The Victorious Opposition

I’m sure by now most of you have seen or heard about the keynote address delivered by Glenn Beck at this years Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  Despite a killer speech by George Will, it seems Mr. Beck is the one who got all the attention, calling on conservatives to have a “come-to-Jesus” moment.  Beck expressed a lot of the feeling many of us share here at the VO, including the need for the GOP to own up to its failures and win back the trust of the American people.

Perhaps Beck’s critics were surprised to hear such criticism levied at Republicans, but I was not.  Like many “intellectual” conservatives, I’ve found myself distancing myself from Beck, calling his rhetoric “over the top” and counterproductive to the cause.  But ever since I got his latest book (”Arguing with Idiots:  How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government”) for Christmas, my opinion of him has slowly been changing for the better.  That positive change in opinion crystallized when I gave Beck an entire hour of my open-minded attention by watching his CPAC speech (which is probably more than many of his critics have given).

Granted, I did not agree with everything he said.  I am especially disappointed at his criticism of my favorite President, Theodore Roosevelt, for reasons that are better explained by someone more knowledgeable and eloquent than me.  But the man made many great points, drawing on facts and history to stitch together a compelling narrative that explains much of the predicament our country and the conservative movement find themselves in.  I was especially moved by this passage from a post by JE Dyer at HotAir:

Conservative commentators fill different roles, and sensitizing his audience to history is – surprisingly, perhaps, for a self-styled rodeo clown – a key element of Beck’s.  He gets it right more often than not, and he highlights things no one else with such an audience does, like the history demonstrating the essential, philosophical antithesis of left-progressivism and limited-government constitutionalism – and the fact, known by hardly anyone today, that presidents as revered as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were on the side of the former.

The popularizing of rare intellectual insights is never pretty.  But it’s necessary.  I’d rather it were happening than not, especially in such a time as this.

What Dyer and other commentators seem to be getting at is that Beck serves an important role in the resurgent conservative movement.  His equal-opportunity criticism of Republicans as well as Democrats is helping to keep the conservative movement honest, and conveys arguments and sentiment that are shared by a large number of Americans.  He has been ringing the bell for some time about the “day of reckoning” that many of us know is coming—where we finally feel the consequences of the fiscally unsustainable and statist course our country is on.  It’s clear from reading his book and watching his speech that he seriously studies the lessons of history and is trying his damnedest to make sure that we don’t repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past.

So maybe Beck isn’t the imbecilic blowhard everyone seems to think he is.  I, for one, will be paying a little closer attention to what he has to say.

By now, you’re aware of the plane crash in Austin, almost certainly directed at the IRS.  Other sites have been swearing that this is the pilot’s suicide e-note, so I’m going to run with it.

Take a few moments and read it.  Note: the FBI had gotten the original message on Stack’s website removed by the server (talk about feeding into the paranoia).  I’ve changed the link.

What a scathing indictment of our entire political/economic system.  Reading this guy’s story and how he just got left feeling fucked over and had to do something drastic to settle the score was the heaviest experience I’ve had in months.  This paragraph really got me:

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything.  Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”.  Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.

I read the whole note carefully, looking for signs that this guy was some kind of evil lunatic and couldn’t find any.  We want to assume that a person who does something like this is irredeemable but all I see is a regular guy who got pushed too far and didn’t know what else to do.  He was hurting and wanted to make other people hurt too.  I’m not sure why burning down his own house with his family inside was something he felt he had to do but it is easy for me to see how someone who felt completely helpless could be driven to this, particularly at the IRS.  Even though Stack bitterly criticized the Bush Administration, I don’t see anything really political or ideological in the note.  He felt like he was getting fucked by Big Government and Big Business, Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue all the same.  Reading his story, I really wanted to sympathize.

Maybe it makes me a bad person, but when I heard in early reports that he had slammed the plane into an FBI building, my first reaction was, “Oh, no!”  When I saw it corrected to say that it was an IRS building, I was actually relieved and thought, “Yeah, no surprise there” before realizing how fucked up that was. I was even disturbed by my own initial reaction.

To me, what this all comes down to is that millions of Americans are really hurting right now, they’re very frustrated at what business and government are doing, it’s probably going to get worse, and there are probably a lot more Joe Stack’s running around.  No, he’s not a hero and nobody should make him out to be one.  Killing yourself and others while putting your family in danger and making them homeless at the same time is the very apex of douchebaggery.  Stack also should not be used by any political side to score points against another one.  If you can say anything nice about the man, you can admit that he was non-partisan and independent at the bitter end.

Again, I am not saying that Stack is any sort of hero and if anyone deserves sympathy, it’s his family, his victims, and their families.  Nonetheless, I just have to wonder if we really have created an “American nightmare” that we’re pretending doesn’t exist; that drove a working, self-employed middle-class man to a desperate terrorist act.  Stack’s note has, more than anything, has left me feeling worried.

Some people really do live and die by the adage that a dollar is not useful until it is spent, and on Capital Hill, tapping unused TARP money is proving more fun than finding spare change under a couch cushion.

A little background, White House budget director Peter Orszag went to The Hill the other day with outstretched hands and a few choice suggestions on what to do with the remainder of the unused TARP slush fund, notably, to skim some off the top to fund Obama’s new business credit legislation. We should remember, this is not Stimulus money, money set aside to put the economy on better footing with new job creation, this is TARP money, money set aside to prop up a failing financial sector and free up credit. Some could argue that the banking system still needs assistance and is not where it should be, but most bank loans have been paid back, with interest ,so that catastrophe has been averted.

I’m not real big on congressional hearing grandstanding, showing the folks back home that their pit bull is on the job, but some of these clowns need to be chastised.

And did everyone catch the significance of the ending? The guy at the end that says ,“That is how laws are made, congress passes them”, I think that was Bernie Sanders, he is telling everyone that congress can give Orszag the authority to go against the TARP provisions of paying down the debt with unused or re couped funds. Essentially, nothing is binding, in any legislation if congress decides to make a switchero. It really is their money, and don’t you forget it.

I’ve written a number of posts about various times I’ve written my elected representatives (primarily around health care, budget reconciliation, etc). Sometimes they go into a black hole, sometimes I get a form letter response, and sometime I actually get a thoughtful response that makes it clear that they read and understood my issue. Then there’s this story…

Earlier today I got an email from Planned Parenthood, regarding a bill that passed our House of Delegates yesterday, and asking that I write to my delegate to express my concern about his “Yes” vote. Since I’m pro-choice, and this bill would have significant impact on access to first-trimester abortions, it’s in the realm of things that get my dander up. So I went to their website and looked up the bill, and who my delegate was (TBH, he’s new and I don’t really know anything about him). And then I sent off the letter as they requested.

A couple hours ago, I got an email from my Delegate’s office, explaining that he had actually cast his “yes” vote in error, and has filed the paperwork with the clerk to change his vote.

A few minutes ago, I got a phone call. From my Delegate (not some representative thereof). Explaining the mistake that he and several other freshman Delegates made in the procedures they were unfamiliar with for recording votes on a range of bills (there are apparently a bunch of formalistic no-debate bills that get mechanically recorded, and then when this one came up, they thought it was another of the prior batch), and all of them have filed paperwork to get their votes switched. He wanted to make sure I understood what had happened and what his position was, and to make sure that I contacted him directly with any future questions.

Well. How about that? I’ve had a decent amount of communication with my state Senator over the last few years, and had communication with my Delegate a number of years ago (sufficient that I continued to vote for her in subsequent elections - the first Republican I routinely cast my vote for). But my new Delegate I’d never heard from before, and he’d never heard from me before. And I not only got an email response to my email, but a personal phone call as well.

Odds are exceptionally high that this guy will be getting my vote in the future.

Happy Frickin’ Anniversary, Mr. President!

We have talked about term limits many times here. Not only is new blood required (and essential for infusing new ideas into age old problems) but it is also synonymous to the prevailing wisdom of those that shaped and instituted our new government. Career politicians (those that would enrich themselves to the detriment of their constituency) was about as foreign and abhorrent as a re pledging of loyalty to King George. A public serving was always viewed as a patriotic duty, not an avocation onto itself.

And Pelosi is not the only fat career politician who feels an entitled well beyond those that elected here. Sen. Chuck Schumer exchanged pleasantries with a flight attendant last month.

According to a House Republican aide who happened to be seated nearby, the notoriously chatty New York Democrat referred to a flight attendant as a “bitch” after she ordered him to turn off his phone before takeoff.

Schumer and his seatmate, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), were chatting on their phones before takeoff when an announcement indicated that it was time to turn off the phones.

Both senators kept talking.

According to the GOP aide, a flight attendant then approached Schumer and told him the entire plane was waiting on him to shut down his phone.

Schumer asked if he could finish his conversation. When the flight attendant said “no,” Schumer ended his call but continued to argue his case.

He said he was entitled to keep his phone on until the cabin door was closed. The flight attendant said he was obliged to turn it off whenever a flight attendant asked.

“He argued with her about the rule,” the source said. “She said she doesn’t make the rules, she just follows them.” 

No doubt Chucky was on the phone with Blackwater, trying to strike a better deal for baby sitting KSM during his trial.

And who could forget the wrestling match Rep. Cynthia McKinney got into with a US Capital police officer as she tried to jump the line, doesn’t he know who she is? what a racist.

These people are not royalty, nor are they privileged, and when they lose site of this and their view of their own self worth gets skewed, the people should bring them back to reality with a pink slip.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but this makes me cringe:

President Obama set a new record last year for getting Congress to vote his way, according to an annual study by Congressional Quarterly.

In his first year in office, Obama won 96.7 percent of the votes on which he had clearly staked a position.

That was a bit less than 4 percentage points higher than the previous record, set by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

...

In the House, Obama won 68 votes and lost four.

...

In the Senate, Obama won 78 votes and lost one.

I don’t care who the President is, what party he is, etc. I didn’t like it when Bush had a rubber-stamp GOP Congress, I didn’t like the idea of Obama having a rubber-stamp Congress, and I sure don’t like the results. I strongly disapprove of single-party rule, and stand by my Vote For Gridlock mantra. The Executive and Legislature are supposed to be checks and balances on each other, not rubber-stamp.

This analysis of the Congressional Quarterly data includes a chart going back 50+ years. Clinton and Bush had 80-90% rubber-stamp from their single-party-rule tenures; Obama looks to be 10 points higher than Bush’s highest (I can’t find the raw data, so that’s from eyeballing the chart).

Given how much of his party disagrees with his positions (he’s too conservative for the far-left wing, too fiscally-free for the “blue dogs”, etc), what we see here is the effect of partisan politics. It’s more important to vote with your party than to vote your own positions, it seems. Such partisan orthodoxy serves the country ill.

Having already booked two trips this summer, one international and one domestic, I am really looking forward to getting there 4 hours early just to get groped by sweaty minimum wagers too stupid to know when to remove the fry cooker from the grease (Hint: its when that loud buzzer goes off). Alright. I’m not being fair, I admit, half these people could score a greeting job at Walmart, or stock shelves at Home Depot, even without the forklift training.

And since I am about as lilly white as they come, ditto family in tow, I can expect some tag teaming that would make Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan jealous. I will be sporting my “I give it up for TSA workers” underwear so that my full body scans will be enjoyable.

It’s times like these that I wish Texas (with all the accouterments that goes with it) incorporated an airlines. Texas Air, where everyone is packing, and if you even look Arab, there will be several dozen pairs of eyeballls on you non stop, so tear open that bag of peanuts very slowly.

H/T: reason.tv

From CNN today:

Top Democrats are prepared to short-circuit the traditional legislative process and exclude their Republican counterparts during final congressional health care deliberations, senior Democratic sources have told CNN.

Democrats are trying to prevent the Republicans from using Senate rules to slow the push for final passage of a comprehensive reform bill, the sources added.

...

Formal House-Senate negotiations, under the ordinary legislative process, would likely have started shortly after both houses of Congress reconvene. Democratic concerns over the GOP’s ability to slow the process, however, may result in the traditional process being replaced with informal, high-level talks, sources stated.

Via Congress.org, I sent the following note to the President, my Senators and my Representative, with the same title as this post:

In August, 2008, in a town hall meeting, candidate Obama said “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. ... what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

PolitiFact.com has already called this out for the broken promise that the “health care reform” process has been. But the administration and Democratic Congressional leadership continue to take this even farther. It is difficult to put into words how astonished I was to read today that the leadership is going to exclude the opposition party from the negotiation process by holding private negotiations, bypassing the normal conference committee process.

This is the most repugnant step yet in what has been a repugnant process. Both parties deserve to be held up for their ill behavior in this process. Besides the lack of openness promised by candidate Obama, we have “we won, get over it” from the Democrats, and the “party of no” from the GOP. We have “you lie” from a GOP Representative, and “they want you to die” from a Democrat Representative. We have lies, spin, deception and scare tactics from both parties about what’s in and what’s out. And at the end, we have Democratic leadership buying off members of their own party to get the bill passed in the Senate.

There is much common ground to be had on health care reform issues. But rather than trying to craft a bill that starts from the common ground, the administration and the Democratic leadership have tried to redefine an entire industry and massive portion of our economy, with no consensus within even their own party.

I’ve written before about the budget reconciliation issue that has been proposed to get this bill passed, and I am pleased to see that, at least so far, the Democratic leadership has avoided going this route. As I said in those notes - the Democrats have a virtual super-majority (58 + 2 independents). If you cannot get 3 people to vote with your near-super-majority then maybe, just maybe, the bill doesn’t deserve to be passed.

I call on my representatives to oppose this latest abuse of power. It is better that nothing be passed than have this horrid process, with its horrid legislation, be brought to such a horrid conclusion.

I am a political independent, and this process has reinforced for me why an am such, and why I will remain such. Please pull back from this partisan power play before it is too late.

Sincerely,
dwex

I see via Fox that C-SPAN is calling out the President:

The head of C-SPAN has implored Congress to open up the last leg of health care reform negotiations to the public, as top Democrats lay plans to hash out the final product among themselves.

C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate Dec. 30 urging them to open “all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings,” to televised coverage on his network.

“The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of the sessions LIVE and in their entirety,” he wrote.

In a Tuesday afternoon press conference on health legislation negotiations, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared to object to the premise behind the request.

“There has never been a more open process for any legislation in anyone who’s served here’s experience,” she said.

If that’s true, that’s about the most damning condemnation of Congress I’ve ever heard from one of its leadership.

In the aftermath of the failed terrorist attack on American Airlines flight 253, news continues to break.  We’ve seen pictures and read details of the sophisticated, but thankfully defective, underwear bomb worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  Most recently we learned that two of the four alleged leaders of the plot were released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay in 2007, which surely throws a wrench into the politically-sensitive nature of that facility.  But for many, the biggest questions have to do with the government’s involvement in preparing for and responding to the attack.

In yesterday’s Sunday Morning Roundup, we watched Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano firmly state that “the system worked,” also implying that the response of the passengers was part of the system (which isn’t necessarily wrong, but is news to me and many other people).  But a new day means a new talking point for this administration, as the Secretary makes a “hard pivot” to declare that what she really meant to say when she said the system worked was that the system had actually failed:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I’m glad the Secretary has finally come around, and realized that the system that allowed this man to board a plane to the United States is a system that failed.  The only thing that saved the passengers and crew on that flight was the failure of Abdulmutallab’s explosive panties.  The Secretary says they are looking into the reasons for the failure of the system, but it doesn’t take a government study to see what policies are no more than security theater.  Check out this audio recording of a pilot announcing the ridiculous policies that do nothing to make us safer and wouldn’t even have stopped Abdulmutallab himself:

“Sterile zones”?  Nothing in your lap for the last hour of a flight?  It’s ridiculous, but folks, this is what our government has turned into.  But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  Don’t be surprised when, besides the financial system, housing, health care and energy, homeland security returns as a target of ever more intrusive government.

Update (dwex): I hope zoomzoom is OK with me sticking this here rather than creating a separate post. Saw this on Fox this morning:

A former head of El Al pointing out the counter-productivity of the TSA’s security measures.

I expected to the DoJ to let the ACORN Bill of Attainder ruling stand without argument. However, they’re taking an interesting tack:

While a federal judge previously ordered a preliminary injunction on that ban, the Justice Department this afternoon asked a New York District Court to revisit that ruling in light of new facts unearthed from ACORN’s own internal review.

Those details, wrote the department, “might reasonably be expected to alter the Court’s previous conclusions, and the Court should reconsider its injunction as a result.”

In other words, instead appealing the decision, they are asking the District Court judge to reconsider her ruling using ACORN’s own internal investigation against them. This is intriguing at a number of levels. ACORN clearly paid for a mostly-favorable pseudo-analysis to demonstrate “hey, just some bad actors, nothing systemic to see here.” Yet the DoJ is elevating the severity of the conclusions of that whitewash, contending that this is enough to provide the basis for the Congressional action.

I’m speculating, but my guess is that the DoJ is going this route because taking this to appeal is likely a complete lose. The case for a Bill of Attainder is made pretty well in the decision discussed in my previous post. The government winning on appeal is probably fairly unlikely. But if they can get the District Court to reconsider the ruling, using this new information as a basis to modify the decision, then they can skate around the Bill of Attainder question and win indirectly.

I wonder why they’re not just letting this go, or taking it to a no-win appeal. ACORN must have really peed on some peoples’ cornflakes or something.

H/T: The Volokh Conspiracy

Wow. Things are getting way ugly in the Democratic party trying to get a health care reform bill passed in the Senate.

First topic - a move is afoot to change the rules of cloture to make it easier to break GOP filibusters:

Given what he sees as the abuse of power by a couple members of his own party whom he said are threatening to join the minority party if their every demand is not met, Harkin is considering reintroducing the legislation.

“I think, if anything, this health care debate is showing the dangers of unlimited filibuster,” Harkin said Thursday during a conference call with reporters. “I think there’s a reason for slowing things down ... and getting the public aware of what’s happening and maybe even to change public sentiment, but not to just absolutely stop something.”

...

He said for instance if 60 senators could not agree to end debate, it would carry on for another week or so and then the number of votes required to end debate would drop by three. Harkin said it would carry on this way until it reached a simple majority of 51 votes.

“You could hold something up for maybe a month, but then, finally you’d come down to 51 votes and a majority would be able to pass,” Harkin said. “I may revive that. I pushed it very hard at one time and then things kind of got a little better.”

I think I’m gonna break out the “H” word here and call Harkin a hypocrite, even though it is the same legislation he introduced fifteen years ago. The difference? Then, his party was the minority, and this legislation would have reduced the power of his own minority party to hold up the work of Congress - something most of us would probably consider commendable. This time, his party has a near super-majority (everyone says the Democrats have a supermajority, but fail to recall that it’s actually 58-40-2). He’s basically introducing this as a way to ensure that his majority party gets its way, not some altruistic ideal of making Congress more efficient. So he gets the “hypocrite” banner of the day.

Second item - It appears Harry Reid is refusing to use reconciliation:

A couple of months ago I wrote about the debate over whether the legislation defunding ACORN was a Bill of Attainder. Having earlier been denied in their request for a Temporary Restraining Order, on Friday, they were granted a preliminary injunction (PDF file) barring the Federal government from implementing the law:

ACORN’s critics consider it responsible for fraud, tax evasion, and election violations, and members of Congress have argued that precluding ACORN from federal funding is necessary to protect taxpayer money. ACORN, by contrast, while acknowledging that it has made mistakes, characterizes itself as an organization dedicated to helping the poor, and argues that it has been the object of a partisan attack against its mission. This case does not involve resolution of these contrasting views. It concerns only the means Congress may use to effect its goals. Nor does this case depend upon whether Congress has the right to protect the public treasury from fraud, waste and abuse; it unquestionably does. The question here is only whether the Constitution allows Congress to declare that a single, named organization is barred from all federal funding in the absence of a trial. Because it does not, and because the plaintiffs have shown the likelihood of irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, I grant the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

(retyped from PDF image file; any typos are mine).

The order notes that the SCOTUS has only found an illegal Bill of Attainder five times, so odds are quite high that this case is going to the SCOTUS. The court bases its finding on the following:

Last spring I wrote about Rep. Joe Barton’s BCS tirade, comparing the BCS to Communism and threatening legislation if they didn’t voluntarily reform it to a playoff system. Well, H.R.390 was passed today by a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee:

Aggrieved college football fans scored a touchdown today: a congressional panel advanced a bill that slaps down the post-season bowl championship series.

A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a bill that would prohibit the Bowl Championship Series, a collective arrangement of most Division I college football teams, from marketing any merchandise or game as a national championship unless it is the result of a playoff series.

...

Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas), a main sponsor of the legislation, said the bill is designed to send a message to administrators of the bowl series that fans want a more equitable way to determine a national champion and distribute revenue among colleges. And he noted the bill does not dictate exactly how college football arranges its post-season play. “The BCS will eventually get there,” Barton said. “You shouldn’t have to hit the mule over the head too many times.”

Only one lawmaker, Rep. John Barrow (D., Ga.), registered his opposition when the bill passed on a voice vote. “I don’t like the BCS system any more than anybody else does,” Barrow said, “but I think going so far to make it a law is a little bit overboard.”

OK, so wait a second. This bill is sponsored by someone with a 94% lifetime conservative rating, and the only vote against it is someone with a 41% lifetime rating (24% in 2008). Remember me mentioning the world of politics being all topsy-turvy? When everyone except a very liberal Democrat votes for a clear nanny-state bill (not to mention an utterly irrelevant one), what the hell is going on?

Let’s look at the operative portions of this bill:

A lot has (rightly) been made about the length of various boondoggle bills like ARRA and the House and Senate healthcare bills. There’s a whole “read the bill” movement going on to go along with it. It turns out that this is actually a bipartisan behavior for boondoggle bills. Take a look at the final version of the No Child Left Behind Act bill (H.R. 1 of the 107th Congress) - it’s over 1600 pages (huge PDF file). Good grief. What is it with these people? As I mentioned when I linked the Senate version of the healthcare bill, the original Social Security Act was on the order 65 pages.

I wonder if the increase in the average length of boondoggle bills is correlated to the rate of inflation…