabled, or even in legitimate need of it. Every check of Social Security that goes to an undeserving recipient plunges Black America into deeper poverty. Since my son is both African American and special needs I've seen some of those abuses up close.
But the result of both the FDR "Great Society" and Lyndon Baines Johnson's "War on Poverty" were both identical. Within a decade, those living off the government were doing worse, and those who had broken free from the government dependency were prospering.
No society has ever taken taxes from one group of its workers, and unjustly given them to those who were not working, and ended up assisting the overall growth of that nation's wealth--especially for the poor and middle class. There is only one way to grow wealth in America: equal education, hiring practices, and social justice for all. To remain dependent upon government to pay your bills, cover your food and rent, and to "take care of" your family is dehumanizing, degrading, and causes shame to the one accepting it. Which is why, the two different times I have been laid off from my jobs, I was then and always will be, highly motivated to work, earn, and grow my way out of economic downturns. There is nothing to be ashamed of in accepting help. There is everything to feel guilty about in living off of it indefinitely.
Lastly - under the Obama administration there is already an effort underway to reshape the values you hold dear.
Black America is not pro-abortion. I know this. In many ways your personal belief that life is sacred is more devout than many "white" sectors of society. Unfortunately, the rest of America doesn't understand this because your "civil rights leaders" of recent years have made deals with devils to keep the racist operation of Planned Parenthood active in your inner city communities where your daughters are now ending seven out of every ten pregnancies with abortion.
Black America do you not know, have you not heard that your ethnic group is the only segment of the population in the United States that is shrinking in number? It has been exactly the policies of Senator Obama and the back-room deals they have brokered with Planned Parenthood that have caused this travesty.
I also know that Black America is especially opposed to "partial birth" abortion, where a baby is sliced, mauled, and mashed at the point of delivery. Yet Senator Obama has been this procedure's biggest advocate in votes in the Illinois Senate and in the United States Senate.
But let's put those forms of death aside. Senator Obama even advocates the allowing of discrimination and starvation of an especially vulnerable class of people: disabled children who were aborted, but had the audacity to survive the procedure! You see, as the father of a black special needs son, I can't tell you all the ways this hardened pragmatism towards the death of children horrifies me...
And lastly, under an Obama administration black churches would be silenced under new laws to ban the preaching of scripture--especially as it relates to sexual purity. His administration and those who support him have already made clear their intention to censor air-waves of anything they find disagreeable. They have also promised to train their fire on pastors, churches, and Christians who believe the full gospel.
My friends, brothers, and fellow citizens in Black America: Barack Obama seeks office to institute radical policies that will make you fiscally, emotionally, and spiritually impoverished for generations to come. And while his stump speech has been rhetorically impressive, it has not dealt honestly with you as to his true intentions. And in the end if Obama is elected, he may very well be the most negative influence upon the totality of the Black American community this nation has ever seen.
This country IS ready for a president of any race. But race alone is not nearly a good enough reason to put into office a man who will enjoy overwhelming, veto-proof power to change the entire landscape of everything you hope for and dream of.
Hoping you choose well on November 4th,
Kevin McCullough
Obamanomics Abhors the Free Market
David Limbaugh
Friday, October 24, 2008
For Obama Kool-Aid guzzlers who believe Joe the Plumber was a premeditated Republican plant to trap Obama into admitting his communist inclinations (even though Obama approached Joe, not the other way around), I refer you to Obama's history of similar utterances in favor of soaking the rich.
In June, Obama said he'd designed his tax and spending policies to deal, in part, with the challenge of our "winner-take-all" economy, where the gains from economic growth skew heavily toward the wealthy. "A strong government hand," he said, "is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably." He said he'd seen "no evidence" that tax cuts, particularly on business, spurred growth, calling the idea "flawed economics." He must be unfamiliar with the Kennedy, Reagan and George W. Bush years, pre-financial crisis.
In April 2005, Obama mocked President Bush's reference to an "ownership society," where "each of us are on our own, managing risks and returns in the free marketplace." When asked how "the government should help us share the risks of the new economy and reap greater rewards from the new economy," Obama replied, "Well, right now what we're seeing is the average American is reaping all the risks and not many of the rewards."
In September 2006, Obama agreed with a questioner that "there needs to be an increased focus on the common good, directing more energy and resources toward improving the income and standard of living of Americans who are not in upper-income brackets." Obama added, "I think the problem is that they've got a different idea of America than the idea that we've got." You think?
In March 2007, Obama said Bush wants government to have no role in ensuring that America is prosperous for all people and not just some. The "term for it (is) 'social Darwinism' -- every man and woman for him or herself." Obama must be kidding to suggest Bush has no commitment to a safety net, with his prescription drug and education policies, to name a few.
So pardon us if we conclude Obama isn't a big fan of the free market and prefers that government be the arbiter of how much money we keep.
Equally disturbing are the repeated lies upon which Obama bases his redistributionist advocacy. Last March, he said President Bush believes "that all we can do is hand out tax breaks for the wealthiest few and let the chips fall where they may." But it is an objective fact that Bush gave greater percentage cuts to lower-income earners than to the wealthy.
How can these class-warfare demagogues sleep at night saying the rich don't pay their fair share when 2006 official figures show the top 1 percent of income earners pay 40 percent of the income taxes; the top 5 percent pay 60 percent; the top 10 percent pay 71 percent; the top 25 percent, 86 percent; and the top 50 percent, 97 percent? Just how much would the wealthy have to pay for it to be fair?
The more the wealthy pay the more actual dollars they will retain when there are marginal rate cuts, even when the rates of lower-income earners are cut more. When Bill Clinton's goons figured out they could mischaracterize cuts favoring lower-income earners as being skewed toward the wealthy because they saved more in actual dollars, we ceased to have a coherent, intelligible discussion of the issue.
Tax cuts are not "giveaways." When the government taxes at a lower rate, it is not "giving" money back. It is taking less money from the taxpayer, who owns it unless you subscribe to the socialist view that the government owns or controls the major means of production and the Marxist view that private property should be abolished.
Democrats lied about the economy for the first seven years of the Bush presidency, during which we had consistent growth and negligible inflation. The president spent way too much, but Obama will spend substantially more by design.
Worst of all, Democrats, including Obama, are primarily responsible for the subprime crisis yet are profiting from it politically. They created policies that led to it. Then they exacerbated it by installing and protecting Fannie and Freddie execs, whose bonuses were based on the volume of bad loans they made and who contributed to the Democrats' political war chests in return. Finally, the Democrats fatally obstructed the regulation necessary to ameliorate the problem once it arose.
Obama's tax plan is not based on economics (raising taxes in a recession, including letting the Bush cuts expire) but his idea of fairness. He wants to redistribute wealth by sucking the lifeblood out of producers. It's one of the oldest ideas known to societies. It never works economically but always works politically, which is all that matters to Obama.
Now don't get me started on national security.
Friday, October 24, 2008
For Obama Kool-Aid guzzlers who believe Joe the Plumber was a premeditated Republican plant to trap Obama into admitting his communist inclinations (even though Obama approached Joe, not the other way around), I refer you to Obama's history of similar utterances in favor of soaking the rich.
In June, Obama said he'd designed his tax and spending policies to deal, in part, with the challenge of our "winner-take-all" economy, where the gains from economic growth skew heavily toward the wealthy. "A strong government hand," he said, "is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably." He said he'd seen "no evidence" that tax cuts, particularly on business, spurred growth, calling the idea "flawed economics." He must be unfamiliar with the Kennedy, Reagan and George W. Bush years, pre-financial crisis.
In April 2005, Obama mocked President Bush's reference to an "ownership society," where "each of us are on our own, managing risks and returns in the free marketplace." When asked how "the government should help us share the risks of the new economy and reap greater rewards from the new economy," Obama replied, "Well, right now what we're seeing is the average American is reaping all the risks and not many of the rewards."
In September 2006, Obama agreed with a questioner that "there needs to be an increased focus on the common good, directing more energy and resources toward improving the income and standard of living of Americans who are not in upper-income brackets." Obama added, "I think the problem is that they've got a different idea of America than the idea that we've got." You think?
In March 2007, Obama said Bush wants government to have no role in ensuring that America is prosperous for all people and not just some. The "term for it (is) 'social Darwinism' -- every man and woman for him or herself." Obama must be kidding to suggest Bush has no commitment to a safety net, with his prescription drug and education policies, to name a few.
So pardon us if we conclude Obama isn't a big fan of the free market and prefers that government be the arbiter of how much money we keep.
Equally disturbing are the repeated lies upon which Obama bases his redistributionist advocacy. Last March, he said President Bush believes "that all we can do is hand out tax breaks for the wealthiest few and let the chips fall where they may." But it is an objective fact that Bush gave greater percentage cuts to lower-income earners than to the wealthy.
How can these class-warfare demagogues sleep at night saying the rich don't pay their fair share when 2006 official figures show the top 1 percent of income earners pay 40 percent of the income taxes; the top 5 percent pay 60 percent; the top 10 percent pay 71 percent; the top 25 percent, 86 percent; and the top 50 percent, 97 percent? Just how much would the wealthy have to pay for it to be fair?
The more the wealthy pay the more actual dollars they will retain when there are marginal rate cuts, even when the rates of lower-income earners are cut more. When Bill Clinton's goons figured out they could mischaracterize cuts favoring lower-income earners as being skewed toward the wealthy because they saved more in actual dollars, we ceased to have a coherent, intelligible discussion of the issue.
Tax cuts are not "giveaways." When the government taxes at a lower rate, it is not "giving" money back. It is taking less money from the taxpayer, who owns it unless you subscribe to the socialist view that the government owns or controls the major means of production and the Marxist view that private property should be abolished.
Democrats lied about the economy for the first seven years of the Bush presidency, during which we had consistent growth and negligible inflation. The president spent way too much, but Obama will spend substantially more by design.
Worst of all, Democrats, including Obama, are primarily responsible for the subprime crisis yet are profiting from it politically. They created policies that led to it. Then they exacerbated it by installing and protecting Fannie and Freddie execs, whose bonuses were based on the volume of bad loans they made and who contributed to the Democrats' political war chests in return. Finally, the Democrats fatally obstructed the regulation necessary to ameliorate the problem once it arose.
Obama's tax plan is not based on economics (raising taxes in a recession, including letting the Bush cuts expire) but his idea of fairness. He wants to redistribute wealth by sucking the lifeblood out of producers. It's one of the oldest ideas known to societies. It never works economically but always works politically, which is all that matters to Obama.
Now don't get me started on national security.
Reagan + Friedman + Keynes
Lawrence Kudlow
Friday, October 24, 2008
Back in early 1981, when I went to Washington to work for President Reagan, one of the architects of supply-side economics, Columbia University’s Robert Mundell, visited my OMB budget-bureau office inside the White House complex. At the time we were suffering from double-digit inflation, sky-high interest rates, a long economic downturn, and a near 15-year bear market in stocks.
So I asked Prof. Mundell, who later won a Nobel Prize in economics, if President Reagan’s supply-side tax cuts would be sufficient to cure the economy. The professor answered that during periods of crisis, sometimes you have to be a supply-sider (tax rates), sometimes a monetarist (Fed money supply), and sometimes a Keynesian (federal deficits).
I’ve never forgotten that advice. Mundell was saying: Choose the best policies as put forth by the great economic philosophers without being too rigid.
Of course, John Maynard Keynes was a deficit spender during the Depression. Milton Friedman warned of printing too much or too little money. And Mundell, along with Art Laffer, Jack Kemp, and others, revived the importance of reducing high marginal tax rates to reward work, investment, and risk. The idea was to make each of these activities pay more after tax, and in the process boost asset values across-the-board. This incentive model of economic growth was used effectively by President John F. Kennedy and the great 1920s Treasury man, Andrew Mellon.
During the 1980s Reagan enacted Mundell’s three-legged approach. He slashed tax rates on the supply-side and was not afraid to run budget deficits in the Keynesian mold. At the same time, Reagan gave Paul Volcker carte blanche to practice the tough-minded monetarism that curbed excess money and vanquished inflation. This eclectic policy mix reignited economic growth, and it ushered in a three-decade prosperity boom that revived free-market capitalism.
Today, however, the economic naysayers are ignoring the advice of Prof. Mundell. Looking at our financial crisis, with its deflationary sweep from stock markets to home prices to energy, they want to lurch leftward to a big-government tax-and-spend regulatory approach. Instead, we need to put all three legs of the Mundell hypothesis in place. And we’re already two-thirds of the way there.
Treasury man Henry Paulson is using a $700 billion rescue package to prop up banks with new capital, purchase distressed assets, and backstop inter-bank lending. Keynesian deficits will finance it. But it’s working. While ankle biters on the left and right have dissed Paulson’s plan, important credit-market spreads have declined significantly in the last two weeks.
Fed head Ben Bernanke, meanwhile, is combating deflation with a Friedmanite monetarist approach -- the second leg of the Mundell mix. Over the past two months the Fed has doubled its balance sheet and spurred a major increase in the basic money supply in order to meet the enormous liquidity demands that always accompany deflation. The Fed should keep this up in the coming months until stocks, commodities, and credit show life-signs of recovery.
But what’s missing is Mundell’s third policy leg: supply-side tax cuts. And here we find the partisan debate of the closing days of the presidential and congressional elections.
Democrats want to tax the rich, redistribute the wealth, and spend our way out of the economic doldrums. It won’t work. Senators Barack Obama and Harry Reid, along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, disdain supply-side tax incentives. But Sen. John McCain wants to reemploy them as a recovery tool. McCain is right, and now is the time for the Republican party to call for sweeping tax cuts that would reduce marginal rates by half for businesses, individuals, and investors. Yes, it would be bold. But no bolder than Reagan in the 1980s, Kennedy in the 1960s, or Mellon in the 1920s.
The corporate tax rate should be slashed from 35 percent to less than 25 percent, including capital-gains. (Corporations, let’s not forget, don’t pay taxes. Only individuals do, since business costs are passed along to consumers.) The top individual rate should similarly be lowered, with fewer income brackets to clutter up the tax code. And investment taxes on capital-gains and dividends should be cut from 15 percent to 7.5 percent to revive the dormant animal spirits of investors.
These tax cuts would mean all three legs of Robert Mundell’s pragmatic approach to policy are in place. Use the money supply to combat deflation (inflation is not the problem), employ deficits to rescue and stabilize the banking and credit system, and slash tax rates to reignite economic growth.
In effect, a successful rescue plan requires a drawdown of all the major economic schools of thought. Given the current economic emergency, we need all the help we can get. For a change, how about a little pragmatism in the policy mix? That just might do the trick.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Back in early 1981, when I went to Washington to work for President Reagan, one of the architects of supply-side economics, Columbia University’s Robert Mundell, visited my OMB budget-bureau office inside the White House complex. At the time we were suffering from double-digit inflation, sky-high interest rates, a long economic downturn, and a near 15-year bear market in stocks.
So I asked Prof. Mundell, who later won a Nobel Prize in economics, if President Reagan’s supply-side tax cuts would be sufficient to cure the economy. The professor answered that during periods of crisis, sometimes you have to be a supply-sider (tax rates), sometimes a monetarist (Fed money supply), and sometimes a Keynesian (federal deficits).
I’ve never forgotten that advice. Mundell was saying: Choose the best policies as put forth by the great economic philosophers without being too rigid.
Of course, John Maynard Keynes was a deficit spender during the Depression. Milton Friedman warned of printing too much or too little money. And Mundell, along with Art Laffer, Jack Kemp, and others, revived the importance of reducing high marginal tax rates to reward work, investment, and risk. The idea was to make each of these activities pay more after tax, and in the process boost asset values across-the-board. This incentive model of economic growth was used effectively by President John F. Kennedy and the great 1920s Treasury man, Andrew Mellon.
During the 1980s Reagan enacted Mundell’s three-legged approach. He slashed tax rates on the supply-side and was not afraid to run budget deficits in the Keynesian mold. At the same time, Reagan gave Paul Volcker carte blanche to practice the tough-minded monetarism that curbed excess money and vanquished inflation. This eclectic policy mix reignited economic growth, and it ushered in a three-decade prosperity boom that revived free-market capitalism.
Today, however, the economic naysayers are ignoring the advice of Prof. Mundell. Looking at our financial crisis, with its deflationary sweep from stock markets to home prices to energy, they want to lurch leftward to a big-government tax-and-spend regulatory approach. Instead, we need to put all three legs of the Mundell hypothesis in place. And we’re already two-thirds of the way there.
Treasury man Henry Paulson is using a $700 billion rescue package to prop up banks with new capital, purchase distressed assets, and backstop inter-bank lending. Keynesian deficits will finance it. But it’s working. While ankle biters on the left and right have dissed Paulson’s plan, important credit-market spreads have declined significantly in the last two weeks.
Fed head Ben Bernanke, meanwhile, is combating deflation with a Friedmanite monetarist approach -- the second leg of the Mundell mix. Over the past two months the Fed has doubled its balance sheet and spurred a major increase in the basic money supply in order to meet the enormous liquidity demands that always accompany deflation. The Fed should keep this up in the coming months until stocks, commodities, and credit show life-signs of recovery.
But what’s missing is Mundell’s third policy leg: supply-side tax cuts. And here we find the partisan debate of the closing days of the presidential and congressional elections.
Democrats want to tax the rich, redistribute the wealth, and spend our way out of the economic doldrums. It won’t work. Senators Barack Obama and Harry Reid, along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, disdain supply-side tax incentives. But Sen. John McCain wants to reemploy them as a recovery tool. McCain is right, and now is the time for the Republican party to call for sweeping tax cuts that would reduce marginal rates by half for businesses, individuals, and investors. Yes, it would be bold. But no bolder than Reagan in the 1980s, Kennedy in the 1960s, or Mellon in the 1920s.
The corporate tax rate should be slashed from 35 percent to less than 25 percent, including capital-gains. (Corporations, let’s not forget, don’t pay taxes. Only individuals do, since business costs are passed along to consumers.) The top individual rate should similarly be lowered, with fewer income brackets to clutter up the tax code. And investment taxes on capital-gains and dividends should be cut from 15 percent to 7.5 percent to revive the dormant animal spirits of investors.
These tax cuts would mean all three legs of Robert Mundell’s pragmatic approach to policy are in place. Use the money supply to combat deflation (inflation is not the problem), employ deficits to rescue and stabilize the banking and credit system, and slash tax rates to reignite economic growth.
In effect, a successful rescue plan requires a drawdown of all the major economic schools of thought. Given the current economic emergency, we need all the help we can get. For a change, how about a little pragmatism in the policy mix? That just might do the trick.
Arizona's Illegal Hire Sham
Tom Tancredo
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The opponents of immigration enforcement have stooped to a new low in Arizona with their latest attempt to undermine the state’s workplace verification laws. After exhausting their usual tactics, they are resorting to outright and intentional deception of the voters. This November, Arizonans will vote on Proposition 202; which will be described to them as such:
“Stop Illegal Hiring" Act is an initiative designed to crack down on unethical businesses who hire illegal immigrants. This initiative targets employers who hire workers and pay under-the-table in cash, which fuels illegal immigration in Arizona. It revokes the business license of employers who knowingly or intentionally hire illegal immigrants. This initiative increases penalties for identity theft, as illegal immigrants often use stolen identities to conceal their undocumented status…
If this were all I knew about Prop 202, I’d wholeheartedly support it; and the initiative backers are hoping that voters won’t learn anything about the initiative beyond the title.
Arizona does not need a new law against illegal hiring. It already has the toughest workplace enforcement law in the country. The Legal Arizona Workers Act (“LAWA”), which was enforced in the beginning 2008, is the first state law to require all employers to use the E-Verify worker identification system. E-Verify is a nearly fool proof electronic data-base system that makes sure an job applicant is here legally. Arizonans on both sides of the immigration issue agree that the law has had a huge impact in keeping employers from hiring illegal aliens and, in turn, causing the illegals to leave the state.
The Stop Illegal Hiring Act effectively overturns Arizona’ current employer sanction laws. It completely removes the E-Verify requirement that was central to the success of LAWA. It forbids Arizona from acting against employers until the federal government does so first, but it’s the federal government’s failure to act that makes the law necessary in the first place. On top of all this, it gives amnesty to employers of illegal aliens, and bans whistleblowers from alerting the authorities to illegal hiring.
The importance of preserving laws such as LAWA cannot be underestimated. During my ten years in Congress I have fought in vain to get the federal government to take action against illegal immigration. States and localities, however, have had a great deal of success in cracking down on illegal immigration. From small towns like Hazelton, PA and Farmers Branch, TX to states like Georgia, Oklahoma, and my home state of Colorado; patriotic citizens and legislators have taken action when the government refuses to do its duty. As the illegal immigrants leave states that get tough, they bring pressure on neighboring states and the federal government to take action as well.
Arizona has been in the vanguard of this movement. It passed Prop 200 in 2004, which took away many taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens; and then passed four other initiatives that got tough on illegal immigration in 2006 with well over 70% of the vote.
Usually the pro-immigration groups try to overturn the will of the people in the courts. With both the Arizona and Greater Phoenix Chambers of Commerce as well as heavily funded left wing legal outfits like the ACLU and Mexican American Legal Defense Fund as plaintiffs, and government executives who are often just as eager to have the laws overturned charged with defending them; any state law against illegal immigration immediately faces an uphill legal battle.
The business lobby tried this tactic with both Proposition 200 and then with LAWA, but after the most left wing Federal Appeals Court in the country upheld the law, their last resort is outright deception of the voter. With little fanfare, a business group called Wake Up Arizona—who were one of the primary plaintiffs against the current employer sanction laws—have managed to sneak the misleading initiative on the ballot.
Recent polls show that when given the title of the act and the misleading description, voters would support Prop 202 by a margin of 2 to 1. However, when explained that it guts the enforcement mechanisms in LAWA, voters oppose Prop 202 by 5 to 1.
If there was ever a case of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, this is it. Even citizens who oppose LAWA should be outraged by how dishonest and undemocratic the tactics used by Wake Up Arizona.
Unfortunately, Arizonans who want their laws against illegal hiring preserved do not have multimillion dollar legal groups to try to keep the proposition off the ballot. The only hope is to educate the voters before they go to the polling booths that if they want to stop illegal hiring, they need to vote no on Prop 202, the Stop Illegal Hiring Act.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The opponents of immigration enforcement have stooped to a new low in Arizona with their latest attempt to undermine the state’s workplace verification laws. After exhausting their usual tactics, they are resorting to outright and intentional deception of the voters. This November, Arizonans will vote on Proposition 202; which will be described to them as such:
“Stop Illegal Hiring" Act is an initiative designed to crack down on unethical businesses who hire illegal immigrants. This initiative targets employers who hire workers and pay under-the-table in cash, which fuels illegal immigration in Arizona. It revokes the business license of employers who knowingly or intentionally hire illegal immigrants. This initiative increases penalties for identity theft, as illegal immigrants often use stolen identities to conceal their undocumented status…
If this were all I knew about Prop 202, I’d wholeheartedly support it; and the initiative backers are hoping that voters won’t learn anything about the initiative beyond the title.
Arizona does not need a new law against illegal hiring. It already has the toughest workplace enforcement law in the country. The Legal Arizona Workers Act (“LAWA”), which was enforced in the beginning 2008, is the first state law to require all employers to use the E-Verify worker identification system. E-Verify is a nearly fool proof electronic data-base system that makes sure an job applicant is here legally. Arizonans on both sides of the immigration issue agree that the law has had a huge impact in keeping employers from hiring illegal aliens and, in turn, causing the illegals to leave the state.
The Stop Illegal Hiring Act effectively overturns Arizona’ current employer sanction laws. It completely removes the E-Verify requirement that was central to the success of LAWA. It forbids Arizona from acting against employers until the federal government does so first, but it’s the federal government’s failure to act that makes the law necessary in the first place. On top of all this, it gives amnesty to employers of illegal aliens, and bans whistleblowers from alerting the authorities to illegal hiring.
The importance of preserving laws such as LAWA cannot be underestimated. During my ten years in Congress I have fought in vain to get the federal government to take action against illegal immigration. States and localities, however, have had a great deal of success in cracking down on illegal immigration. From small towns like Hazelton, PA and Farmers Branch, TX to states like Georgia, Oklahoma, and my home state of Colorado; patriotic citizens and legislators have taken action when the government refuses to do its duty. As the illegal immigrants leave states that get tough, they bring pressure on neighboring states and the federal government to take action as well.
Arizona has been in the vanguard of this movement. It passed Prop 200 in 2004, which took away many taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens; and then passed four other initiatives that got tough on illegal immigration in 2006 with well over 70% of the vote.
Usually the pro-immigration groups try to overturn the will of the people in the courts. With both the Arizona and Greater Phoenix Chambers of Commerce as well as heavily funded left wing legal outfits like the ACLU and Mexican American Legal Defense Fund as plaintiffs, and government executives who are often just as eager to have the laws overturned charged with defending them; any state law against illegal immigration immediately faces an uphill legal battle.
The business lobby tried this tactic with both Proposition 200 and then with LAWA, but after the most left wing Federal Appeals Court in the country upheld the law, their last resort is outright deception of the voter. With little fanfare, a business group called Wake Up Arizona—who were one of the primary plaintiffs against the current employer sanction laws—have managed to sneak the misleading initiative on the ballot.
Recent polls show that when given the title of the act and the misleading description, voters would support Prop 202 by a margin of 2 to 1. However, when explained that it guts the enforcement mechanisms in LAWA, voters oppose Prop 202 by 5 to 1.
If there was ever a case of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, this is it. Even citizens who oppose LAWA should be outraged by how dishonest and undemocratic the tactics used by Wake Up Arizona.
Unfortunately, Arizonans who want their laws against illegal hiring preserved do not have multimillion dollar legal groups to try to keep the proposition off the ballot. The only hope is to educate the voters before they go to the polling booths that if they want to stop illegal hiring, they need to vote no on Prop 202, the Stop Illegal Hiring Act.
The Case Against Barack Obama, Part 2
Larry Elder
Thursday, October 23, 2008
1) What about this business of Barack Obama and William Ayers?
Ayers and his wife, Bernardine, belonged to a radical terror group in the '60s and '70s called Weather Underground. The organization committed murders, bombings and attempted acts of terrorism. In a Sept. 11, 2001, article about Ayers' book "Fugitive Days," Ayers showed no remorse. Indeed, he said: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
When Obama ran for state senator in Illinois, Ayers hosted what one person present called Obama's political "coming-out party."
Ayers and Obama sat on two boards together. One -- the Chicago Annenberg Challenge -- distributed more than $100 million from 1995 to 2001 to improve Chicago schools. Their own assessments show they failed. The money went for things such as peace initiatives, multiculturalism, Afrocentrism, bilingualism and courses that condemn capitalism and encourage attacking "oppressors."
Obama and Ayers also served on the board of the Woods Fund, an organization that distributed grant money to ACORN, which pushes its leftist agenda -- "tax justice," livable wages, anti-school choice, voter registration and affordable housing. The nearly 400,000-person-strong organization is currently under investigation by state and federal authorities in several states for voter registration fraud. The Obama campaign dismisses any connection to ACORN as tangential.
But on Dec. 1, 2007, Obama spoke at the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum before leaders of community organizing groups, including ACORN. He said: "Let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we'll be calling all of you (community organizers) in to help us shape the agenda. We're gonna be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America."
"Meet the Press" moderator Tom Brokaw called Ayers -- a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago -- a "school reformer." Ayers, on the other hand, calls himself a Marxist and a "small 'c' communist." A Venezuelan government Web site, translated to English, calls Ayers "the leader of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist group the Weather Underground, which initiated armed struggle against the government of the USA." Ayers sits on the directorate of a think tank funded by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
2) Is McCain's support for the Iraq war a political winner or loser?
McCain needs to clearly state that America and the world sleep easier without Saddam Hussein in power, and that Saddam intended to restart his chemical and biological programs. McCain makes a mistake by conceding, through silence, that the war was a mistake. A recent Rasmussen poll shows that more Americans than not believe that history will judge Iraq a success.
Obama was wrong about the surge, and continues to maintain -- despite clear evidence to the contrary -- that political reconciliation is not taking place. Even The Washington Post, which endorses Obama, editorialized against Obama's insistence on withdrawing troops by a date certain. Furthermore, the Post wrote: "Democrat Barack Obama continues to argue that only the systematic withdrawal of U.S. combat units will force Iraqi leaders to compromise. Yet the empirical evidence of the past year suggests the opposite: that only the greater security produced and guaranteed by American troops allows a political environment in which legislative deals and free elections are feasible."
3) Obama supports the use of our military to stop genocide in Darfur while showing indifference about a possible one in Iraq.
Brokaw, moderating a debate, asked Obama when American combat forces should be used to quell humanitarian crises that pose no threat to U.S. security. Obama -- specifically mentioning Darfur and Rwanda -- said, "When genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us." But after a 2007 interview with Obama, The Associated Press wrote, "Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there." So Obama wants to use our military to stop genocide in Darfur -- a tragedy that we did not start. But he wants our military to withdraw in Iraq, possibly resulting in a genocide of our own making. Got that?
4) As for the current financial crisis, does Obama bear some responsibility?
In the subprime crisis, many people took out unaffordable loans, and lenders lent under government policies that encouraged them to make risky loans. As a lawyer, Obama and his firm filed a class action lawsuit against Citibank, alleging that the bank systematically shut out minority borrowers. According to The Associated Press: "The case was settled out of court. Some class members got cash payments, and the bank agreed to help ease the way for low- and moderate-income people to apply for mortgages."
Bottom line. When the Communist Party USA approvingly says Obama would "advance progressive politics for the long term" -- run.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
1) What about this business of Barack Obama and William Ayers?
Ayers and his wife, Bernardine, belonged to a radical terror group in the '60s and '70s called Weather Underground. The organization committed murders, bombings and attempted acts of terrorism. In a Sept. 11, 2001, article about Ayers' book "Fugitive Days," Ayers showed no remorse. Indeed, he said: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
When Obama ran for state senator in Illinois, Ayers hosted what one person present called Obama's political "coming-out party."
Ayers and Obama sat on two boards together. One -- the Chicago Annenberg Challenge -- distributed more than $100 million from 1995 to 2001 to improve Chicago schools. Their own assessments show they failed. The money went for things such as peace initiatives, multiculturalism, Afrocentrism, bilingualism and courses that condemn capitalism and encourage attacking "oppressors."
Obama and Ayers also served on the board of the Woods Fund, an organization that distributed grant money to ACORN, which pushes its leftist agenda -- "tax justice," livable wages, anti-school choice, voter registration and affordable housing. The nearly 400,000-person-strong organization is currently under investigation by state and federal authorities in several states for voter registration fraud. The Obama campaign dismisses any connection to ACORN as tangential.
But on Dec. 1, 2007, Obama spoke at the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum before leaders of community organizing groups, including ACORN. He said: "Let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we'll be calling all of you (community organizers) in to help us shape the agenda. We're gonna be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America."
"Meet the Press" moderator Tom Brokaw called Ayers -- a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago -- a "school reformer." Ayers, on the other hand, calls himself a Marxist and a "small 'c' communist." A Venezuelan government Web site, translated to English, calls Ayers "the leader of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist group the Weather Underground, which initiated armed struggle against the government of the USA." Ayers sits on the directorate of a think tank funded by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
2) Is McCain's support for the Iraq war a political winner or loser?
McCain needs to clearly state that America and the world sleep easier without Saddam Hussein in power, and that Saddam intended to restart his chemical and biological programs. McCain makes a mistake by conceding, through silence, that the war was a mistake. A recent Rasmussen poll shows that more Americans than not believe that history will judge Iraq a success.
Obama was wrong about the surge, and continues to maintain -- despite clear evidence to the contrary -- that political reconciliation is not taking place. Even The Washington Post, which endorses Obama, editorialized against Obama's insistence on withdrawing troops by a date certain. Furthermore, the Post wrote: "Democrat Barack Obama continues to argue that only the systematic withdrawal of U.S. combat units will force Iraqi leaders to compromise. Yet the empirical evidence of the past year suggests the opposite: that only the greater security produced and guaranteed by American troops allows a political environment in which legislative deals and free elections are feasible."
3) Obama supports the use of our military to stop genocide in Darfur while showing indifference about a possible one in Iraq.
Brokaw, moderating a debate, asked Obama when American combat forces should be used to quell humanitarian crises that pose no threat to U.S. security. Obama -- specifically mentioning Darfur and Rwanda -- said, "When genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us." But after a 2007 interview with Obama, The Associated Press wrote, "Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there." So Obama wants to use our military to stop genocide in Darfur -- a tragedy that we did not start. But he wants our military to withdraw in Iraq, possibly resulting in a genocide of our own making. Got that?
4) As for the current financial crisis, does Obama bear some responsibility?
In the subprime crisis, many people took out unaffordable loans, and lenders lent under government policies that encouraged them to make risky loans. As a lawyer, Obama and his firm filed a class action lawsuit against Citibank, alleging that the bank systematically shut out minority borrowers. According to The Associated Press: "The case was settled out of court. Some class members got cash payments, and the bank agreed to help ease the way for low- and moderate-income people to apply for mortgages."
Bottom line. When the Communist Party USA approvingly says Obama would "advance progressive politics for the long term" -- run.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Assault on Fairness from the Left
Ken Blackwell
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
While we hear a lot about "partisan politics" in the media, most Americans do not define themselves, first and foremost, by their political party. Many people's beliefs do not fit neatly into the label of "Republican" or "Democrat."
The cultural identity of many Americans supersedes their views about the role of government or the proper way to increase health-care coverage. Part of that identity is the belief in the value of a fair fight and in the fundamental right of the American president to be elected by a transparent and accurate vote.
That's why the widespread and blatant voter registration fraud and outright voter fraud being reported nationwide is not a partisan issue. This illegal activity affects all fair-minded Americans who want a free, fair and honest election.
Republicans and Democrats alike should be up in arms because voter fraud is a direct threat to freedom and bedrock American beliefs. Outlets for voters to express their concern are available on both sides of the political divide - and well they should be.
As news reports demonstrate, the voters' concern over fraud is not unfounded. In Florida, we've got people registering Mickey Mouse to vote. In Nevada, they attempted to register the Dallas Cowboys' starting lineup. Ohio has unfortunately been plagued by persistent and widespread voter registration fraud this year. Stories of teenagers signing dozens of registration forms and criminals brazenly voting multiple times with fake addresses dominate the evening news coverage and fill the morning papers.
The actions of unscrupulous activists have been made easier by rulings on early voting, and an overall indifference to fraud from the state's top elections official. New opportunities now exist for widespread fraud, which could seriously compromise the accuracy of this election. For example, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner recently interpreted Ohio law to allow for people to cast an absentee ballot on the same day that they register to vote. Her edict on that issue is one of many she will have to address as concerns of voter registration and voting fraud continue to grow. Ms. Brunner's recent bombshell announcement that 200,000 of the state's 660,000 new voter registrations are in question raises the stakes. This means information provided by a person registering does not match that person's corresponding information on file at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.
Ms. Brunner then took the extraordinary step of refusing to provide the mismatched voter data to county election officials. After vigorous objections by Ohio Republicans and the free-market think tank the Buckeye Institute, a federal district court and its appellate court ordered her to make the information available. The matter made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that federal courts lacked jurisdiction. Republican lawyers are now arguing the case before Ohio's Supreme Court.
Ohioans, I suspect, find Ms. Brunner's protestations curious. They want Ms. Brunner to make sure the voter rolls are correct and fraud free. In fact, voters across the country want that too. They do not want to be embroiled in months of post-election litigation and uncertainty. Imagine a repeat of Florida 2000 occurring in Ohio or in multiple states across the country, with disputes over who was properly registered, where fraud occurred and which votes should count. It will make the "hanging chad" debacle look like a walk in the park.
This, however, can be avoided by closely examining suspicious registration and voting activity now, while there is still time to prevent these fraudulent votes from entering the system. Fraudulent activity undermines the fundamentals of democracy. Voter fraud contaminates the integrity of our election system.
The right to vote is one of our most basic rights, and it is subverted whenever a qualified voter's ballot is denied or when a legal vote is nullified by a fraudulent vote. Our election process must therefore receive the most vigorous protection possible, to ensure that all legal votes are counted, while all illegal votes are not. To protect the integrity of their vote, citizens can go to websites like www.DefendMyVote.com and give added voice to a national effort to stop fraud.
To their credit, many states have initiated investigations into voter fraud, and some courts have acted to force officials to examine or adjust their voting practices. But leaving the future of our country in the hands of others is never a wise idea.
A clear message from the voting public is the most effective way to ensure that secretaries of state and other authorities vigorously protect voters - and this country - from unsavory activists who are looking to subvert the election.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
While we hear a lot about "partisan politics" in the media, most Americans do not define themselves, first and foremost, by their political party. Many people's beliefs do not fit neatly into the label of "Republican" or "Democrat."
The cultural identity of many Americans supersedes their views about the role of government or the proper way to increase health-care coverage. Part of that identity is the belief in the value of a fair fight and in the fundamental right of the American president to be elected by a transparent and accurate vote.
That's why the widespread and blatant voter registration fraud and outright voter fraud being reported nationwide is not a partisan issue. This illegal activity affects all fair-minded Americans who want a free, fair and honest election.
Republicans and Democrats alike should be up in arms because voter fraud is a direct threat to freedom and bedrock American beliefs. Outlets for voters to express their concern are available on both sides of the political divide - and well they should be.
As news reports demonstrate, the voters' concern over fraud is not unfounded. In Florida, we've got people registering Mickey Mouse to vote. In Nevada, they attempted to register the Dallas Cowboys' starting lineup. Ohio has unfortunately been plagued by persistent and widespread voter registration fraud this year. Stories of teenagers signing dozens of registration forms and criminals brazenly voting multiple times with fake addresses dominate the evening news coverage and fill the morning papers.
The actions of unscrupulous activists have been made easier by rulings on early voting, and an overall indifference to fraud from the state's top elections official. New opportunities now exist for widespread fraud, which could seriously compromise the accuracy of this election. For example, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner recently interpreted Ohio law to allow for people to cast an absentee ballot on the same day that they register to vote. Her edict on that issue is one of many she will have to address as concerns of voter registration and voting fraud continue to grow. Ms. Brunner's recent bombshell announcement that 200,000 of the state's 660,000 new voter registrations are in question raises the stakes. This means information provided by a person registering does not match that person's corresponding information on file at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.
Ms. Brunner then took the extraordinary step of refusing to provide the mismatched voter data to county election officials. After vigorous objections by Ohio Republicans and the free-market think tank the Buckeye Institute, a federal district court and its appellate court ordered her to make the information available. The matter made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that federal courts lacked jurisdiction. Republican lawyers are now arguing the case before Ohio's Supreme Court.
Ohioans, I suspect, find Ms. Brunner's protestations curious. They want Ms. Brunner to make sure the voter rolls are correct and fraud free. In fact, voters across the country want that too. They do not want to be embroiled in months of post-election litigation and uncertainty. Imagine a repeat of Florida 2000 occurring in Ohio or in multiple states across the country, with disputes over who was properly registered, where fraud occurred and which votes should count. It will make the "hanging chad" debacle look like a walk in the park.
This, however, can be avoided by closely examining suspicious registration and voting activity now, while there is still time to prevent these fraudulent votes from entering the system. Fraudulent activity undermines the fundamentals of democracy. Voter fraud contaminates the integrity of our election system.
The right to vote is one of our most basic rights, and it is subverted whenever a qualified voter's ballot is denied or when a legal vote is nullified by a fraudulent vote. Our election process must therefore receive the most vigorous protection possible, to ensure that all legal votes are counted, while all illegal votes are not. To protect the integrity of their vote, citizens can go to websites like www.DefendMyVote.com and give added voice to a national effort to stop fraud.
To their credit, many states have initiated investigations into voter fraud, and some courts have acted to force officials to examine or adjust their voting practices. But leaving the future of our country in the hands of others is never a wise idea.
A clear message from the voting public is the most effective way to ensure that secretaries of state and other authorities vigorously protect voters - and this country - from unsavory activists who are looking to subvert the election.
Affordable Health Care
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
One of the campaign themes this election cycle is "affordable" health care. Shouldn't we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the "affordable" housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care? Shouldn't we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine?
The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute's annual publication, "Waiting Your Turn," reports that Canada's median waiting times from a patient's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist, depending on the procedure, averages from five to 40 weeks. The wait for diagnostics, such as MRI or CT, ranges between four and 28 weeks.
According to Michael Tanner's "The Grass Is Not Always Greener," in Cato Institute's Policy Analysis (March 18, 2008), the Mayo Clinic treats more than 7,000 foreign patients a year, the Cleveland Clinic 5,000, Johns Hopkins Hospital treats 6,000, and one out of three Canadian physicians send a patient to the U.S. for treatment each year. If socialized medicine is so great, why do Canadian physicians send patients to the U.S. and the Canadian government spends over $1 billion each year on health care in our country?
Britain's socialized system is no better. Currently, 750,000 Brits are awaiting hospital admission. Britain's National Health Services hopes to achieve an 18-week maximum wait from general practitioner to treatment, including all diagnostic tests, by the end of 2008. The delay in health care services is not only inconvenient, it's deadly. Both in Britain and Canada, many patients with diseases that are curable at the time of diagnosis become incurable by the time of treatment or patients become too weak for the surgical procedure. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to introduce a "constitution" setting out the rights and responsibilities of its health care system. According to a report in the Telegraph (02/01/2008), "What this (Gordon Brown's plan) seems to amount to in practice are the Government's rights to refuse treatment, and the patient's responsibilities to live up to what the state decides are model standards." That means people who have unhealthy habits such as smoking, heart sufferers who are obese or those who fall ill because of failure to take regular exercise might be refused medical care, even though they pay taxes to support government health care.
Government health care can become ghoulish as reported in a Human Events (1/17/08) article "Gordon Brown Wants Your Organs" written by Susan Easton. As in the U.S., many Brits die while on the waiting list for organ donations. The prime minister has a solution called a "Presumed Consent Scheme." Mrs. Easton says, "If you don't specifically carry a card saying 'leave my corpse alone' -- known as the 'opt out option', or unless one's family is on hand to object, one's remains are considered fair game for an organ harvest festival." Supporters of the scheme argue that what is done with people's organs after their death should not be up to the next of kin. Such a vision differs little from one that holds that after one's death he becomes the property of the state.
Of course, if socialized medicine becomes a reality here, Americans can do as many Brits do. Mrs. Easton says, "more than 70,000 Britons -- known as 'health tourists' -- have gone as far as India, Malaysia and South Africa for major operations. This figure is expected to rise to almost 200,000 by the end of the decade."
We have health care problems in the U.S. but it's not because ours is a free market system of health care delivery. Well over 50 percent of all health care expenditures are made by government. Where government spends, government regulates. It's truly amazing that Americans who are dissatisfied with the current level of socialized medicine in the U.S. are asking for more of what created the problem in the first place. Anyone thinking that an American version of socialized health care will differ from that found in Canada, Britain, Sweden, France and elsewhere are whistling Dixie.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
One of the campaign themes this election cycle is "affordable" health care. Shouldn't we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the "affordable" housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care? Shouldn't we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine?
The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute's annual publication, "Waiting Your Turn," reports that Canada's median waiting times from a patient's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist, depending on the procedure, averages from five to 40 weeks. The wait for diagnostics, such as MRI or CT, ranges between four and 28 weeks.
According to Michael Tanner's "The Grass Is Not Always Greener," in Cato Institute's Policy Analysis (March 18, 2008), the Mayo Clinic treats more than 7,000 foreign patients a year, the Cleveland Clinic 5,000, Johns Hopkins Hospital treats 6,000, and one out of three Canadian physicians send a patient to the U.S. for treatment each year. If socialized medicine is so great, why do Canadian physicians send patients to the U.S. and the Canadian government spends over $1 billion each year on health care in our country?
Britain's socialized system is no better. Currently, 750,000 Brits are awaiting hospital admission. Britain's National Health Services hopes to achieve an 18-week maximum wait from general practitioner to treatment, including all diagnostic tests, by the end of 2008. The delay in health care services is not only inconvenient, it's deadly. Both in Britain and Canada, many patients with diseases that are curable at the time of diagnosis become incurable by the time of treatment or patients become too weak for the surgical procedure. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to introduce a "constitution" setting out the rights and responsibilities of its health care system. According to a report in the Telegraph (02/01/2008), "What this (Gordon Brown's plan) seems to amount to in practice are the Government's rights to refuse treatment, and the patient's responsibilities to live up to what the state decides are model standards." That means people who have unhealthy habits such as smoking, heart sufferers who are obese or those who fall ill because of failure to take regular exercise might be refused medical care, even though they pay taxes to support government health care.
Government health care can become ghoulish as reported in a Human Events (1/17/08) article "Gordon Brown Wants Your Organs" written by Susan Easton. As in the U.S., many Brits die while on the waiting list for organ donations. The prime minister has a solution called a "Presumed Consent Scheme." Mrs. Easton says, "If you don't specifically carry a card saying 'leave my corpse alone' -- known as the 'opt out option', or unless one's family is on hand to object, one's remains are considered fair game for an organ harvest festival." Supporters of the scheme argue that what is done with people's organs after their death should not be up to the next of kin. Such a vision differs little from one that holds that after one's death he becomes the property of the state.
Of course, if socialized medicine becomes a reality here, Americans can do as many Brits do. Mrs. Easton says, "more than 70,000 Britons -- known as 'health tourists' -- have gone as far as India, Malaysia and South Africa for major operations. This figure is expected to rise to almost 200,000 by the end of the decade."
We have health care problems in the U.S. but it's not because ours is a free market system of health care delivery. Well over 50 percent of all health care expenditures are made by government. Where government spends, government regulates. It's truly amazing that Americans who are dissatisfied with the current level of socialized medicine in the U.S. are asking for more of what created the problem in the first place. Anyone thinking that an American version of socialized health care will differ from that found in Canada, Britain, Sweden, France and elsewhere are whistling Dixie.
Forced Into an Unhealthy Choice
Ed Feulner
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Can you imagine the government forcing you to take benefits you didn’t want? How about a situation where you’d have to sue the government to get out of taking those benefits?
Welcome to Washington -- and the upside-down logic behind federal entitlements.
Policymakers here are well aware that Medicare and Social Security are living on borrowed time. The Medicare Trustees reported earlier this year that the program’s Part A (the hospital insurance program) will start spending more than it takes in through taxes in 2011. The Part A trust fund will be totally exhausted eight years later. At that point the government will either have to slash benefits or jack up taxes, since it will run a deficit from that point on, forever.
You’d expect those who run entitlement programs to jump at any chance to trim expenses and save money. You’d be wrong.
Over the years, some have tried to withdraw from Medicare Part A and rely on their own health insurance. But federal policy says you can’t pull out of part A and still collect Social Security benefits. It’s a package deal. Washington thus compels citizens to take Medicare Part A, even if they wish to finance their own coverage.
This is a bipartisan political error.
In 1993, under President Clinton, the Social Security Administration changed its rules so it was no longer possible for a person to decline Medicare Part A without forfeiting Social Security retirement or survivor’s insurance (RSI) benefits as well.
In 2002, under the Bush administration, SSA reaffirmed its policy. Today, though, two separate attempts to change it are underway.
In one, three men are suing the Department of Health and Human Services, demanding they be allowed to opt out of Part A and still collect Social Security. “[The plaintiffs] all believe they can obtain better health care, and the health care they desire, privately and with less interference from third parties,” their lawyer Kent Brown announced at a press conference.
The men, Brian Hall, Lewis Randall and Norman Rogers, say that since Medicare is supposed to be voluntary, they ought to be allowed to decline it and pay for their own insurance. That makes sense.
Moreover, they note that, “If just 1 percent of current retirees chose not to participate in Medicare, Medicare expenditures would decrease by about $1.5 billion per year immediately and by approximately $3.4 billion per year by 2017.” Certainly a substantial savings for taxpayers.
At least one lawmaker also wants the SSA to change its rules.
This month Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, introduced the Medicare Beneficiary Freedom to Choose Act. This measure would allow seniors to forgo Medicare Part A. It would also allow seniors to contribute pre-tax dollars into a Health Savings Account, so healthy older people could continue saving money they might eventually need to pay for future medical care.
“If Warren Buffett wants to pay for his own medical care, I say we should let him,” Johnson said, sensibly. And that, of course, is the greater problem with all federal entitlement programs -- they treat everyone exactly the same way, even those who can afford (and want) to go outside the taxpayer-supported system.
“It’s sad that people who want to make their own health care decisions feel like they have no other option than to sue the federal government,” Johnson says. “People should make their own medical decisions, the government shouldn’t force health care decisions on anyone.”
Virtually everyone -- outside of Washington, that is -- would agree.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Can you imagine the government forcing you to take benefits you didn’t want? How about a situation where you’d have to sue the government to get out of taking those benefits?
Welcome to Washington -- and the upside-down logic behind federal entitlements.
Policymakers here are well aware that Medicare and Social Security are living on borrowed time. The Medicare Trustees reported earlier this year that the program’s Part A (the hospital insurance program) will start spending more than it takes in through taxes in 2011. The Part A trust fund will be totally exhausted eight years later. At that point the government will either have to slash benefits or jack up taxes, since it will run a deficit from that point on, forever.
You’d expect those who run entitlement programs to jump at any chance to trim expenses and save money. You’d be wrong.
Over the years, some have tried to withdraw from Medicare Part A and rely on their own health insurance. But federal policy says you can’t pull out of part A and still collect Social Security benefits. It’s a package deal. Washington thus compels citizens to take Medicare Part A, even if they wish to finance their own coverage.
This is a bipartisan political error.
In 1993, under President Clinton, the Social Security Administration changed its rules so it was no longer possible for a person to decline Medicare Part A without forfeiting Social Security retirement or survivor’s insurance (RSI) benefits as well.
In 2002, under the Bush administration, SSA reaffirmed its policy. Today, though, two separate attempts to change it are underway.
In one, three men are suing the Department of Health and Human Services, demanding they be allowed to opt out of Part A and still collect Social Security. “[The plaintiffs] all believe they can obtain better health care, and the health care they desire, privately and with less interference from third parties,” their lawyer Kent Brown announced at a press conference.
The men, Brian Hall, Lewis Randall and Norman Rogers, say that since Medicare is supposed to be voluntary, they ought to be allowed to decline it and pay for their own insurance. That makes sense.
Moreover, they note that, “If just 1 percent of current retirees chose not to participate in Medicare, Medicare expenditures would decrease by about $1.5 billion per year immediately and by approximately $3.4 billion per year by 2017.” Certainly a substantial savings for taxpayers.
At least one lawmaker also wants the SSA to change its rules.
This month Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, introduced the Medicare Beneficiary Freedom to Choose Act. This measure would allow seniors to forgo Medicare Part A. It would also allow seniors to contribute pre-tax dollars into a Health Savings Account, so healthy older people could continue saving money they might eventually need to pay for future medical care.
“If Warren Buffett wants to pay for his own medical care, I say we should let him,” Johnson said, sensibly. And that, of course, is the greater problem with all federal entitlement programs -- they treat everyone exactly the same way, even those who can afford (and want) to go outside the taxpayer-supported system.
“It’s sad that people who want to make their own health care decisions feel like they have no other option than to sue the federal government,” Johnson says. “People should make their own medical decisions, the government shouldn’t force health care decisions on anyone.”
Virtually everyone -- outside of Washington, that is -- would agree.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)