The Party of Nyet in WI and IN Merits Universal Condemnation

So says Nolan Finley, Editorial Page Editor for The Detroit News, in a scathing editorial entitled "AWOL Dems Defy Ballot Box" for February 27, 2011, here:

AWOL Dems defy ballot box

NOLAN FINLEY

American-style democracy holds together because no matter how nasty the political game gets, the players honor a few inviolable rules. We obey the laws, even the ones we disagree with. We respect the ballot box. And after even the most bitterly contested election, the loser accepts the results, works within the system and awaits another chance to prevail with voters.

These guidelines kept the nation from shearing apart in 2000, when supporters of Al Gore (wrongly) believed the presidential election was stolen by George W. Bush. A tense period of uncertainty ended when Gore, in perhaps his finest moment, conceded and urged his backers to work to heal the country.

But what's happening in Wisconsin and Indiana breaks that tradition and puts a crack in our democratic foundation.

Democrats in those states, as in most others, were shellacked in legislative races last fall, giving Republicans majority control of their legislatures.

Republicans interpreted their overwhelming victories as a mandate to change the course of the states. Specifically, they set about undoing decades of laws put in place by Democrats to favor labor unions over taxpayers.

Instead of staying on the field to defend their positions, Democratic lawmakers in both states fled to neighboring Illinois, where they hope to win with their absence what they couldn't at the ballot box — namely, the right to control policymaking.

Without the Democrats, the legislatures don't have the required quorums to pass budget measures, including cutting pay and benefits for public workers.

The lawmakers in exile call this a defense of democracy. In truth, it's a step toward anarchy. If it catches on as a practice, it will officially end government by, of and for the people.

It's part of a disturbing trend by Democrats to embrace a by-any-means-necessary approach to governing. We saw it during passage of Obamacare, when the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate blew up the rules to block a filibuster. In Massachusetts, Democrats used after-the-fact law changes in a failed attempt to keep a Republican from succeeding Ted Kennedy.

Obama trashed bankruptcy law to move the United Auto Workers ahead of General Motors' and Chrysler's secured creditors. And his regulatory agencies are bypassing Congress to enact policies he knows the elected representatives would never approve.

The strategy exposes the arrogant liberal conviction that they are justified in imposing their will on the people, because only they know what's best for America.

These Democrats in Indiana and Wisconsin merit universal condemnation.

What they are saying is that the people no longer have the right to use the ballot box to decide the direction of their government.

That's a rule change our system can't survive.

Obama is Deliberately Making Americans Poorer

So says Richard T. Rahn, here:

The Obama administration’s policies are causing Americans to pay far more for gasoline and other fuels than necessary. America is awash in fossil-fuel energy sources with almost 30 percent of the world’s coal and 80 percent of the world’s oil shale - which contains an estimated three times the recoverable oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. ...

The United States should be an energy exporter. ...

The Obama administration has a hatred of fossil fuels and is determined to reduce their use despite the economic damage. ...

[T]he Obama administration has stopped the new oil-production process in the Gulf of Mexico, even in the face of a court order requiring it to issue permits. The administration, through executive orders, has denied oil and gas producers access to millions of acres where large deposits of oil and gas are known to exist. The administration also is holding up permits for many new power plants, pipelines and industrial plants, all of which are costing Americans jobs and driving businesses to other countries.

A Re-Run of 2008?

Deflation, depression, inflation, recession, oh my.

Claus Vistesen for CreditWriteDowns here thinks we're in for a re-run of 2008.

Accidental Death Insurers Use ERISA Law as Shield to Deny Payments

So says an important story which appears here at Bloomberg.com, detailing the unintended consequences of the 1974 legislation.

The story, focusing on the lucrative $25 billion business for accidental death insurance purchased by employees through their employers' group plans, discusses notable cases involving MetLife, Prudential, and AIG.

Outrageous. 

Now Add "Shorters" to "Truthers" and "Birthers" in Conspiracy Theory Pantheon

I kid you not:

Another economic warfare tool that was linked in the report to the 2008 crash is what is called “naked short-selling” of stock, defined as short-selling financial shares without borrowing them.

The report said that 30 percent to 70 percent of the decline in stock share values for two companies that were attacked, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, were results of failed trades from naked short-selling.

The collapse in September 2008 of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, was the most significant event in the crash, causing an immediate credit freeze and stock market crash, the report says.

In a section of who was behind the collapse, the report says determining the actors is difficult because of banking and financial trading secrecy.

“The reality of the situation today is that foreign-based hedge funds perpetrating bear raid strategies could do so virtually unmonitored and unregulated on behalf of enemies of the United States,” the report says.

For the complete story at The Washington Times, go here.

The paranoid style in America lives to die another day!

Spreading the Misery Around

Moreover, as we were saying before, [the tyrant] grows worse from having power:

he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first;

he is the purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as miserable as himself.


-- Socrates, Republic of Plato, Book IX

Presentative Justin Amash: Making the Perfect the Enemy of the Good

As if there were the remotest possibility his co-sponsored measure would get passed, when de-funding Planned Parenthood was a complete no-brainer. Puh-leeze.

From Politico.com here:

Amash also voted present on Indiana Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood and said it was “improper and arguably unconstitutional” to single out one entity. He co-sponsored a similar measure that would deny so-called Title X family-planning subsidies to any organization that performs abortions.

Textbook Nirvana Fallacy, a la Voltaire, as here.

Q4 2010 GDP 2nd Estimate = 2.8 Percent, Down from Initial 3.2 Percent

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, here.

Q3 2010 GDP rises to 2.6 percent from previously estimated 2.0 percent.

Overall, despite TRILLIONS in loans, bailouts and other government guarantees, all we've got to show for it is a huge steaming pile of new debt, millions still out of work, housing values in the toilet, foreclosures reaching new heights, smaller banks failing and the biggest banks sailing, giant GSEs on government life support, record numbers on food stamps, the Federal Reserve punishing savers and livers on fixed incomes with artificially low interest rates . . .

and GDP? Basically treading water, so that the losses of 2009 were recouped in 2010 and we're back to where we were in December 2008, a lovely time as I recall:  

Real GDP increased 2.8 percent in 2010 (that is, from the 2009 annual level to the 2010 annual level), in contrast to a decrease of 2.6 percent in 2009.

Was it worth it? WELL WAS IT?

What Did Rep. Justin Amash Do? On Funding Planned Parenthood He Was Silent.

He did not vote to fund it. He did not vote to de-fund it. He voted "present".

“And what I think is important for you all, is that when you see people standing in defense of what’s right, that you make sure that your voice is not remembered as one of the silent,” Thomas said. “Because there’s gonna be a day when you’re gonna look around and you’re gonna look at your kids and your grandkids and they’re gonna ask you a question: what happened to the great country that was here when you grew up, and why isn’t it here now, and what did you do?”

-- Justice Clarence Thomas, quoted here

Rep. Justin Amash: How About Some "Re-" In Front of That?

Politico.com has a story generating considerable interest about how Republican freshman Rep. Justin Amash (MI-3) has been voting "present" a number of times, even on some serious matters like de-funding the abortion provider Planned Parenthood:

In total, Amash has voted present on roughly 4 percent of the legislation that has come to the House floor in the 112th Congress.

Amash has voted "present" five times, which calls to mind Obama's voting record as a state senator in Illinois, where he voted "present" 129 times, about 3 percent of the votes he cast.

Obama's record attracted the attention of Nathan Gonzales in 2007 because Obama also had cast such votes on several controversial issues like partial birth abortion:

For example, in 1997, Obama voted "present" on two bills (HB 382 and SB 230) that would have prohibited a procedure often referred to as partial birth abortion. ...

[I]n 1999, Obama voted "present" on HB 854 that protected the privacy of sex-abuse victims by allowing petitions to have the trial records sealed. He was the only member to not support the bill.

In 2001, Obama voted "present" on two parental notification abortion bills (HB 1900 and SB 562), and he voted "present" on a series of bills (SB 1093, 1094, 1095) that sought to protect a child if it survived a failed abortion. In his book, the Audacity of Hope, on page 132, Obama explained his problems with the "born alive" bills, specifically arguing that they would overturn Roe v. Wade. But he failed to mention that he only felt strongly enough to vote "present" on the bills instead of "no."

And finally in 2001, Obama voted "present" on SB 609, a bill prohibiting strip clubs and other adult establishments from being within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, and daycares.

It's not like people weren't warned in Amash's case, either, since he had a famous reputation here in Michigan as a state representative for reporting his votes in real time on his Facebook page, and for voting "present" now and again.

Still, you'd like to think that a guy who graduated from law school could come up with a better excuse for voting "present" than not having "a reasonable amount of time to review the legislation." (Gee, I'm sorry, Professor, my dog slobbered all over my homework at breakfast). Besides, he's getting paid an awful lot of money if all he's going to do is "present" us. How about some "re-" in front of that?

In the Planned Parenthood case, Amash said he doubted the constitutionality of the language. Well, then didn't he have an obligation to vote "No" instead of "present"?

If most Americans could go back and listen to candidate Obama on the stump talking about how he and his supporters were going to transform America, I'm sure it would elicit a shudder now, knowing what they know about the carnage his policies have wrought in America. Which is exactly what I felt when I heard Justin Amash thank his supporters on election night in November 2010:

In his victory speech at Kent County GOP election night headquarters, he said the party should work to bring more Democrats and independents into the party to "transform this state" and "transform this country."

Yep, just what we need. More transformers. More Democrats.

UPDATED Sunday February 27, 2011:

Unlike doctrinaire libertarians who think they are always right about everything but are in consequence thereof not free to admit it when they are wrong, we must retract the following:


[Amash] had a famous reputation here in Michigan . . . for voting "present" now and again.


Amash never voted "present" in the Michigan legislature.

But his voting record was noted for its "singularity." Of 1315 votes cast, there were 76 in which his was the lone vote against legislation which otherwise obviously overwhelmingly passed. That's 5.8 percent of his votes. It is useless to speculate how many of these would have been cast as "present" if he had been permitted to do so, as he is now in the US House, where, however, it is becoming clear that after just two months his record in Michigan is a kind of proxy for how his record in DC has already shaped up.

This does not mean Amash was wrong, of course, in every instance, but it does show that he marched to the beat of a different drummer. That drummer was distinctly libertarian. His singular votes often reflected an aversion to using legislative power to single out groups for special favors or penalties. Sometimes it appears to have courted the stoner vote. Other times it disdained regulatory intrusion on private industries, and otherwise steered clear of do-gooder legislation, such as protecting "endangered species" or senile old women in danger of freezing to death in their homes because they forget to pay the gas bill.

In Michigan Amash's record meant that he went against his own party almost 36 percent of the time (472 votes), which makes perfect sense of the rhetoric to get more Democrats and independents into the Republican Party (without the singular "libertarian" votes, Amash voted against his own party 30 percent of the time). His election night remarks in that regard were jarring and startling in a year marked by one of the biggest partisan Republican victories nationwide in decades, but play well in a district full of Democrats and independents and union members. The clarion call of the Tea Party was not bipartisanship, but that's often the ploy of libertarians, whose small numbers keep them forever in need of allies. It's smart politics, not but it's not principled conservatism.

Methinks thou dost protest principle too much.

With the "present" vote on de-funding Planned Parenthood, one suspects Amash is taking a page out of Obama's unprincipled playbook.

"Suddenly" coming to the conclusion that DOMA is unconstitutional, Obama has instructed the DOJ not to defend it in court. But at the same time he is going to enforce this "unconstitutional" law until the courts have done with it. Instead he should be using his own Executive power to preserve, protect and defend the constitution as one of its co-equal representatives by not enforcing DOMA, which he views as a threat to it. In this Obama plays a cowardly slave who is in thrall to the courts, and doesn't have the courage of his own convictions. He is a weak president, of very poor character, but it does shore up his street cred on the left.

Expressing doubt that voting to de-fund Planned Parenthood would be constitutional, Amash was content to let de-funding pass unopposed by him, hiding in the half-way house of "present" and putting the constitution at risk. He too is guilty of ceding his co-equal authority, in this case of the Legislative power in which he shares. It was a moment of weakness. He may have escaped the anger of the left in his constituency, but his so-called conservative principles were sacrificed.

I say it was cowardly.

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

Record Corporate Cash? Doodleysquat

Says the master of the S and P:

Mr. Silverblatt complains that he has repeatedly seen analysis showing US companies with a big cash hoard, which fails to note that much of it is being held by financial institutions as deposits or in expectations of higher capital requirements. In short, the companies can't spend it.

Read more about the man behind the numbers in The Wall Street Journal here.

Obama: America's First Queer President?

The gay M/O is aggression. And the president is following it:

1. Signs repeal of DADT, 12/22/10.

2. Refuses to defend DOMA on Wednesday, 2/23/11.

3. Orders the military to begin queer sensitivity training for battlefield troops as reported on Thursday, 2/24/11.

4. Appoints a queer to White House social secretary on Friday, 2/25/11.

In your face, America.

"Pop takes another shot, neat,

Points out the same amber

Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and

Makes me smell his smell, coming

From me;"

-- Barack Obama, 1981, here

"[This incident] may be describing outright sexual abuse. But perhaps not; we don't know, and we'll never know. But there is no question that the poem is describing a boundary violation on several levels: this child feels invaded-perhaps even taken over-by this man, and is fighting against that sensation."

-- From "Decrypting Obama's 'Pop'" here

Our Tyrant is Himself a Servile Bastard

As Jonah Goldberg reminds us here:

More to the point, once the president concluded that the law [Clinton's Defense of Marriage Act] was unconstitutional, he would be bound by his oath to ignore it, and challenge it in every way possible.

President Obama says DOMA is unconstitutional, and yet the “law professor” says he will continue to enforce it.

In a properly ordered constitutional republic, this would be a scandal. But in America today, it’s cause for eye-rolling, shrugs, and platitudes about the demands of politics.

Translation for those of you in Rio Linda: the president is violating his oath of office to defend the constitution when he enforces an unconstitutional law, and is bowing to the Judicial branch of government by deferring to it to decide the fate of the law  instead of asserting the co-equal power of the Executive branch, of which he is the head.

Such servility in the soul is a prerequisite for a tyrant. Obama often can't bring himself to assert the power of the Executive, which helps explain the dithering, idling, and lack of urgency which characterizes his decision making, especially in crises, the bowing to foreign leaders, the apologizing for America's sins abroad, etc.

It's all one important reason our opposition to Obama has a good chance of succeeding, and is. He is weak.

Democrats: The New Party of No

"Here stand the Democrats, avatars of reactionary liberalism, desperately trying to hang on to the gains of their glory years - from unsustainable federal entitlements for the elderly enacted when life expectancy was 62 to the massive promissory notes issued to government unions when state coffers were full and no one was looking.

"Obama's Democrats have become the party of no. Real cuts to the federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell, no.

"We have heard everyone - from Obama's own debt commission to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched Greece self-immolate. We can see the future. The only question has been: When will the country finally rouse itself?

"Amazingly, the answer is: now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin - Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at the congressional level - a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?"

-- Charles Krauthammer, at his finest, in The Washington Post, here

Rep. Paul Ryan: "I Didn't Like ObamaCare, But I Didn't Walk Out On It"

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, here.

Hear! Hear!

Gold's Gift: Stable, Long-Term, Low Interest Rates

In Great Britain thanks to John Locke and William of Orange, as discussed here by Nathan Lewis.

The gold standard: The sine qua non for prosperity, greatness, and liberty.

Flee-Baggers: Elected Democrats Who Run Away to Shut Down Government

The New York Times romanticizes them as exiles when it's Democrats who shut down duly elected government by running away from their jobs:

Illinois suddenly found itself as the refuge of choice for outnumbered Democrats fleeing their states to block the passage of such bills. By Wednesday evening, most of Indiana’s 40 Democratic state representatives were living in rooms (“plain but all we need,” in the words of one) at the Comfort Suites in Urbana, Ill., about 100 miles west of the state Capitol in Indianapolis. Wisconsin’s Senate Democrats were preparing to mark their first full week, on Thursday, somewhere in northern Illinois.

Meanwhile, The Washington Times reports that the US Senate, still controlled by Democrats, has bugged out of town while Republicans in the US House have been working very hard to cut spending and keep the government engine operating on a leaner mixture:

House Republicans said they’ve done their work. They stayed in session until 1 a.m. twice, worked until 3:43 a.m. another day, and then pushed until nearly 5 a.m. Saturday morning to get their bill done. Along the way, they considered hundreds of amendments and held more than 100 recorded votes.

The Senate, meanwhile, hasn’t touched spending since before Christmas. Instead, senators have worked on a bill to update federal aviation rules, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support on Feb. 17.

Senators then left Washington, adjourning by unanimous consent, which means no lawmakers objected to the decision.

Freshmen House members were incredulous.

“It’s just remarkable that we have this deadline looming and apparently they’re not working on it,” said Rep. Robert Hurt, Virginia Republican. “It’s incumbent on them to get the work done — either adopt the measure as we’ve sent it over or get it back to us as soon as possible so we can work out the details.”

Fleabaggers Infest Wisconsin State Capitol Building: Odd Lurking Smells Everywhere

As observed by an imported (!) protester here:

Many of the protesters have been here for days, some without a change of clothes. While some Madison residents have opened up their homes to people who need a shower, and many people clean up daily in the washrooms with buckets of soapy water, there are still, as protester Nathan Christ from Chicago put it, "odd, lurking smells everywhere."

Republican Super-Majority in MT Scares the Bejeebers Out of Dem. Governor

And out of the Associated Press, showcasing a story designed to inflame reaction in the moribund left:

Some residents, Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer and even some Republican lawmakers say the bills are making Montana into a laughingstock. And, they say, the push to nullify federal laws could be dangerous.

"We are the United States of America," said Schweitzer. "This talk of nullifying is pretty toxic talk. That led to the Civil War."

More at the link here.

How Doctrinaire Libertarians Co-Opt the Tea Party Illustrated

The latest example comes from Senator Rand Paul, son of Representative Ron Paul. Republicans, maybe. Libertarians for sure, who, like all our collectivist enemies, believe in permanent revolution: