GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

News from the Swamp: Fleecing America

On Wednesday, the House passed its housing bill by a 272-152 vote. The Senate will vote in coming days and send it to President George W. Bush, who has dropped his veto threat. The multi-provision bill became even more of an “emergency” because of trouble at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which, between the two, own or guarantee almost half of the nation’s mortgage market. Along with the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie and Freddie accounted for 90 percent of mortgages originated in the second quarter.

The Washington Post reports, “The measure would grant [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson immediate but temporary authority to extend an unlimited line of credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or to buy their stock if their financial condition deteriorates sharply before December 2009.” Paulson will also have wide latitude in setting the terms of a bailout, though the bill’s primary author, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), cautions, “You have to protect the taxpayer.” Protect taxpayers by using their money to bail out irresponsible lenders and borrowers? That’s Democrat logic for you.

In line with that bit of fiscal irresponsibility, the bill raises the national debt ceiling by $800 billion to $10.6 trillion to make room for any bailout. The Post reports further, “In addition to the rescue plan for the mortgage-finance firms, the package includes a plan to rescue more than 400,000 homeowners at risk of foreclosure by helping them trade high-cost loans with rapidly rising monthly payments for more-affordable mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration.” That little gift will cost as much as $300 billion.

Furthermore, nearly $4 billion will go to local governments to purchase and restore foreclosed properties; $4.6 billion will go to tax credits for first-time homebuyers; and $5.3 billion will go toward more low-income housing. Concerning the overall cost of this boondoggle, The Wall Street Journal said it best: “Even conservative estimates by the Congressional Budget Office say the cost for this bailout will run to $41.7 billion, with $16.8 billion offset by higher taxes. No one has any idea of the real cost.” What was that about “protecting the taxpayer” again?

Of course, missing amid all the furor over this behemoth bill is one simple question: Is it constitutional?

New & notable legislation

The National Rifle Association is lobbying for a bill in Congress that will take away the District of Columbia’s power to legislate gun laws. Such a law appears to be necessary considering that the DC council has flouted the Supreme Court’s ruling by creating a new gun ban similar to the old one. Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) introduced the bill, which has 247 co-sponsors, but predictably, Democrat leaders are not allowing it to come to the floor. The NRA is threatening to take away A-plus ratings from legislators who don’t sign a discharge petition to allow a vote. The legislation would allow handguns that are still banned, abolish gun registration and end criminal penalties for possessing an unregistered firearm.

Beltway gas pains

As gas prices have surged to record heights this year, there have been many bad ideas proposed. Among the first was John McCain’s proposal of a federal gas-tax holiday to spare consumers 18.4 cents per gallon (24.4 cents for diesel) during the summer driving season. Of course, the idea was merely symbolic, but he meant well, right? Now there is a bid in Congress to increase the gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon on both gasoline and diesel—a 50-percent tax increase on unleaded and 40 percent on diesel.

As is often the case, it’s all about the Benjamins. Democrats have noticed that the drop in gasoline consumption—and, hence, taxation—is resulting in a shortfall of funding that has already been promised for transportation projects in the next fiscal year. Rather than cut back as average Americans are doing, however, their solution is higher taxes. They will make every attempt to fund these projects from the rapidly emptying pockets of the driving public. Look for this effort to come to fruition later this year, probably as a lame-duck Congress wraps up after the 2008 elections.

On the other hand, rather than allow a vote on offshore drilling, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) intend to leave for August recess without touching the subject.

Campaign watch: Election money update

The lead in fundraising for the November elections that congressional Democrats hold over Republicans continues to widen. If the GOP was alarmed earlier over the anemic results of their fundraising, they must be panic-stricken by now. The Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee raised almost $21 million in the second quarter and has $46 million in cash on hand. The National Republican Senatorial Committee raised $15 million and has a paltry $24 million on hand, leaving the Demos with an edge of nearly 2-to-1. In the House, Democrats hold a 6-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over Republicans.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama broke his own monthly fundraising record in June with a $52-million haul after a three-month dip. He finished last month with $72 million after spending $25 million, his lowest monthly operating costs so far this year. John McCain has significantly increased his spending now that he has a specific Democrat to target. His campaign spent $27 million in June and took in more than $21 million. While Obama’s fundraising prowess has been touted in the media, the RNC victory fund for McCain has done a pretty good job of leveling the playing field, ending June with $96 million in the bank. Obama and the DNC had $92 million.

From the Left: Clinton angling for 2012

We recently reported that Hillary Clinton was soliciting her 2008 donors to roll their money over to one of three funds for the 2012 campaign—her Senate re-election, the Democrat primary or the general election. No word yet on how successful that plea has been. This week brings news that her campaign surrogates have bought the Internet domain “HRC2012.com.” This could be just another Web site for her pending Senate campaign, but we can’t help but speculate about her planning another run for the White House. If Obama wins in November, she can use all these resources for her Senate race, but if he loses, the door would be wide open for Hillary to fulfill what she has always seen as her destiny.

Of course, there is still the matter of Clinton’s debt from the 2008 campaign. She lent her campaign another $1 million last week to alleviate some of the $12 million in bills she owes to vendors. Her total debt now exceeds $25 million. Barack Obama’s symbolic appeal to get his own donors to send money to Clinton to pay off her debt has fallen on deaf ears, and no one should be surprised. After all, if Obama supporters wanted to give money to Hillary, they would have been Hillary supporters.

Defending free speech

In an attempt to stifle the free exchange of ideas, individuals with alleged connections to terrorist organizations have been circumventing U.S. libel laws by suing Americans in foreign courts, and they have been winning.

Author Rachel Ehrenfeld was sued in an English court by Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz. His complaint? In her book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It, she claims that Mahfouz had bankrolled Osama bin Laden. According to Mahfouz, that constitutes slander and damages his reputation. Although residents of England had purchased only 23 copies of the book, English courts still allowed the case to proceed, and Mahfouz won a $250,000 judgment against Ehrenfeld.

In the United States, a plaintiff seeking a judgment for libel must prove that speech at issue is false. In England, however, the burden is on the defense to prove that the published material is true. In addition, the losing party must pay the winner’s legal fees, as well as any awarded damages.

Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) have authored the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008 in order to protect Americans from such abuses abroad. The bill would prevent U.S. courts from enforcing the judgments of foreign courts against U.S. residents, if the speech at issue would not be libelous under American law. A similar bi-partisan effort is also under way in the House, co-sponsored by Reps. Peter King (R-NY) and Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

NATIONAL SECURITY

Warfront with Jihadistan: Air Force surge

Military leaders and historians will be studying the success of the surge in Iraq for decades to come, but it is already becoming clear that the United States Air Force played a crucial role that has gone almost unnoticed. On the rare occasion that the Leftmedia has actually reported on the surge, credit for progress has almost always been given to the “Anbar Awakening,” or the 20-percent increase in boots on the ground. While these are certainly important factors, the Air Force deserves some credit too.

New research by the Pentagon shows that during the period after the surge began, air strikes against insurgents increased by 400 percent, and the amount of munitions released increased by more than 1,000 percent. The Air Force also began targeting groups as small as three insurgents with precision munitions, and in most cases air strikes were putting overwhelming force on targets anywhere in Iraq within seven minutes. Of course, air support doesn’t happen in a vacuum—it was the increased human intelligence (HUMINT) that Army and Marine surge units were able to provide that allowed the Air Force to devastate the insurgency. The Air Force’s role in the surge shows that it is overly simplistic to explain U.S. success in Iraq as merely the result of increased troop levels. All of the military branches had a large part to play.

More important, however, the Air Force’s success proves the importance of overwhelming force when fighting a deadly insurgency. By constantly pummeling al-Qa’ida in Iraq with devastating firepower wherever their forces were found, the U.S. military denied terrorists the opportunity to plan or regroup. It’s a lesson we hope the military and the American people will remember as their focus increasingly shifts from Iraq to Afghanistan, where another surge might be needed.

Hamdan on trial

The first U.S. military trial of the Long War got under way this week at Guantanamo Bay, as Salam Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, stands charged with conspiracy and aiding terrorism. Unfortunately for the U.S., the trial did not get off to a good start. The presiding military judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, threw out statements that Hamdan made after he was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, including details on bin Laden’s movements. Allred said prosecutors could not use some of the statements Hamdan gave interrogators as evidence because they were obtained under “highly coercive” conditions while he was being held captive in Afghanistan. Naturally, many of Hamdan’s incriminating admissions were key parts of the prosecution’s case. But Allred declined to throw out admissions Hamdan made after he arrived at Guantanamo, ruling that the Fifth Amendment did not apply to Hamdan and that “no coercive techniques influenced” what he said at Gitmo. However, Allred also ruled that to use Hamdan’s Gitmo admissions, prosecutors must have Hamdan’s interrogators explain the conditions under which those admissions were obtained, another blow to the prosecution.

On Tuesday, one of those interrogators, former FBI agent Ali Soufan, an al-Qa’ida expert and key witness for the prosecution, said interrogators did not tell Gitmo detainees of any self-incrimination rights because the military prison was dedicated to intelligence gathering, not law enforcement. Soufan also said that Guantanamo is the only place in the world where he has not informed suspects of a right against self-incrimination. “The way it was explained to us is Guantanamo Bay is an intelligence collection point,” he said. Balancing due process with the need to put away terrorists in this asymmetrical war is going to be difficult and, at times, painful. Let’s hope the rest of trial goes more smoothly for the prosecution.

Military Correctness: Don’t ask, don’t invite

Congressional hearings were convened this week on the military’s 15-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Oddly enough, however, the military’s invitation to the hearing apparently was lost in the mail. Of course, some might think the military’s input on military policy might be useful, but Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) said that it would be “a waste of time… They always have the same answer.” Tauscher is sponsoring the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would overturn the ban on open homosexual conduct in the military. She admitted that the hearing is little more than a publicity stunt, though, as Democrats have no intention of bringing the bill to a vote before a Democrat is in the White House.

Current Uniform Code of Military Justice policy is that homosexual conduct, not homosexuality, is cause for immediate discharge. The policy is a result of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign pledge to allow homosexuals to serve in the military. As long as the military didn’t ask, the service member wouldn’t tell.

Profiles of valor: USA CWO Cooper

On the afternoon of 27 November 2006, United States Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Cooper of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—the “Night Stalkers” —was leading a formation of six helicopters north of Baghdad. The formation comprised two AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopters (one flown by Cooper), two MH-6 troop-carrying Little Birds, and two MH-60 Black Hawks carrying Special Operations soldiers. When the formation was 50 kilometers from Baghdad, Cooper heard his wingman shout “Mayday!” An insurgent had hit the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, severing the tail rotor. Despite the damage, Cooper’s wingman was able to land his helicopter without sustaining major injuries, and the other helicopters in the formation landed to assist.

The Black Hawks soon evacuated the downed pilots, leaving behind 20 special operators and the Little Bird pilots to set up a perimeter around the disabled helicopter. Forty minutes later, eight enemy anti-aircraft gun trucks approached the crash site, and Cooper took off in his Little Bird to investigate. He immediately came under attack by the enemy force but stayed in the air to draw fire away from the exposed U.S. soldiers on the ground. Meanwhile, two more trucks unloaded enemy forces into a house about 800 yards away, where they began to set up mortars and machine guns.

Cooper immediately began attacking the numerically superior force using his Little Bird’s miniguns and rockets. When his helicopter ran out of ammunition, Cooper landed and the men on the ground quickly unloaded the rockets from the downed helicopter and put them on Cooper’s, despite intense enemy fire. Cooper took off and again started to pummel the enemy despite the bullets that were striking the helicopter inches from his face. When low fuel forced Cooper to land again, the soldiers on the ground used a Leatherman tool to remove an auxiliary fuel tank from the disabled helicopter and attach it to Cooper’s Little Bird. Cooper went back into battle a third time, finishing off the trucks and mortar positions once and for all.

For Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Cooper’s “complete disregard for his personal safety and extreme courage under fire,” he became the first Night Stalker to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. “I just happened to be the guy there that day,” Cooper said. “Any one of the Night Stalkers that’s in this formation would have done the same thing I did.”

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Regulatory Commissars: ‘Double Nickel’

Sen. John Warner (R-VA) has proposed returning to the hated federal 55-mile-per-hour speed limit in an effort to save energy. “I drive over 55 miles an hour… sometimes 65,” he said. “But I am willing to give up whatever advantage to me to drive at those speeds with the fervent hope that modest sacrifice on my part will help those people across this land… dealing with this financial crisis.” In other words, if he is sacrificing, everyone else has to as well. The National Motorists Association estimates that 95 percent of drivers regularly exceeded the federal speed limit when it was in effect. In other words, it worked almost as well as Prohibition. Maybe that’s why it was repealed in 1995. Some western states, realizing what a ridiculous law it was, put common sense first. Montana limited speeding tickets to $5, and in Wyoming, state troopers would tell drivers to hang on to tickets because they were good all day. Sure, driving slower saves a bit of energy, but the law also cost Americans an extra one billion hours in their cars each year. If liberals want to feel good about themselves by driving slower, they are welcome to do so… in the far-right lane, of course.

EPA problems

Earlier this month, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the EPA’s Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), a complicated “cap and trade” system of regulating smog and soot. Holding that the EPA’s analysis was “fundamentally flawed,” the court said that the EPA must “re-do its analysis from the ground up.” At about the same time, the EPA issued a report containing its blueprint for reducing the output of greenhouse gases. This report, made necessary by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 decision that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, contains thousands of suggestions for regulating carbon emissions. In fact, it includes regulations on everything with an engine. It also includes regulations on buildings, hotels and retail establishments. Essentially, anything that emits carbon gets the EPA’s attention. The White House immediately repudiated the report.

This illustrates a fundamental problem with the EPA: It is overreaching, and it is doing so incompetently. Under the guise of environmental protection, it seeks to do what the Communists never could: totalitarian micromanagement of every aspect of our lives. Like the Communist central planners, however, the EPA bureaucrats are discovering that micromanaging the lives and the economic activity of Americans is far more difficult than their theories and models predict. Indeed, it simply will not work.

To avoid the inevitable damage to the economy and to our personal liberty that will surely result from the EPA’s efforts, we offer an alternative solution: abolish the EPA.

Government ‘help’

As management track records go, the U.S. government’s is hardly enviable. Time and again, Washington has lagged far behind the eight ball in demonstrating its administrative effectiveness. Now, add yet another bureaucratic blunder to the file, this one under “banking.”

Even as the feds are scrambling to rescue homeowners and lenders from the subprime mortgage fiasco, it seems Uncle Sam was partly to blame for the mess in the first place. In 2001, the government took over the failing Superior Bank FSB, an Illinois-based national subprime lender. Instead of halting operations or selling the company right away, however, the feds continued lending, handing out over the course of several months more than 6,700 subprime loans valued at more than $550 million. Then, the FDIC sold a large portion of these loans to Beal Bank SSB, passing the proverbial buck as approximately 1,500 of the 5,315 loans sold were problematic.

Unfortunately, Beal wasn’t the only bank hit. The feds also sold 3,964 Superior subprime loans to Bank of America Corporation. Of these, 511 have already shown signs of problems.

While the lessons to be learned from this latest government goof abound, perhaps the most important is the truth spoken by President Ronald Reagan years ago: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’.”

Income Redistribution: Soak the rich

Another leftist myth, one that is usually perpetrated in the mainstream media, has taken another hit this week. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts led to possibly the largest hike in taxes paid by America’s wealthy in history. The Journal bases its findings on new data released by the IRS, which shows that in 2006 those with incomes over $344,806 paid 40 percent of income taxes in this country; those earning in the top 50 percent paid 97.1 percent. On the other side, those earning below-average salaries paid taxes at the lowest percentage ever, at 2.9 percent.

The Journal also points out that the number of wealthy citizens increased dramatically between 2003 and 2006. During that period, the number of millionaires in the U.S. grew from 181,000 to 354,000. The taxes paid by these and other wealthy households are credited with lowering the budget deficit to 1.9 percent of the gross domestic product, a remarkable reduction in such a short amount of time.

As liberal politicians continue to call for the rich to “pay their fair share” in taxes and decry President Bush for his “giveaway to the rich,” these facts expose the situation for what it is, says the Journal: “a figment of the left’s imagination.”

Speaking of income, Thursday was minimum-wage-hike day, as the wage rose 70 cents to $6.55. Look for the price of goods and services to do the same in coming weeks. It was the second of three annual increases. Next year, it will rise to $7.25.

CULTURE

Around the nation: Aftermath of Kelo

Three years have passed since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the City of New London, Connecticut, allowing it to dispossess Susette Kelo of her home. In writing the majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens assumed the mantle of Chief Lexicographer of the United States by determining that maximizing potential tax revenue (i.e., a public resource) is of equal benefit to the location of bridges, schools, roadways and firehouses (i.e., a public use). Therefore, in the name of tax-revenue maximization, Susette Kelo and 14 other property owners had to make way for the grand redevelopment plan of a 90-acre site. Ms. Kelo’s home was moved piece by piece about a mile from her original property. But a funny thing happened on the way to tax-revenue nirvana—the underlying economics changed. Developer demand for vacant ground has diminished along with the property tax previously remitted by Ms. Kelo, et al. Where there were families maintaining homes there are now empty and overgrown lots.

Government economic activity is constitutionally limited to those broad areas that are beyond the scope of private enterprise. It is not charged to guarantee the success of one enterprise at the expense of another. Any attempt to do so renders its impartiality in tatters, and its legitimacy becomes suspect.

Faith and Family: The new ‘Happy’ meal

McDonald’s latest slogan is “i’m lovin’ it.” The question is, what is “it”? Conservative groups are calling for a boycott of the fast-food giant after it recently joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), paying $20,000 in return for a seat on the NGLCC board of directors. McDonald’s didn’t take the boycott threat lying down. Spokesman Bill Whitman said, “Hatred has no place in our culture. That includes McDonald’s, and we stand by and support our people to live and work in a society free of discrimination and harassment.” Hatred? This isn’t exactly Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists we’re talking about here. The American Family Association, which organized the boycott, is simply calling on McDonald’s to stay out of the political mess that is the homosexual-rights movement. Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel replied, “[Whitman] insulted tens of millions of Americans who believe that the historical definition of marriage between one man and woman is important and crucial to society. He said that we’re haters and we’re motivated by hate. That, on its face, is a bald-face lie.”

Climate change this week: Gore’s moonshot

Former Veep Al Gore, now the populist potentate of ecotheology, is calling for a JFK-style “moonshot” mentality in our quest for eco-purity. In other words, he wants the U.S. to be carbon free in 10 years. It has been virtually undisputed for some time that the divinity-school flunky has been using multiple times more energy units than the average American Joe Six-Pack. Ignore that. Now he calls on America to make enormous sacrifices, comparing it to the national effort to get to the moon by the end of the ‘60s. “The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels,” Gore declared. He droned on, “It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil.” Yeah, who would ever suggest that greater supply would lower prices? Gore must be drinking moonshine.

According to Ron Fournier of the Associated Press, “The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that [Gore] chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money.” Okay, everybody! All together now, blow… hard!

And last…

Speaking of Al Gore, we all know the old joke about his inventing the Internet. Way back in 1999, Gore told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Then everyone had a good laugh and went back to their day jobs. Apparently, however, some actually believed Gore. One such gullible Goron is none other than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Introducing Al to Netroots Nation, a gathering of 2,000 hard-left activist bloggers, in Houston, Pelosi crowed, “Without him, there would be no Netroots Nation. There wouldn’t be the technology.” Not only that, but the Houston Chronicle reported the story without calling her on it. Granted, Pelosi also thinks that drilling won’t reduce oil prices, but if she’d merely Google “supply and demand” (and maybe Tim Berners-Lee) on Al Gore’s Internet, she might learn something.

Veritas vos Liberabit—Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families—especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)