Category Archives: Politics and government

A chess match ends as a win, a loss or a draw.  A draw can be agreed to by the persons playing the white and black pieces.  Certain situations are deemed a stalemate, which is a draw by definition.  No one wins.  The rules defining a stalemate have application to real life.  If one player on either side is not in checkmate, but has no legal moves, the game is a stalemate and drawn.  If both players have moved fifty times without a pawn moving or a capture being made, that’s a stalemate.  If a position has been repeated three times with every piece on the exact same square for both sides, that’s a stalemate and drawn.  It matters not if the positions are repeated sequentially, so long as they are reproduced exactly.   Only the side in the weaker position poised for a loss would declare the repeated position and draw.

“If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out.”  George Brett

At the end of drawn out, bitterly contested campaigns, we find ourselves shell-shocked weary with virtually no change in the balance of power in Washington.  Hundreds of thousands of words have been and will be written about changing demographics, debate performances, issues false and true, ground games and early media blitz bets placed in swing states.  The essential question, however, is where do we go from here?  Can the Republicans tweak their base and make inroads into the new demographic coalitions of Latinos, single women, citizens of Asian origin and other minorities?  Have we reached a “tipping point” such that those relying on government and “in the wagon” outnumber those contributing to tax revenues and “pulling the wagon”?

“When the people find they can vote themselves money–that will herald the end of the republic.”  Ben Franklin

Can we avoid repeating our exact position or making fifty moves with no progress to break the potential of stalemate?  Will common sense prevail over ideology and a compromise be crafted to avoid the “fiscal cliff” of large across the board tax increases and devastating cuts to our defense that the Congressional Budget Office tells us will script us directly into over 9% unemployment and a new recession?  Other than a textbook definition, did we ever truly climb out of the last one with the prolonged anemic “recovery”?  Will the now assured full implementation of Obamacare with its assured tax increases and enormous expenditures make cutting our deficit structurally impossible over the next decade and trip us into a recession anyway?  What the hell was David Petraeus thinking?  So many questions to answer, we can be easily overwhelmed.

“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”  Attributed, but not fully documented, to the late former minority leader, Senator Everett Dirksen

There is some certainty in the real numbers, however, and they are worth understanding as we discuss everything else.  Let them speak for themselves.  The deficit that deeply troubles so many of us and will beggar the future of our children can be grasped quite easily with a minimum of sophisticated fiscal knowledge by using this table from a Wall Street Journal article:

U.S. Deficit Growth (from US Treasury Dept and CBO records)
Total federal revenue, outlays and deficits,
fiscal years 2007-2012, in billions of dollars.
Year	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Revenue	$        2,568	$    2,524	$    2,105	$    2,163	$    2,302	$    2,449
Spending	$        2,729	$    2,983	$    3,518	$    3,456	$    3,599	$    3,538
Deficit	($161)	($459)	($1,413)	($1,293)	($1,297)	($1,089)
% of GDP	-1.2%	-3.2%	-10.1%	-9.0%	-8.7%	-7.0%

Let these numbers roll around the back of your head for just a little while.  As revenues dropped (and are now just starting to recover), spending exploded and set a new benchmark frozen at an unprecedented level. No serious attempt has been made to curtail the profligacy of Washington as they buy our votes and the campaign contributions of special interests. Our deficit in the Obama years as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (the sum of our total economic activity as a nation) has never been less than double the worst year of the Bush administration, which was fighting the same two wars.  And the actual dollars of deficit have never been less than double the worst of the Bush years.

The Republican caucus insists on paring back the out of control spending; President Obama’s supporters such as those in the public unions and MoveOn.org insist on reducing the deficit by raising taxes.  His proposal in last year’s debt ceiling negotiations was to raise them by about $82 billion a year, which is still only 7% of last year’s deficit.  This week he has upped the ante to double that with no mention of trying to reduce spending.  Stalemate.  Many believe he would be content to let the economy go over the fiscal cliff and blame the Republicans for the new recession while satisfying his left base which demands higher tax rates and very few cuts.  Next year he could negotiate from the now higher rates.  Stalemate, and playing political brinksmanship with our fragile economy.

Unsustainable is a clichéd buzz word, but sometimes clichés are the best we can do.

Just behind sex, food, shelter and clothing in the hierarchy of human drives is the pharisaical impulse – that most ardent desire to write down and impose the minutiae of stultifying rules and regulations upon the spirits of our fellows.  Jesus put it this way: “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (Matt 23:4) John the Baptist was more succinct: “You brood of vipers!” (Luke 3:7)

We have advanced exponentially in the technological competence to distribute and enforce these regulations, but not a whit, it seems, in controlling the inclination.  In the twentieth and twenty first centuries, the prime movers of regulation are the progressives or liberal political parties (or tyrannies), most especially exemplified currently in the United States by the Obama administration.

Just a couple of examples from the most prolific regulations generators in American history:

• In 2010, the administration headed the charge to fulfill Rahm Emanuel’s admonition (former White House chief of staff, now Mayor of Chicago) to never let a serious crisis go to waste by signing into law the Dodd Frank financial reform bill.  When any bill is passed, it then falls to the bureaucrats to promulgate the regulations defining how it will be enforced.  And propagate the new bureaucrats necessary to enforce it.  Propagating bureaucrats is something at which progressive government is particularly talented.  Consisting of 2,319 pages, Dodd Frank has generated over 8,000 pages of new Federal Register regulations.  And counting.
• The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was worse yet, imposing over twenty new taxes, over 2,700 pages in length, it has generated to date almost 12,000 pages of new regulations.   Eighteen pages of these went just to define the term, “full time employee”.  No kidding.  Any reasonable person could have defined the term in a well constructed sentence.  11, 327 pages in July so far.  And counting.

The far from conservative and long esteemed magazine, “The Economist” wrote this about Dodd Frank: “(the bill) will smother financial institutions in so much red tape that innovation is stifled and America’s economy suffers.”  Given the tepid recovery, barely above horizontal since the recession ended in early 2009 – the slowest post war recession recovery –and the record breaking low velocity of money turn over, “The Economist” was prescient, albeit with an obvious prediction.  Banks are sitting on enormous reserves of cash that are not being put to use.

 Financial institutions are struggling to understand and implement the 8,000 pages of Dodd Frank, and are increasingly timid to put their cash back into growing the economy.  Businesses, also concerned with compliance and future tax implications, are reluctant to borrow the money necessary to grow and hire new employees.  Fear and the fearful levels of work necessary to comply are two sea anchors that an economy just beginning to see the wind pick up from the doldrums doesn’t need.  Experts approximate that the 8,000 pages so far are about 30% of what will ultimately be imposed.    The House Committee on Financial Services calculates that the law will take private companies 24 million labor hours a year and require that businesses hire 26,477 employees to comply.  In that sense, it is, I suppose, a jobs bill.  Of course, not one of those 26,477 expensive employees will contribute an iota to growing the business or the profits necessary to hire more people.  Au contraire.

What does this new bureaucracy look like, and how much does it cost the already overburdened taxpayer?  One section (there’s a lot of sections in 2,300 pages) of Dodd Frank was the original brainchild of Elizabeth Warren (Harvard professor and Senate candidate running against Scott Brown in Massachusetts). Dodd Frank established a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (bureau being first two syllables of ‘bureaucrat’).  Sounds lofty and helpful, doesn’t it?  The CFPB has a budget of over $447 million for fiscal year 2013, ladles on 958 new federal employees, 60 % of whom make over $100,000 in salary, and has authority to draw up to $550 million directly from the Federal Reserve with no Congressional oversight and just a one page letter to the Fed describing why it needs the money.  Five percent of the employees make over $200,000, which is more than a sitting cabinet member.  The “administrative assistant” (secretary) of the director, Richard Corday, makes $165,139. They spent $40 million (40% of it borrowed in the deficit) on office renovations.

In contrast to those exalted salaries, the median American taxpayer makes $50,054, an amount that has decreased against inflation every year of the Obama administration, including 4% last year.  So far, we have seen the CFPB produce such gems as Consumer Alerts (such as the mandatory small print in things like credit card terms and conditions) published in 187 languages at taxpayer expense, including Somali and Tamil – spoken predominantly in northeast Sri Lanka.  How many of us have read the terms and conditions in the existing credit card statements?  The Tower of Babel had nothing on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Labour Party government in post WWII Great Britain left in place many of the wartime restrictions and regulations; this is typical of the progressive Pharisee: once in place, regulations tend to grow brothers and not ride off into the sunset.  A report was commissioned in the fifties to investigate the benefits of closely managing the youth.  Here are some excerpts: Special agencies, called Citizen’s Advice Bureaus, are set up to steer the bewildered through the forest of rules, and to indicate to the persistent the rare clearings where a private person may still make a choice…(the ordinary citizen) spends great stretches of his waking hours going through motions that have been predetermined for him by directives in whose framing he has had no part, whose precise intention he seldom understands, and of whose appropriateness he cannot judge.  (They are) so acclimatized to that state that they seldom plan and carry out under their own steam any new….enterprise.  He thus looks forward to no future period at which a sinewy faculty of responsibility is likely to be of service to himself or others.

Anyone who has had the misfortune to work for a micromanager experienced the slow sapping of creativity, energy, commitment and joy that results.

At his inauguration, President Obama promised “hope and change” and to “fundamentally change” America.  Many did not understand the degree to which he wanted to change us, nor exactly how he would go about it.  This time during the election process, we do.

(Powerful central government) covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd.  The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided… Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepherd. “Democracy in America” Alexis de Tocqueville.

520 BC – Hercules slays the giant, Alcyoneus

 Hercules Industries drew first blood against an overwhelming giant this week when Colorado District Federal Judge John Kane granted a preliminary injunction against the imposition of the Obamacare mandate which requires private companies to provide insurance at no cost to their employees that will supply embryocidal chemicals, contraceptives and sterilization procedures.

 Hercules manufactures and distributes HVAC (Heating-Ventilation-Air Conditioning) products to contractors throughout Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and parts of Wyoming and Utah.  The company was founded in 1962 by William Newland, and he and his family still run it, employing over 265 full time workers.  As a privately held company, the Newland family holds deeply held convictions, born of their Catholic faith, that inform and provide a moral structure for their business. Mission statements are seemingly de rigueur in current business practice; most are trite and laden with regurgitated buzz words.  Hercules appends an unusual emphasis, “We will nurture and maintain the culture of a family owned business in which our employees grow financially, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.”

“Profit is a regulator of the life of a business, but it is not the only one; other human and moral factors must also be considered, which in the long term are at least equally important for the life of a business.”  Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II

The Newlands, as did many Catholic hospitals and universities, filed suit against Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.  This scary group is defended by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.  The Greek mythical warrior, Hercules, hardly faced more formidable odds.  Declaring that the mandate violates not only their consciences, but their religious beliefs and First Amendment rights, Hercules went to battle and won the first skirmish.

 The DOJ response to the motion for injunction ran for 76 pages, but it came down to this: Plaintiff’s challenge rests largely on the theory that a for-profit, secular corporation .. can claim to exercise a religion and thereby avoid the reach of laws designed to regulate commercial activity. Matt Bowman, attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, who helped represent the family, said, “The bottom line is that Congress and the Constitution explicitly protect all religious freedom.  They don’t exclude family businesses.”  Judge Kane (appointed by Jimmy Carter) found that the Department of Justice arguments “are countered, and indeed outweighed, by the public interest in the free exercise of religion.”

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams

Irrespective of whether the full Colorado District Federal Court upholds or strikes down Judge Kane’s ruling, either Hercules or Holder will appeal, and the Roberts Court will decide ultimately once again.  Since the rough shod ride over the First Amendment is undeniable, perhaps the Roberts Court will find this abridgement of fundamental rights of conscience is somehow justified by the compelling interest of the State to pay for its citizens to kill their young or mutilate their bodies with sterilization, thus saving the bill once again.

What is not surprising in the bill is the relentless effort of Secular Progressives to not only prevail over the people of other faiths, but to silence in the Public Square the voices and actions of conscience by dissenters from the creed of Secular Progressivism.  The intent of Freedom of Religion enshrined in our Constitution is upheld by all Americans: that there will be no state sanctioned official church of any kind.  To insist that moral decisions, conduct of personal business (including commerce) and political choices should not be influenced by human consciences is merely silly.

“Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.”  George Washington

ObamaCare is a glimpse into the Progressive soul, which finds in the State not only the sole solution to complex human problems, but that dissent is heresy of the worst kind.  When President Obama slips into rare, unguarded candor with statements about private sector business like “you didn’t build it” or that the small business owner was not successful because they were “smarter or worked harder”, we see another glimpse into his soul – the Progressive’s deepest convictions. When he thinks about hard working middle class, faith filled Americans, he sees a people “clinging to their guns and Bibles.”  Really.  And when he thinks about those who have worked hard and become successful, his soul glimpse and driving impulse is to “spread the wealth around.”

A deluge of bewildering regulations from every Executive Agency from EPA to IRS to HHS to Labor is costing business billions to figure out,  a distressing reality that favors large businesses which can afford to hire staff to comply.  If this administration cannot convince the American people to change a law which doesn’t fit the President’s agenda, they act by arrogant fiat and refuse to enforce them, thereby breaking their solemn oath to do so.  (e.g. Defense of Marriage Act, current immigration law, the Clinton welfare reform that required recipients to work, etc).  Our only relief from this usurpation is in November, just a hundred days away.

Among the twelve labors imposed on Hercules as punishment by the gods was to clean the Stables of King Augeas, who owned more sheep, horses and cattle than any other person in the world — to clean the Augean Stables in a day – an impossible task.  Hercules accomplished the impossible by hewing out large holes in either end of the Stables and rerouting the Alpheus and Peneus Rivers through the breaches, washing out years of horse pucks, sheep dip and bull excrement in a day.

If Hercules Industries can prevail over ObamaCare, may I suggest to these dauntless businessmen a trip to Washington?  The Potomac is a very big river……

“It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life….  Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately.  It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will.”

“Democracy in America”, Alexis de Tocqueville

Barry and Genevieve, high school sweethearts

Barack Obama’s well written autobiographical, “Dreams From My Father” portrayed his youth as a series of permanently mind altering revelations at Occidental College, Columbia and Harvard that formed his belief system and character.  His high school career was commonplace.  He drank beer, smoked dope, dated and hung out with friends, mostly white.  In Hawaii with so many of mixed race, there was no stigma and he experienced rare, if any, discrimination.

At Occidental College and Columbia Barry Obama transformed to “Barack”, became radicalized, and it was a journey he avidly sought out – he found his mission; he found his role.  Adolescent insecurities were morphed or sublimated, as with us all.  The narcissism and hubris so evident today took root and blossomed.  In “Dreams” he described incidents and conversations that led to these epiphanies; the troubling element is that some of the characters in the book were composites or didn’t exist at all according to the newly released biography, “Barack Obama: The Story”.  David Maraniss, the author, is a Washington Post reporter and an Obama supporter, so one expects a positive perspective, which it presents for the most part.

In “Dreams”, Mr. Obama writes of how he reinvented himself.  In reality, he was “inventing himself inventing himself.”  Andrew Ferguson’s review of Maraniss’ “The Story” (“meticulously researched, well footnoted, carefully written”) wrote this, “What’s dispiriting is that throughout Dreams, the moments that Obama has invented are precisely the occasions of his epiphanies – precisely those periodic “aha!” moments that carry the book and bring its author closer to self-discovery.  Without them not much is left: a lot of lovely writing, some unoriginal social observations, a handful of precocious literary turns….  As Obama’s best biographer, David Remnick, observed, this wasn’t the stuff of Manchild in the Promised Land; you couldn’t use it to make … the Autobiography of Malcolm X.  So Obama used the drama inside himself, and said he’d found there an experience both singular and universal, and he brought along nonexistent friends like Regina and Ray to goose the story along. He did in effect what so many of us have done with him.  He created a fable about an Obama far bigger and more consequential than the unremarkable man at its center.”

From “Barack Obama: The Story”: The character creations and rearrangements of the book (“Dreams from My Father”) are not merely a matter of style, devises of compression, but are also substantive.  The themes of the book control character and chronology.  Time and again the narrative accentuates characters drawn from black acquaintances who played lesser roles in his real life but could be used to advance a line of thought, while leaving out or distorting the actions of friends who happened to be white.

 Oh yes, I’m the great pretender
Adrift in a world of my own..’  “The Great Pretender” (The Platters)

It appears President Obama may persist in his self absorbed attempts to reinvent himself as he would prefer to be. Or his publicity flacks, campaign staff and even his national security advisors are doing it for him.  Peggy Noonan’s editorial in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal asks the question, “Who Benefits From the ‘Avalanche of Leaks’?”   In the article, she writes about David Sanger’s new book, “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power”, as well as the sensational New York Times articles that expose sensitive and ongoing American covert intelligence operations, putting our own operatives and those of our allies at great risk.   Who benefited from these revelations was a president perceived as “weak, a one man apology tour whose foreign policy is unclear, unsure, and lacking in strategic depth”.   President Obama would rather reinvent a warrior and a “do over” from a walking, inept, act of contrition.  No lesser light from the Left than Senator Dianne Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called these an “avalanche of leaks” and said that her “heart stopped” reading the stories:

• A Pakistani physician, Dr. Shakil Afridi, who assisted the CIA by taking DNA samples trying to locate Osama Bin Laden’s lair was exposed by the stories, arrested within days by Pakistan agents, tortured and convicted of spying for America.  He was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
• A sophisticated infusion of trackable video cameras was inserted into Pakistan to enable satellites to identify and find terrorist leaders hiding there.
•  The double agent in Yemen planted deep in Al Qaeda who provided key information about the new, more deadly, airline destroying underwear explosives.
•  The joint Israeli American covert Stuxnet virus, a cyber attack, which disrupted the operation of Iranian centrifuges – a cyber attack that could easily be construed as an act of war and used to justify all manner of retribution.
• And others, most of which could only have come from the recesses of the White House situation room.  Indeed, unnamed White House officials were quoted liberally in the stories.

Before he left the administration, former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, originally a holdover from the Bush White House, visited Obama national security advisor Tom Donilon’s office.  “I have a new strategic communications approach to recommend,” he said.  “What?” asked Mr. Donilon.  “Shut the f*%$ up!” replied Mr. Gates.

Two choices: either the President inexplicably declassified these ongoing operations, which put covert intelligence operatives in mortal danger, betrayed our allies and authorized their leaking to the press OR someone very close to him should be prosecuted for treason.

President Obama has shown himself to be defined by a self reinvented narrative to suit his ambitions.  He has proven to be a gifted campaigner and an inexperienced, ideologically hidebound, manipulative chief executive.  It is not a far stretch of the imagination to envision him as again up to what he’s best at.

“There is something childish in it: Knowing secrets is cool, and telling them is cooler.”  Peggy Noonan

An article by Kevin Williamson earlier this month in National Review points out the fallacy of thinking Barack Obama a socialist because of his enthrallment with “spreading the wealth”.  Advocacy for large government deficit spending and tax policies tilted towards income redistribution are definitive of all modern liberalism and “progressive” politics, but they don’t make anyone a socialist.  The nucleus of socialism is central planning.  The Obama characteristic that firmly plants him in the socialist camp is his fixation with centrally planned solutions for the nation’s ills, irrespective of their consistent record of disappointment.

Few differences exist between the old five year plans of the Soviet Union for potato or wheat harvests and the “planned” objectives of 50% renewable energy or tax credits to increase purchases of electric cars or health care mandates. What will achieve real progress are competitive and practicable means of renewable energy sources, producing electric cars that anyone actually wants to drive at reasonable prices and facing squarely the many conundrums of modern health care.  Not arbitrary policies implemented by a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The European Union economies of Greece, Spain, Italy and even France are foundering not just because they spend more than they generate in wealth for entitlements, early retirements and “social justice” programs (although that is what is happening), but the root cause of failure is central planning itself.  Collapse occurs not because there aren’t plenty of brilliant true believers doing the planning, but because the premise of central planning is deeply flawed and unworkable.

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal carries an instructive editorial by Alberto Mingardi, the director general of the Intsituto Bruno Leoni, a Milan free market think tank. Link to editorial here.  In it, Mr. Mingardi cites Frederich A. Hayek’s Nobel Prize winning economic writings debunking the central planning myth.  Dr. Hayek is the author of the celebrated “Road to Serfdom”.  Central planning may have been feasible when humankind lived in small, insular groups which shared common values and metrics for measuring relative worth and achievement.  In modern, multifaceted states, there are too much data, too many variables, too many unknowns and too many destabilizing influences. Computer models are not capable of predicting the behavior of or the outcomes for small groups and individuals within this complexity.  Grandiose plans and goals predicated on these models are built on shifting sands.

The inherent waste and inefficiencies in outsized bureaucracy multiplies cost and diminishes the competence of any enterprise.  Corruption, internal wrangling and cronyism exacerbate the ineffectivness of solutions that do not solve and analgesics that do not relieve.  Our path out of the swamp cannot be found in unsound theories.  Socialism reads a lot better than it lives.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

Thomas Sowell

President Obama’s claim that the achievements of his first term ranked his presidency as the fourth greatest in American history initiated these posts.  This edition will focus on the administration’s tendency toward fiat, executive orders and ignoring the more inconvenient aspects of the constitution.

President Obama has written and spoken about flaws in the constitution.  He also has publically promised that his main goal is to “fundamentally transform” America.  Even more recently, he pledged to accelerate his agenda by executive orders and rules whether or not Congress was prepared to follow.  If the legislative branch chooses to deliberate, vote, advise and consent on his plans, as is their constitutional responsibility, he will do what he wants to do and let God sort it out.   Here are a few instances where he already has demonstrated his predilection.  There are many more across all executive departments.

• After the infamous Section 1233 mandating “end of life” counseling was voted out of the final Obamacare bill, it was reinstated by stealth regulation in November 2010 tucked amongst hundreds of new Medicare rules.  Friday night ‘document drops’ of hundreds of regulations and disclosures camouflaged on the slowest day of the news cycle has been an administration mainstay.
• The Interior Department in Secretarial Order 3310 gave itself the authority to designate public lands as “Wild Lands” taking them off limits to such things as domestic oil exploration. Previously, such designations had been the exclusive prerogative of Congress.
•  Before the outcry shut it down, after the “cap and trade” bill was defeated in Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency drew up regulations enacting the same anti-carbon measures rejected by the legislature.
• While many presidents have employed recess appointments, President Obama has made it an art form. When the Senate could not see its way to approving Craig Becker, an AFL-CIO and SEIU lawyer, to the National Labor Relations Board, he was made a recess appointee. After all, the unions had contributed over $400 million almost entirely to Democrat candidates in the previous election, and where was the quid for the quo?  Although after the appointment ran out, Becker was rejected by the Senate and left the board, during his tenure the NLRB prevented Boeing from building a new factory in South Carolina, a right to work state.  The president made other recess appointments when the Senate was actually in session, which was remarkably unconstitutional.  He ignored the protests, challenging the Senate to a constitutional crisis, which Harry Reid declined to pursue.
• Recently, we’ve seen an Amish farmer put out of business selling raw milk to neighbors, which his family had done for generations.  We once bought such milk from a local farmer in Maine, and it was healthy and the best milk we ever had.
• Last week we read about a four year old in North Carolina, whose mother made her a turkey and cheese sandwich with a banana and apple juice lunch.  Citing a regulation put in place under the umbrella of Obamacare, the school confiscated the child’s lunch as not meeting their guidelines and gave the girl the prescribed chicken nuggets, then charged the mother for it.  This was put in place as part of an executive order from the president to retrain American citizens by ‘behavior modification.’  Nanny state, indeed.

A recent furor boiled up over Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius enforcing regulations mandating that Obamacare health insurance coverage for all employees of private companies include abortifacient drugs.  There was no provision for conscience exemptions.  When the Catholic Conference of Bishops objected to this unprecedented crushing of First Amendment protections for churches, the president offered a ‘compromise’ wherein he simply ruled by fiat that, should church organizations demur, their insurance companies must offer at their own expense free coverage for these services.  This transparent ruse has become typical of the administration.  If an awkward constitutional issue blocks their way, declare it a non issue and override the niceties.

The United States Preventative Services Task Force, under Obamacare, makes all decisions on coverage such as the contraception decision.  Empowered to evaluate all preventative health services and decide which will be covered by insurance, the task force rates services “A” through “D” or “I” for “Insufficient Evidence”.  Under Obamacare, services rated “A” or “B” such as colon cancer screening for adults between 50 and 75 must be covered in full without co-pays.  Services rated “C” or “D” such as screening for ovarian or testicular cancer could end up not covered at all.  We first became aware of the task force’s new powers buried within the 2,500 pages of the bill, when it recommended that women ages 40-49 shouldn’t get routine mammograms, men shouldn’t get routine screening for prostate cancer, nor should women be screened for the viruses that cause cervical cancer.    It is one of the few Federal agencies with no review or appeal process defined; they have no requirement for public deliberations and are the only Federal health agency mandated to take cost into account when evaluating medical decisions.  What further restriction, mandate and cost cutting awaits an aging nation remains to be seen. It’s a Brave New World.

Embedded in the thousands of pages of the Obamacare, stimulus and financial reform bills is the power to issue regulations and executive orders to interpret and implement them.  This administration has embraced this control with great enthusiasm in order to “fundamentally transform” America and modify the behavior of Americans.  Without even the modest restraint of a reelection, what will a second term bring?  If this fails to give you pause, you aren’t paying attention.

Psalm 118:  It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.

Last Thursday at the Rhode Island Statehouse, the Occupy Providence folks joined by the “professionals” from Occupy Wall Street finally clarified their muddled message a bit while shutting down the Rhode Island Right to Life Committee’s annual rally in the rotunda.  Apparently greed is bad; abortion is good.  Abortion is so good, even though it already ends 23% of pregnancies in Rhode Island, there needs to be more of them, and indeed killing our unborn children should be an entitlement paid for with public tax dollars, breaching both tradition and the law in Rhode Island.

The governor, Lincoln Chaffee, recently issued an executive order to create the health benefit exchanges mandated by Obamacare.  When the state senate refused to pass the exchanges allowing abortion funding, the good governor took it upon himself to design them with the mandated payments for abortion.  This executive order is being challenged in the courts.  The Occupiers, like the governor, prefer administrative fiat and publically funded abortions, seizing by edict that which must be the legislature’s prerogative.  This strategy of executive strong-arming is exactly what President Obama explicitly has promised us should he be reelected.  The legislature be damned.

To reinforce their message, the Occupiers engaged in brown shirt thuggery and exercised their First Amendment rights by booing down the free speech of those who would exercise theirs.  Palpable anger, whistles, bumping, bullying grandmothers and children, fist pumping and pelting the high school girls of LaSalle Academy with condoms were taken, it seems, from the playbook of dilettante revolutionaries.  The well planned, orchestrated and slowly intensifying commotion started with signs and escalated with incremental crowding of the podium and intimidation of especially young pro life speakers to the point of making further speeches or prayers impossible.

They hooted down Barth Bracy, Executive Director of RIRTL, when he was telling them they weren’t part of the 99%, but a remnant of the survivors in the 77% of their demographic who dodged the abortionist.  Father Bernard Healey, who represented the Diocese of Providence, was prevented from leading the closing prayer.  The diocese actually implemented the homeless shelter that the Occupiers have been demanding ineffectually for months from the City of Providence.  Father Healey, an affable, intelligent man with a ready sense of humor, would have liked to pray for the mothers, the babies and the Occupy Providence mob, but was prevented from doing so.

These “revolutionaries” will eventually take showers (one would hope – those nearest them at the rally told us that personal hygiene was not their strong suit) and go back to their classrooms at Brown to check on their trust funds, but in the meanwhile they played winter camping out in tents in Burnside Park and disrupted the orderly gatherings of those with whom they disagree. Perhaps the Brown University Swearer Center for Public Service would consider setting up a homeless center themselves with the dorm capacity vacated by the Occupiers.  However, I suspect the Brown public service community is more comfortable with the theoretical when it comes to helping the homeless; the messy details are best left to other than the chardonnay crowd.

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras should follow the lead of the more courageous leadership in New York and Boston.  The time is past due for the Providence police to don their Tyvek hazardous material suits and filtered masks, clean out the tents and disinfect the area for use by the 99% of Providence residents and taxpayers who used to enjoy the park.

Freedom of speech is not a sometimes thing, available only to the loud and noxious.  The vast majority of Americans greatly value the right of peaceable assembly to express to their lawmakers their most heartfelt views on critical issues.  Pity the few who don’t so value the First Amendment and overrun that right for the rest of us with adolescent tantrums.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.  Frederick Douglass

Future Mount Rushmore?

President Obama consistently differentiates Himself from mere mortal politicians. No great surprise that in his impregnable narcissism during an interview on “Sixty Minutes” he portrayed the ‘accomplishments’ of his first term as superior to any prior president with the possible exceptions of Johnson (presumably Lyndon), FDR and Lincoln.  (Click here to watch video – back arrow to return to blog.)  I am hard pressed to catch my breath with that claim.  Even CBS had to do a double take (or in this case an outtake).

Compare the Roosevelt response to the Great Depression and the Obama response to the financial crisis of 2008.  A debate about Keynesian economics is way beyond the scope of this humble blog, but FDR faced a far worse unemployment and financial crisis than we experienced in 2008.  Unemployment topped 25% with a 37% rate of non-farm unemployment in 1933.  He built permanent public works projects such as the Hoover Dam and developed a public employment program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, which hired young, single men between 18 and 25.  These men were exercised into good physical shape, trained to be more employable and accomplished multiple conservation goals in erosion and flood control, forest culture and protection, disaster relief, structural improvements and wildlife conservation – not quite the same as the nonexistent ‘shovel ready’ jobs of the Obama era. Over its 9 year history until the beginning of WWII, over 2.5 million young men had jobs, money for their families and restored dignity.  Stan Musial, Aldo Leopold, Chuck Yeager, Robert Mitchum, Archie Moore, my father and father-in-law were all enrollees.

In contrast, President Obama crafted the most egregious example of pork barrel earmarks-for- friends Federal spending in American history, over $800 billion.  His history of crony capitalism extends from the earliest years of his career.  As an Illinois state senator in his book, “Audacity of Hope”, Obama told of having his credit card declined when his law business was out of money.  His political ally and wealthy campaign donor, Robert Blackwell, paid him an $112,000 legal retainer to save him from bankruptcy.  What his book failed to note was that State Senator Obama shepherded through a $320,000 Illinois tourism grant to subsidize a state Ping-Pong tournament that benefitted Blackwell’s table tennis company.

President Obama’s long political and financial connections with the now imprisoned ex governor, Rod Blagojevich and real estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko as well as with millionaire slumlord and Democrat king maker Valerie Jarrett (still with him as his Senior Advisor on Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs) and Mayor Richard J. Daley are well documented in NY Times bestselling author, Michelle Malkin’s 2009 book on the Obama administration history, “Culture of Corruption”.  President Obama’s roots are deeply embedded in Chicago Democrat machine politics.  The corrupt profligacy of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009 is no surprise, but a predictable continuation of his record.

In the interest of brevity, let’s look at just one facet of the Recovery Act, the Department of Energy’s 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and 1603 Grant Program for alternative fuel and green power projects.  As documented in Peter Schweizer’s recent book, “Throw Them All Out”, oversight of the loans distribution was not entrusted to a scientist or even an experienced Department of Energy bureaucrat, but to Steve Spinner, an Obama appointee.  Mr. Spinner was previously on the campaign’s National Finance Committee, was a significant campaign contributor and bundler himself; he sat on the White House Business Council.  The grant allocations were stage managed by Sanjay Wagle, who was the co chairperson of Cleantech and Green Business Leaders for Obama, which supplied millions for his campaign.

Of the $20.5 billion in ‘green’ loan guarantees, $16.4 billion went to companies “either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers – individuals who were bundlers, members of his campaign’s National Finance Committee or large donors to the Democratic Party.”  Most were early backers of his presidential run for office.  The Solyndra scandal was the most public failure ($573 million in loan guarantees), but there were others.  As you may remember 35% of Solyndra was owned by George Kaiser, major Obama donor and bundler.  The President personally went to the California factory twice to brag of all the green jobs created there.  Solyndra never was able to manufacture a solar panel for less than they sold it for.  After the bankruptcy, all jobs were lost almost overnight.

Loans often went to previously small or almost nonexistent companies.  The owners often took advantage of the credibility lent to them by the guarantees, took their companies public and cashed out.  Steve Farber, a major donor to the DNC and the 2008 convention host, along with Steve Westy, who bundled more than $500,000 for the campaign, openly advertised in the Wall Street Journal that their connections would ‘hook up’ a company for loans and grants.

Some, such as Granite Reliable Wind ($135 million), were companies directly connected to White House staff.  The company was owned by CCMP Capital, of which Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, had been the managing director.  A wind farm subsidized by the Federal government cost less than 55% of what non subsidized companies had to pay.  Grants were given to companies with less than 10% private equity skin in the game.  Normal grant approvals required at least 30% private equity investment.  The Congressional General Accounting Office found numerous incidents of a lack of transparency in the applications and favoritism to ‘friends and families’ among the winners. The GAO was ignored.

A final typical example was Leucadia Energy, which was awarded grants and loan guarantees totaling $3.5 billion for three separate projects.  The company is a subsidiary of Leucadia National.  At the time of the administration’s decision, Leucadia Energy had annual revenues of $120,000 and one employee, when it was given billions.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Chairman and CEO Ian Cumming was a member of the 2008 Obama National Finance Committee and DNC Convention Committee.  Cumming wrote large personal checks contributing to Obama campaign funds in the weeks just before the approvals.  Eighteen months later in December of 2010, exactly three jobs had been created.

Next week another aspect of this fourth greatest presidency.

“Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”  George Washington

Ambulances and vans pull to the side of a remote road and idle; surgeons and assistants wait patiently just after sunset.  Gun shots signal the onset of frantic activity.  The final few hundred yards are driven into an open area; still warm bodies of executed criminals, political prisoners and religious dissenters are carried into makeshift mobile operating facilities.  Body parts are hastily harvested with the occasional chest contraction or gasp from not quite yet dead donors.  The commodity market for livers, kidneys, corneas and the occasional heart not ruined by a bullet is lucrative (about $4,700 for a good kidney). Victims were given anti coagulants to help ensure good results and told the injections were anesthesia to mitigate pain during their executions.  The only provided anesthesia penetrated the right side of their chests at 300 meters per second from a Norinco knockoff of the 9 mm Tokarev Model 213, the reliable sidearm of Chinese officialdom.

Not some ghastly science fiction by Michael Crichton or Robin Cook, but true horror in an immense region in northwestern China called East Turkestan.   No , this story is true and was related to Ethan Guttmann from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies by two former doctors forced into service by the Chinese Army:  Nijat Abdureyim and Enver Tohti, and was published in last week’s Weekly Standard.  They were ordered to cut deep and fast.  An estimated 65,000 Turkestan, mostly Muslim, were ‘harvested’ in the late 1990’s.  Ethnically, the original inhabitants are Turkic and now a minority to the imported Han Chinese.  More recently, this profitable sideline of culling those that challenge the state was visited upon the unlucky chosen of Falun Gong, three million of whom were funneled through Chinese corrections facilities.  Prisoners were blood tested and tissue matched before those selected for execution were lead away.  Occasionally, Chinese officials in need of a kidney or liver waited in a hospital and were matched with a not yet dispatched donor.  At the end of a restaurant interview, Dr. Tohti turned to Dr. Abdureyim, saying, “Nijat, we really are going to hell.”  His companion was silent and knocked back his beer.

When girls were born to Turkestan women, mid wives were known to inject them with “antibiotics”, which were not administered to Chinese infants.  Within two weeks, the babies turned blue and died.  If confronted, mid wives told the mothers their babies were simply not up to handling the “medicine”.  Well documented ‘one child’ policies and forced abortions by the Chinese government expose pervasive human rights abuse.  Tallying the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution, the government of China has murdered millions in the interest of the supremacy of the far left State and the People.

A second article about China this week by Andy Stern appeared in the Wall Street Journal editorial pages.  Mr. Stern is a fellow at Columbia University’s Richman Center and is the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  According to the filing with the Federal Election Commission, the SEIU PAC was the largest single contributor to President Obama’s election campaign with over $27 million taken from the dues of healthcare, property services and public employees. Stern was appointed by President Obama to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (?!?).  During his tenure, the SEIU also donated $6 million to ACORN, the community action group discredited for voter fraud.  The SEIU was deemed the “most engaged and influential” lobby for the ObamaCare bill.  Stern was the most frequent visitor to the White House during the first year of the administration – 22 times according to White House logs.   Perhaps some microbrews in the Rose Garden discussing preferred mentors of President Obama like Saul Alinsky (author of “Rules for Radicals”)?

In his editorial, Stern praises the superiority of the China model of the “planned economy” as clearly the future. The editorial is smooth and persuasively written.  “The free market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history”.  He cites China’s ascent to become the world’s second largest economy, their 10% wage growth (although many citizens in China still live in third world conditions), their commitment to next generation Information Technology (how much is pirated is not mentioned), and he waxes most rhapsodic about their penchant for five year plans, while the “Americans are planning only for the next election”.  Five year plans worked out especially well for the late, unlamented Soviet Union.

A third “China” allusion this week is cited in a Yuval Levin National Review article. Peter Orszag, former budget director for the Obama administration, is quoted from his editorial in “The New Republic”.  He tells us we need to take power from Congress and give it to “automatic policies and depoliticized commissions.  Radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.”  President Obama has frequently said similar things, presumably as long as he controls the commissions.  He has told aides that making the changes he wants would be a lot easier if he was the president of China.  Whether ironic whimsy or a revelatory foretaste is up to you.

A favored quote of Saul Alinsky is, “History is a relay of revolutions” and another is “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”  His plan for the radicals of the sixties was to clean up, get haircuts and infiltrate through political action to the highest positions of power they could attain.  To underestimate their intelligence and determination is a grievous error.

The left is alive and well in Beijing, on American campuses like Columbia, in unions like the SEIU and on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, in Washington, DC.

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”  — Galileo