How do you fix a problem? Well, in Washington, there is a sure-fire solution to any crisis: pass reactionary legislation without knowing what is in it to show you really “care” about the problem. Then, claim the problem is solved. Wait until the next crisis. Repeat.

The current crisis is big, overly exposed financial institutions; some of which have taken enough risks that they are now insolvent. Unfortunately, the regulatory reform (a Democratic metaphor for regulatory expansion) being considered by the House and Senate in response to the recent financial crisis will not solve the problem.  In fact, it may make them worse by cloaking the real issues with new regulations but without addressing root causes. These misguided political ambitions are especially obvious in H.R. 4173, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010.

Here are just a few examples of why H.R. 4173 is very effective at expanding government regulation but very ineffective at providing for the substantive reform needed to fix the failure points of our financial institutions:

Contrary to claims made by the Democratic majority:

• H.R. 4173 perpetuates financial bailouts. In reality, the bill allows the FDIC to bail out selected creditors.  To pay off the creditors of a “too big to fail” financial institution, the bill gives the FDIC the authority to borrow an amount equal to the value of the firm being liquidated. For some larger institutions this could amount to $2 trillion (of taxpayer money) per institution.  This “solution” actually incentivizes failure, as mismanaged institutions have a taxpayer bailout as a safety net. In contrast, House Republicans have pressed to end taxpayer-funded bailouts by creating an enhanced form of bankruptcy for large non-bank financial institutions, forcing participants to plan for the possibility of failure and face stiff consequences for mismanagement.

• H.R. 4173 Fails to Address the Biggest Single Cause of the Financial Crisis. Mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among the root causes of the housing and financial market melt-down, costing American taxpayers more than $145 billion so far.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the cost could reach $380 billion or more if the Obama Administration continues using Fannie and Freddie as a place to store bad loans made by banks.  And yet, despite this, H.R. 4173 virtually ignores these problem areas – authorizing only a study.  Such a study will only delay reform and limit any opportunity for meaningful recovery in the housing market.

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In 1854, the Democrats in control of the 33rd Congress were moving toward passage of their Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowing slavery to expand into the western territories.  Championing the bill was Stephen Douglas, the senator who would be the Democratic Party’s 1860 presidential nominee.  The Democrat President at the time, Franklin Pierce, said he would sign the bill into law.  The Democratic Party had chosen to promote slavery.

Amid the intense reaction, a grassroots movement similar to today’s Tea Parties sprang up to oppose the extension of slavery.  At town meetings and demonstrations, anti-slavery activists voiced their opposition to the “Slave-ocrats” and organized the Republican Party.  A small gathering in Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 20, is credited with being the first to use the Republican label.

On July 6, 1854, the Republican Party held in Jackson, Michigan its first-ever state convention.  So many people attended – over 10,000 – that the meeting was held outdoors, Under the Oaks.

Just four months later, one of the founders of the Michigan Republican Party, anti-slavery activist Kinsley Bingham, was elected our nation’s first Republican governor.  And, another of the original Michigan Republicans, Zachariah Chandler, became one of the first Republicans in the U.S. Senate.  Senator Chandler, a former mayor of Detroit and leader of the Underground Railroad, went on to serve as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”
Abraham Lincoln (R-IL), 1864

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On May 5th, 2010 The Missouri NAACP hosted a press conference and rally on behalf of Perry Molens and Elston McCowan, demanding the county prosecutor drop assault charges stemming from an attack outside Russ Carnahan’s townhall in South St. Louis County on Health Care last August. Molens and McCowan were arrested after the staged Carnahan event in August after they beat, kicked and stomped on black vendor Kenneth Gladney. The two Russ Carnahan supporters and SEIU members also called Kenneth the n-word as they bashed him into the cement.

This press conference in May was intended to drum up political pressure to prevent the jury trial of the two SEIU staff members arrested for attacking Kenneth Gladney in the presence of three witnesses.

Video of the entire press conference was posted online in eight parts and includes speeches by Harold Crumpton (NAACP national board member and president, St Louis City branch), Mary Ratliff, (NAACP state president, Missouri), progressive blogger Adam Shriver (cited as their legal expert), Elston McCowan, Perry Molens, and emceed by Zaki Abruti, UAPO. Also attending the event were a host of self-defined socialist agitators and a self-proclaimed Huffington Post reporter, Jeanine Molloff.

Here is the unbelievable video of the racist NAACP event. The two men accused of attacking Gladney go on trial this month. Elston McCowan, the man standing next to the speaker, can be seen laughing when the speaker says Gladney is not a brother.

Following is the transcript:

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In a victory for American trade interests, the World Trade Organization rebuked the European Union for issuing government subsidies to European companies, giving them an advantage in international contract bidding. In what is being called a “stinging rebuke,” the WTO charged that the EU’s assistance constituted an illegal export subsidy. They requested that EU figure out a way to help European companies without adversely affecting American companies or discontinue the subsidies altogether.

The ruling has particular significance for American company Boeing, which has been locked in a bidding war for large civil aircraft with a European company receiving these very subsidies, EADS. Boeing, which filed the case in the WTO, contended that EADS was being given an unfair advantage when bidding for American contracts since they were able to undercut American companies; the EU would provide a “loan” to EADS allowing them to bid less, with the agreement that EADS would repay the loan as planes were sold. The result? European companies were able to underbid American companies, take jobs from American workers and send them to Europe. Today, the WTO agreed that this was an unfair practice.

The Wall Street Journal puts it bluntly:

This has been obvious for years to most fair observers, but with the WTO ruling Germany, France, Spain and the U.K. now have a strong legal and political reason to end the practice of lending money to Airbus on easy terms to fund the development of new aircraft. The practice dates to Airbus’s beginnings as an multi-government-owned consortium, but the aircraft maker is no longer a fledgling and now splits the market for large civil aircraft nearly equally with Boeing. With soaring deficits and a debt crisis that is still creating turbulence on the Continent, politicians have better uses for taxpayer money than subsidizing a successful company.

In each of the five individual cases involving Airbus models, the WTO found that these subsidies led to a loss of sales and exports for Boeing. U.S. Trade Representative lawyers stated that the key finding in this case was that without these subsidies, Airbus would not have been able to develop or produced when they were or with their current slate of features. The A-330, the base airplane EADS intends to use for the tanker is, unsurprisingly, one of the aircraft models that the EU subsizided. Boeing has already contended time and again that their plane is superior but had feared that EADS’s unfair competitive advantage would stall their bid, which could mean uncertainty for Boeing’s American workforce.

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The power to make money, and the ability to receive a reward for assuming risk, have been cornerstones of America’s economic success.  A free-enterprise system made the U.S. the world’s only remaining superpower.

Sadly, all of the above are foreign concepts to the government-run public education system.  Karen Lewis, the new president of the Chicago Teachers Union, recently fired this shot across the administrators’ bow:

I’m giving notice to [Chicago Public Schools’ CEO] Ron Huberman and the board: you’ve met your match.  We will no longer be played.

…

We’re going to put business in its place: out of our schools.  These corporate heads and politicians seem willing to trade off our childrens’ and educators’ futures to pad their bottom line.

Her speech goes on with one-liners that would make Mao Tse-Tung (and Karl Marx) blush.  Anita Dunn, call your office!  This is the type of person we should expect to teach students an appreciation of what’s made America great?  Perhaps Ms. Lewis would fit better in the Havana Education Association than any teacher group in America.

The National Education Association recently considered a New Business Item at its annual convention which called for bouncing Education Secretary (and former CPS CEO) Arne Duncan and replace him with “a person who is aligned with the interests of the NEA, its members, and especially the students it serves.”  The reason?

The D.O.E. must be led by someone who sees all students as deserving of an excellent public school and the federal funding it requires, not just those in states that can win resources by best adopting  Sect. Duncan’s competitive philosophy.

Leaving aside my quibbles with the reform competition known as “Race to the Top,”  what has made it successful is the fact that states have had to one-up each other in terms of legislating reforms to in order to compete for the money.  I can see why that wouldn’t fly in the public schools of say, Cuba.  But apparently it’s just as unwelcome in the union halls of Chicago and elsewhere in America.

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Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.

Today, New Orleans has the most market-based school system in the US. 60% of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution. It’s too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but for the first time in decades people are optimistic about the future of New Orleans schools.

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Defeat Socialism in America – Draft Sarah Palin for RNC Chair

The bottom line is this…

America is under attack. The progressive left is attempting to forever alter the foundation of this great nation with their record deficits, record spending, record unemployment, corruption, thuggery, assault on liberty and socialist policies. The Obama-Pelosi Regime must be stopped before they destroy this great nation. Republicans need a great and dynamic personality to lead the party in a vigorous offensive against the Socialist agenda of the Progressive Democrat movement. We don’t have time to waste and we can’t afford to lose this battle against the immoral statists destroying our country.

Michael Steele has made too many critical missteps and has failed to lead the party against the radical Socialist agenda of the Progressive Democrat movement. The failure of Chairman Steele to successfully sell Liberty over Socialism, and to cultivate and facilitate those future candidates who can, is emblematic of the dysfunction of the Republican party, a dysfunction which has over the past four years led the party to near-ruin. We need a true and tested leader.

We need Sarah Palin.

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Should farmers get thrown in jail for 90 days and hit with $1,000 in fines for engaging in free trade?

Unfortunately, that’s the law in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

And that is why the farmers are fighting back.  Tuesday they rallied [check out the pictures here], coming from around the state to secure their constitutional rights.  Yesterday, the Institute for Justice—the libertarian law firm that defends economic liberty nationwide—took the farmers’ case to federal court.

On December 1, 2009, the city council in Lake Elmo—a rural city just outside St. Paul—decided that it would begin enforcing a law that makes it illegal for farmers to sell products from their own land unless they were grown within Lake Elmo.

The city’s politicians argue that they are protecting Lake Elmo’s rural character.  In fact, they are destroying that character by making it impossible for their farmers to earn an honest living and increasing the likelihood that family farms will fail.

Consider Richard Bergmann.

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It is all in the eye of the Eric Holder, so to speak:

It is no secret that Illinois is going broke with over $6 BILLION in unpaid bills to social service providers, Medicaid doctors, mental health providers and schools. It is also no secret that the state has a $13 BILLION budget deficit that the Chicago Democrats who control the entire state failed to address. Next year’s budget deficit will be around $15 – $16 BILLION assuming the economy doesn’t do a double dip recession.

Just last week, Illinois overtook California as the riskiest state to insure against default on bond obligations. You would think cause a sense of urgency among the elected Democrats who control the state. You would be wrong.

Yesterday, we learned from the Associated Press that the Governor was busy doling out 20% raises to his top staff. While the rest of us worry about having jobs, see our hours cut and our pay stagnates, political cronies in the Quinn administration get fat raises.

This would typically be the kind of story the public sector unions would jump on. Not in Illinois because the Democrats and unions like SEIU and AFSCME are part of the same corrupt political class that has driven the state into a ditch. There is also another reason.

On July 1st this year, 40,000 or so AFSCME state employees happily collected a 7% percent “cost of living adjustment”. July 1st next year, they will get another 7%. In short, in 2 years, they will get a 14% raise. Even in good years, 7% is well over inflation. The timing of these raises were also very well coordinated.

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Some call it the suicide disease.

No one really knows for sure what causes trigeminal neuralgia (TN) and as of now there is no cure. Like many disorders of the human nervous system it remains in many ways a baffling mystery even to the best doctors and specialists, and one that’s difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to treat. On the right and left side of your face is what’s called the trigeminal nerve because it breaks off into three different parts eventually landing right above the eye, the upper cheek and along the jaw line. Something, for lack of a better word, inflames this nerve and the result is a searing, burning, electric shock-like pain that can come at any time and last for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few days…

It’s called the suicide disease because there’s no escaping from the pain. For some, various levels of relief can be found through pain medications. Enough relief that you’re willing to live with all the ugly side-effects that come from ingesting such things. But nothing will ever completely mask the pain — a pain you never get used to and that slowly drains away your life-force.

My wife doesn’t have TN, she has something rarer still: Atypical TN (ATN). For sufferers of this nightmare the pain doesn’t come and go – the pain never-ever goes away. Four years ago and from out of nowhere it struck and ever since – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – there’s been no relief and no good days; only bad days and awful days – days where she can tolerate it and terrible days when the flare ups come which frequently results in a trip to the emergency room. (more…)

As we feared, the Chicago Democrat Machine reached into neighboring Will County and lined up a couple Democrat officials to throw Cedra Crenshaw, GOP candidate for the 43rd State Senate District, off the ballot. The Machine candidate in the district, A.J. Wilhelmi, is a legacy politician who was specially appointed to the Senate seat. The Democrat Machine would prefer a coronation, rather than a competition. The Election Board’s decision is below:

Davis_vs_Crenshaw_Decision

The story doesn’t end here. Cedra’s campaign will appeal the decision, which stands a good chance of being reversed. But, as is often the case, there is more to the story. Stay tuned also for information on current GOP officials who, if not actually complicit in this injustice, certainly weren’t helpful in pushing Cedra’s case. At junctures like these, names need to be named.

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The original $23 billion in public education stimulus spending has been whittled down to $10 billion and cynically stuffed in a bill to continue funding the war effort in Afghanistan.  While Democrats can hardly be accused of coming up with the idea, it’s a maneuver that we can ill afford right now.

If the Democrats had the courage to continue racking up debt to give handouts to their political supporters, they’d promote the bill on its own. But they don’t, so it’s stuck in a bill that has nothing to do with education and everything to do with a war effort President Obama once said “We need to win.”

Perhaps he should remind his fellow Democrats of that and not allow them to hold the war in Afghanistan  hostage by demanding pork barrel spending to satisfy campaign financiers.

Worse yet, the president and his administration are allowing members of their own party to strip funding away from one of Obama’s signature initiatives, Race to the Top – a $4 billion fund aimed at incentivizing reforms such as performance pay and charter schools.

So Democrats such as Rep. Dave Obey want to take funds away from reform and give them to maintaining a failing status quo.  Is that where the Democratic Party really stands on sensible and much-needed reform?  Apparently when the going gets tough, they revert back to instinct: whatever Big Labor wants, Big Labor gets.  Don Loos exposed a communication on BigGovernment.com showing the firefighters union president explaining it was Big Labor’s idea to attach public works spending to the war bill.

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Remember the flap last summer about the $700k Social Security staff conference at the luxurious Arizona Biltmore hotel?  Reps. Johnson and Linder asked the SSA Inspector General to dig around and see what other deluxe conferences SSA runs for its staff. That led to further questions about speakers brought in address these conferences, and their expense specifically.  Below is what SSA found about the top five most expensive speaker tabs for these staff “training” conferences.  Far and away the number 1 was a “diversity conference” in Atlanta, in which the paid guests included – literally – a clown, as well as massage therapists and “a juggling stilt walker.”

Sadly, this is not made up, and paying for it does not create a “festive atmosphere” for taxpayers.

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Michael Graham in today’s Boston Herald:

Anyway, if enforcing immigration law is a bad thing for local cops to do, as Holder claims, why pick on Arizona? If he’s really upset that the same laws he has taken an oath to enforce might actually get (gulp!) enforced, why isn’t he suing Providence instead of Phoenix? They’ve been doing local immigration enforcement for years now.

As The Boston Globe-Democrat reported yesterday, “From Woonsocket to Westerly, the troopers patrolling the nation’s smallest state are reporting all illegal immigrants they encounter, even on routine stops such as speeding, to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Even liberal Providence, where politicians long opposed any local enforcement efforts, changed its policy in 2008 after the infamous Marco Riz case.

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It is Day 79 of the BP oil spill, and just this weekend tar balls from the spill washed up on Texas beaches.  Over a hundred million gallons of oil have been released into our waters.  And yet where is our President?  He spent the 4^th of July playing golf and hosting a barbeque on the White House lawn.  Apparently some people want the new “normal” to be an oil-ridden Gulf.

But we at The Heritage Foundation are not satisfied with this new norm.  So this week we are sending a team of respected energy, environment, homeland security and response experts to the Gulf region to investigate what is and is not working and what more needs to be done (or in many cases, where the federal government should simply step out of the way) to get the Gulf cleaned up.

Since the explosion on April 20, the outflow of oil has gotten worse, goals have been missed, and attention has waned on this horrible situation.  When the president last took questions from the press at the G20, not a single reporter asked him an oil spill related question.  It seems the mainstream media is more concerned with blaming BP for the spill than actually cleaning it up.  And while BP should not escape blame for the spill or their less-than-promised skimming abilities, the federal government should also be held to task for their less-than-efficient clean up operation.

Five years ago, the bureaucracy of state, local, and federal governments made the disaster after Hurricane Katrina worse.  And that bureaucracy is at work again, hindering the clean up efforts of the oil spill.

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Office of Management and Budget Director, Peter Orszag is one of the first major players of the Obama administration to call it quits.  Orszag was touted as one of the most brilliant minds in number-crunching, especially by Ezra Klein, who deemed Orszag as the most influencial bureaucrat:

In the coming years, no bureaucrat will be as decisive as Peter Orszag — the former director of the Congressional Budget Office who is now the head of Barack Obama’s Office of Management and Budget — and few bureaucracies will be as important as the CBO and the OMB. For every major policy and legislative fight, those organizations will decide the Number: the official price tag of a government program. And you can’t do anything without the Number.

But while everyone was so enamoured with the heartbreaker, stud, and hottie Orszag and his economic brilliance and wisdom to sound alarms of repeated financial unsustainability as the CBO director, what did the USA really get?  Patterico has a quick outline on Orszag which touches on some key points, but with Orszag’s background, people should wonder how he ever got to hold the keys to the budget.

If you look a bit closer at his education, background, and experience, Orszag was everything that the Keynesians/progressives/Democrats could have dreamed of in a budget director.  Let’s explore.  Aside from being the former CBO director, Orszag  was a senior fellow and Deputy Director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he directed The Hamilton Project. His education is impressive having studied and receiving two degrees from the London School of Economics (LSE). While all Orszag’s education and experience appears impressive, it should have been more alarming than comforting to Americans.

Orszag’s policies are heavily influenced by his days at the LSE, and Obama has placed others from the LSE in his administration. As prestigous as the LSE may be, it is concerning because of the school’s founding and history, and continual ideological path it has taken since its inception. But how does all of this translate into effective economic policy specific to the capitalistic US economy? It doesn’t.  Although it may not have been apparent, but Orszag’s ideology shaped the US economic policy into exactly what the Obama administration had planned.

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From the UK’s Guardian:

It is clear, too, in the course of the two hours I spend with Greene that he has some pretty wacky ideas that, were he to win in November, would put him among the more unpredictable members of the senate. At one point, he lurches off on his big idea for how to create jobs in South Carolina.

“Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That’s something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It’s not something a typical person would bring up. That’s something that could happen, that makes sense. It’s not a joke.”

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Last week, I reported how the Chicago Democrat machine had injected itself into neighboring Will County in attempt to knock me on the ballot. My candidacy against a legacy politician, the specially appointed AJ Wilhelmi, was too much of a threat to the status quo in Illinois. Today, the Will County Board of Elections is expected to decide whether I can stay on the ballot; whether the voters of my district will face a competition or a coronation this November.

A few short weeks ago, I was a former accountant, auditor, and stay at home mom.  The trifecta of mortgage, marriage, and motherhood catapulted me into the conservative I am today.  A few Republican reformers noticed my local activism.  They asked me to fill an empty ballot spot against a Democratic incumbent State Senator who is a rubber stamp for the same Chicago Machine that put Obama in the White House.

Despite the fact that the district is 2-1 Democratic, my opponent’s party has hired one of the premier elections attorneys to attempt to knock me off the ballot on technicalities.  These same technicalities have been rejected in court wherever they have been tried.  This attorney has worked for the likes of Obama, Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, etc. The Democratic board deciding the case has simply stalled.  They are attempting to run out the clock.  They have waited six weeks to merely decide if my opponent’s case has any merit.  For six weeks our campaign has been in limbo not knowing how they are going to decide on two simple points.  Time is of the essence in a campaign.  While I always knew that politics was an ugly sport, I was not prepared for the lengths the Democrats would go through to try and sabotage my campaign.  I was One Mom versus the Chicago Machine!

I say, “was” because that has all changed.

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