Politics, Government & Public Policy: January 2008 Archives

The Clintons have worked hard to divide the Democrats along racial lines in order to defeat Barack Obama, but they may be less pleased if what they see as their white voting bloc gets sliced and diced by accounts of Hillary's tenure on the Wal-Mart board of directors.

In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

Clinton has been endorsed for president by more than a dozen unions, according to her campaign Web site, which omits any reference to her role at Wal-Mart in its detailed biography of her.

Wal-Mart's anti-union efforts were headed by one of Clinton's fellow board members, John Tate, a Wal-Mart executive vice president who also served on the board with Clinton for four of her six years.

Tate was fond of repeating, as he did at a managers meeting in 2004 after his retirement, what he said was his favorite phrase, "Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living." ...

An ABC News analysis of the videotapes of at least four stockholder meetings where Clinton appeared shows she never once rose to defend the role of American labor unions. ...

A former board member told ABCNews.com that he had no recollection of Clinton defending unions during more than 20 board meetings held in private.

John Tate's characterization of modern unions is basically right, and Hillary Clinton is a fairly smart person so she probably recognized his correctness at the time. That past position is no longer convenient however, so the woman who wants to be the most powerful person on earth -- protecting America, leading our government, and facing down tyrants around the world -- is forced to fall back on a claim of impotence.

President Clinton defended his wife's role on the Wal-Mart board last week after the issue was raised by Sen. Barack Obama in a CNN debate.

His wife did not try to change the company's minds about unions, the former Arkansas governor said.

"We lived in a state that had a very weak labor movement, where I always had the endorsement of the labor movement because I did what I could do to make it stronger. She knew there was no way she could change that, not with it headquartered in Arkansas, and she agreed to serve," President Clinton said.

Now that's what I call bold leadership for change! Or just a lie. Take your pick. My only regret is that this sort of baggage is coming out now rather than after Hillary wins the nomination.

Despite many proposals to "fix" the "broken" primary system, I may be the only American left who likes the undemocratic status quo. Most opponents of the primary system lament that a small handful of states do most of the winnowing, leaving the majority of citizens with only a few choices and little direct say in the nomination process. All true!

But remember: voting is not a "right", it is merely a means to an end. The goal is to create and maintain an honest, fair, and open government that will protect us and preserve our liberty. Democracy is one tool we can use to build that government, but democracy should not be seen as an end unto itself. Our Founding Fathers knew this, which is why the voting franchise was limited even though the rights protected by the Constitution were reserved for all people. They believed that the rights of everyone would be best protected by reserving the power to vote to a subset of the population. History has shown that they were right in some regards and wrong in others, but no one can dispute that America has been only somewhat democratic since its inception.

Even now there are a whole host of undemocratic controls built into our government to prevent tyranny by the democratic mob. The Senate is perhaps the most obvious example, its membership being based states rather than the citizenry. The Supreme Court is also undemocratic, as is the Electoral College, as is the President's veto power, as is the requirement that both houses of Congress approve a bill before it can be signed into law, and so forth and so on. These institutions are democratic to varying degrees in that the wielders of power somehow trace their authority back to the People, but that derivation is purposefully indirect. And these institutions have served us reasonably well for more than 200 years, preserving for us the most enduring Republic and the safest and freest society on the face of the earth.

And so the fact that my primary votes have never counted as much as those cast in Iowa or New Hampshire doesn't distress me. I think Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are fairly representative of the population as a whole, and I don't feel like the results would have turned out much differently if Missouri has been an early primary state. Additionally, I like that a little-known candidate can compete in these small states and ramp up their campaign gradually rather than having to fight in California, New York, and Florida right out of the starting gate. Without a system like we've got, Barack Obama would have had no chance against Hillary Clinton, and Mike Huckabee would have been dead in the water.

I for one hope that we stick with something similar to the current system. I'm not adverse to any change whatsoever, but I think it would be a mistake to make drastic changes to a system that has served us pretty well thus far. Remember that democracy is only a means to an end, a tool to help us maintain our liberties and security. It's ironic that people simultaneously complain about the primary system and how "one vote can't make a difference". Be content as a cog in our wonderful Republic that somehow keeps chugging along despite its flaws.

John Edwards has dropped out from the presidential race, and my speculation is that he did so in exchange for a promise to be Barack Obama's VP.

The former North Carolina senator will not immediately endorse either candidate in what is now a two-person race for the Democratic nomination, said one adviser, who spoke on a condition of anonymity in advance of the announcement.

Obama needs all the anti-Hillary voters he can get for next week's Super Tuesday, and trading the vice presidential slot for those votes might be the only path he saw to the nomination. I don't think Edwards brings much to the potential general election Obama ticket based on his positions or geography, but you can't get to the general election if you don't win the nomination.

Then again, Edwards might end up only being offered a cabinet position. The guy's basically unemployed, so he'll probably take what he can get in 2009.

Everyone was expecting Barack Obama to beat Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, but he got more than double her number of votes. That's amazing.

Sen. Barack Obama, vying to become the nation's first black president, has won the South Carolina primary today, boosted by a record turnout of African-American voters in a state whose electorate appears polarized along racial lines.

Obama overwhelmingly beat Sen. Hillary Clinton with 55 percent support to her 27 percent, and former Sen. John Edwards, trailing with 18 percent support, with almost all precincts reporting.

The Clintons are doing everything they can to cast this primary in racial tones, but wow, Obama trounced them tonight.

Bernard Moon was at a breakfast with ex-Clintonista Dick Morris and describes Morris' perception of the Clintons' brilliance.

Anyway, so Dick Morris discussed how over the past week or more, much of the media attention has been on Bill on the issue of race in South Carlina ("Bill Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Stirring Race Issue" NYTimes). Morris stated that Obama has been a candidate not running on the race card, but the Clintons want to use the South Carlina election to make it about race to create a white backlash to the bloc-voting by African-Americans (more from Morris, "How Clinton Will Win The Nomination By Losing South Carolina"). ...

So it's not only luring Obama to hit the cape instead of the matador, but the star power of Bill draws the media to him and maintains the political status quo in the campaign. Morris described how Bill did this when John Kerry ran. During the Democratic convention in Boston that year, Bill came out with his new book two weeks before and held book signing events there right before the convention. The local press focused on Bill Clinton and not John Kerry. Morris said that this was a strategic move, so that Kerry wouldn't win and improve Hillary's chances to run in 2008. Brilliant (yes, I love Guinness beer). Evil but brilliant.

I may be out of touch, but I see Hillary as a far weaker candidate than Obama for a host of reasons. I hope she wins the nomination, because I don't think she'll be hard for any of the leading Republicans to beat. Am I deluded by my own echo-chamber?

Maybe so, because despite my analysis that beating Obama will alienate Hillary from the black voters she needs to win the general election, Dick Morris predicts the opposite.

If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama’s ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. It’s one thing for polls to show, as they now do, that Obama beats Hillary among African-Americans by better than 4-to-1 and Hillary carries whites by almost 2-to-1. But most people don’t read the fine print on the polls. But if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton. ...

Of course, this begs the question of how she will be able to attract blacks after beating Obama. Here the South Carolina strategy also serves its purpose. If she loses blacks and wins whites by attacking Obama, it will look dirty and underhanded to blacks. She’ll develop a real problem in the minority community. But if she is seen as being rejected by minority voters in favor of Obama after going hat in hand to them and trying to out-civil rights Obama, blacks will even likely feel guilty about rejecting Hillary and will be more than willing to support her in the general election.

That logic seems flawed to me. Only white leftists vote as a block based on guilt... the "oppressed" groups have been conditioned by the left to vote based on anger and resentment. I think Morris (and the Clintons, if this is their plan) are mistaken if they think black voters will react to their manipulations the way they're used to white voters reacting.

So the generous government elite have deigned to return to us plebeians some of the money they confiscate from us by force on a weekly basis. Consider me underwhelmed.

Congressional leaders announced a deal with the White House Thursday on an economic stimulus package that would give most tax filers refunds of $600 to $1,200, and more if they have children. ...

The rebates will go to 117 million families, according to a Democratic summary. That includes $28 billion in checks to 35 million working families who wouldn't have been helped by Bush's original proposal, the analysis estimated.

Republicans, for their part, were pleased that the bulk of the rebates—more than 70 percent, according to an analysis by Congress' Joint Tax Committee—would go to individuals who pay taxes.

By "working families" I assume the story means family with members who work, but not enough to pay any taxes... which means they probably don't work full-time and are already likely to be on the public dole.

As many other more knowledgeable writers have already said, this "stimulus package" is idiotic. Besides being deeply "progressive" (in that the amount is basically equal rather than being a percentage of income) there's no evidence whatsoever that this plan will do anything to encourage long-term economic growth. The only way you do that is with tax cuts, which Democrats hate because they reduce our dependency on government.

If somebody grabbed your wallet and then handed you back a $20 bill, would you be grateful? Realizing the money was yours to begin with, you would probably call the cops rather than thank the thief.

President Bush’s latest gimmick to stimulate the economy by giving back to taxpayers $800 of their own money is the Washington equivalent of the “generous” thief. The biggest fairy tale in Washington isn’t Barack Obama’s voting record on the war in Iraq, but the notion peddled by Republicans and Democrats alike that the government has a big pot of its own money that it generously gives to people by “injecting” it into the economy as a stimulus.

In fact, government has only our money or money it borrows from lenders. The problem is it costs the government a major portion of every dollar it takes from us in collecting it and paying the interest on dollars it borrows. Why not just let us keep our money in the first place?

Cut taxes, and make the cuts permanent so that people can make plans and commitments based on the lowered rates. That's how you stimulate an economy permanently.

Even though I'm only a luke-warm Mitt Romney supporter, I was glad to see him win in Michigan last night. Romney isn't my ideal candidate, but I have a lot of respect for his executive experience, which far eclipses any of the Democrats and surpasses even the other Republicans who have served as governor of a state. Romney "should" have won in Iowa and had victory snatched from him by Huckabee, a candidate who is only in the running for a shot at VP.

The race warfare between Obama and Hillary could play out like this: Hillary wins the nomination but completely alienates black Democrats, thereby dooming her in the general election. Blacks have voted 90% for the Democrats for the past 40 years and have frequently made the Democrat's margin of victory. Blacks don't have to vote for Republicans to let the GOP win in November, they just have to stay home out of disgust for Hillary's perceived "racism".

I've long predicted that the combating interests within the Democratic party would lead to just this sort of fracture. The Democrats thrive on group-identity politics... live by the sword, die by the sword. Maybe Republicans have an opportunity to show blacks they might prefer a party of limited government, economic conservatism, and social values.

The videos of Ezra Levant addressing the Canadian Human Rights Commission are priceless. I can't believe he was actually dragged before a "court" to answer for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammad in the Weekly Standard. Hopefully Canadians will see and object to how their government bureaucrats are spending their tax dollars.

As many people have been pointing out for a long time, despite his current attractiveness to disaffected conservatives Ron Paul is a crazy, racist conspiracy loon.

Finding the pre-1999 newsletters was no easy task, but I was able to track many of them down at the libraries of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Of course, with few bylines, it is difficult to know whether any particular article was written by Paul himself. Some of the earlier newsletters are signed by him, though the vast majority of the editions I saw contain no bylines at all. Complicating matters, many of the unbylined newsletters were written in the first-person, implying that Paul was the author.

But, whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul's name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him--and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing--but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics. ...

[skip past pages of craziness]

In other words, Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically--or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point--over the course of decades--he would have done something about it.

Anyone who supports or associates with this sort of idiocy should be ashamed. I know that none of the mainstream Republican candidates are perfect reincarnations of the idealized Ronald Reagan, but that doesn't excuse embracing a nut like Ron Paul.

I've discussed the wisdom of the 19th Amendment before, but I've never sunk so low as to accuse women of voting on pure emotion!

Then Clinton began getting emotional: "It's not easy, and I couldn't do it if I didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know I have so many opportunities from this country just don't want to see us fall backwards," she said.

Then, her voice breaking and tears in her eyes, she said, "You know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political it's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it." ...

After the event, Pernold Young told ABC News that she was glad Clinton showed emotion.

"That was real," Pernold Young said.

Another woman in the group, Alison Hamilton of Portsmouth, New Hampshire said she, like most of the people in the group, had been leaning toward voting for Obama.

But after seeing Clinton become emotional, she said she was going to back Clinton.

"That was the clincher," Hamilton said.

If I made this stuff up I'd be branded as a sexist. Can't Hillary, the voters, the media, and America do better?

I've been writing about Hillary Clinton's unelectability for years, so I'm very conflicted over the results of the Democrats' caucus in Iowa last night. On the one hand, few people are slimier, more corrupt, or less qualified than Hillary Clinton, so I'm saddened to see her lose because I think she would have been easy for any Republican to beat in November. On the other hand, no one wants face the prospect of an America saddled with such a slimy, corrupt, unqualified president of either party.

I disagree with Barack Obama on every political issue I can think of. Barack Obama's "Christian" church is literally insane. And yet, he doesn't come across as slimy and corrupt as Hillary Clinton which means that -- despite sharing her inexperience -- America would likely do much better with an Obama presidency than a Hillary presidency. If I had to pick a Democrat for President, Obama would be near the top of my list, so in that sense it's good that he trounced the Hilldabeast in Iowa.

If Obama wins the nomination, as seems likely, the Republicans will have a hard time beating him. Huckabee certainly won't stand a chance. Hopefully Romney or Giuliani will shine over the course of the next month and one of them will turn out to be a diamond.

Captain Ed has put out a porkbusting call-to-action for us citizens as well as for President Bush.

In case you aren't familiar with the situation, Congress recently passed the Omnibus Spending Bill which included in the text of the law a whole bunch of pork-barrel earmarks. These earmarks that are in the text of the law are called legislative earmarks because they identify spending that is now required by law.

However, Congress also issued a bunch of paperwork with the law that identifies additional earmarks that they want various government offices to spend money on but that aren't specifically called out in the text of the law. These are nonlegislative earmarks and do not have the force of law because they are not in the text of the bill that was passed by Congress. In essence they are preferences expressed by one or more lawmakers (not a majority, or they would have been in the text of the bill) for how they want some of the money spent. Constitutionally, because these nonlegislative earmarks don't have the force of law, the President can issue an executive order instructing the government to completely ignore these earmarks and to instead spend the money in the way that the departments think is best for the country.

President Bush should do exactly this, and we citizens should be pressuring him issue such an executive order. Call or email the White House as described below.

Sources on the Hill tell some of us that a critical point has been reached at the White House on whether to issue an Executive Order that would prevent federal agencies from spending funds on 90% of the earmarks in the Omnibus Spending Bill. According to the whispers, the earmarkers on Capitol Hill have begun to lean heavily on the White House to let the matter drop and to keep the earmark funding in place. Every day brings a fresh round of calls from the same lawmakers who porked up the overdue spending bill, "airdropping" almost all of them (against the new rules in Congress) to keep the porkers from accountability.

If CapQ readers want George Bush to issue the Executive Order and hold Congress responsible for violating its own rules while pursuing personal political benefits, they need to let the White House know now how they feel. The EO advocates need to remind Bush that only through dramatic action can the GOP reclaim any momentum on fiscal responsibility. A rescission package would only play into the hands of the same people who larded up the spending bill while delivering it three months late.

You can make a difference. Call 202-456-1111 and politely explain why the President should issue the EO, or e-mail the staff at comments@whitehouse.gov.

(HT: Instapundit.)

This story about a "hearty eater" being banned from a buffet can serve as a great example for why socialized medicine doesn't work.

On his most recent visit, he said, a waitress gave him and his wife's cousin, 44-year-old Michael Borrelli, a bill for $46.40, roughly double the buffet price for two adults.

"She says, 'Y'all fat, and y'all eat too much,'" Labit said.

Labit and Borrelli said they felt discriminated against because of their size. "I was stunned, that somebody would say something like that. I ain't that fat, I only weigh 277," Borrelli said, adding that a waitress told him he looked like he a had a "baby in the belly."

Buffets are very similar to health insurance in that everyone pays nearly the same price, but people use very different amounts of service. Health insurance providers are prevented from many forms of price discrimination by law, which means that like a buffet that can't discriminate all they can do is refuse service to unprofitable customers. Socialized medicine would reduce the ability to discriminate by price even further, leading to even more unhealthy people being denied treatment.

The end result is that unhealthy people won't be able to get treatment from the socialized system because they're too far from the norm, and they won't be able to buy treatment because the free market will have been destroyed. It goes without saying that poor, uneducated people tend to be the least healthy, so who's really going to benefit from socialized medicine?

This Des Moines Register article breaks down the supporters of the various Democrats running in the upcoming Iowa caucuses. Eric at Classical Values notes that Hillary has a problem attracting young voters, as shown here:

But what's especially intriguing is that Hillary's supporters are also the least educated and poorest. Since her supporters tend to be old, wouldn't you also expect them to be wealthier and more educated? This strange conflation doesn't bode well for her.

(HT: Instapundit.)