Columnist.
A recent poll shows that 85 percent of middle-class Americans believe they're worse off now than they were 10 years ago. Yet shockingly, just 34 percent of those people blame Barack Obama. More Americans blame Congress (62 percent), banks (54 percent), corporations (47 percent), former President George W. Bush (44 percent) and foreign competition (39 percent). Why the disconnect? These folks aren't entirely wrong. Congress did nothing about an out-of-control Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for a decade, and allowed the Federal Reserve to inflate the currency all the while. Banks played along with the regulatory regime in order to make short-term profits. President George W. Bush didn't do enough to free the real estate market from the shackles of liberal central planning.
Here are two quotes from two world leaders. See if you can guess the speakers. Leader #1: "Any action that is provocative [and] offends the religious thoughts and feelings of any people, we condemn. Likewise, we condemn any type of extremism. Of course, what took place was ugly; offending the Holy Prophet is quite ugly." Leader #2: "The future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians in Egypt ... The future must not belong to those who bully women ... The future must not belong to those corrupt few who steal a country's resources ... The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."
What happens when a free people decides it was never free to begin with? What happens when a nation decides that individual liberty is a myth, that the endless vicissitudes of life form an impenetrable wall to success, that we are all controlled by outside forces? We despair. We turn to the power of the masses. This is where almost half of America currently stands. It came out this week that Mitt Romney made this claim back in May, and he was exactly right. That doesn't mean that every American who doesn't pay federal income tax -- veterans, recipients of Social Security -- has given up the American dream. But it does mean that the vast majority of Americans who, on net, receive government benefits and beg government for more, have given up on that dream.
This week, writer-director Nick Cassavetes released his new movie, "Yellow," about a woman having an affair with her brother. "I have no experience with incest," says Cassavetes. "We started thinking about that. We had heard a few stories where brothers and sisters were completely, absolutely in love with one another. You know what? This whole movie is about judgment, and lack of it, and doing what you want." But Cassavetes wasn't done: "Who gives a s--- if people judge you? I'm not saying this is an absolute, but in a way, if you're not having kids, who gives a damn? Love who you want. Isn't that what we say? Gay marriage -- love who you want? If it's your brother or sister, it's super weird, but if you look at it, you're not hurting anybody except every single person who freaks out because you're in love with one another."
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - If the Republican National Convention was all about the numbers -- unemployment numbers, deficit numbers, tax rates -- the Democratic National Convention thus far has been all about feelings. The keynote address on Tuesday night was delivered by Julian Castro, mayor of San Antonio, who proclaimed that numbers didn't matter -- Barack Obama was the only candidate who could "multiply" individual success. And the capper of the evening went to Michelle Obama, who boldly stated, "I've seen how the issues that come across a president's desk are always the hard ones -- the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer." When it comes to economics, of course, this is bull. Numbers generally dictate the right answer. Tax rates dictate how hard people will work and how much they will be penalized for working. Spending dictates tax rates. Unionization rates and minimum wage dictate hiring practices. And so on.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The Republican National Convention started off as an anxiety-ridden, soggy, depressing mess on Monday morning. By Tuesday night, the Democratic Party and Barack Obama in particular had to be an anxiety-ridden, soggy, depressing mess. The transition between Monday morning and Tuesday evening was stunning. The Republican Party went into the convention on a low note after Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri Senate candidate, suggested that women's magic uteruses protect them from becoming pregnant via "legitimate rape," enmeshing the GOP in a battle of demagoguery over abortion. Meanwhile, the convention had a legitimate shot at cancellation; it seemed that the entire city was going to shut down for Hurricane Isaac. And controversies over Sarah Palin and Ron Paul not being granted featured speaking slots at the RNC seemed to be fragmenting the RNC base.
Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate has utterly unhinged the Obama campaign. Last week they were happily jabbering about Romney's record at Bain Capital, implying that he had killed a man's wife, stating that he was a tax cheat and blaming him for outsourcing jobs. This week they're stuck defending Barack Obama's $700 billion cuts to Medicare and spending addiction. That leaves the Democrats with one solution: get ugly.
President Obama is my president. He's not illegitimate. He's not a usurper. He was duly elected by my fellow citizens -- and as much as I think he's a horrible commander-in-chief with anti-American ideals, that's the choice Americans made in 2008. But by the same token, President Obama isn't *my* president. He isn't doing anything for me, the typical, faceless American citizen. I'm not a member of a minority group -- at least a minority group that counts (being Jewish obviously doesn't count when it comes to Obama's giveaway grab bag). I'm not a welfare case, and I'm employed. I'm not a member of a public sector union.
Let's say that you own a business. And let's say that as a person of faith, you decide to use the profits from that business to support, at least in some small part, traditional marriage. Now let's say that your political opponents find your position stunning and launch a boycott against your business. So far, no harm, no foul. It may be irritating that your political opponents choose to make your personal political predilections the basis of a crushing economic attack. But it's their right. But now let's say your political opponents are in government. And let's say they use the power of their office to shut down your business -- not because you violated any law or broke any regulation, but because they don't like your position on traditional marriage. This would be fascism.
Last week, President Obama infamously said that if you built a business in America, you weren't really responsible -- the government was. You didn't get ahead because you were smart or worked hard, or a combination of the two. Only the government could allow you to rise above your station. Obama took a lot of flack from commentators for this comment. There's only one problem: He was right. He wasn't right because that's the way things *should work*. But increasingly, it's the way things *do work*. That's why, two weeks ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., begged Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to do something to boost the economy prior to the 2012 election. "Despite two false starts, we're having a much rougher time than we ever imagined getting unemployment down," Schumer complained. "So get to work, Mr. Chairman." After all, there's an election coming up -- and unless Bernanke boosts President Obama, the incumbent faces trouble.
This week, President Obama spelled out just how much he hates American business in an off-prompter moment in Roanoke, Va. If "you've been successful," said Obama, "you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out here. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there." So, according to Obama, it wasn't your brains or your work ethic that made you successful. What was it? Obama continued: "There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." In other words, the government did it.
This week, the city of San Bernardino, Calif., went bankrupt. It followed hot on the heels of Vallejo and Stockton, Calif. And they'll be followed, no doubt, by Los Angeles -- and then, shortly after that, by California. Let's take a look at the numbers. San Bernardino has an annual budget of $258 million; it is running a budget deficit of $45 million. Where does that money go? To the unions, largely. About three-quarters of the general fund goes to personnel; 78 percent of that 75 percent goes to public safety employees, the most lucratively compensated of all government workers. The city retirement fund amounts to 13 percent of the general fund. San Bernardino, like most other California cities, is heavily taxed. The average wage-earner makes about $30,000 per year, and the city suffers from nearly 17 percent unemployment.
Last week Chief Justice John Roberts blatantly ignored the Constitution and the law and purposefully rewrote Obamacare in order to rule it legal. He called Obamacare a "tax" instead of an individual mandate; he then proceeded to blithely expand the government's power to tax to encompass a tax on breathing, which is what Obamacare is. Now I had warned conservatives years ago that Roberts was a rotten pick for the Supreme Court. "Roberts is not an originalist," I wrote in 2005. "There is nothing in his very short jurisprudential record to indicate that his judicial philosophy involves strict fidelity to the original meaning of the Constitution." Nonetheless, Roberts' decision was stunning.
"There is no good government but what is republican," John Adams wrote. "(T)he very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'" Adams meant that a government in which law is applied at the discretion of powerful people is a bad government. The law must be applied in a straightforward, nonarbitrary fashion or the entire governmental system should be called into question. This week, the Supreme Court called the entire governmental system into question. A couple of weeks ago, President Obama unilaterally declared that he would cease to enforce major provisions of federal immigration law. Now he's campaigning on that reckless disregard for the constitutional structure. "You can decide whether it's time to stop denying citizenship to responsible young people just because they were brought here as children of undocumented immigrants," he told an audience in Boston. "I know where I stand on this." Actually, we can't decide. That's because President Obama decided for us. And when we try to decide for ourselves via state governments, we are told that we're violating the constitutional order.
Remember when President Obama inspired Americans with such tired bromides as, "There are no red states or blue states, just the United States"? Remember when Obama declared that Americans had to pull together, because what united us was stronger than what divided us? Yeah, not so much. President Obama's re-election campaign has been an exercise in fragmentation. Where the 2008 campaign was built thematically around the notion that a polarized electorate was bad for the country and that election of a third-way, multi-racial president could symbolically overcome our divisions once and for all, the 2012 campaign is built on precisely the opposite notion: Americans united in opposition to Obama's agenda must be divided again. And so Obama has carved up the electorate into winnable chunks. And he's appeasing those chunks of the electorate, one by one.
In California, the mayor of a major city has decided that it's time to renegotiate union pensions, which are bankrupting the municipality; more specifically, he wants to raise the retirement age. The governor of the state wants to revamp the welfare system, forcing people to get back to work within two years rather than four. The state government has worked with the California Highway Patrol to implement furloughs amounting to a 5 percent pay cut. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Unified School District has forced teachers unions to accept 10 furlough days, amounting to a 5 percent pay cut. Here's the crazy thing: All of the governmental officials are Democrats. Reality has smashed the Golden State across the face with an iron fist. In fact, all of the measures that Democrats are taking in California will surely fail -- they're half-measures. The state suffers from a $16 billion deficit and has over $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's pension reform wouldn't even make a dent. Gov. Jerry Brown's welfare reform would save just $880 million -- and meanwhile, recent studies show that $69 million in welfare cash is spent in casinos, cruise ships and Hawaii every year. The new deal with the CHP won't touch the CHP pension problem, which amounts to more than $3 billion per year. The LAUSD's furloughing will save a few bucks but won't touch its $390 million deficit.
Back in 2008, after a hard-fought primary battle against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., then-Sen. Barack Obama had a choice: he could put her on the ticket as his vice presidential nominee, thereby healing the rift that had torn apart the Democratic Party or he could go another direction. He chose Joe Biden over Clinton -- a move for which comics everywhere will forever thank him -- and relegated Clinton to a figurehead secretary of state. The question at the time was: Why? Pundits then settled on two answers. The first was ego: Obama didn't want to be outshone by his second-in-command, especially with regard to national security issues. The second was more nefarious: Obama feared having Hillary Clinton as the second-in-line to the presidency. Conspiracy theorists suggested that the Clintons weren't beyond Shakespearian action to obtain the highest office in the land once again; less kooky commentators theorized that a Clinton vice presidency would motivate her to undercut him in order to get a shot at the big chair.
Cory Booker is, by most accounts, a reasonable man. He went to Stanford and Oxford, as well as Yale Law School; now he's the mayor of Newark. He's also African-American. That last fact is only important because liberals have made it so. Booker has been a strong backer of President Obama -- so strong, in fact, that in 2009, Obama offered him a slot in his administration as head of the Office of Urban Affairs Policy. Booker turned it down on the grounds that he wanted to fulfill his job as mayor.
According to President Obama, he's a historic figure. That's no figure of speech. This week, journalist Seth Mandel discovered that President Obama had authorized his staff to add his name to the biographies of former presidents from Calvin Coolidge to George W. Bush on the White House website.
