The Foundation

“The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of its political cares.” –Federalist No. 12

Government & Politics

Obama Indigestion Causing Gas Pains

The national average for gas is approaching $4 per gallon, once again causing pain at the pump. According to the U.S. Energy Department, the average yearly cost for an American family to fill up the car with gas will rise 28 percent from last year, or about $700. A family can’t lose that much money without also losing the ability to buy other goods or services. The price of gasoline has skyrocketed by 67 percent since Barack Obama took office, but, needless to say, he isn’t letting this crisis go to waste.

The fact is that Obama’s energy policy is working exactly the way it was designed to work. His intent is to drive up the price of fossil fuels in order to make alternative energy sources seem more appealing. Alternative sources have been heavily subsidized for years and yet still can’t rival fossil fuels, so, Obama reasons, prices on the latter must be driven higher.

In 2008, now-Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Obama began work on that less than one month after taking office in 2009 by reversing George W. Bush’s expansion of offshore oil drilling. When the BP Deepwater Horizon spill occurred in April 2010, the administration took this as a golden opportunity to enact a moratorium on offshore drilling. Despite multiple court rulings against that moratorium and even being ruled in contempt, however, the administration persists with its policy.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar put up the Left’s favorite straw man, saying, “[W]e don’t believe that the ‘drill, baby, drill’ program is the way that’s going to get us to the energy independence that we need for America.” No one says that domestic drilling on its own would achieve energy independence, but putting so much of our own oil off limits or underutilized – offshore, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the Bakken Formation to name but a few examples – certainly doesn’t help.

The White House has countered by floating a proposal to release some oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to bring down prices. This is a bad idea for two reasons. First, it doesn’t replace domestic production, and, second, it would need to be replaced as expediently as possible, thus merely kicking the can down the road. In essence, the administration is admitting that supply must increase to offset price hikes, but in every other way, it’s working against supply increases. Such rank indifference to the plight of ordinary Americans has become a White House hallmark.

Earthquake Strikes Japan

“A ferocious tsunami spawned by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded slammed Japan’s eastern coast Friday, killing hundreds of people as it swept away boats, cars and homes while widespread fires burned out of control,” the Associated Press reports. “The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake unleashed a 23-foot (seven-meter) tsunami and was followed by more than 50 aftershocks for hours, many of them of more than magnitude 6.0.” As we went to press, Hawaii was being swept by tsunami waves, as well. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected. News like this certainly puts things in perspective.

Collectivist Tyranny Continues in Wisconsin

The standoff in Wisconsin between the fiscal common realism of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the entrenched state unions and their Democrat lackeys came, at least in part, to an abrupt end this week. State Senate Republicans used a parliamentary procedure to remove the spending measures from Walker’s proposal to limit collective bargaining significantly, allowing GOP senators to pass the bill without the chamber’s 14 Democrats, who fled the state three weeks ago in an attempt to prevent passage by denying the chamber a quorum. The state assembly followed the senate, passing the bill 53-42. Rather than debate Walker’s argument that state unions are severely hampering Wisconsin’s ability to close its nearly $4 billion budget gap, Democrats found it easier to chastise Republicans as cowards – all while they themselves hid in an Illinois hotel to avoid participating in the citizens’ elected government.

Union leaders and their hired thugs descended on Madison to lock up the Capitol building and protest raucously, issuing threats (and in some cases, trying to carry them out) of physical violence and even death against Republicans. They overwhelmed state house security, climbed through windows and have done over $7.5 million in damage to the building. The source of their anger is obvious – without government support, public-sector unions are shrinking in size and power. Given that union support is almost entirely for Democrats, it’s no wonder both parties want to continue the cozy relationship.

This law will be a major blow for those who seek to continue the status quo of cushy jobs and generous pensions at our expense. Union organizers are now hoping to reverse this defeat by initiating recall drives for the Republican senators and Gov. Walker, once again proving that the Left’s respect for the American system of government is limited to how far they can bend that system to their own will.

This Week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ Award

“So they’re going to escalate the protests [in Wisconsin] – you will either have collective bargaining through a vehicle called collective bargaining or you’re going to have it through the streets. People here will fight back because they think their cause is moral and they have nowhere else to go.” –rabble rouser in chief Jesse Jackson

New & Notable Legislation

Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced a bill to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has received over $4 billion in taxpayer money since 2001 to run National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). “Americans struggling to make ends meet shouldn’t be forced to fund public broadcasting when there are already thousands of choices for educational and entertainment programming on the television, radio and web,” DeMint said, adding that Barack Obama’s own bipartisan debt commission proposed ending the subsidies. NPR receives only 2 percent of their funding from taxpayers, and PBS 15 percent, making it likely that these organizations would easily survive without government aid. In fact, erstwhile NPR fundraising executive Ron Schiller said (among other things) that they would be “better off” without federal funding.

Rep. Doug Lanborn (R-CO) is leading the House effort to defund NPR. He made note of the “condescension and arrogance” apparent in a sting video that caught Schiller discussing his unvarnished views of conservatives with two members of conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe’s Project Veritas who posed as part of a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood. Schiller told the men that he viewed the Tea Party as “really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

Schiller resigned from NPR after his words were made public, and he also won’t be taking that position at the Aspen Institute he thought he had. NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) likewise stepped down this week in the aftermath of the video. She had already been taking flak for the recent firing of commentator Juan Williams after he made comments on Fox News Channel that seemed to contradict NPR’s ideological bent. It’s time for NPR and PBS to stand or fall without taxpayer support.

Correction: On Wednesday, we erroneously attributed Ron Schiller’s quote about the Tea Party to Vivian Schiller. We regret the error.

Hope ‘n’ Change: ObamaCare’s Waivering Appeal

The Department of Health and Human Services issued another 126 waivers to ObamaCare this week, bringing the total number of exemptions to 1,040. The exempted groups – corporations, non-profits, unions and other entities – have been allowed to maintain their current insurance schemes for at least one year because they have proven in some fashion that ObamaCare’s insurance mandates would cause financial harm. Additionally, the state of Maine has received a three-year waiver to opt out of the requirement that insurers spend at least 80 percent of the premiums received on medical care. If ObamaCare is so well put together, why the need for all these backdoor exits? One reason is that they will no doubt be offered to unions and blue states in exchange for political favors in 2012.

This new strategy of lenience in administering the president’s signature legislation is a subtle admission that ObamaCare doesn’t work as an insurance program – but it becomes more evident every day that it works just fine as a political payoff tool. The administration’s painfully slow march through the courts in defense of the law struck down by Judge Roger Vinson in January is another example of this admission. The administration hopes that by stretching out the appeals process as long as possible, they may be able to build up ObamaCare to such an extent that the Supreme Court won’t strike it down. They plan to do this by implementing various aspects of the law with an automatic funding mechanism that has effectively hidden $105 billion in the budget. As Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Republicans are working to repeal this portion of the law.

In the meantime, Democrats appear to have quietly given up pursuing confirmation of Donald Berwick to a full term as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Berwick, who was recess-appointed to CMS last year, has a record that even Democrats have come to realize is indefensible. In 2008, he was quoted as saying, “Sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker and that any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.” By Berwick’s reckoning, even ObamaCare is too conservative. Though Obama resubmitted his nomination, 42 Republicans wrote a letter opposing Berwick’s confirmation, meaning that it’s highly unlikely that it will happen.

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File

Barack Obama has hired yet another czar – this time a “Cabinet czar” to serve as a liaison to his own Cabinet. Media adviser Tom Gavin has been appointed to serve as Cabinet communications director, and his job description is “to better coordinate with and utilize members of the Cabinet.” Isn’t the president the Cabinet czar? We suppose Obama is too busy being the golf czar and needs a Cabinet czar to keep those pests from interfering with his game.

National Security

Being Liberal Means Never Having to Say You Were Wrong

Having painted George W. Bush as a torturer, a destroyer of constitutional freedoms, and a villain from the dystopian novel “1984,” in true Orwellian fashion, Team Chosen One has arrived full-circle at exactly the same policy positions on terrorist detainees as the Bush administration. Specifically, the Obama administration announced this week that military tribunals would resume, thus implicitly conceding that Guantanamo Bay would likewise remain open for the foreseeable future. The Leftmedia was too busy doing the drug called Charlie Sheen to take full notice.

This decision owes to the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling and its congressional backlash, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that effectively relegates detainee tribunals to Gitmo. Obama’s abrupt pirouette was accompanied by not so much as a hint of admission of miscalculation regarding the wisdom of Bush administration policies. The Wall Street Journal summed it up best: “No one has done more to revive the reputation of Bush-era antiterror policies than the Obama Administration.”

Perhaps its court “win” over terrorist Ahmed Ghailani was a bit too much of an embarrassment for the administration to suffer yet another public drubbing by admitting – again – it was wrong. Of course, Americans now recognize Ghailani simply as the terrorist who was acquitted of more than 224 murder counts in a dog-and-pony “showcase” civil trial. They also remember that he was just one acquittal count shy of walking away as a free man, notwithstanding his pivotal role in the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Incredibly, however, Team Best-and-Brightest still hasn’t received the memo, reaffirming its commitment this week to civilian trials for terrorists in the same breath it announced resumption of military tribunals. Apparently, the liberal alternative to admitting an error in judgment is simply to affirm the error while simultaneously backpedaling on actual policy.

Finally, the administration also announced it will dispense with a cornerstone of the laws of armed conflict, declaring that the U.S. will now treat as legally binding a radical 1977 add-on to the Geneva Conventions, a protocol rejected since the Reagan administration. This protocol effectively erases the otherwise clear line between lawful and unlawful enemy combatants, effectively de-incentivizing potential enemies to follow the laws of armed conflict. Thus, while terrorists do not respect any of the commonly recognized international combatant rules, American soldiers will now be forced to treat them as though they do, affording them protections they do not deserve and ultimately putting even more American lives at risk.

Department of Military Correctness: Minority Report

The U.S. military has been taking the fight to Jihadistan on two fronts for nearly 10 years and faces the possibility of fighting elsewhere in a restive Middle East. The troops are stressed and equipment is wearing out. Throw in other duties the military performs, such as disaster-relief missions, as well as competition from a rising Chinese military that may match U.S. capabilities in a few years, and it’s now obvious that one of the most serious problems the U.S. military faces is, uh, well, that it’s too manly and too white. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.

That is the conclusion of a report by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission ordered by Congress in 2009 and released Monday. The report declares that the U.S. military is too white and too male at the top and needs to change its promotion policies and lift its ban on women in combat. The Commission, whose members included military personnel as well as businessmen and civilians, said greater diversity in the military’s leadership is needed in order to better reflect the diversity of U.S. Armed Forces and American society as a whole. The report said efforts to develop a more equal opportunity military have generally succeeded, but “despite undeniable successes … the armed forces have not yet succeeded in developing a continuing stream of leaders who are as diverse as the nation they serve.”

On the contrary, the U.S. military is not a laboratory for Leftist utopian fantasies. As we have stated before, the sole purpose of the U.S. military is to defend our nation and serve its interests by bringing controlled, sustained violence against an enemy until that enemy is dead or defeated. Nothing more, nothing less. Any policy which jeopardizes that purpose must be avoided at all costs. The best, and only the best, leaders must be allowed to rise, based on merit and nothing else. If this results in a military that doesn’t exactly track the minority percentages of American society, then so be it. At least we’ll know that we have the best military possible protecting that society.

Obama Pats Himself on the Back for Doing Nothing About Libya

Moammar Gadhafi and his band of thugs continue to put up a fight against the uprising that has taken control of about 75 percent of Libya. Loyalist soldiers and foreign mercenaries, supported in some cases by aircraft and helicopters, have been able to defeat any of the rebels who attempted to stand and fight, but the rebels still hold most of eastern Libya and much of the south. After several days of being bombed and rocketed by Gadhafi’s airplanes, rebel leader and former Justice Minister Abdul Jalil pleaded on Wednesday for Western intervention in the form of a no-fly zone, a wish unlikely to be granted. The White House seems to have little appetite for military action, and none of the Europeans can plausibly project airpower into the skies over Libya even if they wanted to.

The White House has not recognized the opposition administration set up in Benghazi, despite repeated announcements that Gadhafi’s regime is illegitimate. The failure to act has only emboldened Gadhafi, who along with better armed forces has vast sums of cash to spend. It has also left France – France – in the position of leading the Western response. None of this stopped Barack Obama from boasting about his efforts in the matter, saying, “We have already engineered the most rapid and forceful set of sanctions that have ever been applied internationally.” Take that, Moammar!

Even the leftist Washington Post concludes in an editorial, “Mr. Obama, who skipped a meeting of his top aides on Libya Wednesday, may hope that the Libyan rebels will defeat the [Gadhafi] forces without outside help – or that other Western governments will provide the leadership that he is shunning. Meetings of NATO, the European Union and the Arab League in the next several days may produce decisions that loosen the straitjacket the administration has applied to itself. If not, the world will watch as Mr. [Gadhafi] continues to massacre his people, while an American president who said that he must go fails to implement any strategy for making that happen.”

Business & Economy

Around the Nation: New York Eyes Wisconsin

As states nationwide battle budget crises, New York has emerged as a perfect example of what not to do. After years of catering to employees’ unions, the costs are catching up. According to a recent New York Times editorial, salaries and benefits for state employees amount to $18.5 billion, or 20 percent of the state’s budget. In 2009, average pay for full-time state workers was $63,382, far higher than the statewide average income of $46,957.

To add insult to injury, the cost for New York taxpayers to fund the state’s pension system has ballooned from $100 million in 2000 to $1.5 billion today – in no small part because New York state workers contribute a minuscule 3 percent of their pay to their pensions (half the percentage typically contributed by state workers nationwide). Additionally, the state’s allowance for “double dipping” means that retirees collecting pensions can return to state employment and collect both a pension and a salary. How convenient for the 2,000 people currently doing so.

Unfortunately, it’s not convenient for New York taxpayers, though that doesn’t matter to the unions. As yet, they have refused to accept Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s requests for a salary freeze and for larger employee contributions to pensions and health benefits. Perhaps they still think of their status as one of the state’s largest political donors will pay their way out of real negotiations. The reality, though, as the Times accurately suggests (yes, the Times actually got some things right this time), is that New York’s long-term viability depends on its ability to control the costs of its public workers – whether unions like it or not.

Does British Health Care Offer a Preview of Things to Come Here?

If one British health official has her way, the newest casualties of that country’s government-run health care system will be its most helpless and vulnerable citizens. Dr. Daphne Austin, a National Health Service (NHS) consultant who provides advice on health funding allocation, is suggesting that babies born after only 23 weeks of pregnancy or sooner be left to die. She claims doctors are “doing more harm than good by resuscitating 23-weekers,” that treatments have “very marginal benefit,” and that money would be better spent “providing support to people who have much more lifelong chronic conditions.” Translated: lives have relative fiscal value, and 23-weekers come up short.

Ironically, Austin actually suggests she’s speaking for the babies: “There’s a lot of emphasis on the parents’ views and what they want. But somewhere in there, there needs to be an advocate for the baby.” If she’s the best advocate these tiny lives have, heaven help them. Yet that’s what one gets in the zero-sum world of government health care where “death panels” are alive and well. The objections raised by government health care advocates at even the suggestion that death panels will come to the U.S. are as meaningless as all leftist denials throughout the decades. Should ObamaCare survive, Britain’s system foreshadows where we’re headed.

Culture & Policy

Second Amendment: Illinois Considers Releasing Gun Owner List

The battle lines are drawn in an Illinois conflict between an attorney general who wishes to release the names of all 1.3 million state firearm owner registration holders and a state representative who wishes to carve out an exemption to the state’s public records law to protect their identities. The Illinois State Police, which maintains the list, has twice refused Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s request to make the records public.

Madigan, a Democrat who once served in the same state senate in which Barack Obama voted “present,” claims that releasing the names in compliance with a Freedom of Information Act request last fall by an Associated Press reporter wouldn’t be an invasion of privacy or endangerment to permit holders. State Rep. Ron Stephens disagrees. “My gun ownership is none of your business,” he contends, and his bill exempting permit holder records from FOIA requests awaits approval by a House committee – it deadlocked 5-5 on a vote there last week, but Illinois House rules allow such bills to be reconsidered.

Opponents of releasing the data, including a number of Second Amendment advocacy groups, fret that such release could target both holders and non-holders; in particular, those who have permits would be targets for gang retribution and harassment. Obviously non-holders may as well place a “Gun-Free Household” sticker on their doors and see how well that works.

Since the ISP isn’t budging on its refusal to turn over the information, it appears the issue will find its way into court. While the requirement for a permit itself is questionable, it’s presumable the people who need to know already have the information. So, aside from satisfying the curiosity of the nosy neighbor, where is the benefit in making this public?

Georgia Court Upholds Voter ID Law

By a solid 6-1 margin, the Georgia Supreme Court rebuffed a Democrat effort to throw out the state’s law requiring photo identification to vote. While Democrats claimed that the law imposes an unauthorized qualification on voters and unduly burdens them, their case was considerably weakened when they couldn’t produce any voters denied their franchise by the law. Moreover, the Justice Department (under President George W. Bush) approved the Georgia law under the Voting Rights Act, making Georgia one of a handful of states where changes to state election law must be approved for compliance with the VRA.

A similar law in Indiana passed muster with federal and state courts in the last three years. As in Georgia, plaintiffs couldn’t produce a victim either. Five other states also require photo identification at the polling place: Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan, and South Dakota. In all cases, voters are allowed to cast a ballot, although in Florida, Georgia, and Indiana they are given provisional ballots.

Faith and Family: Abstinence Gains Traction

New findings by the National Survey of Family Growth have validated the “abstinence only” curriculums championed by the Bush administration. The Left had long ridiculed and vilified these programs, saying they don’t work and calling President Bush “too religious.” Now they have contrary evidence to ignore.

According to the survey – which focused on the 15-24 age group – 29 percent of females and 27 percent of males reported never having had sexual contact with another person. This is a dramatic 22 percent increase from 2002, when the survey was last conducted. In addition, there has been a 40 percent decrease in teen pregnancy since its peak in the 1990s.

Most of the findings – including the news that most adults are monogamous – are positive; however, the news is not all good. The survey showed that more than 40 percent of children are born to unwed mothers. Studies consistently show that fatherless children are five times more likely to experience poverty (and become dependent on government welfare), as well as being at a substantially greater risk for behavioral and social problems.

The survey’s results also lend credence to the policies of religious universities, such as Brigham Young. Last week, BYU’s nationally ranked basketball team suspended a sophomore and star forward after the young man admitted that he and his girlfriend had been sexually intimate. BYU’s honor code includes the expectation that students will lead a “chaste and virtuous life,” a view that according to the National Survey of Family Growth, seems to be gaining traction with America’s youth.

And Last…

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Searchlight) opposes defunding anything where the government already spends money. Well, for Democrat constituents anyway. In opposing the House Republicans’ bill to cut $61 billion in federal spending, Reid spoke from the Senate floor this week saying, “The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1, eliminates National Public Broadcasting. It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”

The people wouldn’t exist without federal funding? Whatever, Harry.

What really jumped out for us, though, was the reference to cowboy poetry. For some reason, it made us think of the closing narration in “Braveheart,” only with a modern twist. In the Year of our Lord Common Era 2011, patriots of Nevada – starving and unionized – charged the deserts of America. They fought like cowboy poets, they fought like Democrats, and won their subsidies.