Understanding the Obama Agenda

The Patriot Post is a little gem that comes in my inbox every Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Editor Mark Alexander writes his own columns, but also culls the best quotes from the most recent political opinion. I don't always have the time to read it, but today I was glad I did. Alexander quotes at length from an Abraham Miller post on the American Thinker. For anyone who hopes to understand the motivations of the Obama Agenda, this is a must read. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is hope and change, Chicago style:

If you want to understand the political agenda of Barack Obama, forget Alinsky, stop calling Obama a "socialist," and start thinking of Barack Obama as a guy who received his political baptism, not from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but from the Chicago machine.

Chicago politics is not about ideology. It is about, "Who Gets What, When, and How," to quote the inimitable Harold D. Laswell, one of the outstanding political theorists of the last century.

The sine qua non of Chicago politics is power, getting it and keeping it. Everything else is incidental. Even corruption is a byproduct of power and is functional only if it enables you to stay in power.

In Chicago politics, you don't make waves, you don't back losers, and you "don't talk to nobody nobody sent." Chicago politics is always about hierarchy and centralization.

Chicago politics is also parochial. In the City of Neighborhoods, ethnic consciousness is strong. An Irish machine, for years, ran a Polish city by making sure that the Poles got a big piece of the pie. There is seldom a perception of a common good. There is the amalgamation of different ethnic interests. In Chicago, the whole is clearly the sum of its parts, and the lubricants for the parts are political spoils.

If you want to understand Obama's health care policy, you need to start where Obama starts. You need to start with Chicago. You need to look at constituent interests.

Obama won in 2008 because, among other things, he mobilized the electoral periphery. He mobilized young voters and minority voters, people who traditionally had a lower probability of showing up on Election Day. Chicago politics is about mobilizing the vote. "Vote early and often" is the city's sardonic refrain.

Obama needs his newly socialized base. He needs them to keep coming to the polls. In the vein of Chicago politics, he needs to deliver benefits to them.

Unrewarded, the electoral periphery will revert back to apathy. Health care is a reward to this base of people who are on the economic as well as political periphery.

Talk-radio host Sean Hannity can trumpet medical savings accounts on one day and talk about the forty percent of Americans who don't pay taxes the next, and he will be immune to the inconsistency because Hannity's listeners are taxpayers. But a medical savings account means nothing if you don't pay taxes.

If you don't pay taxes and don't have health insurance, you want a card in your wallet that says someone else is going to pay. You want a medical savings account and tort reform about as much as you want another Chicago winter in an unheated apartment.

If you grow up poor and minority, everyone else's gain is ill-gotten. You expect the people you elect to take from them and give to you. If they don't, then there is no point in electing them. You might as well stay home on Election Day.

There's more, and you must read it all, here and now. In the meantime, I will include the companion quote Alexander included, since it illustrates Chi-town politics so vividly:

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. ... We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" --George Orwell, "1984"

Universal Healthcare for Dummies

H/T Tania at PAWatercooler

America's royal dynasty ends after 40 years of borrowed time

I've about had my fill of the worshipful fluff that serves as the coverage of the death of Ted Kennedy. Those of you familiar with me know I have very little tolerance for the idea of the Kennedy family as a political dynasty, a position I know puts me in direct conflict with those who insist upon preserving phony memories of Camelot.

Of the endless tributary memorials playing non-stop on a mainstream media channel near you, perhaps the most obnoxious is the assertion that were it not for Teddy's Chappaquiddick "indiscretion" in July of 1969, he would have been President.

Mary Jo Kopechne, according to the mainstream media, was a mere "indiscretion" that stood in the way of the re-instatement of their Camelot.

Carl Cannon:

On July 18, 1969, Kennedy and five other men – all but one of whom was married – met six single young women who had worked on Robert Kennedy's 1968 campaign. The women were known as the "Boiler Room Girls" for their tireless work in a windowless office in that ill-fated campaign. All of them, especially Teddy, had grieved hard when Bobby had been killed 15 months earlier. Although he was only 37 years of age, Teddy had lost all three of his brothers; two to assassin's bullets, one in the skies over England in World War II. Mary Jo Kopechne had felt gut-shot by Bobby's murder, too. For all of those people who met in the cottage in the island off Martha's Vineyard, getting together must have been cathartic.

Sometime late at night after an evening of drinking, Kennedy and Kopechne went for a drive in his 1967 Oldsmobile. Kennedy placed the time he left at 11:15 p.m. A local cop who believed he saw the car put the time at 12:40 a.m. – significant at the time because Kennedy testified that he was taking Kopechne to a ferry that ran to Edgartown, a ferry that stopped running at midnight. In any event, Kennedy wasn't headed toward the ferry landing when his car careened off Dike Bridge and into the inlet known as Poucha Pond; they were heading toward the beach.

Kennedy got out of the car alive, Mary Jo Kopechne did not. He said he dived down several times to try and rescue her, before walking back to the cottage where his friends were staying. To do so, he passed at least four houses with working telephones, including one 150 yards from the accident with a porch light on – as well as a firehouse with a pay phone. When he got to the cottage, none of the women were told what happened. According to the 763-page coroner's inquest, this was just the first of a series of appalling decisions Kennedy made that night, decisions that stretch credulity.

First of all, he and two of the men, a cousin named Joseph Gargan and a friend named Paul Markham say they returned to the bridge to try and rescue Mary Jo. (If the Edgartown constable who believes he saw Kennedy was accurate, this was impossible.) Next, the men claimed that they drove Kennedy to the Chappaquiddick ferry landing, where he told them not to tell the other women for fear that they would try to rescue Mary Jo – at great peril to themselves – and assured them that he would report the incident to authorities. Then, the men said, Kennedy dove into the water and swam across the sound to Edgartown himself.

Upon reaching Edgartown, Kennedy went to his room at a local inn – it was now 2:25 a.m., -- where he spent the night, and the following morning engaged in small talk about sailing with a local yachter and agreed to have breakfast with the man when Gargan and Markham showed up about 7:30. They asked him who he'd called about the accident only to receive the astounding reply: no one. Kennedy explained it this way at the inquest: "I just couldn't gain the strength within me, the moral strength, to call Mrs. Kopechne at 2 in the morning and tell her that her daughter was dead." But he hadn't called the cops, either, and wouldn't until 9 a.m.

Of course, Teddy himself employed that famous Kennedy charm in reducing Mary Jo Kopechne's death into a cute little cocktail hour anecdote himself, and his sycophants in the press were only too happy to chuckle along (audio courtesy
Hot Air)


Despicable. Even if you are a liberal and admire all that Ted Kennedy did to destroy this country/advance his liberal agenda, the level of elitist privilege on display here is nothing short of monstrous.

Ted Kennedy brought the word "borking" into our vocabulary and was the first to successfully employ the "politics of personal destruction" to eviscerate his political opponent, Robert Bork. He also attempted to undermine Ronald Reagan (and some might say, sell out his country to the Russians) during a pivotal moment in the cold war for personal political gain (via Ace):

"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."

Kennedy's message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations," the memorandum stated. "These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."

He may have been charming and friendly, he may have been a great reacher across the aisle, and long time Washington insiders on BOTH sides of the aisle may have nothing but kind words for him at his passing. But to me, he will always be the ruthless partisan who embraced the far left in ways that his much more famous brothers never did, despite the left's claim on them. To me, he will always be the hypocritical liberal moralizer, who no matter how often he championed his beloved "downtrodden" could never wipe the stain of Mary Jo's blood from his hands.

The question that keeps occuring to me in the face of the accolades over the most "important", "effective", "skilled", etc., Senator in history, is exactly what kind of skill set makes one an effective Senator? Because without the powerful Kennedy family clout, money, power and mystique behind him, I'm thinking Teddy was really something of a rather ordinary and flawed individual. Cheater, underacheiver, party boy, drunkard, womanizer. That he was effective in weilding the power that came with the Kennedy name, no one is denying; however, without this power that he was born into, I sincerely doubt he would have been able to accomplish much at all, if indeed he ever rose to the Senate in the first place.

It is time for the Kennedy mystique to come to an end. America is a Democratic Republic, not a monarchy, and the Kennedys were not simply the closest thing America had to royalty. The Kennedys, for all intents and purposes, WERE royalty. After Bobby and Jack, Teddy and the next generation simply glided into political power on the wings of their famous name and established political power network. Qualifications for office were never questioned; it was a birthright rarely, if ever denied. Barack Obama's election to the Presidency is largely credited to the Kennedy family endorsement of him late in the the primary season.

It is time for the Kennedy family's presumption to power to come to an end once and for all, 40 years after it should have drowned in the Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island.

More right wing hate against the ever-lovin' arms of Obamacare

Or are we calling it Kennedycare now?



Yes, we need reform. Tort reform, EMTLA policy reform, address the problem of healthcare for illegal aliens. What we don't need is a government monopoly of healthcare.

And, oh, by the way, for those of you who still think that all those protestors at Townhalls are simply right wing wackos or dupes for special interests, there's a great piece in yesterday's WSJ by former NY Lt. Governor Betsey McCaughey who recounts, in chilling detail, the words of Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's chief health care advisor and brother of Rahm, that is a must read for everyone:

Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."

True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care: "Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness," he writes. "This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to 'use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment' as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."

Did everyone get that?

True reform must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations.
The chart above accompanied the WSJ article and was used by Dr. Emauel to illustrate the ages on which health care spending should be focused. This chart originally accompanied an article in the medical journal "The Lancet".

Read McCaughey's whole article here.

Welcome to Philly, Michael Vick

Before we all go off half-cocked about signing "convicted felon" Michael Vick to a two-year deal with the Eagles, a little perspective, please.

Michael Vick, by all accounts, gives back hugely to the downtrodden neighborhood from which he came. He came from a culture that does not pamper its pets by sending them to doggy daycares with optional massage and movie packages. Michael Vick, much like the Pennsylvania Amish, came from a place where animals were not members of the family, but were used for work, companionship, and amusement. Michael Vick spent 18 months in jail for his mistaken belief that dog fighting is still acceptable in this society.

But lets take a look at what is acceptable in this society: It is acceptable to weep and send flowers to Barbaro, an ailing horse, while elsewhere, Terri Shiavo is being starved to death at the direction of the State. It is acceptable for Woody Allen to continue to make movies after he leaves his wife for his stepdaughter. It is acceptable for Ted Kennedy to leave Mary Jo Kopechne to die in the Chappaquiddick River and still be qualified to write health care legislation for the country.

Ours has become a society where animal rights often trump human rights, not only in matters of the law, but in matters of societal interest. As we continue to move away from a monotheistic society, we move closer towards our pagan roots, worshipping the environment and treating animals as equals or betters.

This is not to say that I think animal cruelty should go unpunished, but to point out that the punishment has been meted out and served. Michael Vick is never going to fight dogs again; wasn't that the point of putting him in prison?

He paid his debt to society, now let him play football.

Lazy reporting, propaganda or liberal denial?

It's really tough to decide these days, isn't it?

Under the byline of someone named Sara K. Smith, NBCPhiladelphia is running a lead sstory on their news page with proof positive that the conservative outrage at townhall's across the country is "manufactured." In fact, that's the title of the piece: "Manufactured Meltdowns at a Townhall Near You."

Nobody can ever confirm what nefarious deeds their opposition might be up to until somebody comes forward with inside knowledge of the formation of front groups. And now we finally have a winner!

A former health insurance executive says the disruptions taking place at lawmakers' town halls around the country are the result of stealth efforts by health insurance companies.

Wendell Potter, a former CIGNA vice president, detailed what he said were past covert efforts by the industry.

[...] Potter said during his 20 years in the insurance business, the industry would funnel money to large public firms who would create front groups and find friendly voices in conservative media.

Of course, Potter also said that he'd been out of the industry for about a year and did not "have specifics for what is occurring now." So it's entirely possible that this go-round, for the first time ever, all of people's laments about "the slippery slope to socialism" and "rationing" are motivated entirely by sincere, spontaneous beliefs that just happened to spring simultaneously into their brains, all across America, in front of TV cameras everywhere.

And then there's the other explanation, which seems slightly more plausible.

I'm all for a blogger expressing her opinion, but this is clearly opinion labeled as "news"--Ms. Smith is "reporting" proof positive that one retired insurance executive, who admits that 'he'd been out of the industry for about a year and did not "have specifics for what is occurring now,'" is proof positive that the sentiments expressed at Townhalls are not genuine.

So basically if you are upset about this massive power grab of govermment, if you do not buy the line that Obama and the Dems are selling but trying to ram down your throat, if you are even a little bit concerned about the extremely radical agenda that is being pushed through congress piloted by the most liberal president we have ever had, then expressing this anger and frustration really anmounts to nothing more than being a shill for the insurance companies. You are all liars, or so says Sara K Smith and Wendell Potter.

Is this lazy reporting, state sponsored propaganda or is it something else? Is it denial now that they see that their fellow Americans are not quite as enamored with their liberal dreams of a socialist utopia that they thought? Is it a manifestation of the pain that comes from a miscalculation of your adversary's strength, resolve and knowledge?

One thing it is not is straight reporting. And it certainly should not be classified under "News" on NBCPhiladelphia's website.

With each passing day it gets uglier. And the MSM, for one, two or all of the reasons above, makes it worse.

The "Post Office" of Health Care Plans

If you haven't seen the above clip, you have probably been living in a cave. I elaborate below on the MSM's coverage of the Obama Town Hall in New Hampshire, but apparently I was a little too kind to Chuck Todd, calling his NBC Nightly News report "mostly straight reporting." I should have known better.

Three Sources points me to this scathing Heritage Foundation fact check of the Obamacare Pep Rally. It begins thusly:

Any doubts that President Barack Obama’s “townhall” in Portsmouth, New Hampshire yesterday was a complete farce were dispelled early on when the hand picked crowd broke out in a chant of: “Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!” at the close of his opening remarks. Recognizing his campaign’s signature slogan, the President responded: “Thank you. I remember that.” Comforted knowing he was surrounded by a room full of die-hard supporters, President Obama then want on to make a number of misleading and outright false statements about the health care legislation still working it’s way through Congress.

Read it all here.

Parting shot:

And these are just some of the falsehoods and misinformation peddled by President Obama yesterday. It doesn’t even include his choice to sell Obamacare as The “Post Office” of Health Care Plans. No wonder so many Americans are skeptical.

In which the MSM abandons all pretense of objective reporting. Again.

They have basically become the proud PR arm of the White House, repeating whatever message the White House tells them to. Consider the following two clips. The first one, below, is from last evening's NBC Nightly News broadcast. This report features mostly straight reporting and even hints that Obama's Townhall meeting may have been pre-packed with mostly supporters. There was very little editorializing by Todd in this segment:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now compare and contrast this with Chuck Todd's report on the very same event this morning -- 13 hours later -- on the Today Show:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Some blatant editorializing by Mr. Todd:

The President was "pushing back against WILD accusations."

Unlike members of congress, Obama faced only "POLITE skepticism" from Republicans.

"Outside the hall, the misrepresentation was on full display."

The President faced mostly supporters not because he stacked the deck with supporters, but because of the Secret Service.

It's the same report essentially, but a totally different tone. The glaring differences in these two reports indicate either that NBC News was told by the White House to shade the report more in favor of "Obamacare" supporters or that NBC News took it upon themselves to slant the report for the Today Show audience--an audience that is probably not as politically savvy as the audience who watches the Nightly News.

Either alternative is very chilling.

Katie Couric's insufferable "Notebook" segment on the radio this evening was more in the same vein. In tonight's installment, Katie was lamenting the loss of the pure Town Hall Meeting of the founders' days, saying that political speech has evolved. "Even though much of that speech is scripted", she sighs, "it's still democracy in action." That was her radio address. Her CBS Evening News "page" was quite a bit more egregious:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Really, what a scold. Where was all of this tut-tutting when the Dems were carrying swastikas to protest George W. Bush? Where was all of the bitter cynicism when Dems were scripting old ladies in wheelchairs against the Republicans' Contract with America? And even though I believe that this is a legitimate grassroots movement, since when has the great American tradition of "Community Organizing" deserved to be met with such derision from the fourth estate?

Your chip is showing, dear

You know, that rather large one. On your shoulder.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

This is what happens when a "strong, independent woman" rides her husband's coattails to power. Brian Williams' explanation that it was actually President Obama's opinion the questioner wanted her to "channel" and not Bill Clinton's, only adds insult to injury.

I almost feel bad for her. Almost.

Criminal Intent

One of my favorite shows is Law and Order: Criminal Intent. I can get sucked into a marathon of this program very easily, especially on a humid, stormy day like yesterday. USA has taken over the new episodes of this show from parent company NBC, which still has the first runs of Law and Order and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Other than changing the theme of the show into an over-produced, hard-to-listen-to piece of music, USA has pretty much remained true to the spririt of the show and Jeff Goldblum, alternating the male lead with my favorite Vincent Dinofrio, is a solid addition to the cast.

Law and Order: CI has pretty much steered clear of any kind of political statements in the past; they generally leave that to the writers over at SVU. But last night's season finale was an exception. The teaser for the show said it was about a small group of "homegrown terrorists". It turned out that the leader of the terrorists was an established terrorist from Germany and the "daughter" he kidnapped from a family he killed and raised as his own, unbeknownst to her. The group was rounded out by a "homegrown" drug dealer who met his demise early in show when the father and daughter team determined he was a liability after he panicked during their operation to kidnap a Wall Street banker.

The first half of the show seemed promising; the terrorist father was clearly a communist, who reminisced fondly to his daughter about the Communist revolutions of his youth. Their politics were clearly of a Communist bent and at one point, Jeff Goldblum's character, Nichols, criticizes the FBI's public response to the act of terrorism-- that they had situation well in hand-- saying it was like a dare to them. "Why not just come right out and say that Communism is dead? That it makes no sense to replace a flawed system with a failed system?"

Apparently, another group of writers took over for the second half of the show, or the NBC censors, detecting a bit too much conservatism in this episode, decided to apply a little ideological balance of their own, in an underhanded and factually incorrect way.

After setting off a bomb on Wall Street, the daughter is surfing the internet and excitedly tells her father that their plans for revolution are catching on, "There was another Tea Party up in Boston this weekend!" she tells him. This line completely misrepresents the purpose of the Tea Parties, which is decidedly ANTI-Communist and are protests against taxation. This is a subtle--and probably effective--attempt by NBC to portray the Tea Party movement as an enemy of democracy and freedom instead of a facet of it. This is how the MSM and Hollywood win the ideological battle; people who are not of a political bent, who are too lazy or disinterested to really follow political events, may now be inclined to believe Tea Parties (and the subsequent anti-Obama care protests) are a facet of Communism or at the very least, anti-democratic. Make no mistake; this is completely intentional.

The second slam was more blatant, and probably less effective in the context that it was presented. The FBI agent working with the CI detectives announces that data mining of monitored credit card data has revealed that one person had recently made several purchases of large quantities of chemicals known for making bombs and it tripped their alarm system. After determining who the purchaser was and where she lived, one of the characters asked, "Wait a minute. Whose credit card transactions are being monitored?" The FBI agent replies, "Don't ask." Someone else says, "All of ours," and another sarcastically adds, "Thank you, Dick Cheney." Yes, thank you Dick Cheney, for giving us the tools to track down potential bomb-making terrorists by mining data supplied by credit card companies. The writers of the second half of Law and Order: CI seem to think we'd be better off if we just remained in the dark about these things.

This is just one show on a cable network but it is an example of the power of popular culture in the hands of a media giant with an agenda. This is what we need to target and fight against, because it is the Left's most powerful weapon against us; the ability to sprinkle political disinformation into popular television shows to subtly influence public opinion.

You got trouble Folks! Right here in River City. Trouble with a Capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for disinformation

H/T Ace

And on a more serious note, Iowahawk has this important public service announcement from Linda Douglass herself:

Greetings citizen! By now you may have heard scattered rumors of state and party officials encountering reactionary resistors at local health care reform information programs. Do not be alarmed, for our 5-year plan for citizen health proceeds without delay. Remain stalwart! The truth can be told at last, that these so-called "protests" are merely the desperate rear flank mob actions of dead-end bandits and saboteurs in the pay of enemy insurance agents.

Pay them no heed, for these outside agitators in no way represent any threat to our great patriotic push forward for increased citizen heathfulness! These well-dressed prep school gangsters of reaction seek only to frighten and demoralize and intimidate you, with their confusing "facts" and hob-nailed Sperry Topsiders. Unfortunately they are joined in conspiracy by a well-financed network of unlicensed blogs and talk radio traitors, who exaggerate their numbers and percolate disinformation -- even cleverly staged YouTube videos of an impostor President Obama saying "quotes"!

Read it all, dear reader. Read it all.

Upgrade your flight to Political Class

Roll Call:

Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies.

But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.

The Air Force had asked for one Gulfstream 550 jet (price tag: about $65 million) as part of an ongoing upgrade of its passenger air service.

But the House Appropriations Committee, at its own initiative, added to the 2010 Defense appropriations bill another $132 million for two more airplanes and specified that they be assigned to the D.C.-area units that carry Members of Congress, military brass and top government officials.

And John Fund has this on the diva who calls herself "Madame Speaker" in today's WSJ Political Diary (subscribers only):

...the watchdog group Judicial Watch documented last March just how difficult it's been for the Pentagon to accommodate Speaker Pelosi's demanding schedules. Judicial Watch obtained internal Pentagon correspondence that expressed frustration with the Speaker's office. One Defense Department official wrote in response to the numerous requests from her office for transportation, "Any chance of politely querying [Pelosi's team] if they really intend to do all of these or are they just picking every weekend? . . .[T]here's no need to block every weekend 'just in case' . . ." The email also notes that Pelosi's office had, "a history of canceling many of their past requests."

The emails also show that intermediaries for Speaker Pelosi frequently expressed anger when they were told transportation demands couldn't be met. "It is my understanding there are no (Gulfstream) 5's available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable . . . The speaker will want to know where the planes are," wrote Kay King, Director of the House Office of Interparliamentary Affairs. In a separate email, when told a certain type of aircraft would not be available, Ms. King wrote, "This is not good news, and we will have some very disappointed folks, as well as a very upset [s]peaker."

And I'm speechless in the face of this audacity.

Temple University targeted for political payback

Having spent the better part of last week arguing with State Senator Daylin Leach over the morality of raising taxes, the perils of public dependency on poorly provided government services and the amount of wasted taxpayer dollars, it appears I'm about to eat my words.

Kind of.

As the parent of a Temple University sophomore, I received an urgent email in my inbox yesterday from Temple stating that funding in the amount of $175 million was going to be withheld by the state legislature, which, if it happened, would necessitate a rise in tuition of $5,000 per year or 45%.

As I did not have all of the facts at my disposal, I naturally assumed that this was part of the PA Budget cuts I argued for so forcefully last week with Daylin Leach. I asked my co-worker whose daughter is starting at Pitt in a few weeks if she received a similar email, becuase I was aware that the "state affiliated" schools--Temple, Pitt, Lincoln and Penn State---had been targeted for budget cuts, but because I had just paid my daughter's tuition bill for the fall semester, I had seen that in spite of those cuts that the University had been successfulll in holding down costs and was only implementing a 2.5% increase in tuition for the 2009-10 year. Was this something new, I wondered, and was it another budget cut that was going to affect the other state-affiliated schools?

Indeed, upon researching the matter I found that Rendell had implemented funding cuts of $21 Million for this year, which, obviously, the University was unhappy about, but made the necessary adjustments to their budget. The June 30, 2009 press release from Temple's web site:

Temple University, with the other state-related universities, received bad news last week. Gov. Ed Rendell announced his intent to cut the Commonwealth’s appropriation to the four state-related universities for the coming fiscal year by 12.8 percent, and declared that Temple, Penn State, Pitt, and Lincoln universities were being cut out of federal stimulus funding. For Temple University, this would mean an appropriation cut of more than $21 million in addition to the loss of $10.5 million in expected stimulus funding.

Rendell made the announcement on Friday, as part of a sweeping series of budget cuts designed to help balance the 2009-2010 state budget, as required by the state Constitution.

(...)

While the four state-related universities were hit with the 12.8 percent appropriation reduction in the Governor’s proposal, the colleges and universities that are part of the State System of Higher Education and the community colleges were not subject to the same cuts because of requirements for the state to receive federal stimulus funding.

The Governor declared the state-related schools were “not public” because they are not under his “complete control,” and therefore could be excluded from the requirements for federal stimulus funding.

“The Governor’s position flies in the face of the Temple University-Commonwealth Act that made Temple an instrumentality of the Commonwealth and an integral part of the state’s system of higher education in 1965,” said George Moore, senior vice president and university counsel. “It also appears to contradict the terms and intent of the federal stimulus bill.

“The state of Pennsylvania has benefitted greatly from its state-related schools,” Moore added. The Governor’s position will not only do great harm to the state-related schools, but will adversely impact the many Pennsylvania students and their families who depend on us for their futures.”

I can live with the belt tightening. Indeed, I applaud it. I'm not happy about perpetual tuition increases, and, though I am very happy withthe quality of education my daughter is getting at Temple, I think that a college education in general is already overpriced, but I am willing to suck up the cost of incremental cuts if they are fiscally necessary.

This $175 million cut is something else, however. This is political payback from a local politician who is miffed at Temple for closing a hospital in his district that was on track to lose some $15 million last year:

Hundreds of Temple University students were on red alert yesterday when they learned of a legislative effort to deprive the college of $175 million in state and federal funds.

Temple officials said that the loss in funding would lead to a $5,000 increase in tuition for undergraduates, sending students into a tizzy on Facebook and Twitter.

Many were unaware that state Rep. John Taylor and other lawmakers had taken steps to make good on a pledge made several months ago, during an ill-fated battle to save Northeastern Hospital, to withhold the funds.

Temple University Health System closed the longtime Port Richmond hospital on June 30 because of financial losses.

Taylor told the Daily News on Tuesday that a bill that would provide Temple with the $175 million through a nondeferred appropriation was pulled from the House of Representatives. Bills regarding other state universities were allowed to move to the next step.

The Temple bill was scheduled to be reintroduced yesterday, but "we got it delayed again," Taylor said.

House members won't vote on appropriations for Temple and other universities until after the state budget is settled.

Two-thirds of the House must vote in favor of each school's appropriation for it to pass. Taylor said he believes that he's convinced lawmakers to vote against awarding Temple any funds.

"I think I had a lot of those votes secured way back," he said. "Once members make commitments to other members, it's hard to change that."

While I still feel like I'm compromising my principles somewhat by contacting my congressmen in support of Temple, this is not a budget issue; it's political blackmail between this congressman's ego and the University with the parents and students caught in the middle; it's not like witholding this funding is going to bring back Northeastern Hospital. But like many legislators who let their egos get in the way of their constituencies, Rep. John Taylor is only concerned with making the University sweat by withholding money that belongs to the taxpayers. He is not punishing Temple, he's punishing the students, and Temple, apparently, is well aware of that, hence the outreach to parents, student and alumni.

We budgeted my daughter's college savings payments based upon our estimates of what Temple's tuition would be. Effectively doubling that tuition will make continuing her education there impossible. This situation applies to all of Temples 27,000 students as well.

Here is Temple's new release about the witholding of funds. Temple is a great school and I urge readers to contact their representatives in support of Temple University.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

"Shark Week" returns. And this year's Darwin Award goes to....Erich Ritter!

I saw this story last night on Discovery Channel's Shark Week. Warning, the video is quite graphic, as it captures the actual attack on film; Ritter was filming a documentary for Discovery Channel to demonstrate his theory that sharks will only attack if they feel threatened. This guy stood in chest high water for 45 minutes when this happened:



Here's the report after the attack:

According to police, Ritter, 43, went into severe shock after losing a large part of his left leg. He was rushed to the airport and medivaced to a hospital in Palm Beach, Florida where a surgical team was standing by.

The shark, believed to be a 160-kg (350-pound) bull shark, attacked Ritter while he was standing in waist deep water performing for a TV adventure show film crew.

Ironically, Ritter has been one of the most strident dive industry voices arguing that commercial shark feeding activities are not dangerous.

During the dive industry's failed attempt to stop Florida's ban on shark feeding, Ritter claimed he could protect himself by modifying his heart rate and had never been bitten thanks to his expert knowledge of shark behavior.

Legitimate shark scientists scoff at Ritter's ideas and describe him as a quack.

"(Ritter) was an accident waiting to happen," said Samuel Gruber, a University of Miami professor and director of the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas. "There is no evidence to support his theories.

"He has been getting more and more fearless, or some would say bold--this method is basically to titillate TV cameras," Gruber added. "(Ritter) wants to impress people that he can control these sharks and they will never bite him."

Ritter survived and was able to keep his leg. At the end of the segment last night, Ritter did some soul searching for the camera: Is everything I know about sharks wrong?"

Eric: I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and BITES YOU ON THE ASS!

But perhaps you weren't paying attention in Shark 101, to wit:

...what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that's all.

However, against any kind of common sense, a the end of the segment we see Ritter "clearing his mind" and stepping right back into those shark infested waters.

Like Timothy Treadwell and his beloved grizzlies, animals don't want to be understood. They want to be fed.

U.S. to World: Yes, as a matter of fact, we DO negotiate with rogue nations

When asked if the U.S. would try a similar tactic for the release of the local hikers who are now being detatined in Iran, Joe Sestak had this to say about Bill Clinton's successfull negotiation of the release of Al Gore journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling (heard on Smerconish this morning)

"Every situation is different, so maybe we won't use the same tactics in
Iran, but in the case of North Korea, we know that Kim Jonng Il values prestige, status and recognition as a world power, which is why we sent him Bill Clinton"

In other words, we gave Kim exactly the prestige, status and recognition as a world power that he wanted. That photo op will will go a long way towards cementing Kim's image of himself and North Korea.

Dick Morris:

This trip gives North Korea the ability to act like the good guy in world public opinion by releasing people they shouldn’t have seized in the first place. Considering their record, bomb explosions, and missile tests, we should not be in the business of letting North Korea score propaganda victories.

The AP is spinning it this way:

The Obama administration let North Korean leader Kim Jong Il save face by releasing two jailed Americans to former President Bill Clinton. The payoff — maybe not right away — is likely to be renewed dialogue with Pyongyang about its nuclear weapons program.

And from the same AP story, Clinton was not the first choice to go to North Korea to negotiate for the release. The first choice to go was apparently unsuitably prestigious:

The White House has taken pains since Clinton's arrival in Pyongyang to play the mission as a private one designed only to win the release of Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, both with former Vice President Al Gore's Current TV media venture. They were captured while on assignment to collect material for a report about trafficking of North Korean women into China.

Bill Clinton undertook the mission, a senior administration official said, only after the North assured the White House that the reporters would be freed and allowed to return home with the former president.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail the back-channel negotiations, also said the north rejected Gore as a suitable emissary.

Gaia demands sacrifice

The wildly popular "Cash for Clunkers" program is another example of an Obamanomics zero sum game: wealth redistribution disguised as economic stimulus.

James Pethoukis is worth quoting at length:

An analysis by Macroeconomic Advisers forecasts that the program will affect only the timing of car sales, not total sales: “In particular, we expect that roughly half of the 250,000 in new sales would have occurred in the months following the conclusion of the program, and the other half would have occurred during the program period anyway. Therefore, we do not expect a boost to industry-wide production (or GDP) in response to this program.”

In other words, the program gets much of its juice via stealing car sales from the near future rather than generating additional demand. In practice, it works much like tax policies and subsidies to encourage women to have more children. Studies have found that women may have children earlier than they would otherwise, but they don’t necessarily have more kids.

The rebate program is also emblematic of the administration’s unwise approaches to economic policymaking. It borrows money to generate economic activity, which in effect borrows growth from the future, since eventually that loan will have to be paid back through higher taxes.

It picks and promotes a particular industry in a sort of small-scale industrial policy. It also places an emphasis on consumer spending as a route to renewed prosperity over greater investment — and isn’t that how the American economy got in trouble in the first place?

And for those reasons, cash for clunkers isn’t just a whimsically named government program that helps automakers clear out some inventory and generate a bit of quick cash flow, while also making average Americans feel they’re finally getting their bailout.

If that’s all it was, cash for clunkers wouldn’t be such a big deal. Rather, it is evidence that no one in Washington is learning any economic lessons. And that is a very big deal.

So what is the point? The so-called "clunkers" that are being traded in still have a bit of life left in them and could potentially be re-sold to those people who can't really afford a new car (Rich Lowry has a list of the top ten traded in "clunkers" here). Instead they are being destroyed as a sacrifice to the great Gaia in a ritual that is part of what is fast becoming a national religion.

"Let me be clear" about raising your taxes

Whenever I hear those four words---"Let me be clear"--- out of the President's mouth, I know I'm about to hear a whopper. "Let me be clear" always prefaces a statement about an issue that the press has been nagging the President about and seem to be code for; "I don't care what kind of facts or questions you have, this is my story and I'm sticking to it. Now move on to the next question." It's very effective at preventing those uncomfortable follow up questions that make the President visibly squirm.

"Let me be clear" also prefaced the famous campaign assertion that the Obama Administration was not going to raise taxes on the middle class. Specifically, anyone making less than $250,000 a year “will not see their taxes increase by a single dime” if he was elected.

But now, it looks like that promise, like so many others, has fallen by the wayside as the unsustainability of these poorly run government programs starts to finally take it's toll.

From today's WSJ:

Asked about raising taxes on the middle class on Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” White House economist Larry Summers wouldn’t repeat Mr. Obama’s pre-election promise. “It is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out no matter what,” Mr. Summers said—except, apparently, when his boss is running for office. Meanwhile, on ABC’s “This Week,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also slid around Mr. Obama’s vow and said, “We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically. And that’s going to require some very hard choices.”

These aren’t even nondenial denials. The Obama advisers are laying the groundwork for taxing the middle class while claiming the deficit made them do it.

The liberal establishment is even further along in finally admitting that Mr. Obama wasn’t, er, telling the truth. A piece in the New York Times over the weekend declared in a headline that “the Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say.” And it quoted Leonard Burman, a veteran of the Clinton Treasury who now runs the Brookings Tax Policy Center, as saying that “This idea that everything new that government provides ought to be paid for by the top 5%, that’s a basically unstable way of governing.” They’re right, but where were they during the campaign?

Aside from raising Federal taxes, one of the strategies that the Obama administration has been successful at using is passing along some of this tax raising to the States. By creating Federal mandates and attaching strings to "stimulus" money, States are forced to use this money for NEW spending instead of filling their budget gaps. (this is what Mark Sanford was fighting against so effectively until the Argentinian girlfriend meltdown) So if the state has to raise your taxes, it doesn't look like its the Obama Admistration's fault.

More from WSJ:

Democrats have already taxed the middle class by raising cigarette taxes to pay for the children’s health-care expansion. They’re also teeing up average earners with their cap-and-tax energy bill. Mr. Obama had hoped that cap-and-tax would raise some $646 billion over a decade, but Democrats in the House had to give most of that away in bribes to business to pass their bill. To finance ObamaCare, they’re also proposing another 10-percentage-point increase in the payroll tax on firms and individuals that don’t purchase health insurance. But this won’t raise enough money either.

So waiting in the wings is the biggest middle-class tax increase of them all: a European-style value added tax, or VAT. This tax would apply to every level of production or service, and it is beloved by politicians in Europe because it raises so much money so easily without voters noticing. Ezekiel Emanuel, a White House aide and brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has advocated a 10% VAT to finance national health care. Look for a VAT to be one of the prominent options when Mr. Obama’s tax reform commission issues its report later this year.

Conservatives knew that Obama was a radical liberal who would raise your taxes. We never believed the $250,000 cap. But we were scoffed at for not getting on board the hope and change express, for not buying into the radical liberal in moderates clothing.

If there is anything at all that should be "clear" by now it's that the grand remaking of our nation into a Euro-socialist state was the Obama plan all along.

Nobody is talking about some government takeover of healthcare....anymore

But they were. Oh yes, they were.



H/T Hot Air

Dirty Profits

I was remiss in not posting this bit from Henninger's WSJ column on Friday:

I don’t think the White House or the Democratic leadership understands the level of despondency in the country now among people who add new wealth—business owners, entrepreneurs or those who invest in new ideas that don’t depend wholly on subsidized choices made by the public sector.

This is all many people in the most dynamic corners of the private sector talk about now. Their beef is not with recession but the feeling that this presidency and Congress have no interest in them. If we get another jobless recovery, we’ll need the job-creating impulses of these people. The do-good but not-for-profit mentality of the current government looks either hostile to or oblivious of these private-sector fast runners.

It must be the fact that I'm re-reading "Atlas Shrugged" right now; I'm seeing it everywhere.

The First Amendment as it was intended

Maybe I'm just looking for the silver lining in the dark world of impending socialism, but it seems to me that the worm is turning. Arrogant politicians at every level are on the defensive because the worst has happened: the public has woken up. Watch the indignation of the East Norriton Township Supervisors as the husband and wife team of Nick and Diane (nice job, guys!) dare to demand accountability for political shenanigans:

I know, I know. How dare members of the great unwashed think they are worthy to ask questions of the tin pot dictators of East Norriton? Such audacity. Of course, these guys are only township supervisors.

It's not like they are State Senators, like this guy. Because you really shouldn't question State Senators. You shouldn't respond to a ridiculously arrogant assertion that Pennsylvanians are eager to have their taxes raised lest they lose out on all those efficiently administered government programs. No, when a State Senator makes an assertion like that, you should always remember that he operates on a higher moral plane. And please make sure to keep your tone reverent.

Of course, U.S. Senators are a completely different matter.

Go ahead. Watch it again. It never gets old.

We are still Americans and we know we have a right to question our leaders. The most dangerous among us know that the First Amendment was not written so that Larry Flynt can make a fortune on skin magazines; we know that freedom of speech was intended primarily for political speech and for questioning our leaders. Just like this.

They thought we weren't paying attention and that we were so soft, ignorant and dependent on their pathetically delivered programs that it would be easy to roll this country into socialism without a fight. They were wrong.

Skip Gates: Next stop, under the bus

The official White House Post Beer Summit photo that's worth a thousand words.

After that planted question about Gates' arrest at the nationally televised health care press conference, and Obama's preprared answer to the planted question, how do you think Obama feels now about this crank "distracting" the nation from his health care agenda now that the whole race-baiting issue has blown up in his face?

Say hello to grandma and Reverend Wright for us, Professor Gates.

P.S. As has become customary, Sgt Crowley is the only one exhibiting class.

H/T The Corner and read the American Thinker's thoughts on this as well.

Taxation as morality

With each passing day it seems we fall further into a world created by Ayn Rand. Seems many of our lawmakers, like this one, have a pretty well developed Robin Hood complex, which allows them to rationalize taxing the "rich" to "help" the "poor" as the height of moral turpitude.

As the alarming chart above above illustrates, (shamelessly lifted from Three Sources) taxing the rich to pay for the poor is a trend that has been quite socially acceptable for some time. It is also unsustainable.

Coincidentally, I came across this quote at M.D.O.D. on the same night as Three Sources posted this chart and thought it illustrated the concept perfectly:

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it." -- Adrian Rogers

And the incomparable Mark Steyn basically echoes my point to the obtuse Senator Leach with his Happy Warrior column in this week's National Review (Link for subscribers only)

The end game is very obvious. If you expand the bureaucratic class and you expand the dependent class, you can put together a permanent electoral majority. By “dependent,” I don’t mean merely welfare, although that’s a good illustration of the general principle. In political terms, a welfare check is a twofer: You’re assuring the votes both of the welfare recipient and of the vast bureaucracy required to process his welfare. But extend that principle further, to the point where government intrudes into everything: A vast population is receiving more from government (in the form of health care or education subventions) than it thinks it contributes while another vast population is managing the ever-expanding regulatory regime (a federal energy-efficiency code, a government health bureaucracy) and yet another vast population remains, nominally, in the private sector but, de facto, dependent on government patronage of one form or another — say, the privately owned franchisee of a government automobile company, or the designated “community assistance” organization for helping poor families understand what programs they’re eligible for. In any case, what you get from government — whether in the form of a government paycheck, a government benefit, or a government contract — is a central fact of your life.

The government's only source of income is the taxation of it's citizens; politicians do not give you anything they have not first taken away from someone who has earned it. As our politicians grow increasingly bold and arrogant in cloaking taxation in terms of morality, it is increasingly incumbent upon the electorate to shatter this idea.

Ragnar Danneskjöld would approve.