The Foundation

“Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.” –John Adams

Government & Politics

‘Is That the Best You Can Do?’

Democrats are in such dire straits headed into November’s elections that they’re resorting to outlandish fear mongering about foreign money influencing the campaign via the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents 300,000 American businesses. Considering the Democrats’ record of cap ‘n’ tax legislation, financial sector regulations and the takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, it’s no wonder they’re focusing on a non-issue such as the Chamber.

After a leftist blog reported that the Chamber had received $300,000 in annual dues from foreign companies, the Democrat National Committee ran an ad that warned, “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They’re shills for big business. And they’re stealing our democracy, spending millions from secret donors to elect Republicans to do their bidding in Congress. It appears they even have taken secret foreign money to influence our elections. It’s incredible: Republicans benefiting from secret foreign money. Tell the Bush crowd and the Chamber of Commerce: Stop stealing our democracy!” And here we thought we lived in a republic.

CBS anchor Bob Schieffer played the ad for White House adviser David Axelrod and then asked, “If the only charge three weeks [before] the election that the Democrats have to make is that somehow this may or may not be foreign money coming into the campaign, is that the best you can do?” Yes, Bob, it is. Furthermore, Democrats have a long history of blaming opponents for engaging in all the dastardly practices they themselves have done for decades, a tactic right out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” (“pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it”). Foreign money has been flowing to Democrat coffers, especially labor unions, for many election cycles. Yet the White House indicates that it will continue this theme for the next few weeks.

For the Chamber of Commerce to use foreign funds to pay for campaign ads would be a crime. Obama knows this, though it doesn’t stop him from calling the Chamber’s latest free-market advocacy campaign a “threat to democracy.” Joe Biden challenged the Chamber to “tell us how much of the money they’re investing is from foreign sources.” “None,” would be the answer. Even the “fake but accurate” New York Times reports, “[A] closer examination shows that there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents.”

Ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC ruling overturned parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, Democrats have been looking for ways to repeal the First Amendment for businesses, and publicly demonizing the Chamber of Commerce and other faceless corporations is the first step. Whether it’s this pathetic episode, or Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) ordering investigations into tax-exempt groups for political activities, or Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius threatening “zero tolerance” for health insurance companies blaming ObamaCare for increasing premium rates, Democrats have a plan. And there’s little “democratic” about it.

Open Query

“‘The president was not suggesting any illegality,’ insisted White House Counsel Bob Bauer. In other words, when Obama said ‘one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign sources,’ he was not implying any connection between the ads and the money. He was just stringing sounds together randomly. … [I]t is of a piece with his frequent complaints that the First Amendment allows too much speech of the wrong sort. ‘If we just stand by and allow the special interests to silence anybody who’s got the guts to stand up to them,’ Obama said in his Maryland speech, ‘our country is going to be a very different place.’ What the ‘special interests’ are actually doing is speaking, and the president regrets that they have the freedom to do so. Who wants to silence whom?” –columnist Jacob Sullum

This Week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ Award

“We have a lousy Supreme Court decision that has opened up the floodgates, and so we have to deal within the realm of constitutionality. And a lot of the campaign finance bills that we have passed have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. I think the Constitution is wrong. [emphasis added] I don’t think that money is the same thing as human beings. I don’t think money equals free speech. I don’t think corporations should have the same equality as a regular voter in this district.” –Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) on campaign-finance regulation and the January U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission

See the video and tell us what you think.

News From the Swamp: Deficit Numbers

The Congressional Budget Office released preliminary figures for fiscal year 2010 last week, and the news is quite unsettling. Federal spending tipped the scales at $3.45 trillion for the year, second only to 2009’s record-shattering $3.52 trillion. Domestic spending increases were once again to blame for the high numbers with Medicare rising 8.7 percent and various other expenditures, such as education and housing, which both rose 13 percent. Unemployment benefits rose a staggering 34 percent. Total deficit spending for 2009 and 2010 is now up to $2.7 trillion. That amount is more than all the deficits accrued during the Reagan administration when Democrats were complaining that deficit spending was ruining the country, even as they were enacting the spending. Now, Democrats maintain that deficit spending is helping the economy, despite the fact that unemployment remains stubbornly close to 10 percent and the private sector is reluctant to invest in jobs or growth.

In other fiscal news, The Washington Post reports, “For the second year in a row, the nearly 54 million retirees and other Americans who receive Social Security benefits will not get any cost-of-living increase in 2011 in their monthly checks, government officials announced Friday morning.”

From the Left: The Great Divider

Last week, in his essay “Poverty Pimps,” Mark Alexander traced the decline of the “once proud” Democrat Party to one that encourages reliance on the state and destruction of the free market. For generations, Democrats have fostered the image that theirs is the party that cares about minorities and protects the poor. Now, as Democrat strategists prepare for the midterm elections, we see how strongly they rely on their decades of successful indoctrination to retain their grip on power. This includes exerting pressure on Democrat candidates, particularly blacks, to toe the party line. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the Senate campaign of Democrat nominee Robin Carnahan in Missouri.

While Michelle Obama is busy campaigning inside a polling place in Illinois, Carnahan has been distancing herself from Barack Obama. In March, she was absent from a Missouri fundraiser the president attended. She is against Obama’s latest stimulus plan to spend another $50 billion on “infrastructure.” Perhaps most important, she has joined Republicans in supporting the extension of the Bush tax cuts for all Americans, even the “rich.” Clearly Carnahan realizes the folly in tearing down the rich in the name of the poor. Strategists are worried that she’s ruining her chances with black voters, and they may be right. According to research conducted by the Feldman Group, “Obama is extraordinarily important to African-American voters, and they perceive efforts to weaken him as personal, racial and unusually hostile.” They encourage the Democrats to focus on Obama as a person, rather than on his policies, which resembles despotism, not democracy.

Contrast the words of then state-senator Obama at the 2004 Democrat National Convention with his actions as president:

Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us – the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of ‘anything goes.’ Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.

As president, he’s shown that he’s not above bald-faced appeals to race. He now calls on black voters to turn out in the same numbers as in 2008, telling them at a recent rally, “The other side … is counting on black folks staying home.” Hmm … what was that he once said about “those who are preparing to divide us”? Obama is also threatening “hand-to-hand” combat on Capitol Hill should Republicans regain the majority. That may be an improvement over his back-room strong-arming in order to get members of Congress – of both parties – to vote for policies that are contrary to the welfare of this country as ensconced by the Founding Fathers.

Nobel Peace Prize Contrast

Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo was named this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, much to the chagrin of the Chinese government, which had sentenced Liu to 11 years in prison for supposedly subversive activities. Liu is a writer and activist who called attention to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, in which Chinese soldiers killed hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators. The Chinese government has labeled him a “tool of the West,” but when it comes to tools, the American and European news media take the Tool Prize. They have covered up China’s internal and international misbehavior for decades, including their pathetic coverage of Liu’s plight. He certainly received less coverage than did last year’s recipient, Barack Obama, who received the Peace Prize after having been in office for a matter of days. Obama has done little to live up to the award, and the White House and the State Department stopped well short of demanding Liu’s release from prison, or from pressing human rights issues with China.

Meanwhile, Peter Diamond, Obama’s nominee for the Federal Reserve Board, was one of three recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics. Diamond, along with Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides, developed a “search theory” which explores the relationship between buyers and sellers in the marketplace. This theory has also been applied to the job market, offering an explanation as to why unemployment remains high in a recovering market.

Democrats claim that Diamond’s Nobel Prize makes him qualified for the Fed position, to which Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) eloquently replied, “While the Nobel Prize for Economics is a significant recognition, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences does not determine who is qualified to serve on the Board of Governors.” Perhaps we should be thankful that Obama, with all the hope ‘n’ change he’s wreaked on the American economy of late, didn’t walk away with another prize.

National Security

Judicial Activism Meets Military Readiness

Federal District Court Judge Virginia Phillips, a Clinton nominee, this week ordered the Pentagon to halt its “Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell” policy immediately, freezing current and future procedures that could remove openly homosexual personnel from the Armed Forces. Phillips said that the law “infringes the fundamental rights” of those serving in the military. Leftists, eager to end the policy by any means necessary, applauded the ruling. However, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who supports ending the policy, says such an action should come from Congress. He warned that such an abrupt change would have “enormous consequences for our troops.” For what it’s worth, the administration has announced that it will appeal the decision, but we expect that to be a half-hearted defense at best. The same goes for the appeal of July’s Massachusetts court ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.

The Pentagon had originally wanted to wait to act on the policy after a thorough review of its potential impact to soldiers currently fighting around the world. The House has already passed repeal legislation, leaving the Senate little time for the military’s input on the matter, and they’re expected to make their move during the lame-duck session.

NSA Jones Steps Down

Marine Gen. James Jones (Ret.) resigned as National Security Adviser last Friday, stepping down after a term marked by a series of blunders and controversies, and adding to the long list of White House advisers abandoning ship before the midterm elections. Tom Donilon, Jones’s deputy, has been tapped as a replacement, but unfortunately he’s unlikely to do much better. Donilon is considered by many to be a bureaucrat’s bureaucrat, having held a number of political positions including staffer to Vice President Joe Biden’s Judiciary Committee and chief of staff to Bill Clinton’s secretaries of state. He’s also on record as being unsupportive of the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Gen. Jones himself has said that Donilon has “no credibility with the military.” Of course, former Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in his now infamous “Rolling Stone” interview, called Jones a “clown.” Such is life in the Obama administration.

Defense Unsuccessful in Delaying Hasan Trial

Despite a last-minute effort by defense attorneys, the Article 32 hearing for U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan began just a day behind schedule on Wednesday. Hasan is charged with murdering 12 soldiers and one civilian (and one unborn child by our count) plus wounding 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas, last November. The one-day delay was in response to a request for information by Hasan’s legal team regarding investigatory material on his past dealings with Islamic radicals. However, presiding officer Col. James Pohl denied the defense’s argument for pushing the hearing date back to Nov. 8. Defense attorneys were also unsuccessful in closing the hearing to the public.

The Article 32 hearing, which can be likened to a civilian grand jury proceeding, is expected to last for about three weeks as a number of Hasan’s alleged victims testify. On the first day, the 911 tape of the incident was played. Several witnesses also reported hearing Hasan shout “Allahu Akbar” (“god is great”) before he opened fire. Hasan, who was wounded by responding police officers and is now paralyzed from the chest down, sat motionless and emotionless during the testimony. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and rightly so.

In other terrorist attack news, Oct. 12 was the 10th anniversary of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors and wounded 39. Al-Qa'ida bombers piloted a small boat loaded with 1,000 pounds of explosives into the side of the warship, blasting a 40-by-40 foot hole in the vessel. We’re still waiting for justice for the perpetrators of that attack.

On the Immigration Front: AZ Immigration Lawsuit to Proceed

Judge Susan Bolton, a Clinton appointee defined by the local Arizona press as an “intelligent and fair jurist,” ruled this week that the ACLU, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and other so-called civil rights groups could continue their federal lawsuit challenging the state of Arizona’s right to enforce its immigration law. Bolton previously blocked enforcement of the law, which merely reflects federal law on the matter, ruling that “harm to the organizational plaintiffs will occur if S.B. 1070 goes into effect, regardless of how it is enforced or applied.” She also found merit in the argument presented by the plaintiffs that the law violates both the Fourth and 14th Amendments.

The denied motion to dismiss the suit was filed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer along with two county sheriffs: Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County and Paul Babeu of Pinal County. They sought dismissal based in part on the doctrine of concurrent enforcement, since Arizona’s law mirrors federal statute; however, the federal government believes Arizona is usurping its enforcement powers. Whatever the trial’s outcome, the prospects of S.B. 1070 taking effect any time soon are dim at best. Meanwhile, La Raza rejoices.

Baby Taken From ‘Oath Keeper’?

Alleging child abuse, the New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth and Family recently took a newborn from a Concord couple still in the hospital after the birth. In doing so, the agency cited the father’s affiliation with the Oath Keepers organization – a “militia” according to the agency. Oath Keepers is not a militia, but a group of retired military, police and firefighters who are promising to keep their oaths to support and defend, and even if they were, it’s not a crime – yet – to associate with a militia. There are other serious allegations of wrongdoing that have not been made public, but certainly the father’s political affiliations have nothing to do with them in this case. That New Hampshire’s child services agency thought such information was relevant sets a dangerous precedent. So much for the Granite State’s motto, “Live Free or Die.”

The Department of Homeland Security already has a history of watching “right-wing extremists.” Now, the DHS “Working Group on Countering Violent Extremism” includes the CEO of the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, a race-obsessed group that “tracks” what they call “hate groups” (a.k.a. right wingers). Never a dull moment with the current regime in Washington.

Business & Economy

Florida Judge Allows ObamaCare Suits to Proceed

“A federal judge ruled Thursday that parts of a lawsuit by 20 states seeking to void the Obama administration’s health care overhaul can go to trial, saying he wants to hear additional arguments from both sides over whether the law is unconstitutional,” reports the Associated Press. U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a Reagan appointee, believes an answer to the question of whether the individual mandate to purchase insurance violates the Constitution is worth pursuing, unlike the Clinton-appointed Michigan judge ruled last week. A judge in Virginia, however, also permitted a suit to proceed. As the lawsuits go forward, it becomes more likely that they will end up before the Supreme Court. According to the AP, “The other states involved in the lawsuit Vinson is hearing are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.”

For its part, the Obama administration is using the Pete Stark defense: “The federal government, uh, yes, can do most anything in this country.” Administration attorneys also argue that states have no standing in the matter, but that individuals must take on the federal government in court. We think that the law is a fairly obvious violation of the Commerce Clause, as well as the Ninth and 10th Amendments, on top of the fact that health care is not an enumerated power of Congress.

Meanwhile, in Greece, the government’s largest health insurance provider plans to stop covering special footwear for diabetes patients. Why? Because amputation is cheaper. Just a preview of what’s in store here in the U.S.

Regulatory Commissars: Administration Lifts Drilling Ban

After months of stalling, the Obama administration has lifted the moratorium on deepwater oil drilling – only to replace the ban with new regulations that industry insiders fear are little more than a “de facto moratorium.” The Interior Department itself admits that the costs associated with the new regulations “may result in a reduction in the pace of deepwater drilling activity on marginal offshore fields, and reduce investment in our domestic energy resources from what it otherwise would be, thereby reducing employment in [Outer Continental Shelf] and related support industries.” Translated: Good-bye, even more jobs. (The moratorium has already cost some 20,000-plus jobs.) Hello, greater dependency on foreign oil.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says that the higher costs are justified by the resulting risk reduction, but as the Heritage Foundation points out, “Salazar failed to identify how much risk the new regulations would reduce. How can the cost justify the risk if they don’t even know what the risk is?” Meanwhile, whether through an outright moratorium or stifling regulations, a ban is still a ban. Interestingly, Salazar’s “open for business” masquerade comes just weeks before the November elections – a timeline which, of course, is purely coincidental.

This Week’s ‘Braying Jackass’ Award

This just in: “There’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.” –Barack Obama

Around the Nation: Texas vs. the EPA

Texas is firing back after the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would apply the 1970s clean air laws to carbon regulation and effectively seize permitting authority from states that don’t comply quickly enough. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA’s national office chooses priorities, but state regulators run the relevant programs and issue the necessary permits. When orders from HQ change, as with carbon over the last year, states get three years to revise their ‘implementation plans.’ But in August, [EPA Administrator Lisa] Jackson decided that the law posed too long a climate wait and decreed that if these plans aren’t updated by an arbitrary January 2011 deadline, her office will override the states and run the carbon permitting process itself.”

Given the EPA’s current lack of permitting resources, the Journal notes that this decision “is tantamount to a ban on major construction or building expansion – not merely Texan refineries but any kind of carbon-heavy utility, industrial production, manufacturing plant or even large office buildings.” Indeed, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality projects that the new regulations will end 167 current projects in 2011 alone. In response to Jackson’s fiat, the Lone Star State has filed a lawsuit with the DC appeals circuit, arguing the EPA went “beyond [its] powers” and is asking for an emergency stay of the new regulations.

The EPA itself admits that its actions “may have adverse consequences for the economy.” Of course, we’ve seen how little “adverse consequences” mean to an administration convinced that when it comes to federal bureaucracy, bigger is always better.

Fed to Print More Money – Again

An old axiom of economics is that when the United States gets a cold, third-world economies get pneumonia. While unemployment hovers just below 10 percent in the U.S., in South Africa it’s 25 percent. Ironically, the administration’s policies to deal with unemployment have more closely resembled those of third-world nations than our own free-market heritage.

After a regimen of “quantitative easing” (printing more money) that has produced nebulous results, the Federal Reserve is considering – wait for it – more of the same. To date, however, such stimulus efforts have not stimulated the expansion of credit or employment rolls. Business owners, unlike politicians, have a planning horizon that is longer than eight quarters. Businesses are concerned with sustainability, and so far there is nothing in the Fed’s proposals to alleviate those concerns. But when the default expectation is that government “do something,” doing nothing is not an option to the bureaucrat bosses. So even though its effectiveness is questionable at best, the Fed is committed to plow ahead. It’ll work this time, they swear.

Culture & Policy

Farmer ‘Discrimination’

CNS News reports, “President Barack Obama is requesting $1.15 billion from Congress – to add to a $100-million earmark he pushed through Congress in 2008 when he was a senator – to create a $1.25 billion federal fund to settle discrimination claims by what the Justice Department says is 66,000 African Americans who ‘farmed or attempted to farm’ and were allegedly the victims of discrimination committed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) during the period from Jan. 1, 1981 to Dec. 31, 1996.” That “attempted to farm” caveat must be a big one, because at its peak in 1982, there were only 33,000 black farmers in the U.S., and by 1992 that number had fallen to 19,000.

The Department of Justice claims that the $1.15 billion is to settle claims known as the Pigford II case, in which 66,000 black farmers alleged that the Department of Agriculture denied them federal farm loans or benefits wrongfully. The original suit, Pigford v. Glickman, was brought in 1997 and led to $1 billion in payments to 20,000 claimants. After the Oct. 12, 1999, filing deadline, however, 66,000 more people filed claims, many of which were settled in Pigford II in February 2010. That 66,000 plus the original 20,000 makes 86,000 alleged black farmers, though, again, actual records show that far fewer blacks were farming in the U.S. at the time. A puzzling discrepancy – one that, pending congressional approval, will be paid for by you, the American taxpayer.

Climate Change This Week: It’s a ‘Scam’

It may be the best resignation letter in history. Last week renowned physicist Hal Lewis wrote the president of the American Physical Society to tell him that he no longer wishes to be part of an organization that is part of the “scam” of global warming and “accepts corruption as the norm.” Lewis then did one better: He released his letter to the public.

Lewis, who is also Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, had been a member of APS for 67 years, and his sadness and disgust is apparent as he severs his relationship with the organization. He recalls the days when science was driven by a pure quest for knowledge, likening the choice to be a physicist before WWI as a monkish existence of “poverty and abstinence.” Now, he says, the business of science is just that – a business – with the results slanted toward the highest bidder. And global warming – as we have all seen by the astronomic increase in Al Gore’s wealth – is big business indeed.

“The global warming scam, Lewis wrote, "with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave.” He also referred to it as “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.” Well put.

Islamic Superheroes in Your Living Room

Discovery Kids cable channel recently rebranded itself as The Hub, and it appears that re-branding is important in religion as well as in marketing. As part of the channel’s re-branding, The Hub wants to air “The 99,” a show with 99 superheroes, far more than the Justice League or the X-Men. However, “The 99” is also an attempt to re-brand Islam. The program chronicles the adventures of 99 Sharia-compliant superheroes, each of whom embodies an attribute of Allah. The debut of “The 99” has been pushed back at least until January, supposedly due to unspecified “production issues.”

Barack Obama praised the work of the comic’s creator, saying, “His superheroes embody the teachings of the tolerance of Islam.” Would he have said the same thing about a cartoon that featured characters from another religion? Can the head of a supposedly secular country endorse a program that seems to proselytize young children? The show has aired in England, where a Times of London columnist wrote that the show’s mission was “to instill old-fashioned Islamic values in Christian, Jewish and atheist children.” Would those be “old-fashioned values” such as honor killings and suicide bombings?

On the other hand, American parents seem to see the program for what it is. As one stated, “They’re taking advantage of the fact that in every middle-class household, Mom and Dad are working their [rears] off. They know the kids are watching TV or on the Internet. So maybe Sharia becomes OK. It’s a game. It gradually becomes more and more in their lives.”

And Last…

A Buffalo family hit the jackpot recently when they discovered that the painting that had sat behind their couch for nearly 30 years was in fact an original Michelangelo piece worth millions. The painting was known to the family as “The Mike.” The New York Post reports, “When the kids knocked the painting off its perch with an errant tennis ball sometime in the mid-1970s, the Kober clan wrapped it up and tucked it away behind the sofa. There it remained for 27 years, until Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Kober retired in 2003 and had some time on his hands. His father gave him a task – research the family lore that the painting was really a Michelangelo.” Indeed it was.

The whole thing got us to thinking: What if the Obamas checked behind the couch in the White House? They might find the Constitution stuffed back there. That would be priceless.