Views on the News
February 13, 2010
Views
on the News*
Politicians
on both side of the political aisle are tone deaf to the growing
dissatisfaction with the institutions of national government and the parties
vying to control them. A Wall
Street Journal/NBC News survey found that although 52% of the nation's voters
retain a favorable view of President Obama, only 38% have a similar appraisal
of the Democratic Party. The Republicans
fare even worse; just 30%, fewer than 1 in 3 voters, view the GOP favorably. A recent CBS News poll found that nearly half
of all Republicans, 45%, disapprove of their party's congressional delegation. A national Washington Post/ABC News poll
found that just 24% of Americans, fewer than 1 in 4, trust congressional
Republicans "to make the right decisions for the country's future." The House and Senate Democrats didn't fare
all that better, and are trusted by just 32%. Less than half (47%) have confidence in
Obama's ability to make the right decisions.
Discontent with the present and apprehension about the future have
become the background noise of our politics, yet both sides of the
Congressional aisle seem deaf to the din.
Low approval rating for Congress, distrust of the media, and unease with
“experts” in the Obama administration
is what is behind the emergence of the TEA Party movement. When people's
mistrust of their elected officials and the political parties reaches these low
levels, politicians either need to start listening to their voters who put them
in office or polish their resume since their time in office is very limited!
(“The winter of
America’s discontent” by Tim Rutten dated
February 5, 2010 published by Los Angeles Times at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten6-2010feb06,0,1034960.column
)
The TEA Party activists all agree: government is too big;
Spending is out of control; Individual freedom is at risk; and President
Obama’s policies are making the situation worse! TEA Party is a unique populist movement
that has more grass roots movers, shakers, and members, than any populist
movement ever seen in our country. These
activists are highly energized and a huge majority are
disgusted with both political parties. "Populist Constitutionalism" is an
apt description of this movement since love and respect for the Constitution is
driving the movement. The Constitution
(and a real federal government) is the set of principles
that can unite all Americans (with the possible exception of the most radical
of those on the left who want to see some kind of socialist central state.) Social
conservatives, fiscal conservatives (that might be liberal on some social
issues), libertarians, and moderates can agree to disagree about issues like
abortion, legalized drugs, gay marriage, etc. The Constitution teaches all of them that the
resolution to these problems should be conducted on the state or community
level, as opposed to the national, level.
Issues, including health care, “cap and trade,” and excessive regulation of businesses are outside
of the specific powers granted to the federal government. The
battle of ideas will be fought as an ongoing educational process by tone deaf
and constitutionally ignorant politicians, who do not represent their voters. The TEA Party teaches a multitude of Americans
what they are no longer taught in our public schools and universities: America
was, from the beginning, intended to be a grand experiment in freedom and local
and state control. The TEA Party does not
have now need a charismatic leader, even though Sarah Palin is viewed as
a possible nominal leader. Sarah Palin
has successfully linked herself and the TEA Party movement with the
conservative principles and policies of Ronald Reagan. Democrats have tried to demonize the
coalition, casting it as an extreme right-wing part of the GOP, but instead
they have further distanced themselves from mainstream Americans. Republicans have sought to cajole the
coalition into the GOP fold, but more likely the TEA party will take over the
Republican brand. The mainstream
media (MSM) spent the last year treating the Tea Party movement as if it were a
cancer on the body politic, not an organic outcry from a citizenry that had
enough, but now is forced to treat it with grudging respect. Populist
constitutionalism is the surest and clearest path to save our republic from the
government takeover of private industry.
(“Tea Party
Activists ‘Fed Up’ with Obama Agenda” dated February 6, 2010 published by
News Max at http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/tea-party-convention-gop/2010/02/06/id/349170
“Populist
Constitutionalism and the Tea Party” by Larrey
Anderson dated February 7, 2010 published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/populist_constitutionalism_and.html
“Success of Tea
Party Forces Media to Show Some Respect” by Christian Toto dated February
9, 2010 published by Human Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35537
)
Conservatives
understand that liberals often demonize their opponents rather than debate the
merits of the issues because the tactic works to deflect and obfuscate the
criticism. Liberal progressives
are angry that reality doesn't cooperate with their ideologically driven
solutions and it's easier to blame others than to face up to the unpleasant
truth of their failed ideas. Democrats
frame almost any issue stressing their supposedly good intentions and the
Republicans' alleged lack of compassion to avoid a genuine debate and scrutiny
of their policies. In the area of
foreign policy Obama thought replacing the unilateralist cowboy at the top with
a humbler multilateralist, and the path would finally
be cleared to fix vexing international issues such as curbing carbon emissions
and dealing with the mullahs in Iran. Obama’s
approach was supposed to produce a more cooperative Tehran and Moscow, fewer
terrorists in the Muslim world, and vast new initiatives to fight global
poverty. Instead, Iran has murdered
dissenters while speeding up its nuclear program, Russia hasn’t discernibly
budged even after the U.S. abandoned its missile shield in the Czech Republic
and Poland, a Muslim suicide bomber was stopped at the last minute from blowing
up a plane over Detroit on Christmas, and global gatherings have produced even
less concrete action than usual. The
Copenhagen crackup demonstrated that no amount of international do-goodism is going to prevent countries from acting in what
they perceive to be their own self-interest.
In domestic policies Obama
found that many of his policy fantasies can serve as a salve when you
live on the margins of the policy debate, but will quickly be challenged when
he tires to implement them. Obama and the Democrats have been peddling
the creation of up to 5 million “green jobs” in America, through a combination
of cap-and-trade carbon permits, home weatherization, clean coal, higher gas
mileage standards, environmental regulation, and various renewable-energy
mandates, but there’s no evidence the theory is even true. The debate over
phantom jobs “saved or created”, against a backdrop of double-digit
unemployment, will continue to plague Obama’s credibility as double counting
and imaginary zip codes make him a laughingstock. Americans already have found empty pots at
the end of other Democratic rainbows. Like many of the Democrat party faithful’s long-nurtured beliefs, this hope has
disintegrated on contact with reality. Now that progressive economic thought has its first real
foothold in Washington since the 1970s, many long-marginalized ideas are being
dusted off for real-world testing, and hopefully the growing unpopularity of
central planning will dissuade the enthusiasts from inflicting their experiments
on the rest of us in the first place.
(“Lashing
Out Beats Accountability” by David Limbaugh dated February 9, 2010
published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2010/02/09/lashing_out_beats_accountability
“Back to the Drawing Board” by Matt Welch
dated March 2010 published by Reason Magazine at http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/08/back-to-the-drawing-board
)
The
$787 billion “stimulus” was passed
last winter and other than rewarding liberal special interest groups, it has
not accomplished any of its economic goals.
All the massive infusion of taxpayer cash has done is deprive our consumer-driven private sector of much-needed
oxygen, while sending our annual deficits and national debt soaring to
previously unthinkable heights. Democrat
Senators contend they need another $100 billion or so to spend our way out of
this recession, despite demonstrable failure with their first attempt. The $154 billion Spawn of “Spendulus” passed in the House on
a party-line vote in December is crammed to the gills with special-interest
spending. Half of the money would go to
government bureaucracies already overflowing with “Stimulus One” money. In
order to hide this fact the new bill is instead called a “jobs” bill, as if renaming the same policies will yield different
results. Both this “stimulus” bill and the last one can be divided into roughly four
parts: 1) unemployment relief, 2) aid to state governments, 3) public-works
projects, and 4) tax gimmicks. The only
real jobs that a government stimulus stimulates are government jobs, so more
than 2.1 million government workers will be on the federal payroll by the end
of 2010. Extending the duration of
subsidies to the unemployed is sometimes justified, depending on the severity
of the recession, but continuous extensions of unemployment aid encourage some
job-seekers to hold out as long as they qualify for such relief, waiting for
better jobs than the ones they’re offered. Such workers are undoubtedly contributing to
the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed or quitting the job hunt
altogether, and one reason the unemployment rate is dropping is that the
population of active job-seekers is shrinking.
When the administration says that the previous stimulus bill “saved or created” nearly 2 million
jobs, it is mostly talking about state-government employees it claims
would have been laid off absent a massive transfer of federal dollars. The public-works spending from the previous
stimulus bill accounts for a much smaller share of the administration’s “jobs created or saved” tally. There is a good chance that the government
employees hired to promote “Green Jobs” outnumber the actual permanent “Green Jobs”
created. The tax rebates in the first
stimulus bill mostly took the form of checks cut to taxpayers and at least had
the effect of putting money in people’s pockets. For the new stimulus, however, the Democrats
have seized upon a sillier tax gimmick: giving businesses a tax credit for
every new worker they hire, encouraging businesses to game the system to
qualify for the credit without actually increasing their labor forces. Temporary tax credits to hire new workers
have virtually no permanent job-creating effect. In budget terms, these kinds of temporary tax
credits are scored as tax expenditures, i.e. spending. Only a permanent
reduction in the marginal business tax rate has the incentive effect for
long-run job creation. Obama hopes the public will not notice that his new “jobs bill” is composed of the same
policies that were in the old “porkulus” bill. None of these former elements have contributed
significantly to the recovery, and the enormous deficits required to pay for
them put future growth in jeopardy. We'll only be informed of the last-minute
sweeteners, “Cash for Cloture”
handouts and backroom deals after the ink of the President's signature is dry. Reportedly, public-sector unions are pushing
hard to include their precious card-check plan, which would allow Big Labor
bosses to sabotage workers' rights to a federally supervised private-ballot
election. Reportedly, Democrats plan to
stuff a reauthorization of the Patriot Act into the bill to make it harder for
Republicans to oppose it. While
voters may not love the Republicans, they do want political balance back
in Washington. They don’t want any of this manufactured, left-wing,
class-warfare populism. What voters want
is traditional, commonsense, center-right, free enterprise, which basically
says to the government, “Please, let me keep more of what I earn, and please,
just leave me alone.” The time has come for our government to get out of the way,
allow the American people to prosper, create wealth, build businesses, and
advance technology, and let the United States be the number-one country in the
world from now until forever.
(“Stealth
Stimulus” dated February 8, 2010 published by National Review Online at http://article.nationalreview.com/424250/stealth-stimulus/the-editors
“Porkulus II: Return of the Phony Jobs Boondoggle”
by Michelle Malkin dated February 10, 2010 published
by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2010/02/10/porkulus_ii_return_of_the_phony_jobs_boondoggle
“The ‘Green Jobs’ Scam Unmasked” by
Howard Rich dated February 12, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/HowardRich/2010/02/12/the_green_jobs_scam_unmasked
“The Washington, D.C., Disconnect” by
Larry kudlow dated February 12, 2010 published by
Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/LarryKudlow/2010/02/12/the_washington,_dc,_disconnect
)
There is no reason for 1,000+ page bills to undermine American
prosperity and our way of life, when a simple plan is possible to address our
nation’s most pressing domestic challenges. Fiscal Obamaism
is not just a temporary, Keynesian, countercyclical spike in spending; it is
deficits to infinity and beyond. The CBO
reports that, in the 10th year of Obama's budget, the federal government will
spend nearly a trillion dollars a year, just on interest! This traps us as a country and inflation will
wipe out savings and hurt people on fixed incomes. A plunging dollar will make goods more
expensive, and high tax rates will undermine economic growth. It is the path of national decline. Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed a plan, first introduced in 2008, called “A Road Map for America's Future”
(HR 4529), that is a comprehensive proposal
to ensure health and retirement security for all Americans, to lift the debt
burdens that are mounting every day because of Washington's reckless spending,
and to promote jobs and competitiveness in the 21st century global economy. It is a radical plan to balance the federal
budget by slashing the sacred cows of American entitlement spending: Social
Security and Medicare. Entitlements have
traditionally been a third rail for politicians, which
makes this plan unique, and since Democrats have no ideas how to address the
impending bankruptcies, they have instead chosen to attack this plan. The difference between the Road Map and the
Democrats' approach could not be more clear: it
restrains government spending, and hence limits the size of government itself;
it rejuvenates the vibrant market economy that made America the envy of the
world; and it restores an American character rooted in individual initiative,
entrepreneurship and opportunity. Here are the principal elements:
·
Health Care. The plan ensures universal access to affordable health insurance by
restructuring the tax code, allowing all Americans to secure an affordable
health plan that best suits their needs, and shifting the control and ownership
of health coverage away from the government and employers to individuals. It provides a refundable tax credit to purchase
coverage and keep it with them if they move or change jobs. It establishes
transparency in health-care price and quality data, so this critical
information is readily available before someone needs health services. State-based high risk pools will make
affordable care available to those with pre-existing conditions.
·
Medicare. The plan secures Medicare for current beneficiaries, while making
common-sense reforms to save this critical program. It preserves the existing
Medicare program for Americans currently 55 or older so they can receive the
benefits they planned for throughout their working lives. For those under 55, it creates a Medicare
payment to be used to purchase a Medicare certified plan. The payment is
adjusted to reflect medical inflation, and pegged to income, with low-income
individuals receiving greater support. The plan also provides risk adjustment,
so those with greater medical needs receive a higher payment. The proposal also fully funds Medical Savings
Accounts (MSAs) for low-income beneficiaries, while continuing to allow all
beneficiaries, regardless of income, to set up tax-free MSAs.
·
Social Security. The plan preserves the existing Social Security program for those 55 or
older. For those under 55, the plan offers the option of investing over
one-third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement
accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan available to federal employees.
This proposal includes a property right, so those who own these accounts can
pass on the assets to their heirs. The plan also makes the program permanently
solvent by combining a modest adjustment in the growth of initial Social
Security's benefits for higher-income individuals, with a gradual, modest
increase in the retirement age.
·
Tax Reform. The plan provides the option of a simplified system that promotes work,
saving and investment. This highly simplified code has just two rates and includes
a generous standard deduction and personal exemption, no tax loopholes,
deductions, credits or exclusions and eliminates
the alternative minimum tax. It promotes saving by eliminating taxes on
interest, capital gains, and dividends, eliminates the death tax, and replaces
the corporate income tax with a business consumption tax of 8.5%.
Ryanism
is not only a technical solution to endless deficits; it represents an
alternative political philosophy. Democrats
have attempted to build a political constituency for the welfare state by
expanding its provisions to larger and larger portions of the middle class. Ryan proposes a federal system that focuses on
helping the poor, while encouraging the middle class to take more personal
responsibility in a dynamic economy. It
is the appeal of security vs. the appeal of independence and enterprise. The CBO estimated that Ryan’s plan would
accomplish what no other recent proposal could claim to do – it would
strengthen the economy and put the government’s finances on a sustainable
track. It is not too late to take control of our fiscal and economic future,
but the longer we wait, the bigger the problem becomes and the more difficult
our options for solving it. The Road Map for America’s
Future promotes our 1) national prosperity by limiting government's burden of spending,
mandates and regulation, 2) ensures the opportunity for individuals to fulfill
their human potential and enjoy the satisfaction of their own achievements, and
3) it secures the distinctly American legacy of leaving the next generation
better off.
(“A GOP Road Map for America’s Future” by
Paul D. Ryan dated January 26, 2010 published by The Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703808904575025080017959478.html#printMode
“A Roadmap for America’s Future” by
Budget Committee Republicans at http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/
“Obama on the Path to Ruin” by Michael Gerson dated February 10, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelGerson/2010/02/10/obama_on_the_path_to_ruin
)
President
Obama has asked for a bipartisan health care summit on February 25th, but
partisan Democrat preconditions may undermine its effectiveness before it even
begins. House Republicans had
sought to be included in health care negotiations since May 2009, but Democrats
excluded them from the process. Republicans
suspect that this summit will be another symbolic bipartisan gesture with no
real progress on a topic that the President can not
even convince his own party to agree on.
While Obama is trying to create an appearance of “bipartisanship” in summoning leaders to the White House to try to
breathe life into health care, Republicans have required that any closed door
Democrat deal, such as the budget reconciliation process, be revealed prior to
convening this summit. Republicans need
to be on their toes and aggressive in this summit, and
not let it devolve into a question and answer session with the President
hogging the microphone. Obama asked for
a meeting, not a lecture or a media conference, and Republicans need to demand
equal time to present their ideas. The
last NPR poll found that by 58 to 38 the American people were against the
existing Democrat health care reform bills, and 61% indicated that the best
approach was to scrap the existing proposed legislation. Republican leaders called for scrapping the
partisan bills that passed the House and Senate last year and replacing them
with new, bipartisan legislation to reform health care. It would be very difficult to have a
bipartisan conversation with regard to a 2,700-page health care bill that the
Democratic majority in the House and the Democratic majority in the Senate
can’t pass. The Republicans need to make
the cost-cutting part of the health care summit about tort reform, constantly
raising the subject as the counter to the president's proposed $500 billion cut
in Medicare. Then Republicans need to discuss other cost-saving measures, such as
allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines and other measures to
encourage competition. Republicans
should also zero in on the need for more doctors if we are to expand the number
of patients covered. The
Republicans need to point out that in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney inflicted
a version of ObamaCare on the state, the waiting time
to see a doctor in Boston is now 63 days, which will be felt primarily by the
elderly and will lead to premature deaths.
Finally, Republicans need to explain their own proposals for reforming
health care -- including Medical Savings Accounts and expansions of current tax
breaks to encourage people and small businesses to purchase insurance. Then, Republicans need to keep up a steady
drumfire of criticism of the President's proposals. With proper preparation,
the Republicans can turn this health care summit into a nationally televised Town
Hall meeting such as frustrated Democrat Congressmen last August.
(“Republicans Seek to ‘Start Over’ on Health
Care Legislation” by Fred Lucas dated February 10, 2010 published by
Cybercast News Service at http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/61158
“GOP Needs to Make Case at Health Care Summit”
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann dated February 10,
2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2010/02/10/gop_needs_to_make_case_at_health_care_summit
“GOP demands Reid & Pelosi Disavow
Healthcare Deals” by Connie Hair dated February 12, 2010 published by Human
Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35621
)
Exaggeration
and alarmism have been a chronic weakness of environmentalism since it became
an organized movement in the 1960s when every ecological problem was instantly
transformed into a potential world-ending crisis, from the population bomb to
the imminent resource depletion of the “limits to growth” fad of the 1970s to
acid rain to ozone depletion, always with an overlay of moral condemnation of
anyone who dissented from environmental correctness. With global warming, the environmental
movement thought it had hit the jackpot — a crisis sufficiently long-range that
it could not be falsified and broad enough to justify massive political
controls on resource use at a global level. Former Colorado senator Tim Wirth was
unusually candid when he remarked in the early days of the climate campaign
that “we’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and
environmental policy.” The
global-warming thrill ride looks to be coming to an end, undone by the same
politically motivated serial exaggeration and moral preening that discredited
previous apocalypses. On the heels of
the East Anglia University “Climategate” scandal have
come a series of embarrassing retractions from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding some of the most loudly trumpeted
signs and wonders of global warming, such as the ludicrous claim that Himalayan
glaciers would disappear within 30 years, that nearly half of the Amazon jungle
was at imminent risk of destruction from a warming planet, and that there was a
clear linkage between climate change and weather-related economic losses. The sources for these claims turned out to be
environmental advocacy groups — not rigorous, peer-reviewed science. Dissenters who pointed out these and other
flaws in the IPCC consensus were demonized as deniers and ignored by the media,
but they are now vindicated. Climate
scientists are acting as enforcers of liberal orthodoxy, not seekers of objective
truth. To be
sure, these climate hoax revelations do not in and of themselves mean that the
idea of anthropogenic global warming is false, but this is probably the
beginning of a wholesale revision of the conventional wisdom on climate change.
(“Climate
Gotterdammerung” dated February 10, 2010 published by National Review
Online at http://article.nationalreview.com/424508/climate-gtterdmmerung/the-editors
“Liberals and
Scientific Method” by Mona Charen dated February
12, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2010/02/12/liberals_and_scientific_method
)
President
Obama’s first year in office was marred by numerous confidence-busting security
faux pas that negatively affected public opinion and recent pronouncements
further undermine confidence. Last week Dennis Blair, the Director
for National Intelligence, testified he is “certain”
there will be an attempted terrorist attack in the U.S. in the next three to
six months, but he provided no details or assurances the Obama administration
is doing anything to stop it. Blair’s unsupported warning is another
example of why average Americans are losing confidence in President Obama’s
ability to protect the country. Blair’s
testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee was much starker than his
view last year, which emphasized considerable progress against al Qaeda. Blair
and other intelligence officials told a Senate committee that al Qaeda had
adjusted its tactics to more effectively strike American targets domestically
and abroad. A January Washington Post-ABC
News poll found only 47% of Americans have confidence that Obama is making the
right decisions for the country’s future.
The same poll found 62% of Americans also believe the country is on the
wrong track. National security and
foreign affairs are the president’s primary constitutional duties, but those
critical duties consumed only 15% of Obama’s State of the Union address. Consider
his performance on three of his duties to appreciate why Obama is losing public
confidence: fighting terrorism, conducting foreign affairs and leading the
armed forces. Only one in four Americans
believe Obama’s policies are making America safer from terrorism. Obama’s
anti-terrorism policies illustrate why he is losing public confidence. 56% of Americans disapprove of his decision to
close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo bay, Cuba and bring the
terrorists to this country for trial. 67%
disagree with Obama’s decision to try Khalid sheik Mohammed, the 9/11
mastermind, in a New York City federal civilian court, a decision which the
president is now reconsidering after a public backlash. 61% reject Obama’s decision to treat the
terrorist as a common criminal by granting him constitutional
rights. 63% of Americans worry Obama will not go far enough to
investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights. Obama’s handling of foreign affairs fails to
engender confidence as well. Regarding Iran’s atomic weapons
program, most (69%) Americans believe Obama is not tough enough. Public
confidence is wavering regarding Obama’s Afghanistan strategy. Last year,
Obama changed the war strategy twice. Americans
are not impressed with his war plan with 46% of all Americans expecting the
situation to get worse. Obama is
desperate to get the troops home before the 2012 elections. It also appears Obama will appease the
Russians by accepting limited U.S. verification of Russian missile-flight data
to check on Moscow’s new developments and he has already abandoned our
European-based mid-course missile defense system against Iran, at Russia’s
insistence. Obama is giving up too
much to the Russians with nothing but promises in return which contributes to more
confidence busting decisions. Finally,
Obama’s handling of the military undermines public confidence. The administration lacks a focus on what’s
important other than using the armed forces as fodder for Obama’s radical
agenda. The unfocused Quadrennial
Defense Review (QDR) includes a key Obama priority, linking climate change to
national security even though the science is disputed. The report tasks
the Pentagon with reorganizing operations around issues including climate
change diverting military satellites to monitor natural phenomena like glaciers
rather than spending fulltime tracking terrorists. President Obama’s actions on fighting
terrorism, conducting foreign policy and commanding the armed forces undermine
public confidence much as intelligence director Blair’s failure to address
public anxiety about his “certain”
attack did. Obama is failing to succeed in his
primary constitutional duties which should cost him politically and
diplomatically and America will be less safe as a result!
(“Americans Lack Confidence in Obama’s Terror
Policy” by Robert Maginnis dated February 9, 2010
published by Human Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35544
)
* There is so much published each week that unless you search for it, you will miss important breaking news. I try to package the best of this information into my “Views on the News” each Saturday morning. Individual issue updates this week include:
· Civil Rights at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/civilrights.php
· Employment at http://returntocommonsensesite.com/dp/employment.php
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY