LilSugar

Joe The Plumber's Still Talking!

stephley — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:26:30 -0800

Joe the Plumber (aka Samuel J.Wurzelbacher) headlined state Representative Sam Rohrer’s Mobilize for Liberty event in Harrisburg today, giving the Berks County lawmaker his support a few hours after Rohrer mustered just a dozen votes in the State Republican Committee’s gubernatorial endorsement meeting.

Joe’s endorsement is apparently quite the coup. He says more than 200 politicians have asked for support this year, but so far, he’s only backed five. “I need to talk to candidates before I endorse,” he told me afterwards, explaining that his bar is pretty high. “We have a series of conversations – 20 to 30 minute conversations – and I grill them. I ask them questions about energy, education – make sure they’re straight.” Wurzelbacher says he also vets candidates online.

So why Rohrer? He says they share many of the same values – the Second Amendment, states’ independence, “integrity, honesty.” Plus, “Sam is really favored amongst the tea parties. It takes a lot for them to get behind an individual.”

Wurzelbacher touched on several different points during his speech, and many of them were surprising. He said he doesn’t support Sarah Palin anymore. Why? Because she’s backing John McCain’s re-election effort. “John McCain is no public servant,” he told the room, calling the 2008 Republican nominee a career politician.

I pointed out he’d just be plain old Sam Wurzelbacher of Ohio - Joe the Plumber wouldn’t exist – without McCain. His response was blunt. “I don’t owe him s-. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”

Wurzelbacher said, “McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”

So why’s he still milking the Joe the Plumber image, appearing at conservative events across the country? Wurzelbacher says it’s his duty to take advantage of the platform he’s been given. He wants to talk up the issues he cares about, and encourage the grassroots tea party movement.

Wurzelbacher also told the room to lay off the extreme personal attacks on President Obama. He said people who question whether Obama was born in the United States or compare him to Hitler “belittle and set back” the conservative movement. “The birthers, the truthers - if people are trying to bunch them [with tea partiers], that would kill us. That just pushes away Democrats and independents who might come out for our cause otherwise.” He said he actually likes Obama, in some ways. “I think his ideology is un-American, but he’s one of the more honest politicians. At least he told us what he wanted to do.”

http://scottdetrow.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/a-few-minutes-with-joe-the-p...

Obama responds to ire over 2nd anti-Vegas remark

Roarman — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:41:39 -0800

LAS VEGAS – President Barack Obama is known for having a way with words, but some lawmakers from Nevada wish he would pipe down about trips to Sin City.

After sparking a firestorm of criticism from Nevada's elected officials for suggesting that people saving money for college shouldn't blow it in Las Vegas, Obama told U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a letter that he wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas.

It was the second time since taking office that Obama singled out Las Vegas as a potential example of spending excessively.

"I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun," Obama said, according to the letter released by Reid's office. "There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations."

Obama said he always enjoys his visits to Las Vegas.

A White House spokesman referred to Obama's letter to Reid and said the administration had no further comment.

Perception and reputation are sensitive issues for Sin City as it struggles to find footing amid a two-year meltdown of foreclosures, bankruptcies and unemployment. Tourism is the Silver State's backbone, and several lawmakers said they were shocked that Obama singled out Las Vegas again after commenting last February that bailed-out banks shouldn't go to Las Vegas using taxpayer money.

"When times are tough, you tighten your belts," Obama said, according to a White House transcript of his appearance Tuesday at a high school in North Nashua, N.H.

"You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage," Obama said. "You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices."

The comments quickly sparked a flurry of reaction in the Silver State, which supported Obama in the 2008 election. Nevada had an unemployment rate of 13 percent in December.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said during a hastily called news conference that Obama is no friend to Las Vegas and would not be welcomed here if he visits.

"I'll do everything I can to give him the boot," Goodman said. "This president is a real slow learner."

Goodman and others are worried that Obama's words will discourage visitors from coming to Las Vegas and depress the industry further.

"Enough is enough!" Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley said in a statement. "President Obama needs to stop picking on Las Vegas and he needs to let Americans decide for themselves how and where to spend their hard-earned vacation dollars."

Nevada's tourism has been hit hard during the past two years as consumers everywhere tighten leisure spending and companies spend less on meetings and conventions.

Reid, one of Obama's closest allies, issued a statement headlined "Reid to Obama: 'Lay off Las Vegas'" and was unusually blunt in his reaction.

"The President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," Reid said. "I would much rather tourists and business travelers spend their money in Las Vegas than spend it overseas."

Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, complained that Obama "failed to grasp the weight that his words carry."

"Once again he has threatened the struggling economy of Las Vegas," Ensign said, recalling what he characterized as Obama's "irresponsible" comment in February 2009.

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons and Rep. Dean Heller, both Republicans, and Democratic Rep. Dina Titus also disparaged the president's remarks, while Republican candidates hoping to unseat Reid this year called for an apology.

One year ago, Obama commented during a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind., that corporations shouldn't use federal bailout money for trips to Las Vegas, the Super Bowl or corporate jets. Tourism and casino officials said the comment hurt the city as companies canceled meetings in Las Vegas and rescheduled them elsewhere.

Obama later said during a May 2009 trip to Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas that it was nice to get out of Washington and "there's nothing like a quick trip to Vegas in the middle of the week."

Goodman said he thought Obama had a "psychological hang-up" of using Las Vegas as an example of excessive spending, and that this time, an apology wouldn't be enough.

"He has to step up right away and say, you know, he wasn't thinking," Goodman said. "Sometimes when he's not using his monitors and reading what he says, he doesn't think. And this is one of those times he didn't think, and he should straighten out the record because he's been here, he knows Las Vegas is a great place."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_las_vegas

Report Card for the Obama Administration

Grandpa — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:36:52 -0800

Report Card for the Obama Administration

by CEI Staff
January 20, 2010

Washington, D.C., January 20, 2010-One year ago today, Barack Obama took the oath of office as President of the United States. Since then, he and his appointees have had the opportunity to begin implementing their policy agenda, with notable results throughout the federal government’s departments and agencies. The analysts of the Competitive Enterprise Institute have assessed the administration’s first-year performance and assigned grades accordingly.

D- White House (overall) ― Barack Obama, President

Grader: Fred L. Smith, Jr., President

Americans rallied behind President Obama’s message of hope and change, giving this administration a wonderful opportunity to reframe the debate about an array of issues in America-entitlements, environmental policy, health care, and the roles of the federal and state governments. Americans, not wedded to either the Democrats or the Republicans, were ready for a reappraisal, a rebalancing of the powers of the people and the politicians. He blew it. Despite being elected by moderates and independents, this administration adopted the most statist agenda and created the most bloated bureaucracy in America’s history. By championing further politicization of an already overly politicized America, there have been rapid drops in Obama’s credibility and popularity.

Americans are dropping out of his Long March toward Socialism. Obama could have adopted a “Nixon in China” policy, working with Republicans, Independents, and Democrats to rebalance private and political frontiers, encouraging greater private involvement in education, allowing private property a role in the environmental field, taking on the non-sustainable entitlement programs already threatening the survival of Europe, reducing the regulatory and tax burdens on entrepreneurial creativity, and moving away from the neo-conservative “nation building” crusade of his predecessor. Unfortunately, he has not. He could have been-and, if he reshapes his course quickly enough, might still become-a great president. But, in this first year of his presidency, he has disappointed. The performance of the White House to date merits only a D-.

D+ Department of Agriculture ― Tom Vilsack, Secretary

Grader: Frances B. Smith, Adjunct Fellow

In a February 24, 2009, address to Congress, President Obama promised the American people that his administration would be taking a hard look at farm support. “In this budget,” he said, “we will . . . end direct payments of large agribusinesses that don’t need them.” However, reality wasn’t consistent with that rhetoric, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that direct government payments would total $12.5 billion in 2009, a 2-percent increase over 2008. Agricultural policy in the Obama administration has also continued and expanded massive agricultural subsidies, with new “green” subsidies for ethanol production. In addition, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 gave USDA nearly $28 billion in funding, which together with guaranteed loan programs represents nearly $52 billion in new program funding. The Obama administration has also refused to touch special interest programs that benefit wealthy farmers at the expense of consumers-for example, the USDA decided not to increase import quotas for sugar, which restrict the amount of sugar available for sugar users and consumers. And, despite World Trade Organization rulings against U.S. cotton subsidies, no U.S. action has been taken to change that program.

D Consumer Product Safety Commission ― Inez Moore Tenenbaum, Chairman

Grader: Angela Logomasini, Director of Risk and Environmental Policy

The CPSC gets a D for its management of perhaps the most significant item on the Consumer Product Safety Commission agenda for 2009: the implementation of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). It regulates lead and certain chemicals in toys. Never mind the fact that the trace levels are too low to pose a health risk, this draconian law is putting small businesses out of commission and forcing charities to toss old books, toys, and other items. Small businesses and others have been fighting this unreasonable and impractical law since its inception. But CPSC has made things even more difficult than necessary by refusing to apply any flexibility built into the law.

Commissioner Ann Northup, one of the few voices of reason at CPSC, noted recently in the Wall Street Journal: “For the past several months, American businesses have been caught in the middle of a classic standoff between the federal commissioners in the majority, who argue that the statute ties their hands, and members of Congress, who claim they wrote flexibility into the law and blame the commission for any harsh consequences. Although the commission steadfastly refused to reach out to Congress to seek clarifications to the law, Congress has now reached out to us-asking the agency last week for a list of recommendations to amend the statute. Thankfully the commission responded, in part, by agreeing to extend the stay on testing and certification for lead content. This window gives Congress time to consider such common-sense changes…” The commission gets a few points for having at least extended one compliance deadline to allow time for reform, but it could have taken more opportunities to apply some reason to the application of the law.

F Department of Energy ― Steven Chu, Secretary

Grader: Iain Murray, Vice President for Strategy

The mission of the Department of Energy has historically been one of ensuring that America has the power to meet its economic needs. Unfortunately, under Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, the Department has apparently decided that America’s economy is too big and needs to be scaled back. It has taken a decision to frown upon traditional sources of energy, generated from fossil fuels, and discouraged their further development. Alternative sources of energy, which cannot possibly meet America’s needs in the short-to-medium term, are instead encouraged with massive taxpayer-funded subsidies. Some noises have been made about nuclear energy, but it remains the red-headed stepchild of energy policy. The result will likely be a continuing degradation of America’s energy infrastructure which will almost certainly result in its failure to meet economic needs should the nation begin to climb out of the current recession, with the likelihood of a stalled recovery. For its failure to appreciate exactly what it is supposed to be there for, the Obama administration’s Department of Energy gets a resounding F.

F Environmental Protection Agency – Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator

Grader: Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy

EPA flunked on April 16, 2009, when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson found that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. This endangerment finding came after an advance notice of proposed rulemaking begun during the Bush administration in July 2008 that resulted in numerous substantive expert comments that show clearly that the finding is unwarranted scientifically, that the Clean Air Act is entirely unsuitable for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and that using it to do so would create a regulatory nightmare and do enormous economic damage. Administrator Jackson admitted that the Clean Air Act was not designed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, but went ahead and made the finding anyway.

In addition, EPA has moved aggressively to stop coal production in Appalachia by intervening in mine-permitting decisions by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The EPA has even demanded that the Corps revoke permits for new mines that have already been granted. The grounds upon which the EPA is attempting to stop coal mining are utterly ridiculous.

D Federal Communications Commission – Julius Genachowski, Chairman

Grader: Ryan Radia, Associate Director of Technology Studies

Radio and television stations, Internet service providers, and even wireless phone companies are all regulated by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This agency is tasked with governing the nation’s airwaves and making available communications services to the residents of the United States.

Technological evolution has spurred fundamental changes in the way we communicate over the last couple of decades. Consumers nowadays enjoy more information and entertainment sources than ever before, and the notion of scarcity in communications has yielded to a world of abundance. Consequently, the FCC’s proper role has grown smaller and smaller.

Like most modern bureaucracies, however, the FCC has maneuvered in recent years to interject itself in market processes in order to preserve the agency’s relevance in the face of a rapidly changing communications landscape. Most recently, the FCC has proposed imposing net neutrality rules that would limit how Internet providers can manage their networks in the name of protecting consumers. But these rules threaten to constrain tomorrow’s innovative business arrangements-arrangements which today’s shortsighted regulators simply cannot foresee.

The FCC also made headlines in the fall of 2009 when it launched an investigation into wireless industry practices. AT&T, the nation’s second largest wireless carrier, and Apple, the maker of the iPhone, were at the center of the controversy. Naturally, the FCC claimed its actions were aimed at protecting consumers. In fact, the looming scepter of regulatory intervention in the wireless market-a market which is highly innovative and competitive, according to objective measures-causes firms to retreat, stifling innovation and making consumers worse off.

On the other hand, the FCC has publicly acknowledged the need for expanding the pool of spectrum available to the marketplace. Spectrum is the lifeblood of mobile communications, but government controls giant swaths of this resource. The FCC has streamlined the process of deploying wireless services, which has helped ensure that wireless carriers are able to meet escalating demand for mobile data service. But the Commission still has a long ways to go if it’s to enable American enterprise to realize the full potential of the spectrum.

F Federal Trade Commission – Jon Leibowitz, Chairman

Grader: Michelle Minton, Policy Analyst

The purpose of the Federal Trade Commission is, ostensibly, to protect consumers and encourage competition in the marketplace. However, over the last year the FTC and the Obama administration have initiated or endorsed actions that display an increasingly interventionist intent and that would resoundingly impede competition and threaten the liberty of individual consumers. Congress initiated plans to repeal portions of the McCarran-Ferguson act, ending the long-standing antitrust exemption for health insurers. This proposal, endorsed by President Obama, would do nothing to reduce the costs of health insurance and would more than likely result in increased costs and market consolidation. The “collusion” practiced by health insurers actually allows them (especially small insurance companies) to share information and rate-setting standards for more accurate premium calculations. Setting accurate risk-based rates is fundamental to an insurer's ability to charge adequate rates that are neither too little or too much. States already have the power to regulate antitrust in the insurance industry so the result of repealing the antitrust exemption would most likely be insurance companies erring on the side of caution by reducing market cooperation, a reduction in premium rate accuracy and thus an increase in the costs of writing insurance.

Additionally, the FTC filed an antitrust suit against Intel, the leading manufacturer of microprocessors, alleging that the company violated federal laws by engaging in exclusionary business practices. In reality, Intel has been able to achieve its success due to constant innovation as a result of a vibrant and competitive market. The application of antitrust laws will only retard what is an otherwise dynamic market. There is no evidence that Intel's market success has harmed consumers in any way. Lastly, and most disturbingly, the FTC issued new rules which went into effect December 1, 2009, that would make the average blogger liable for civil penalties for false claims about products or failure to disclose material connections between the reviewer and the marketer of a product or service. This raises serious concerns about the scope of the FTC's powers and its ability and willingness to hamper individuals' freedom of speech. For this and the previously mentioned offenses the FTC receives an unequivocal F.

C- Food and Drug Administration – Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner

Grader: Gregory Conko, Senior Fellow

The Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration had a sub-par performance in 2009. The agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved just 24 new drugs and biotech medicines last year-roughly on par with its performance in the final year of the Bush administration, but well below recent highs of 53 in 1996 and 39 in 1997. In other areas, the FDA’s new leadership has taken a “get tough” attitude with manufacturers that will do nothing to improve safety, but could deprive consumers of useful products and information. For example, in April, the agency informed drug manufacturers that their use of “sponsored link” ads on search engines such as Google and Yahoo! were unlawful because the 70-character links did not present the same encyclopedic risk information required of conventional print advertisements-even though the links directed users to a page containing the full risk disclosure.

In May, the FDA issued a warning letter to General Mills that labels on boxes of Cheerios indicating that consumers could lower their cholesterol by eating the whole grain cereal turned the product from a food into a medical drug. And, in July, Principle Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein recommended imposing strict limits on the use of certain antibiotics in livestock production. The appointment of so-called consumer advocates such as Sharfstein and Assistant Commissioner for Policy Peter Lurie suggest one reason why the new FDA leadership has been taking a needlessly antagonistic regulatory approach. Similarly, the appointment of Ralph Tyler, an attorney with no food and drug law experience, to serve as FDA chief counsel, bodes poorly for consumers and manufacturers alike.

F Immigration and Customs Enforcement – John T. Morton, Assistant Secretary
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – Alejandro Mayorkas, Director

Grader: Alex Nowrasteh, Policy Analyst

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) receive an F for enforcing America’s self-destructive immigration policies. ICE and USCIS have the impossible task of separating immigrants from economic opportunity, and have failed spectacularly. The cost per apprehension of illegal immigrant on the border is up by 1,041 percent since 1992, and the number of illegal immigrants only seems to dip in response to recessions. When our immigration laws are confronted with the economic realities of mass immigration, ICE and USCIS end up with egg on their faces and taxpayers with a hole in their pockets.

F Department of Interior – Ken Salazar, Secretary

Grader: R.J. Smith, Senior Environmental Scholar

Unfortunately, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the host of environmentalists who have filled key slots appear determined to continue to expand the amount of federal land ownership through the acquisition (and regulation) of private lands-supporting the creation of ever more National Parks, National Monuments, National Wildlife Refuges, National Heritage Areas, National Trails, and Wild and Scenic Rivers. With the poor record of stewardship on so many of the federal lands, one would hope for some demonstrated ability to care for what they already have, in place of endless acquisition as a seeming end in itself.

And while DOI is reducing private land ownership, it is also locking up millions of additional acres of existing federal lands in Wilderness Areas, which can never be used and most of which have never even been inventoried for their potential contributions to national survival. Additionally the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in the process of listing more and more species of plants and animals as threatened or endangered regardless of the facts as well as designating ever-larger critical habitats for listed species. DOI is supporting efforts of environmentalists to not only close areas of known fossil fuel deposits to exploration and development, but is also opposing the creation of alternative wind and solar energy farms because they might impact endangered species and their habitat-or harm “viewsheds” -thus making doubly sure that America has neither non-renewable nor renewable energy supplies for the future. Such policies harm the land, the resources, the wildlife and the American people. How could one do worse?

F Department of Justice – Eric Holder, Attorney General

Grader: Hans Bader, Senior Attorney

The Justice Department is deeply politicized, putting partisanship before its legal responsibilities and the Constitution. It has failed to enforce federal voting rights laws like UOCAVA that protect the right of military service members to vote, resulting in many of them receiving absentee ballots to late to vote in close congressional races, like the special election for New York’s 20th congressional district. The obvious result of this is to put critics of the administration, who are disproportionately backed by military voters, at a disadvantage in every election. It dropped a voter-intimidation case after career justice department had already won the case and obtained a default judgment, shielding from punishment an Obama poll watcher and Philadelphia democratic official who used a nightstick and racial epithets to intimidate voters, and who belonged to the anti-Semitic, racist New Black Panther Party. It then thumbed its nose at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, by refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the Commission in its investigation of the administration’s actions. It overturned a legal opinion by David Baron, a liberal Justice Department attorney hired under the Obama administration, when he had the temerity to point out the inconvenient truth that giving D.C. a congressman, as Obama advocates, would violate the Constitution.

The Justice Department has expanded the use of Miranda Warnings in Afghanistan -even though they are not constitutionally required and impede investigators. Yet it argues in court briefs that detainees subjected to torture have no redress under the U.S. Constitution. It is eroding civil liberties by re-prosecuting in federal court teenagers acquitted of a hate crime in state court, even though testimony in the state case supported the jury’s not-guilty verdict by pointing to a different culprit. It failed to take steps to cut off funds to ACORN, a political ally of the President, despite ACORN’s being caught on video promoting mortgage fraud and other criminal activity, and the existence for years of federal statutes debarring contractors who engage in fraud.

D Department of Labor – Hilda L. Solis, Secretary

Grader: Ivan Osorio, Editorial Director

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis gets a low grade for shifting the focus of the Department of Labor to run once again as if it were the Department of Organized Labor. Since taking office, she has worked with union bosses to promote organized labor’s agenda, including undermining efforts to improve union financial disclosure. However, one mitigating factor is the fact that the department’s searchable database for union LM-2 reports remains online (the database was made available online by Solis’s predecessor, Elaine Chao).

C- Office of Management and Budget – Peter Orszag, Director

Grader: Ryan Young, Journalism Fellow

Spending and deficits are far higher than under President George W. Bush, himself a big spender. But Obama can’t be given all the blame. The bailout and stimulus spending programs that caused much of the fresh red ink got their start under Bush. In a potentially positive regulatory development, the number of pages in the Federal Register decreased from 79,435 in 2008 to 69,676 in 2009. Of course, the contents of those pages matters more than how many of them there are. And on that front, the new administration is business as usual.

F Public Company Accounting Oversight Board – Daniel L. Goelzer, Acting Chairman

Grader: John Berlau, Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, created by Sarbanes-Oxley to implement its rules, gets an F. It has done nothing to simplify the rules that Republicans and Democrats have called overly burdensome to small public companies. And this year when bonuses in the private sector were under so much scrutiny, the PCAOB raised the salary of its chairman to almost $700,000 a year.

However, it is important to note that Obama cannot be held accountable for any of the PCAOB's actions, since the PCAOB's unconstitutional structure prevents the President from exercising any control through either the appointment or removal process. Despite our disagreement with the Obama administration, in a pending Supreme Court case, CEI has argued for his and future administrations to have the necessary constitutional controls over this agency so that they can be held politically accountable for its actions, good or bad.

D Securities and Exchange Commission – Mary L. Schapiro, Chairman

Grader: John Berlau, Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs

The reason the SEC does not get an F is because its Chairman Mary Schapiro, appointed by President Obama last year at the beginning of his administration, has made going after major investor fraud a key priority. She has brought on law enforcement experts and shifted enforcement resources from trivial headline-grabbing investigations such as the alleged backdating of stock options, which caused little harm to shareholders’ bottom lines, into seeking out Madoff-like Ponzi schemes. Contrary to press accounts, the SEC was not inactive during the Bush administration, but focused on the wrong enforcement priorities. It threw the book at Martha Stewart for trivial charges, but ignored warnings about Bernie Madoff and other fraudsters (as the agency had also done with regard to Madoff, to be fair, under the Clinton administration).

However other actions of the Obama-Schapiro SEC have greatly undermined shareholder well-being. Schapiro brought back the widespread use of corporate penalties to punish shareholder fraud. But penalties on the corporation, rather than individual bad actors in the company, have the effect of punishing the very shareholders the fraud was committed against. The money to pay the penalties is taken from the corporate treasury, which ultimately belongs to the ordinary shareholders of the company. Thus, shareholders end up being penalized twice for the fraud: once when the corporate executives misuse a company's money and again when the corporate penalty further reduces the assets that belong to all shareholders.

Schapiro also gets this bad grade for, over the objection of the two Republican commissioners, overriding 150 years of state corporate law to mandate that companies list shareholder nominees on the same ballot with their own. These proposed “proxy access” rules would let special interests with agendas and shares of stocks, such as union pension funds and environmental groups, use the director nomination process as a wedge against management to promote political agenda items that are contrary to the interests of ordinary shareholders.

And Schapiro failed shareholders and entrepreneurs when she refused to extend an exemption from the Sarbanes-Oxley “internal control” auditing mandates to the very smallest public companies. At a time when President Obama and Republicans are worries about small business growth and the ability to create jobs, this will severely limit these companies ability to grow. And Sarbanes-Oxley, despite costing the economy more than $1 trillion according to University of Minnesota economist Ivy Zhang, did little for shareholders in preventing fraud in the subprime crisis. This action may be mitigated by bipartisan actions in Congress to create a permanent exemption for these smaller companies. This measure was inserted into the financial regulation bill that passed the House in December, with the Obama administration's limited support. But it still needs to clear the Senate. Schapiro should heed this bipartisan action and continue to extend this exemption so vital for entrepreneurs and shareholders from this law that was rushed through after Enron and signed by President Bush in 2002.

F Department of Transportation – Ray LaHood, Secretary

Grader: Sam Kazman, General Counsel

For proposing, in conjunction with EPA, to raise vehicle fuel economy standards to even greater levels, despite the overwhelming evidence that such standards kill people by causing cars to be made smaller and lighter. Downsizing may squeeze more mpgs out of a car, but it also reduces crashworthiness. When passenger car standards were at 27.5 mpg several years ago, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that they contributed to about 2,000 traffic deaths per year. As those standards are pushed up by DOT and EPA, that death toll will only climb, with nary a peep out of the agency whose alleged job is to promote traffic safety.

D Department of Treasury – Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary

Grader: Wayne Crews, Vice President for Policy

In a libertarian world of civil rather than political society, the Treasury Department would pay the modest bills of a constitutionally limited government. It’s true that Congress holds the purse strings; but during an economic and financial crisis rooted in already-gargantuan government that – despite the news reports – has regulated money, credit and interest rates many decades, a sane Treasury’s vision for leadership and recovery would rule out seducing Congress with yet more elaborate and larger purses (with elastic seams besides). This Treasury Department has compounded the “NASCAR” bailouts, helps inflate a silly “green energy” bubble, and stands at the podium cheerleading the idea of regulating the private-sector salaries among other priestly interventions in one formerly free endeavor after another. But creating ficticious economies through political means is nothing new; we’re experiencing the fruits of this key governmental function now. I want to give Treasury an “F” for standing by as the 2009 deficit topped an incomprehensible $1.6 trillion last year amid this self-serving orgy, a political spending phenomenon unrelated to the requirements of economic recovery.

However, Treasury gets only a “D” because it inherited from President Bush what was already the largest government on Planet Earth ($3 trillion) a behemoth it had few complaints about financing. We can argue it ‘till the whiskey’s gone, but there’s no question that under President Obama, Treasury has been instrumental in extending and “customizing” a Stimulus to Nowhere already making a beeline for the cliff’s edge, and things could have been otherwise. Federal interventions are so extensive that civil, voluntary society as opposed to administered society may never quite recover in this particular geographical area of the world during any of our lifetimes.

Since it insists upon doing more than keeping the books, to get an “A,” the U.S. Treasury Department must take a leadership role in removing obstacles to corporate and small business innovation like tax and capital gain liberalization, and help expand economic deregulation on a massive scale. Apart from paying the government’s own light bill, Treasury’s leadership is only valuable when it prioritizes wise and honest alternatives to spending yet more stimulus money that it doesn’t have. It can take a lead role in expanding ideas like privatization, liberalizing America’s network industries like electricity and telecommunications (it will surprise few that the latter is being newly regulated rather than deregulated), simplifying taxes, explaining why a VAT is disastrous, and much more. The U.S. federal government buys us far too much misery with the $4 trillion it now spends annually; I almost wish it were more Machiavellian rather than just crazy. Freedom and liberty cost less than this, America.

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets.
Related Files:

http://cei.org/news-release/2010/01/20/report-card-obama-administration

UK Telegraph: December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began.

Grandpa — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:02:33 -0800

America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels
December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began.

People gather across the street from the New York Stock Exchange in New York Oct. 24, 1929. Thousands of investors lost their savings in the worst stock market crash in Wall Street history five days later.
History repeating itself? President Obama has been accused by some economists of making the same mistakes policymakers in the US made in the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, pictured Photo: AP

The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters.

Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a further exhibit of market infantilism.

The home foreclosure guillotine usually drops a year or so after people lose their job, and exhaust their savings. The local sheriff will escort them out of the door, often with some sympathy –– just like the police in 1932, mostly Irish Catholics who tithed 1pc of their pay for soup kitchens.

Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody's Economy.com expects another 2.4m homes to go this year. Taken together, this looks awfully like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.

Judges are finding ways to block evictions. One magistrate in Minnesota halted a case calling the creditor "harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive". We are not far from a de facto moratorium in some areas.

This is how it ended between 1932 and 1934, when half the US states declared moratoria or "Farm Holidays". Such flexibility innoculated America's democracy against the appeal of Red Unions and Coughlin Fascists. The home siezures are occurring despite frantic efforts by the Obama administration to delay the process.

This policy is entirely justified given the scale of the social crisis. But it also masks the continued rot in the housing market, allows lenders to hide losses, and stores up an ever larger overhang of unsold properties. It takes heroic naivety to think the US housing market has turned the corner (apologies to Goldman Sachs, as always). The fuse has yet to detonate on the next mortgage bomb, $134bn (£83bn) of "option ARM" contracts due to reset violently upwards this year and next.

US house prices have eked out five months of gains on the Case-Shiller index, but momentum stalled in October in half the cities even before the latest surge of 40 basis points in mortgage rates. Karl Case (of the index) says prices may sink another 15pc. "If the 2008 and 2009 loans go bad, then we're back where we were before – in a nightmare."

David Rosenberg from Gluskin Sheff said it is remarkable how little traction has been achieved by zero rates and the greatest fiscal blitz of all time. The US economy grew at a 2.2pc rate in the third quarter (entirely due to Obama stimulus). This compares to an average of 7.3pc in the first quarter of every recovery since the Second World War.

Fed hawks are playing with fire by talking up about exit strategies, not for the first time. This is what they did in June 2008. We know what happened three months later. For the record, manufacturing capacity use at 67.2pc, and "auto-buying intentions" are the lowest ever.

The Fed's own Monetary Multiplier crashed to an all-time low of 0.809 in mid-December. Commercial paper has shrunk by $280bn ($175bn) in since October. Bank credit has been racing down a hair-raising black run since June. It has dropped from $10.844 trillion to $9.013 trillion since November 25. The MZM money supply is contracting at a 3pc annual rate. Broad M3 money is contracting at over 5pc.

Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said the Fed is baking deflation into the pie later this year, and perhaps a double-dip recession. Europe is even worse.

This has not stopped an army of commentators is trying to bounce the Fed into early rate rises. They accuse Ben Bernanke of repeating the error of 2004 when the Fed waited too long. Sometimes you just want to scream. In 2004 there was no housing collapse, unemployment was 5.5pc, banks were in rude good health, and the Fed Multiplier was 1.73.

How anybody can see imminent inflation in the dying embers of core PCE, just 0.1pc in November, is beyond me.

Mr Rosenberg is asked by clients why Wall Street does not seem to agree with his grim analysis.

His answer is that this is the same Mr Market that bought stocks in October 1987 when they were 25pc overvalued on Shiller "10-year normalized earnings basis" – exactly as they are today – and bought them at even more overvalued prices in 2007, long after the property crash had begun, Bear Stearns funds had imploded, and credit had its August heart attack. The stock market has become a lagging indicator. Tear up the textbooks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/696263...

The Biggest Players of the Year

kty — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:27:18 -0800

By Marisa Fox
Admit it, there's no greater spectator sport than witnessing the hookups, the breakups and the oh-so-cute offspring of sports stars and their bombshell, celebrity mates. Find out who ranks (from 0 to 100) as the biggest players of 2009, and which sport ultimately reigns supreme:

Football

MVP: Talk about a touchdown. This year, the Colts' wide receiver Hank Baskett had more than his 15 minutes of fame when he married former Girls Next Door star Kendra Wilkinson, becoming the costar of her E! reality TV show Kendra. The couple's June 27 nuptials at the Playboy Mansion were only surpassed by the televised birth of their son, Henry Randall Baskett IV (aka Lil' Hank) on Dec. 11. While his professional sports career is less storied than his off-field antics, for dating, marrying and squiring a son with Wilkinson, Basket gets 100 in our ratings scale. Honorable Mention: Tom Brady sure knows how to play the field. The New England Patriots quarterback wed Gisele Bündchen on Feb. 26 in Santa Monica, and the newlyweds welcomed son Benjamin, on Dec. 8. He joked, "No Sundays," when Bündchen asked him when she could give birth. Good thing she delivered on a weekday, enabling Brady to make it to the playoffs and earning him 75 points.Sidelined: Dallas Cowboys star Tony Romo blind-sided Jessica Simpson, splitting up with the starlet a day before her 29th birthday, and earning the NFL quarterback a negative 10 on our scale. At first their romance seemed like a touchdown as they vacationed together and survived criticism from rabid Cowboys fans, who considered Simpson bad luck for her beau's team. But their surprise split sacked the score. No word yet on what Simpson did with all those pink No. 9 jerseys.

Basketball

MVP: It's been romance from day one between NBA player Marko Jaric and Victoria's Secret supermodel Adriana Lima. The two were secretly wed on Valentine's Day in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, after the Memphis Grizzlies hot shot proposed to the Brazilian beauty on her birthday in June '08. The two had a baby girl, appropriately named Valentina, on Nov. 15, earning Jaric a score of 100. Honorable Mention: Lamar Odom doesn't waste any time on or off the court. The Los Angeles Laker raced to the altar with reality TV star Khloe Kardashian on Sept. 27, a month after they first met. Now with rumors swirling of Khloe's pregnancy, teased in the season finale of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Odom is proving he sure knows how to shoot and score. The All-Star, who was once named the Player of the Year by Parade Magazine, might be the fastest-moving player in this game of love, earning him 90 points. Sidelined: Tony Parker and Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria have been going strong since their extravagant French wedding in 2007 – earning him a solid 30 points – but it'll take a baby to make a real splash in this celebrity pool!

Baseball

MVP: Serial player Alex Rodriguez covered all the bases this year, enjoying his best season and helping lead the New York Yankees to a World Series victory. And he also resisted striking out with Nine star Kate Hudson – that is until the season was over. Rodriguez was linked last year to Madonna, while Hudson had dated sports star Lance Armstrong. The two have reportedly split, earning A-Rod 70 points, not bad for a third-baseman. Honorable Mention: Derek Jeter, who has played the dating game with everyone from Mariah Carey to Jessicas Biel and Alba, was rumored to have already proposed to his girlfriend Minka Kelly, star of TV's Friday Night Lights. Will he really pop the question in 2010? As long as he remains coy about the relationship we may never know. For now, he gets a 65 for making it to the one-year mark.
Hockey
MVP: It's a slap shot for NHL player Mike Fisher, who got engaged to country superstar Carrie Underwood just before Christmas. The alternative captain of the Ottawa Senators has been dating the American Idol winner since 2008, after the couple met at one of her concerts in Ottawa. "Thank you #12," she wrote in the liner notes of her new CD, Play On, referring to his jersey number. Fisher gets an 85 for scoring the longest relationship Underwood has had – as well as a yes to his proposal. Honorable Mention: Hilary Duff has become a ringside fixture at boyfriend and Ottawa Senators Mike Comrie's hockey games. And while there have been rumors of an engagement, there has been no ring spotted on Duff's finger just yet. Still, Comrie (currently out sick for the season) gets a 55 for sticking with his sweetheart since '07. So, which group of athletic supporters keeps the best company? Football fans, by far! The players' A-list wives and bundles of joy snag headlines while they take their teams to the top. Even being married to a basketball player doesn't sway Khloe Kardashian, who earlier this year said, "It's easier to date a football player for sure. Football players have one game a week, and they practice every day, but they're all at home." She should know, sister Kim makes it work with Reggie Bush. Guess the rest of the gals need to hit the road to keep their honeys!

Top 10 Twitter Feeds to Follow

Monique Marie — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:39:21 -0800

10: Adam Savage

Ray Tamarra/Getty ImagesAdam Savage is but one half of the popular "Mythbusters" team.
You know him as one half of the "Mythbusters" -- Discovery Channel's wildly successful show that's part science, part fun. Aside from being a pretty smart person, Savage (@donttrythis) also has a pretty interesting life, one actually worth following on Twitter. Fans can get an inside peek into the world of a real mythbuster -- "Just finished watching "Stand By Me" with my boys. They LOVED it (of course). AND I finished all my homework for our RSA appearance soon." Part of the appeal of Savage is that he doesn't seem to have bought into his own celebrity and he's extremely fan friendly. His tweet regarding a recent walk down the red carpet -- "This is far out. There are tons of ACTUAL famous people here" -- is the kind of humble self deprecation that has earned Savage nearly 30,000 followers as of April 2009 [source: Twitter].

9: Neil Gaiman

Darryl James/Getty ImagesNeil Gaiman is a popular science fiction and fantasy author.
British author Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) is famous for his science fiction novels, film screenplays and graphic novels. The film version of his fantasy novel "Stardust" grossed more than $135 million worldwide [source: Box Office Mojo]. Gaiman has a blog on his Web site that has become pretty popular due to his interaction with fans. The same fan connection has happened with his Twitter account as well. Gaiman tweets about his life as a world traveling writer, keeping fans in the know about book signings and appearances as well as alerting folks when he's finished a longer blog post on his Web site. Part of the charm of Gaiman's tweets is that he's a respected author, so you won't find any silly Internet abbreviations. If you're expecting "just ate rotten mffn for b-fast - LOLZ!" then you'll be disappointed. If you appreciate sly British humor, Gaiman is your man:
"It is beautiful. As if every photo should be captioned 'by nightfall their peaceful town would be the scene of unimaginable horror'."

8: CNN

Rick Diamond/Getty ImagesThis is CNN...and a dog.
Not all the Twitter feeds worth following are actual people. CNN (@cnnbrk) has been a respected news media outlet since it was founded in 1980 by media mogul Ted Turner. It has since been absorbed by Time Warner Cable, but it still retains its place as leader in providing accurate and up-to-the-minute news from every corner of the globe. To keep up with news in real time, you can follow the CNN feed or the CNN Breaking News version on Twitter. Both feeds are sanctioned by CNN, and you can find news as it happens on both. CNN made headlines in April 2009, when actor and Twitterholic Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to a race for one million followers and won. It was all in good fun though, with Kutcher donating $100,000 to a charity that helps fight malaria after his victory.

7: New York Times

Mario Tama/Getty ImagesThe New York Times building in New York City
The New York Times (@nytimes) was founded in 1851 and quickly became the most successful newspaper in the United States. To this day it's the go-to news publication in the United States, where you always get "All the News That's Fit to Print." With print media outlets falling on hard times during the economic hardships of 2008 and 2009, "The Times" has embraced Twitter as a way to stay relevant and connected in an increasingly paperless world. The Times has no less than 50 different Twitter feeds for newshounds to follow. You can keep up with personal tweets from editors, writers and reporters as well as a host of news feeds. Each section of the paper has its own Twitter account as well, so if you love The Times sports coverage, but don't enjoy the style section so much, you can choose only to follow what you're interested in. Most of The Times' section tweets are blurbs with links to further coverage on its Web site, while the reporter and writer tweets include personal points of view on the news they cover.

6: NASA Robots

Pool/Getty ImagesThe robot team celebrates in the mission control room the successful Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft's scheduled landing on the Martian Arctic.
Yes, you read that one right. In a stroke of marketing genius, NASA, beginning with the Mars Phoenix Lander (@marsphoenix), began to "ghost tweet" as if various mission robots were speaking with their followers. Not only was it a clever way to keep people interested and informed about NASA and space exploration, but it created some unusual and unexpected results. Followers became attached to the Mars Phoenix Lander and humanized it, perhaps partially due to the smash hit film "Wall-E," the Pixar computer animated film about a very emotional robot. The sad news is that the Mars Phoenix Lander's job required it to stay on the red planet forever. The 38,000-plus followers of Mars Phoenix were saddened, though the ghost tweeters tried their best to keep spirits up:
"I should stay well-preserved in this cold. I'll be humankind's monument here for centuries, eons, until future explorers come for me."
And the final message from Mars Phoenix was simply a structured series of ones and zeroes -- the binary code was translated as "triumph."

5: Martha Stewart

Michael Loccisano/Getty ImagesMartha Stewart flashes her trademark cute smile.
Who doesn't need a little more Martha Stewart (@marthastewart) in their lives? The business giant, TV show host, magazine publisher, author and ex-con is one of the most popular women in the world. Her followers, and not just on Twitter, are a force to be reckoned with -- if Martha endorses it, they try it out. If she says to paint it, they paint it. If she says break out the pinking shears, then something is going to get cut (in a zigzag). Followers of her Twitter feed get posts on what she's up too with her various endeavors, updates on appearances she'll be making and simple advice and recommendations on everything from a nice summer wine to what to serve at the perfect dinner party. And as you might expect, it's also delightfully free of grade-school Internet abbreviations.

4: Oprah Winfrey

Katy Winn/Getty ImagesOprah gives a big thumbs up to Twitter.
Just like Martha Stewart, and perhaps even more so, media mogul Oprah Winfrey (@oprah) has a legion of fans who hang on her every word. She's created a true empire and the fate of everything from an author's career to a product's success can hang in the balance depending on her recommendation. When Oprah tweets, her nearly 750,000 (as of April 2009) followers listen. Considering the fact that Oprah just started tweeting in mid-April 2009, the sheer number of followers she has is astounding. So far, her tweets have been a mix of updates on upcoming show guests and some fun personal information, like what music she's listening to and what her dinner plans are. She also gives a little behind-the-scenes look at her show, tweeting about how she pulled an episode on the Columbine High School shooting anniversary because it "focused too much on killers." Go, Oprah, go.

3: Shaquille O'Neal

Jed Jacobsohn/Getty ImagesShaq may not be able to shoot a free throw, but he can twitter with the best.
NBA basketball star Shaquille O'Neal (@THE_REAL_SHAQ) is one of the most popular players in league history because of his sense of humor and gentle giant persona, so it's no surprise that his Twitter feed is also a big hit. As of April 2009, his Shaqness had acquired nearly 900,000 followers and is sure to hit the one million mark. Like with most celebrities, Shaq tweets about his day-to-day life, but through the lens of his funny personality. He also made headlines in March 2009 by twittering during halftime of a game. All he said in the message was a cryptic "Shhhhh," but it was enough to make the news. In addition to his funny posts about what he ate for breakfast and his desire to lose enough weight to have "eight pack abs" Shaq also uses Twitter to give tickets away to fans, proving that his heart is as big as his shoe size -- an astounding 23.

2: Barack Obama

Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesYes we can Ttwitter!
Yes, the President of the United States (@BarackObama) is on Twitter. President Obama twittered himself in the weeks leading up to the election, giving updates on appearances he'd be making and covering talking points of his political rallies. Since he's taken office, he's been a little busier trying to help correct an ailing U.S. economy, but the tweets live on through his staff. But he did make history on March 26, 2009, when he became the first acting American President to send a tweet. He sent a message about the struggling economy and included a video link to the White House Web site. The video was of the President himself, urging Americans to send their questions about the economic struggles for a press conference he held the following day. His staff now sends out tweets updating his million-plus followers about his upcoming speeches as well as calls for Americans to volunteer with various organizations.

1: Wil Wheaton

Albert L. Ortega/Getty ImagesWil Wheaton never had any friends later on like the ones he had when he was 12 -- does anybody?
Actor Wil Wheaton (@wilw) is probably best known for his role on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and when he played a young boy searching with his friends for a dead body in the 1986 film "Stand By Me." But anyone in-the-know is keen to the fact that Wheaton is a virtual God in the land of technophiles and all things geek related. Wheaton has this reputation because he's become what's known in the tech realm as an "early adopter." This means that he's first on the bandwagon when it comes to tech products, gaming and geek trends. His blog has been wildly popular for years and once he started twittering, it didn't take fans long to catch on. Aside from the usual day-to-day stuff that Twitter is known for, Wheaton recommends video games, tech products, movies, podcasts and just about anything else Web related.

Reagan's December Declaration: GOP "Not a Fraternal Order"

Grandpa — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:03:30 -0800

Reagan's December Declaration: GOP "Not a Fraternal Order"

By Jeffrey Lord on 12.8.09 @ 6:09AM
Ronald Reagan would have loved Marco Rubio.
Not to mention Pat Toomey.
Rubio, the current State House Speaker is the conservative challenger to liberal Republican Governor Charlie Crist's U.S. Senate bid in next year's Florida GOP primary. Toomey, famously, came within a whisker of beating Republican U.S. Senator Arlen Specter in the 2004 Pennsylvania primary when Toomey was serving as a Republican Congressman from Allentown. The challenge was renewed for 2010. Taking a look at polls that showed Pennsylvania Republicans finally fed up with his liberal views, the final straw being a vote in favor of the Obama stimulus package, Specter chose to switch to the Democrats -- guaranteeing Toomey the GOP Senate nomination.
The challenge to GOP liberals by GOP conservatives has set off the usual teeth-grinding about demands for party "purity." Snapped Michigan Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter to The American Spectator's Jim Antle recently: "I've seen the game of trying to purge Republicans of those who are 'RINOs' or not pure enough…I have one question: How'd that work out for us?"
Well, now that you mention it, pretty well, actually.
But let's go back to if not to the beginning but the middle of the beginning on this old chestnut of an argument.
The time? December, 1976. As the story opens on this fifteenth day of the month, ten days before Christmas, the Republican Party is at a crossroads. The dominant force in American politics for generations since its beginning in the 1850's when it came into being around the premiere social issue of the day, the "right" to own another human being -- slavery -- the GOP of 1976 is in trouble.
How did it get here?
Up until 1932, as the late Jack Kemp loved to note, the Republican Party was "the home of black Americans, the party of Lincoln, of economic growth, of equal opportunity." The so-called "progressive movement" -- really a rallying cry for economic redistribution and the politics of envy -- swept through the nation in the form of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. While liberal historians love to ignore the fact, Republican Herbert Hoover was enamored of progressives and, unlike his conservative predecessor Calvin Coolidge, considered himself to be one of them. Coolidge took a dim view of Hoover, whom he had kept on as Commerce Secretary in order to preserve a sense of stability following the sudden death of President Harding. Later, Coolidge would gripe that Hoover had spent their entire time together in government giving Coolidge advice "all of it bad."
In fact, Hoover was one of the first of what would become known as the "me-too" Republicans, picking up on progressive movement ideas of the late 1920s and early 1930s and saying "me too" -- only a little less so. Whether the issue was the historic Lincoln beliefs in economic growth and equal opportunity, best expressed in the 1920s by Coolidge's Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, or the idea of a permanent "gift tax" -- Hoover was as one with progressives, believing that there was only so much wealth to go around and a bigger government had a distinct and ever growing role in managing this wealth. In what would become a familiar pattern with Republican liberals, he was Franklin Roosevelt only less so.
As Amity Shlaes records in The Forgotten Man:

Both preferred to control events and people. Both underestimated the strength of the American economy. Both doubted its ability to right itself in a storm. Hoover mistrusted the stock market. Roosevelt mistrusted it more. Roosevelt offered rhetorical optimism, but pessimism underlay his policies. Though Americans associated Roosevelt with bounty, his insistent emphasis on sharing -- rationing, almost -- betrayed a conviction that the country had entered a permanent era of scarcity. Both presidents overestimated the value of government planning. Hoover, the Quaker, favored the community over the individual. Roosevelt, the Episcopalian, found laissez-faire economics immoral and disturbingly un-Christian.

In one fashion or another, through Hoover's election in 1928 on through to the mid-December of 1976, some variation of this argument had gripped the Republican Party. A string of me-too GOP presidential nominees had faced off against Democrats using this argument to persuade the electorate -- and failed repeatedly. From Hoover himself in 1932 to Wendell Willkie in 1940, Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 and 1948, on through Eisenhower and the Richard Nixon of 1960, only Eisenhower the World War II hero had managed a win -- a win for heroism, not moderation. Scores of self-described "moderate Republicans" had won state and congressional elections in this period, managing with a liberal national press to give the impression that "me-tooism" was the wave of the future in terms of building the GOP.
The argument finally sundered the GOP in 1964, with Arizona conservative Barry Goldwater's victory over GOP liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Reagan himself was launched politically during this particular battle, his October, 1964 speech for nominee Goldwater electrifying the blossoming conservative movement.
Nixon appeared to momentarily bridge the gap in 1968 -- presenting himself as a middle road between the views of now Governor Reagan and Governor Rockefeller. Governing as a moderate, Nixon still campaigned relentlessly as a red-meat conservative, the Nixon campaign winning a landslide over liberal Senator George McGovern in 1972 in part on charges the Democrat was representing the party of "acid, abortion and amnesty."
With the resignations of both Nixon and Vice President Agnew as the 1976 campaign season loomed, Reagan, newly retired after two successful terms as Governor of California, watched, appalled, as the new GOP President Gerald Ford nominated Rockefeller as his vice president and started marching the GOP along the same weary and worn-out road to me-tooism. The gauntlet had been thrown, and Reagan picked it up.
On one side in this showdown of the 1976 primary and convention season were Ford and the moderates -- epitomized by Rockefeller and his fellow New Yorker, liberal Republican Senator Jacob Javits -- versus the conservatives as led by Reagan. Once again the "conservatives can't win" argument was trotted out. Once again -- although this time narrowly -- the moderate candidate (Ford, in this case) triumphed. And once again, the moderate Republican nominee lost, this time to Democrat and liberal Jimmy Carter.
By December 15, Reagan had more than had enough. Ford had summoned Reagan, Rockefeller and Democrat-turned Republican John Connally -- the ex-Texas governor who had served Nixon as Treasury Secretary -- to the White House for a chat on the future of the GOP. As liberals were gleefully planning the Carter administration inaugural for the following month, President Ford was trying his best to mend the internal fences of the GOP in true moderate style. Who should be the new GOP chair, he wanted to know? What changes in the party structure should be made.
Reagan quietly seethed. To him, the problem was not party structure. It wasn't this or that person sitting in the chairman's job. It was something else altogether. A handful of days later, sitting in his Los Angeles office, Reagan sat down with a reporter from the New York Times and gave his answer to Ford, Rockefeller, and the party moderates who had by now produced one losing presidential campaign after another for 44 years.
The headline the next day was stark:

REAGAN URGES HIS PARTY TO SAVE ITSELF BY DECLARING ITS CONSERVATIVE BELIEFS

With an accompanying picture of a relaxed and smiling Reagan, the former governor made plain his answer to the question most recently posed in The American Spectator article featuring Congressman McCotter. He answered by rejecting the McCotter premise entirely, in fact turning it around. The way to the future was not by catering to what we now call RINOs -- "Republicans in Name Only" like a Charlie Crist or Arlen Specter today -- or a Jacob Javits of yesterday. Reagan proposed something else.
Instead of appealing to Democrats by becoming more liberal, Reagan saw the answer as "courting conservatives who now call themselves Democrats and independents." Said Reagan, in words that surely astonished the Times reporter:
"The former California Governor said that Republicans could be saved from extinction only by acting quickly to assert the party's ideological identity. A declaration of conservative beliefs, he said in an interview in his Los Angeles office, might drive a number of Northern liberals out of the party, but that loss would be more than offset by potential gains in the South and West."
Did this mean Reagan would support a third party, the reporter asked?
"No!" was Reagan's emphatic answer:

"The largest grouping of a common philosophy is to be found in the Republican Party. Now, if that's true, why do you risk breaking it up to start all over again, because if a third party is started, you know there are people who have a sense of loyalty to the party who would not leave it."
"The Republican Party would not say 100 percent we are going to move over to the new party. You would then break the single biggest grouping of people with the common philosophy that you have in the country. So we should take that as our starting point and build upon it."

So what would this Reagan-approach mean for RINOs? In December of 1976 that specifically meant New York's liberal Republican Senator and Rockefeller ally Jacob Javits, a leading "RINO" of the day -- the Arlen Specter or Charlie Crist, if you will.
Reagan was clear -- and firm:
Senator Javits might have some problems staying within the party. Again, however, we are not ushering anyone out of the party. We are simply saying, "What does our party stand for?" If the great majority agrees with the philosophy, and some say it's a philosophy they can't go along with, that's a decision for every individual to make. A political party is not a fraternal order. A party is something where people are bound together by a shared philosophy.

On January 20, 1977, Jimmy Carter took the oath of office as the 39th president, settling down to the nitty-gritty of a liberal administration whose guiding lights were economic scarcity, cutting defense spending and a belief that Americans and the world had an "inordinate fear" of Communism that could best be resolved by accepting the permanent presence of the Soviet Union and a Communist Eastern Europe.
Eleven days after Carter's swearing-in, Reagan announced the formation of what the Times called a "permanent political group to back conservative Republican causes and candidates." Citizens for the Republic -- which in 1976 had been Citizens for Reagan -- was an early precursor of the idea that is now personified by groups like the Club for Growth.
Five days after that, Reagan appeared in person to give the main address to a fledgling group of activists called the Conservative Political Action Committee. Said the former Governor:

Our task now is not to sell a philosophy but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult. We are members of a majority. Let's act and talk like it.

Ronald Reagan's December declaration in 1976 is as relevant today as it was then.
Reagan was not about "purging" anyone. He was about inclusivity -- understanding that conservatism was not a cult but rather the majority philosophy of the American people. It was a philosophy that, boldly identified and presented, was more than capable of both winning elections and governing the country.
As it turned out, of course, Reagan was right. In 1980 Senator Javits was defeated in the New York Republican primary by a little-known conservative named Alfonse D'Amato. Stung, Javits clung to the ballot as the Liberal Party nominee. He lost his seat to D'Amato in the Reagan landslide -- the same conservative landslide that brought an end to some of liberalism's most celebrated names like McGovern, Birch Bayh of Indiana and Frank Church of Idaho.
Reagan didn't have to "purge" RINOs, as Congressman McCotter's remark might suggest. He simply brought the party back to its philosophical roots of economic growth, equal opportunity, colorblindness, and support for social issues that had begun the party and led it to repeated victories up until 1932. Those who turned their backs on this historically rooted party philosophy, like Javits, not only left the party in defeat but had their careers ended for good. In doing this Reagan ushered in another era of conservative philosophical inclusiveness and clarity, which in turn led to revolutionary changes in the modern world.
How'd that work out for us?
Again, contrary to the McCotter thought, it worked out pretty well. Scratch that. Very well. And having cast that Reagan approach aside in 2008, and in 2006 before that, the results of RINOism -- the approach of Willkie and Dewey and Dole and McCain -- should say something to Republicans if they are willing to listen.
Ronald Reagan was right all those many Decembers ago. A recent Gallup poll demonstrates yet again that he would still be right today.
Today's RINOs, today's Javits, are free to go, like Arlen Specter -- or free to stay, like Charlie Crist. But conservatism is not a fraternal order. As Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey understand along with Ronald Reagan, it's a political philosophy. And a winning one.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize President Reagan would know exactly what conservatives should be doing today in the Obama era. Actually, he already said it.
"We are members of a majority. Let's act and talk like it."
Which is exactly what Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey are doing.
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/12/08/reagans-december-declaration-g

Kate Hudson: Glam Girl Next Door(Harper's Bazaar)

kty — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:41:27 -0800

By Nancy Jo Sales

In his best season ever, the New York Yankees' record-breaking third baseman Alex Rodriguez could be seen knocking 'em out of the park -- helping catapult his team to victory in the World Series -- as a certain A-list blonde jumped up and down in the stands, cheering him on. New Yorkers dubbed her a good-luck charm.
Improbably, she was Kate Hudson, the Academy Award-nominated actress, daughter of Goldie Hawn, and one of the stars of the dazzling Rob Marshall-directed musical Nine (in wide release on Christmas Day). "I'm having a good time right now," Kate says over a glass of champagne at the Odeon in New York's TriBeCa. "It's really fun. It's a blast."
Spotted all over the country together in the last few months -- strolling with their kids in Seattle (Rodriguez has Natasha, five, and Ella, 20 months, from his marriage to Cynthia Rodriguez, while Kate has Ryder, five, with her ex-husband, Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson), kissing at a Yankees family picnic, and dining out in Westchester County -- Kate and A-Rod seem to be getting pretty serious.
"I'm not pregnant," she says. "I can't go two months without being" -- according to the tabloids, that is -- "pregnant, engaged, or breaking up because I'm too needy, which is always the one they love. I'm not needy. You kind of have to laugh it off, but it can kind of screw up other things around it.
"I have a child, and there are people involved, and it's unfair to talk about somebody else, especially when you're not in that place yet to be discussing those things," Kate goes on. "If I was sitting here with a belly out to here, I'd be talking about what the relationship is and how important that is in my life right now."
So does that mean she isn't sure of Rodriguez yet? "You're horrible, so horrible," she says, deflecting the question with a big, infectious laugh. Isn't she moving fast? "People don't know where I'm moving," she counters good-naturedly. "They're just reading psychobabble in these [tabloid] magazines." Even when confronted with the evidence -- a picture of her kissing A-Rod -- she gamely holds her ground. "There's a guy that's shooting probably 60 frames a minute. That was a sideswipe on the cheek. That wasn't even a kiss." So she's not in love with this guy? "I quickly kissed the cheek," she maintains. "And I remember one of the headlines the next day said, MAKEOUT SESSION. What is wrong with people?
"If I walk out on the street with any man, I'm dating him. I've been dating two of my best friends from high school who are like girls to me," she says incredulously. "I'm not going to hide going to breakfast."
At heart, I'm such a hippie," she says. "I don't like structured things. I'll put on a tight, sexy little thing that I can't walk in, and that's fun. But I like the flowy and comfortable. I just want to make really beautiful clothes that I want to put on every day."
But on the night of November 14, 2008, she was dressed to the nines. Sporting a little cobalt-blue Alexander Wang dress with an almost-bare back, Kate, 30, reportedly met A-Rod, 34, at the reopening of the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami. It would come as no surprise if those close to her had warned her to be cautious, but "I don't really have friends like that," Kate says.
According to Cynthia Rodriguez, Rodriguez's wife of five years (she filed for divorce in July 2008, citing "extramarital affairs and other martial misconduct"), he had strayed. And prior to the split, he'd been spotted dining and working out with Madonna. Then, in the darkest moment of his career, in February 2009, A-Rod admitted to testing positive for steroids in 2003.
Kate, ever the optimistic California girl, was not deterred. "My mother never shook anybody's hand. She has kissed and hugged her way throughout her life," Kate says proudly. And growing up, her family had a "no-judgment open-door policy. We were never afraid to bring the wrong person home. They were always open to our failures. And no matter how many times my heart breaks, I'll never be any different.
"I'd rather hang out with the person who's done everything than who's done nothing," she continues. "It would suck to die and not have experienced my life, really. I mean, I think you should keep your eyes open. Blinders are fun for a second, but they have to come off eventually. And I believe it's important to get to know people, to really get to know them."
Today, though, the most important man in Kate's life is Ryder, whom she nicknames Buddy. She and her ex maintain a close friendship. "Chris is a great dad," she says. "I feel really lucky. When we first met, it was so immediate. I had no question in my mind I was supposed to marry him and have children with him."
As for her divorce, she says, "It just wasn't working. It was that simple. I loved him like crazy." And there was no infidelity involved in their decision to separate, she says, despite gossip to the contrary: "That's not what happened."
Regardless of their split, Robinson and Kate amicably share in the parenting of their son. "I'm a pretty strict mom, which is funny," she continues. "I didn't think I'd be so strict. I feel like he is so great, he's such a good kid, people really connect with him, they want to give him things and do things for him, and I'm like, no. The next thing you know, you have the kid who's being cute in order to get something."
In proud-mom mode, she pulls out of her bag a special notebook she's kept since forever in which she has written down pages of Ryderisms. "When he first started talking, he said, 'Mommy, let's get on parachutes and eat the candy-cane sky.' I was like, 'Okay, Sergeant Pepper!'"
She has found that single motherhood "can be okay. I feel like I've learned so much. The routine [of marriage] can kill me. That becomes a difficult balance, too, because I feel like my son needs his routine, but for me I need to step out of my routine. I haven't figured it all out yet."
A close-knit circle of girlfriends, including 90210 star Sara Foster and video producer Juliana Roberts, helps keep Kate grounded. "I don't know what I'd do without my girlfriends," she says. "Let's be honest, I don't care how much you're in love with any man, you need to have your girlfriends to talk to. Without them, we're alone. I don't want to talk to a man about some of the things I feel."
Meanwhile, her career has continued to flourish. And now Nine (which stars a powerhouse of talents, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, and Judi Dench), which casts Kate as Stephanie Necrophuros, a magazine editor and sexpot, promises to show audiences a whole new side to her. "Kate's a life force," Kidman says. "I think what's compelling about her is that she truly sparkles."
Kate sings and dances in the film -- a first for her. "I love it," she says. Asked to show off her skills, she laughs and then breaks out into a few bars of the Aretha Franklin classic "Ain't No Way." Her voice is melodic and sure. "I'd like to do more musical theater," she says. "Nine was so much more rewarding to me personally than other things I've done -- it was really emotional for me to do the number I do in the film ['Cinema Italiano'] -- because I realized I haven't been utilizing some things that I love to do."
Penélope Cruz, for one, was happy to have a coconspirator. "We both studied dance growing up," says Cruz, "so we were happy to be able to do it professionally. Also, we both love food so much. I had to gain some weight for the part, so we would get high from Chinese food. We would go to a Chinese restaurant and eat everything on the menu. We were so hungry from exercising so many hours a day, rehearsing our musical numbers."
"My parents," Kate says, referring to her mom and stepdad Kurt Russell, "always said, 'You came out singing and dancing.' I would take any microphone. I was always talking to myself in mirrors, dancing in mirrors."

All the President's Mavericks

Grandpa — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:08:55 -0700

All the President's Mavericks

By W. James Antle, III

"Forget Sarah Palin," gushed the Associated Press' Laurie Kellman. "The female maverick of the Republican Party is Sen. Olympia Snowe." Soon it reverberated throughout the media echo chamber. "Take note Palin," advised the headline writers of a Delaware newspaper. "Snowe is a true GOP maverick." Asked another paper, "Palin who?"

So began the media lovefest for the liberal Republican senator from Maine after she cast a decisive vote in favor of Sen. Max Baucus's (D-Mont.) version of a national health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee. Snowe is being portrayed as a living embodiment of the Founding Fathers' vision for American government, an amalgamation of Margaret Thatcher and Joan of Arc.

Not even Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz can stomach it. He acknowledged that "Republican defectors tend to get good press especially, as in this case, if they're helping salvage a Democratic president's top domestic priority."

"Imagine the coverage a Democratic senator would have gotten by breaking with his party to help George Bush pass his Social Security plan," Kurtz continued. "No one hailed Joe Lieberman (yes, he's an independent, but he caucuses with the Dems) for turning against Obama on the Baucus bill."

The "maverick" meme was popularized by John McCain and Palin during the 2008 campaign, but it has since become a favorite liberal term of endearment for any Republican willing to follow the president into deepening the federal government's insolvency. And mavericks, like misery, love company.

Lindsey Graham has also entered the maverick sweepstakes. Steve Pendlebury of AOL News enthused that "when it comes to going rogue, Snowe's Senate colleague from South Carolina appears to have the edge." Graham indicated in a New York Times op-ed (co-bylined with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry) that he would be open to rescuing the cap-and-trade climate change bill now being abandoned by many Democrats. According to the Politico, not even John McCain finds the Graham-Kerry proposal persuasive.

Graham is also taking a bold stand against Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) and members of the tiny Constitution Party. "We're not going to be the party of angry white guys," Graham, a white guy, angrily told a town hall meeting at Furman University. "I'm not going to let it be hijacked by Ron Paul."

Whatever one thinks of the Paulistas, this is hardly speaking truth to power. Paul rebelled against a president of his own party in voting against the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. He defied his president on the Medicare prescription drug benefit, No Child Left Behind, and amnesty for illegal immigrants. He even voted against the war in Iraq. Paul's grassroots following, while vocal, remains a rump faction within the GOP. Paul frequently finds himself alone in the congressional wing of his party.

Both Graham and Snowe voted with President Bush on virtually all of the above. They now seem poised to be similarly solicitous of President Obama. It is an odd sort of maverick who demonstrates his independence by regularly voting with those who are in power. When moderate Republican senators saved the Obama administration's stimulus plan, Ross Douthat, now a New York Times columnist, described their mentality well: "Take what the party in power wants, subtract as much money as you can without infuriating them, vote yes, and declare victory."

Perhaps the real mavericks are the moderate-to-conservative Democrats, who are holding out for greater concessions from their party on health care and cap-and-trade than those that satisfy Snowe and Graham. Or the liberals of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who would rather deny a president of their own party a key legislative victory than give up on the public option they believe is central to their vision of health care reform. Or the conservative Republicans and constitutionalists who spent eight years opposing Obama's predecessor from the right.

Mavericks of this kind seldom win as much favorable press because they are usually on the losing side of votes rather than the winning side. There is also a strong bias in favor of mavericks who vote for bigger government. When a politician stands against a bill enlarging the federal role in health care, expect any of their ties to the insurance industry or drug-company to be widely mentioned. When a pro-Obamacare public figure is in the employ of interests that, as Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney put it, "stand to profit from Obama's reform," expect this inconvenient truth to receive less coverage.

And so it is with declarations of independence from the party line. The applause is always loudest for the putatively principled stands that involve taking other people's money and bestowing it on the political class. That's the kind of GOP maverick even the Obama White House can believe in.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/10/16/all-the-presidents-mavericks

Acorn-Minnesota-Last Election Cycle

Grandpa — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:25:44 -0700

Katherine Kersten: Worst trouble with ACORN is at the polls

Nationally, its voter registration is often fraudulent. So what about here?

By KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune Minneapolis

Unless you've been stuck in the Gobi Desert, you've read the headlines about the scandal at ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Earlier this month, ACORN staffers in four states were caught giving not-so-sage advice to two journalists, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, on how to defraud the government, cheat on taxes and wangle a mortgage for a home-based brothel.

ACORN was once the darling of Democrats for its support of every item on the left-wing wish list. Suddenly, its employees can hardly find a Democrat who will answer their phone calls. When the U.S. Senate voted on Sept. 14 to cut off federal housing dollars for ACORN, the tally was a lopsided 83-7.

ACORN's foibles may seem largely irrelevant here in Minnesota, where the organization has so far been able to keep its nose relatively clean.

But ACORN does have a special place in its heart for at least one prominent Minnesota politician. Last year, it showered praise on Al Franken, endorsing his run for the U.S. Senate. Franken returned the esteem: "I'm thrilled and honored to receive this endorsement," he gushed in a press release. He added that he was "more motivated than ever to work with ACORN."

I'm not suggesting that Franken had any association with the folks behind ACORN's recent scandal. Indeed, when the Senate voted to defund ACORN, he got religion and joined the pack.

It's worth recalling, however, that ACORN is best-known for its massive voter-registration campaigns, which focus relentlessly on getting Democrats elected in targeted states. Here its record is appalling -- and goes to the heart of our democratic electoral system.

In October 2008, ACORN announced triumphantly that it had registered about 1.3 million new voters in 18 battleground states, among them Minnesota. A few weeks later, however, the director of Project Vote -- an ACORN affiliate -- acknowledged to the New York Times that election officials had rejected about 400,000 of those, for reasons including duplicate registrations, incomplete forms and (in the Times' words) "fraudulent submissions from low-paid field workers trying to please their supervisors."

Nothing new here. ACORN's registration drives "routinely produce fraudulent registrations," according to a staff report released in July 2009 by the ranking Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The report describes ACORN as "a criminal conspiracy" and details violations ranging from unpaid taxes to a million-dollar embezzlement and cover-up. "To date," the report says, "nearly 70 ACORN employees have been convicted in 12 states for voter-registration fraud."

The latest such scandal broke a few weeks ago, when authorities in Florida accused 11 ACORN workers of falsifying information on 888 voter-registration forms.

In May 2009, Nevada's attorney general charged ACORN and two employees with 39 felonies. Authorities raided ACORN offices after complaints about numerous forms with false addresses and names -- including the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys. Forty-eight percent of forms turned in were "clearly fraudulent," according to a Las Vegas election official. ACORN recruited felons living in transitional housing in Las Vegas to act as canvassers and promised illegal bonuses if they signed up more than 20 new voters a day.

ACORN's practices can make fraud difficult to detect. For example, "at election offices around the country, ACORN workers are famous for waiting until registration deadline to dump thousands of new documents on overworked clerks -- making it harder for them to fully vet the registration forms," according to the New York Post.

As a result, fraud often only comes to light by chance. Fraud "has been discovered by cursory checks or by accident," John Samples, an election expert at the Cato Institute, told the Post. "There's a lot more out there to be discovered."

Here in Minnesota, ACORN has boasted of playing a major role in the 2008 elections. It claims to have registered 43,000 new voters, which it describes as 75 percent of the state's new registrations. Franken's margin of victory in the Senate race was razor-thin: 312 votes out of about 3 million cast. And Minnesota's laws on proof of voter eligibility are notoriously loose. Did ACORN folks pull some fast ones to help get their favorite son Franken elected -- a win that handed Democrats the 60-vote, veto-proof majority that they needed to enact their liberal agenda?

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie assures us that Minnesota's system of voter verification protects electoral integrity.

But here's an uncomfortable fact: Ritchie himself was endorsed by the now-notorious ACORN and elected with its help.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/61519432.html?page=1&c=y