Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
First Jobs
What was your first job? I stuck pieces of plastic and metal together at an Evanston, Ill., assembly line. We produced photocopiers for a company called American Photocopy. I hated the work. It was hot and boring. But it was useful. It taught me to get good grades in school so I might have other choices. Four years later, good grades got me a job as a researcher at a TV station. To my surprise, that became a career. I never planned to be a TV reporter. I hadn't even watched TV news. I never took a journalism course. But by showing up and trying stuff, I found a career.
ObamaCare's Unenforceable Linchpin
Last week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare. It was the 33rd such vote taken by the House and, since Democrats control the Senate, no more likely to be successful than the first 32. The day before the vote, however, the House Ways and Means Committee heard testimony that highlighted another, more promising way to override the health care law: Americans can refuse to comply with its command that they obtain government-approved medical coverage, which the Supreme Court has deemed a mere suggestion even though it is essential to the legislation's goals. Furthermore, if ObamaCare objectors take a simple precaution, they can opt out without paying the prescribed penalty. ObamaCare requires insurers to take all comers and charge them the same rates, regardless of health. Those rules create two problems that reinforce each other: They raise premiums, and they encourage people to delay buying medical coverage until they're sick.
Tyrants and Human Nature
The agendas of liberals, progressives and assorted tyrants desperately depend on the aspects of human nature they often condemn, such as acquisitiveness, profit motive, self-interestedness and greed. This crossed my mind while reading "How Departures From Economic Freedom Can Affect Freedom In General," by Dr. John Taylor, a Hoover Institution scholar. Taylor tells how former Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich was forced to take Troubled Asset Relief Program funds even though Wells Fargo did not need or want the funds. Kovacevich was threatened that if he did not accept TARP money, regulators would declare his bank capital-deficient even though Wells Fargo had a triple-A rating. At the time, October 2008, Wells Fargo was in the process of acquiring Wachovia, and to be declared capital-deficient would have killed the deal. U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke could rely on acquisitiveness, profit motive and self-interestedness to bully Wells Fargo into accepting TARP money. They also knew that Wells Fargo's competitors would go after Wachovia. If all sound banks had refused TARP money, Paulson and Bernanke's tyrannical threats would have failed.
Romney's Hysteria Bubble
It was one of Barack Obama's best lines -- and best moments -- in the 2008 presidential campaign. He had said we could save as much oil as we could get from domestic drilling if everybody properly maintained their cars and got their tires inflated. Now, that was hyperbole. But when conservatives, including his opponent, Sen. John McCain, tried to turn tire gauges into a symbol of Obama's pointy-headed liberalism (remember Dukakis and the endive!) and the sum total of his energy plan (if only!), Obama stood his ground. "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." The line struck a chord. It signaled that Obama was going to elevate the conversation even if he risked being demagogued or distorted. Of course, this was back when a lot of people thought Obama was a more enlightened politician rather than an unknown pol being marketed as one. Still, it was smart. He punctured a bubble of faux hysteria.
LIBOR: Another Symptom of the Same Disease
There's an old saying that has become more apropos than ever in these turbulent times: the greatest danger to capitalism is capitalists. Not genuine free-market capitalists. The crony capitalists, as in the cockroaches who have infested the system with a corrupt level of self-interest that is exacerbated by an ethics-free worldview. The latest scandal involves rigging something known as the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) that is ostensibly the benchmark interest rate for computing the interest on trillions of dollars worth of transactions across the world. So far the only bank on the hook is British bank Barclays. Their punishment? A $450 million fine paid to British and American bank regulators, and the resignation of its two top officers. How sorry is the bank for its transgressions? Last Friday they released this memo: "As other banks settle with authorities, and their details become public, and various governments' inquiries shed more light, our situation will eventually be put in perspective." Let me translate: when the world finds out how much every other bank sucks too, we'll look better by comparison.
A Letter to Young Voters
According to conventional wisdom, the older the person, the less young people are inclined to listen to him or her. This is probably true for some of you. But I do not believe that it is true for most of you. Most young people have tremendous respect for older people's views. I saw this firsthand in my own life. I began lecturing publicly at the age of 21, and I give you my word that young people (and certainly older people) are far more respectful of my views today than when I was their age. All things being equal, it is very rare for a 25 or 35-year-old to command the respect that a 50 or 60-year-old commands. So, I am not afraid that that you will dismiss what I have to say here as the irrelevant thoughts of an older person.
The Lord and His Less-Than-Humble Servants
Every human trend (as those of us who've seen a few will affirm) looks fixed, untouchable, set in ready-mixed concrete. Until, to be sure, something else happens and the betting begins anew. The leadership of the Episcopal Church has the notion that objectors to the present leadership style better get used to an eternity of choose-your-own-truth theology. Don't bet the 401(k) on it: accounts of the church's recent General Convention notwithstanding. Things at the General Convention, from a certain perspective, certainly didn't look good. My fellow deputies -- I admit to serving as an elected member of this naughty assemblage -- endorsed pretty much the same menu that hooked Episcopal appetites during the wild and woolly '60s. We're a church whose worship and formularies presuppose the ancient Christian truths; except the way we have come lately to express these truths often makes it seem our principal interests are "social justice," cultural diversity and the liberalization of sexual norms.
The Most Anti-Business President Ever
If I didn't know better, I might conclude that President Obama is trying to validate my book. His personal attacks on Mitt Romney have been so harsh that Romney called them "beneath the dignity of the presidency." Not only did I devote several chapters to documenting Obama's practice of bullying and attacking his political opponents but my final chapter, uncannily, details Obama's "War on the Dignity of His Office." Having presided over 41 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent and possessing no arrows in his economic quiver besides deficit spending and raising taxes, it's not surprising Obama continues to resort to these gutter tactics. What finally drew Romney's ire was Obama's accusing Romney of committing a felony and then Obama's refusing to apologize. This is simply Chicago Thug Politics 101. President Obama's favorite whipping boy, President George W. Bush, would have never stooped to this level. Even in the face of brutal, scurrilous attacks, Bush refused to diminish the dignity of the office.
Are Race Riots News?
When I first saw a book with the title, "White Girl Bleed A Lot" by Colin Flaherty, I instantly knew what it was about, even though I had not seen the book reviewed anywhere, and knew nothing about the author. That is because I had encountered that phrase before, while doing research for the four new chapters on intellectuals and race that I added to the revised edition of my own book, "Intellectuals and Society," published this year. That phrase was spoken by a member of a mob of young blacks who attacked whites at random at a Fourth of July celebration in Milwaukee last year. What I was appalled to learn, in the course of my research, was that such race riots have occurred in other cities across the United States in recent years -- and that the national mainstream media usually ignore these riots.
Fatal Misstep?
Until this week, the Obama campaign's strategy of interest group payoffs and demonization of Romney seemed, if tawdry, at least a possible route to re-election. The president's promises to deliver more and more "free" stuff for carefully selected grantees -- adorned in the language of sticking up for the "middle class" -- appeared to have a chance of success. But the decision to embrace one of the least popular Democratic positions of the past 100 years -- opposition to the work requirement for welfare recipients -- is inexplicable politically. It's also illegal and imperious. Let's stick with politics, because it's old news that Obama has contempt for the rule of law. He's declined to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" on many subjects: immigration, the Defense of Marriage Act, labor laws and environmental rules, among others. Those were lawless but politically logical acts. Not this.
Mitt Romney and the NAACP
Mitt Romney's speech to the NAACP convention in Houston was -- according to one's political perspective -- a "calculated move on his part to get booed..." to help his white base (Rep. Nancy Pelosi), or a presentation to "independent thinking adult citizens" whom he treated as equals (Rush Limbaugh). Having an adult conversation in a racially and politically polarized age is nearly impossible, especially when our current political culture does not require a solution to problems, only the use of rhetoric and symbols to gain political power. The second "A" in NAACP stands for "advancement." By any standard, African-Americans receiving government assistance do not appear to have advanced much, if by advancement one means progress toward a steady job. In fact, a serious argument could be made that they are falling farther behind.
Time for an Energy Debate
Before we begin, let me remind you that I have worked for T. Boone Pickens on the Pickens Plan since 2008, so filter everything that follows through that lens. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the Department of Energy produces a monthly report of how much money we import, how much we've paid for it, and what percentage of our total oil use it represents. In June, 2012, for instance, we produced about 6.2 million barrels of crude oil per day. That is third most in the world behind Saudi Arabia (10.04 million barrels) and Russia (just behind at 9.89 million barrels). That's pretty good; six million barrels a day, right?
Ending Welfare as We Know It
Obama once again attempts to grow the culture of dependency through bureaucratic tyranny.
Like Charter Schools, Britain's Academies Aim High
LONDON -- 1776 is a number with great resonance for Americans, but not one you expect to be featured on a British government website. But there it is, on the home page of the United Kingdom's Department of Education: "As of 1 April 2012, there are 1776 academies open in England." Academies, as you might expect, mean something different in Britain than in the United States. They are, approximately, what we would call charter schools. And there are 1,776 of them largely because of the energy and determination of British Education Secretary Michael Gove. Britain, like America, has gotten pretty dismal results for years from its (in their terminology) state schools. (British public schools are expensive boarding schools; they include Eton, which produced David Cameron and 12 other prime ministers, and Fettes, its Scottish equivalent, which graduated former Prime Minister Tony Blair.)
Liberals Make Me Laugh
I'm not saying that all liberals are funny. For instance, I don't think Bill Maher, Jon Stewart or David Letterman, is the least bit amusing. Those on the Left only tickle my funny bone when they're not trying for laughs. For instance, when Harvard professor/U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren claims that she is one-thirty-second Cherokee, I can't help chuckling. Here is a woman who was hired by Harvard because they believed her when she claimed to be a "woman of color" even though she's as pale as milk. Naturally, she insists that she didn't claim to be Cherokee in order to further her career, but because she wanted her proud Native American heritage to be known far and wide, so that other members of the tribe would reach out to her. Right. Nothing those Harvard profs enjoy more than having heap big powwows.
Life Terms for Teen Killers: Neither Cruel nor Unusual
In a Colorado town in 1996, Verle Mangum bludgeoned Janet and Jennifer Davis to death. Janet, a 42-year-old nurse's aide, had come home from work and discovered Mangum, then 17, having sex with her 11-year-old daughter, Jennifer. When Janet reached for the phone to call the police, Mangum picked up a baseball bat and fatally bashed her with it. He then used the bat to murder Jennifer as she cowered in the bedroom.
Texas, Taxes & Brass Tacks
The sad truth of the matter is that, when compared to other liberal politicians, Jerry Brown is probably one of the brighter ones. For instance, have you ever heard Sen. Barbara Boxer give a speech or try to answer a simple question? I've never even voted for the woman, but it's downright embarrassing just living in the state that has elected her on four separate occasions. The fact that it is the same state that keeps electing Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman and Barbara Lee, to the House might help explain why some people, including friends, call me "Grumpy."
From The Comedy Store
New York's Joey Chestnut won the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island on July Fourth. He ate sixty-eight hot dogs in twenty minutes. Mayor Bloomberg was on hand to arrest the winner when he ordered a twenty-ounce Pepsi to wash it down.
Closed Circle Syndrome
The coverage of former FBI director Louis Freeh's report on the 14-year cover-up of the child abuse scandal associated with Penn State's football program gives us a peek into an issue I've thought about for a long time: Closed circles. Closed circles are like black holes in physics: An actual, physical force. The gravity they generate is so great, not even light can escape; and anything that ventures near the event horizon will be sucked in and will (essentially) disappear. It is clear from even the most cursory reading that paramount in the minds of Joe Paterno and the university leadership was protecting the football program. Penn State football was Joe Paterno. Paterno was PSU football. Period. It was a closed circle -- in this case a closed circle of men, but it is not clear to me that would have mattered -- that plotted among its membership and only among its membership.
UN-believable
GEORGETOWN, S.C. -- Here in the Carolina Lowcountry, there are few things lower in the esteem of American citizens than the United Nations. While filling the tank of my SUV this morning, I noted the following about the pickup truck at the pump ahead of me: a South Carolina license plate, a U.S. Marine Corps decal, a National Rifle Association decal, a gun rack in the rear window, a sticker reading "Armed Infidel" and another that said "Get US Out of the UN" on it. The owner, it turned out, was a medical doctor on his way to visit a patient. Apparently, down here, doctors still make house calls. Our brief conversation went something like this...