Is it too soon to declare the new Congress a failure?

Ever since their midterm triumph, the Republicans have talked tough about cutting spending. Here’s hoping they make good on those promises, but they spouted the same tough talk after their 1994 election triumph and look what happened.

Back then the GOP revolutionaries targeted more than 200 programs for complete and utter elimination. They scored some minor victories (adios helium fund!), but a decade into their “revolution” (and after they gained a Republican president) inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs slated for elimination actually increased by 27 percent.  And since then total federal spending has continued to soar, so why should we take Republicans seriously this time?

The countdown to disappointment starts now.

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There have been reports – here, here, and here– that Barack Obama has approached William M. Daley about becoming the White House Chief of Staff.  If true, these reports are very interesting, indeed.

You see: Bill Daley has a history. On Christmas Eve, 2009 – a few hours after the Democrats in the US Senate shoved through a version of Obamacare adorned with colorful provisions nicknamed the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Connecticut Compromise, and Gatorade (sometimes called the Florida Flim-Flam) – the gentleman in question published an op-ed in The Washington Post, warning his fellow Democrats that they were in danger of bringing about a realignment in favor of the Republicans.

After alluding to the announced retirements of four centrist Democrats in the House and to Parker Griffith’s switch to the Republican side, Daley argued that “the Democratic Party — my lifelong political home — has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.”

The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.

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Attorney General Eric Holder recently made statements to the New York Times so detached from reality that they could have been written by scheming Republican operatives for fun.  In particular, Holder tells the Times that the lawless dismissal of voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panthers is “a made up controversy.”  I have written about Holder’s accelerating detachment from reality in the interview, along with Jen Rubin.

Putting aside the fact video exists of the armed uniformed thugs in Philadelphia, Holder did something even worse than flirt with kooky conspiratorial characterizations of the fallout from the Black Panther dismissal.  When Holder announced to the New York Times that there “is no there there,” he let the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) know what he believes the outcome of their ongoing investigation into the dismissal should be.   In other words, he tampered with their investigation.

Holder’s close friend Deputy Attorney General James Cole will have the power to veto any critical conclusions by OPR.

Multiple attorneys, including me, have testified under oath that the Obama Civil Rights Division will not enforce civil rights laws in a race-neutral fashion.  Numerous attorneys still at the Justice Department have confirmed the substance of our testimony to the Washington Post. Numerous other attorneys no longer at the Justice Department have also confirmed our testimony. (more…)

Inside the Beltway, Democrats are touting the achievements of the outgoing Congress.  Historian Alan Brinkley asserted that this is the most productive Congress since the Great Society.  These congratulatory assessments stand in stark contrast to the fact that Democrats, for all their labors, suffered a defeat of such historic proportions that it gave rise to a new word: “refudiation.”  What explains this paradox?

First, much of the legislation passed in the 111^th Congress is not really legislation at all.  For all of its verbosity, and for all the outrage surrounding provisions like the individual mandate, the health care legislation enacted in 2010 makes precious few decisions.  Instead, vast discretionary authority is vested in dozens of different agencies and officials, in particular the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

When confronted with tough decisions, Congress prefers to let someone else make laws.  Congressmen can then claim credit for providing Americans with health care, while evading blame for increased costs and premiums, poorer quality of care, rationing, massive uncertainty, and higher wait times.  The rules that led to those unfortunate consequences were made by regulators, who will give shape to legislation, and who would bear the brunt of public ire.

Second, Washington insiders tend to subscribe to the belief that what Americans expect of Congress is that it produce a certain quantity of legislation.  Outgoing House Rules Committee chairman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) captured this belief when she lamented that “what we did was work, and our reward was, ‘Get out of here.’”  The volume of legislation produced by the Democratic 111^th Congress should have been reason enough for voters to sustain Democrats in office.

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In July 2010, Mayor Bloomberg outrageously told reporters it was “un-American” to investigate the individuals behind the Ground Zero Mosque. Now we know why he wanted no one to look into the controversy.

Judicial Watch just obtained a new batch of documents from New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s office that show his office was instrumental in helping radical anti-American Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, his wife Daisy Khan and their partner Sharif el-Gamal obtain approval for a 13-story massive mosque and “community center” to be built in the shadow of Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

These documents, which we obtained through open records requests and a related lawsuit, earned widespread press coverage in New York and around the country. (Here’s the New York Observer’s take to give just one example.) They included email correspondence between top officials inside the Mayor’s office and supporters of the Ground Zero Mosque, a project spearheaded by the Rauf-led Cordoba Initiative. The documents were made available to us on December 23. This unseemly Christmas dump is a well-known ploy by politicians to use the holidays to release bad news in the hopes that it will go unnoticed. (It didn’t work this time.)

Here are some of the documents’ key highlights:

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Shortly after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would cut off late-stage breast cancer patients from Avastin, the Obama Administration announced it would create “end of life counseling” program for Medicare patients. How convenient. The government is sentencing women to death but will try to make them feel better about it.

It’s no surprise that the announcement of the creation of “end of life counseling” comes from the rationer-in-chief Donald Berwick — the unconfirmed head of the Office of Medicare and Medicaid Services. Berwick has said that “Cynics beware, I am romantic about the [British] National Health Service, I love it.” Here’s another Berwick quote: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

It’s clear the bureaucrats have begun to ration care with their “eyes open” but the question is the American people seeing what is happening?

For decades, America was not only the golden land of opportunity; it was the place where the sick would come for cutting edge treatments that could not be found anywhere else. The socialist health care systems of Europe could not save your life, but a trip to America often could. Americans took this for granted. But we cannot anymore.

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With the United Auto Workers’ membership at a third of its former size, and the job-destroying card-check bill (the misleadingly-named Employee Free Choice Act) dead for now, UAW President Bob King and the rest of his Detroit henchmen have had to come up with an inventive way in which to save their dying union by getting new members.

In July, the UAW hooked up with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH coalition and vowed to target the employees of foreign-owned automakers.  In August, the United Auto Workers’ Bob King declared his intent to “shame” companies that do not accept his “Principles for Fair Union Elections.” While eyes rolled throughout the labor relations community, most withheld comment, opting to wait and see what King had up his festooned sleeve. Well, the wait is over.

Because King’s “principles” were unilaterally conjured up in some back office at the UAW’s HQ (or on one of the UAW’s fairways), and given the hints of doom and gloom if an employer did not comply, many never really expected the UAW’s principles to be necessarily fair or principled. As a result, when the UAW officially issued its “principles” on Monday, the Union of Ailing Workplaces UAW did not surprise anyone with its wrong-headedness. In fact, not only did Bob King keep the basic tenets of the failed Employee Free Choice Act in place, he’s taken it even further.

The UAW’s “Principles for Fair Union Elections” [view PDF here] is a series of 11 mostly one-sided and seemingly innocuous guidelines, a few of which are harmless, a few that are superfluous, and several which strike at the heart of an employer’s property and free speech rights. (more…)

I’m about to perform a healing.   For those non-believers out there… like magic, it will terrify and then delight you.   Maybe it’ll scare the jesus into you.

I warn even the staunchest Christian; this will test your mettle.   It will clench your teeth and stiffen your spine.   But, Tea Party babies, I love you!   Have faith!  This idea will end unemployment, and the Fed will never be allowed to print money again.   In God We Trust.

And God wants us to provide every unemployed American citizen a Guaranteed Income of $10,400 per year.

Fifteen million Americans are unemployed.  Even if this program INCREASES the number of people calling themselves unemployed, I want to guarantee all of them, as long as they choose to stay in the program, a check from the Government for $200 per week.

But, there’s a catch.  God’s in the details…

Instead of 99 weeks, Unemployment Insurance will end at three months.  After it runs out, the unemployed will be allowed to enter our new Guaranteed Income system:

1. There’s no more minimum wage.
2. They have to take any job offered.
3. If  they slack off at work and they keep getting fired, they are out of the program.
4. Payments decrease to zero as they earn towards $9 per hour– but on a schedule that still incentivizes them to earn more.

Once someone is in the Guaranteed Income program, their resume goes into the GI website, and if you offer them $2 per hour to pick up dog sh*t in your yard, they pick up dog sh*t.  If a call center offers them $3 per hour for forty hours, they earn an extra $120 per week.

Poof!  There’s no more unemployment.  God said, “Let there be light.”

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Today, in 1643, Sir Isaac Newton was born. Long story, but he was one of the first anti-progressives.

“We could hold 600 investigations perhaps.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who will become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee when the 112th Congress is sworn in this week, announced tonight that the Pigford Scandal will be investigated though not by his committee.

Representative Issa also said that there are 600 investigations perhaps he could hold on the previous Congress and administration but he does not have the time or resources.

Here’s the transcript:

Rep. Issa: “We’ve been asked for quite a while to begin to talk about the order to which we will take on important hearings so we released the first six. We could have released sixty. We could have released 600 perhaps. At the end of the day there is so much in government that in the next two years even if we did a hearing every single day on every single sub committee, we couldn’t do all the areas of waste, fraud and abuse…”

Jim Hoft: Another item that I don’t think is getting a lot of attention but has been out on the internet some and that is the Pigford Scandal. That is not one of the items you have listed. Is it because it is so, it’s a billion dollars. Is it just chump change compared to some of these other items?

Rep Issa: As you know the Pigford Scandal is really one that falls under two other committees. One of the things that I have to know in my committee is I have to leverage my resources.

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Most Americans, I’m certain, would say it is highly unethical (and potentially criminal) for a U.S. Senator to cut a deal to help out a convict in exchange for cash and favors, and then lie on official financial disclosure forms to cover up the scandal.  But not according to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics (or the Senate Ethics Committee, as it is commonly known).

On December 20, 2010, the Committee mailed us a letter dismissing a Judicial Watch ethics complaint filed against outgoing Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT).  (Our “efficient” government postal service took seven days to deliver the first-class letter sent from eight blocks away!)  Our complaint alleges Dodd assisted a longtime friend and associate to obtain a reduced sentence and ultimately a full presidential pardon from President Clinton for tax and securities crimes, in exchange for gifts, including a sweetheart mortgage deal that he failed to properly disclose on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms.

Here’s an excerpt from the Senate Ethics Committee’s one-page response, signed by John C. Sussman, the Chief Counsel and Staff Director:

The Committee has carefully evaluated the allegations and information in your complaint. … After considering all of the information before it, the Committee has determined that there is not sufficient substantial credible evidence of improper conduct or violation within its jurisdiction to warrant further action by the Committee.

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At the very start of the “Reagan revolution,” David Stockman exposed the myth that Ronald Reagan and the modern Republican Party are dedicated to small government.

In 1981, the 35-year-old Stockman gave up his Michigan seat in Congress to become Reagan’s budget director. A vocal critic of what he continues to call the “welfare-warfare state,” Stockman had signed on because he believed in the limited government rhetoric that Reagan espoused. Once inside the White House, Stockman quickly became disenchanted, and gave an interview to journalist William Greider that became the basis for an explosive Atlantic Monthly article in which Stockman admitted that Reagan’s spending cuts had been a “Trojan horse” used to justify tax cuts. In his 1985 memoir, The Triumph of Politics, Stockman chronicled Reagan’s reluctance to fulfill his campaign promise of shrinking the size and scope of government and balancing the budget. The result? The gross federal debt tripled while Reagan was in office.

Last fall, Stockman was the GOP-defector du jour once more, arguing against extending George W. Bush’s tax rates in the New York Times, on 60 Minutes, the Colbert Report, Parker-Spitzer, ABC, NPR, and MSNBC. Stockman’s argument – that it’s irresponsible to cut taxes when cumulative U.S. debt is steadily mounting as a percentage of GDP – is based on the simple principle that balanced budgets come only when revenues actually meet expenditures. If we’re not willing to actually shrink government spending, he says, then we should pay full freight now, rather than forcing our children and grandchildren to foot the bill down the line.

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From Bloomburg:

Illinois lawmakers will try this week to accomplish in a few days what they have been unable to do in the past two years — resolve the state’s worst financial crisis.

The legislative session that begins today will take aim at a budget deficit of at least $13 billion, including a backlog of more than $6 billion in unpaid bills and almost $4 billion in missed payments to underfunded state pensions.

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The chart below (found also here), from Big Government contributor Veronique de Rugy clearly shows that federal employment has grown by 98,000 jobs since the start of the recession. This bears repeating, because lefty columnist Paul Krugman is furiously spinning that the increase in employment is due to Census hiring. Krugman:

But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.

Um, no.

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Did you watch? What were your thoughts? Who won? Who lost?

From the Sun-Sentinel:

For years, Weston developer Roy Rogers planted gardens designed to lure butterflies to Broward schools, using volunteer labor and donated supplies. His generosity and commitment to teaching kids about nature drew plaudits as did his signature act: placing a butterfly on the tip of a delighted child’s nose.

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Beginning in 2004, however, the gardens and Rogers’ services were no longer free. The district began paying for them.

Ultimately, over the next four years, Rogers’ firm collected more than $394,000 from the school system, mostly for butterfly gardens but also to aid a school in the hunt for grant funding.

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Recent student protests against tuition increases in the U.K. and California demonstrate that such upticks invoke strong reactions in student communities and can quickly spiral out of control.

For two years President Obama and Congressional Democrats have pushed federal policies that separate low-income and minority students from quality education.  It is only a matter of time before the breadth of these cuts becomes part of the national dialogue and minority students notice — and erupt.

In March 2009, the President terminated the Opportunity Scholarship Program – school vouchers providing educational lifelines for 3,700 African-American students in the nation’s capital.

In five years and half the per-pupil cost of DC’s abysmal public system, voucher students increased reading scores by 19% and high school graduation rates 12%.  Every year saw four times more applicants than slots.

Current students are safe until graduation, but future opportunity was stolen from DC’s at-risk youth when the President and Congress – led by the Congressional Black Caucus – canceled the program and voted down Republican amendments to extend it.

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The mid-term elections were a rejection of President Obama’s big-government agenda, but those results don’t necessarily mean better policy. We should not forget, after all, that Democrats rammed through Obamacare even after losing the special election to replace Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts (much to my dismay, my prediction from last January was correct).

Similarly, GOP control of the House of Representatives does not automatically mean less government and more freedom. Heck, it doesn’t even guarantee that things won’t continue to move in the wrong direction. Here are five possible bad policies for 2011, most of which the Obama White House can implement by using executive power.

1. A back-door bailout of the states from the Federal Reserve – The new GOP Congress presumably wouldn’t be foolish enough to bail out profligate states such as California and Illinois, but that does not mean the battle is won. Ben Bernanke already has demonstrated that he is willing to curry favor with the White House by debasing the value of the dollar, so what’s to stop him from engineering a back-door bailout by having the Federal Reserve buy state bonds? The European Central Bank already is using this tactic to bail out Europe’s welfare states, so a precedent already exists for this type of misguided policy. To make matters worse, there’s nothing Congress can do – barring legislation that Obama presumably would veto – to stop the Fed from this awful policy.

2. A front-door bailout of Europe by the United States – Welfare states in Europe are teetering on the edge of insolvency. Decades of big government have crippled economic growth and generated mountains of debt. Ireland and Greece already have been bailed out, and Portugal and Spain are probably next on the list, to be followed by countries such as Italy and Belgium. So why should American taxpayers worry about European bailouts? The unfortunate answer is that American taxpayers will pick up a big chunk of the tab if the International Monetary Fund is involved. Indeed, this horse already has escaped the barn. The United States provides the largest amount of  subsidies to the International Monetary Fund, and the IMF took part in the bailouts of Greece and Ireland. The Senate did vote against having American taxpayers take part in the bailout of Greece, but that turned out to be a symbolic exercise. Sadly, that’s probably what we can expect if and when there are bailouts of the bigger European welfare states.

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