Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, January 17, 2011
And a Catepillar Shall Lead Us
I have never understood why the rest of us have sat idly by while unions have gobbled up so much power and money. Even as their numbers in the private sector have steadily declined over the years, they have surged in the public sector. My question is, just exactly when did we lose our senses and allow civil servants to unionize and strike? It had always been understood that the trade-off was that the members of the Civil Service had forfeited possible riches in the world of entrepreneurs and risk-takers for the security that went with a steady paycheck from the city, the state or the federal government.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
What Makes Brown Think He Can Get a Tax Increase?
Can Jerry Brown do it? When he unveiled his budget, the California governor boasted that he was delivering a spending plan without "gimmicks, tricks and unrealistic expectations." On the one hand, Brown presented some bold changes in his spending plan by proposing a realignment of state and local government. Also, Brown has ordered some small but symbolically important cuts, such as slashing his own office's budget and halving the number of state employee cell phones.
A Restorative Congress
WASHINGTON -- Unlike most of the 111 that preceded it, the 112th Congress must begin the process of restoring the national regime and civic culture the Founders bequeathed. This will require reviving the rule of law, reasserting the relevance of the Constitution, and affirming the reality of American exceptionalism. Many congressional Republicans, and surely some Democrats with institutional pride, think Congress is being derogated and marginalized by two developments. One is the apotheosis of the presidency as the mainspring of the government and the custodian of the nation's soul. The second is the growing autonomy of the regulatory state, an apparatus responsive to presidents.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Uniting Congress
The attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others in Tucson have transfixed the nation for the past week. But as horrific as those events were, Congress has little choice but to move on. There is little Congress can do about what happened in Tucson -- or ensure something like it won't ever happen again. It is hubris to believe otherwise. What members of Congress owe their fallen colleague -- and the American people -- is to return to the business of legislating. And few periods in recent history offered greater legislative challenges than those facing the 112th Congress.
Fighting Public-Sector Unions
As resistance to public-sector unionism has intensified, many of the noisiest confrontations have been on the coasts. In New Jersey, freshman Governor Chris Christie has been locked in a battle royale with his state's powerful teachers unions. In California, Oakland's new mayor began her first full day in office by demanding that unionized police officers, who pay nothing toward their pensions, be required to contribute 9 percent of their salaries. In New York, federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into whether Sanitation Department workers purposely paralyzed the city with a work slowdown during last month's blizzard. In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick infuriated public-safety unions by replacing costly police details with civilian flaggers at many construction and repair sites.
From The Comedy Store
Barack Obama angered people in both Britain and the U.S. Wednesday when he told Nicolas Sarkozy that the U.S. has no better friend than France. Britain fights with us in Afghanistan but France needs our help with their food prices. The reason Obama's a Democrat is because he only likes people who need, not people who fight.
More Reasons to Despise Politicians
When people insisted that there was no real difference between politicians, whichever party they belonged to, I would invariably defend Republicans as the lesser of the two evils. However, when I watched the GOP louts hop on Obama's bandwagon during the lame duck session, supporting everything from the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to the passage of START, thereby doing all they could to nullify the mid-term elections, I understood those who cursed both parties. Speaking of which, how much longer are we going to allow left-wingers to mislabel themselves as Independents? Bernie Sanders, Michael Bloomberg and Joe Lieberman, who all have an (I) after their names, haven't had a thought independent of the DNC since they were in knee pants.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Where Will Obama Go From Tucson?
President Obama is receiving uniform praise for his memorial remarks in Tucson, Ariz. Even conservatives are saying he hit the right notes, substantively and tonally. I agree, with a few qualifiers and gentle cautions. Obama was eloquent in his tribute to the victims and appropriately acknowledged that "none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack ... or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind."
Changing How We Think
We mourn, we weep, we wonder why. How could such things happen? Smart phones and online libraries constantly feed us information, but we don't get any wiser. We blame others for what goes wrong and for what we don't fully understand. Pundits argue and provoke, pretending to seek wisdom from the dialectic, but they're merely in love with the sound of their own voices. Jeremiahs predict the worst, Pollyannas foresee a rosy future, and the ostrich buries his head in the sand (where insights as wise as any other may lurk).
From Atrocity to Travesty
WASHINGTON -- Shortly after 10 a.m. MST on Saturday, Jan. 8, an apparently unstable young man goes on a murderous rampage at a grocery in Tucson, Ariz. A federal judge and five others are murdered in cold blood. Thirteen others -- including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- are seriously injured. Those are the cold, hard facts. It's a serious story. It begs the inevitable question: "How could this happen?" But instead of starting a dispassionate examination of the details, members of the mainstream media, politicians and pundits -- within minutes of the event -- began twisting the atrocity in Tucson. In the days since, exploitation of this tragedy has become a national pastime.
Haiti's Tourniquet Isn't Healing the Wound
Nine-five percent of the debris from the Haitian earthquake one year ago hasn't been moved. In other words, billions of dollars later, with none other than Bill Clinton serving as the foreman for a massive international cleanup and reconstruction effort, most of the country pretty much looks exactly the way it did when dust and screams still filled the air. Except, of course, for all of the tent cities.
Now What?
Some good has come of the tragedy in Tucson. President Obama has issued a de facto rebuke to those in his camp who attempted to use the murders to discredit and smear their political opponents. It was no more than decency for the president to rise above that extremely low threshold -- but rise he did and for that he deserves credit. But a call to high-mindedness such as the president issued is, in the nature of things, not likely to be effective for very long. If any lasting good is to be achieved out of this horrible episode, it will require addressing the question that Obama mentioned only glancingly, but that really is the heart of the matter -- mental illness.
No Tucson Lectures for 'Artists'
Within minutes of the news breaking that Jared Lee Loughner had killed six and wounded 14 in a rampage outside a Tucson Safeway store, including a critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the news media immediately leaped to the conclusion that the harsh tone of our political discourse -- led by conservative talk radio -- surely must be to blame. That narrative turned out to be hogwash, but another one has emerged during the investigation into Loughner's psyche, yet virtually no one wants to discuss it. Was the shooter inspired by the entertainment media?
Blame Righty: A Condensed History
I agree with President Obama. When it comes to politicizing random violence, he and his supporters have been "far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than" they do. Recognition is the first step toward reconciliation. It's time to recognize the poisonous pervasiveness of the Blame Righty meme. For the past two years, Democratic officials, liberal activists and journalists have jumped to libelous conclusions about individual shooting sprees committed by mentally unstable loners with incoherent delusions all over the ideological map. The White House now pledges to swear off "pointing fingers or assigning blame." Alas, the Obama administration's political and media foot soldiers have proved themselves incapable of such restraint.
The Man Who Changed Things
Suppose you had billions and billions of dollars and wanted to set up a foundation that would really make a real difference in the world? You could draw up a mission statement as broad as the Pacific. Then put up a skyscraper office full of bright young people with college degrees who talk tech -- high, low and in-between. There'd be a lot of supernumeraries around to get in the way -- all with degrees from prestigious universities and impressive resumes. ("He shows great promise and knows foreign languages -- spreadsheet, broadband and COBOL.")
Thursday, January 13, 2011
More Evidence, Liberalism Is Dead
WASHINGTON -- The evidence mounts that liberalism is dead. The liberal wizards, working their wonders at The New York Times and its clearinghouses in the major networks, cannot even dupe the American people with an absurd conspiracy theory anymore. In Dallas back in 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a pious communist awash in the Marxist-Leninist bilge, shot President John F. Kennedy. In no time, the liberals had the nation focused on the "dangerous right-wing atmosphere" supposedly pervading Dallas. Soon all the talk was of "the paranoid style" of American politics. Oswald was almost forgotten. Doubtless, today there are fervent liberals living in haunts in Massachusetts and in Berkeley, Calif., who believe in their heart of hearts that the president was felled by Texas Republicans.
Dupnik Denounces 'Vitriolic Rhetoric' -- With Left-Wing Vitriolic Rhetoric
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik took time from gathering the facts about the Tucson, Ariz., shooting to denounce the "vitriolic rhetoric" that he claims played a role in the carnage. He insisted, without any evidence, that Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' support for ObamaCare helped trigger the shooter's wrath, resulting in six dead and 13 wounded, including Rep. Giffords, who was shot point-blank in the head. "I think it's time as a country," said Dupnik, "that we ... do a little soul-searching, because I think it's the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business, and what we see on TV and how our youngsters are being raised, that this has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in, and I think it's time that we do the soul-searching."
No Off Button on Sarah Palin
This is a free country. If Sarah Palin wants to run for president in 2012, she is free to try. But she will not win the GOP nomination because Republican voters are not going to choose a middle-aged version of Britney Spears -- a figure whose most evident talent is to attract attention to herself -- to challenge Barack Obama. It's this simple: Republicans are too smart to nominate a candidate with a 50 percent unfavorable rating, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, before she has declared for office.
Hey, Liberals, Will John Lennon Straighten You Out?
We've already heard or read nearly everything that can be said or written about the shooting tragedy in Tucson, Ariz. this past week -- and about the left-of-center's effort to politicize it. Let's turn history around on the more liberal side of the media and government. Let's cite another example of a well-known "liberal" -- as self-defined by his song lyrics, among other things -- who himself might have heightened political or social tensions in his day by means of his "rhetoric." I'm talking about the late rock star, the Beatles' John Lennon.
A Fool With a Badge Is Still a Fool
When a would-be assassin shot my Dad, President Ronald Reagan, nobody questioned the fact that the shooter was certifiably nuts. Authorities recognized that fact and put him in a mental institution as his obvious disturbed mental state demanded. Now we have another attempted killing of a public official, Arizona's widely admired Rep. Gabby Giffords, and just about everybody recognizes the fact that the shooter, one Jared Loughner, is crazy as a loon.