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Those who seek to understand why the GOP has lost three special congressional elections in 2008 in supposedly solidly Republican districts should read Peggy Noonan's column in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal. The former Reagan speechwriter notes a quote from a Republican leader regarding the latest of the losses and adds a sharp retort that gets to the heart of why the party of Goldwater and Reagan is in its death throes as an effective vehicle of conservative reform: "This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told The New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.(emphasis mine) Exactly. Republican leaders, including President Bush and most of the party's congressional leaders, have for years talked the talk of being conservatives, but have hypocritically avoided walking the walk on virtually all the major domestic issues. Faithful readers of this blog will recall a discussion from a couple years back between the "Tapscottians" and "Geraghtyites," as dubbed by Hugh Hewitt. I've purposely kept quiet on this issue since then out of hope that House Minority Leader John Boehner would somehow succeed in restoring the fighting spirit of the congressional wing of the GOP. Boehner has made a valiant effort, to be sure, but as I feared the rot is just too deep, as is seen in developments like the failure to secure a GOP consensus on behalf of a no-strings-attached earmark moratorium and the fact more House Republicans voted for the $300 billion Farm Bill giveway than opposed it. The present era feels very much like the 1974-76 time period, but with one massive difference. The Watergate election of 74 and Jimmy Carter's ascension in 76 were the just desserts of the traditional "moderate" Nixon/Ford wing of the GOP. There was still hope in the smoking ruins , though, because we conservatives knew Reagan was coming back and that the nation would be with him when he would won the 1980 nomination. This is different because there is no Reagan waiting in the wings to rebuild a shattered, demoralized, rightfully discredited party of political hollow men, hacks and lobbyists. John McCain may be elected president in November, but it will only happen by default and it will make absolutely no difference in the long-term future of either the GOP or the conservative movement. We conservatives hitched our fortunes to the GOP in 1960 because Barry Goldwater was a Republican. We stayed with the party because more often than not it provided a credible possibility of winning elections and gaining opportunities to implement conservative reforms. A for a few years, we actually got some of those reforms passed into law. But through it all, the voices of the pragmatists were always there, preaching compromise and warning of extremism. During Bush I, they frittered away their Reagan inheritance. Then, after the 94 revolution, many more who claimed to be conservative leaders turned out to be instead willing captives of the Washington Establishment. And they used their office to destroy the party's public credibility. I'd say they've thoroughly succeeded because after this November the wreckage they will leave behind won't be worth Mr. Garner's proverbial warm bucket of spit. Politics |
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Three special interests with the tightest grip on Democrats are the teachers unions, Big Labor and the plaintiffs bar. If any one of this powerful trio were to lose political effectiveness - i.e. money, media access and campaign volunteers on the ground - it would be a major blow to the Democrats. Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers are being challenged to serve the public interests rather than the plaintiffs bar's interest by convening an investigation of the Milberg Weiss scandal and its implications for the legal system every American depends upon for justice. House Minority Leader John Boehner issued the following letter to Pelosi and Conyers earlier today: Congress of the United States House of Representatives May 2, 2008
The Honorable John Conyers, Jr. Committee on the Judiciary 2138 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Chairman Conyers:
On May 19, 2008, trial attorney William Lerach is expected to report to federal prison to begin serving the prison term he received after pleading guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy in conjunction with a class action scheme involving his former law firm, formerly known as Milberg Weiss. This development will be the latest milestone in a steadily unfolding scandal that points to a cancerous growth within our nation’s economy -- an economic threat the United States Congress has a responsibility to address at a time when middle class families and small businesses are struggling.
According to federal investigators, Milberg Weiss officials masterminded a $250 million illegal kickback scheme involving their clients, and then lied in court about their actions. “The scope and the breadth of this conspiracy was breathtaking,’’ said U.S. District Judge John Walter, who sentenced Mr. Lerach, adding that the crimes involved go “to the core of our judicial system.”
More disturbingly, Mr. Lerach himself told the Wall Street Journal his illegal conduct and that of his law partners was an “industry practice.” At his sentencing, one of his supporting letters quoted Mr. Lerach as saying, “Everybody was paying plaintiffs so they could bring their cases.”
The Milberg Weiss trial lawyer scandal has implications for every American, particularly at a time when our economy is struggling and the triple threat of excessive regulation, taxation, and litigation is pushing jobs overseas. The costs of the crimes involved in the Milberg Weiss scandal are ultimately borne by innocent American taxpayers, workers, and employers -- the very Americans being tossed about in the current economic storm. If in fact Mr. Lerach’s crimes are an “industry practice,” then the Milberg Weiss scandal has revealed a clear and present threat to our nation’s prosperity. The United States Congress has an obligation to take action -- by holding hearings to determine the extent of the trial lawyer scandal and the threat to our economy, identifying appropriate legislative remedies, and sending them to the President without delay.
It has already been documented that securities class action lawsuits such as those that bankrolled Milberg Weiss are cheating American taxpayers by disproportionately clogging the court system and consuming a wasteful share of judicial resources. Federal securities class actions are brought more than four times as often as any other single type of federal class action, and account for almost half of all such class actions in the United States (Comm. on Capital Markets Regulation, Interim Report 74, Nov. 2006). Securities class action lawsuits are also on the rise, with the number of filings in 2007 increasing 58 percent over the previous year’s number (Stephanie Plancich et al., NERA Econ. Consulting, Recent Trends in Shareholder Class Actions: Filings Return to 2005 Levels as Subprime Cases Take Off; Average Settlements Hit New High 2; Dec. 2007).
Evidence also exists that the threat of such litigation has been preventing the creation of new American jobs and pushing them instead to other nations. International employers with the potential to invest and create high-paying jobs in the United States have been turning elsewhere, driven away from America’s shores by the fear of becoming ensnared in the sort of bogus, predatory litigation perfected by Milberg Weiss during its rise to power. A recently-released study by the London-based firm Lovells found that international employers believe the threat of becoming embroiled in frivolous, job-killing litigation is greater in the United States than in any other major nation (Lindeman, Ralph; “In-House Counsel for EU Companies Cite Disputes in U.S. as Key Concern,” Bureau of National Affairs’ Daily Report for Executives; March 20, 2008). The study, according to BNA, indicated international employers are troubled by “the complex relationship [in the United States] between state and federal courts, legal costs, the time involved, the extreme and demanding discovery process, the inability to recover costs even if one is successful and the potential for punitive damages.” Respondents also cited the “multiplicity of courts, prosecutors and regulators at the state and federal levels as well as a tradition of targeting corporations as well as individuals in criminal cases -- effectively using criminal investigation and prosecution as a form of regulation,” according to BNA.
Even the far-left publication “Mother Jones” has written that “[l]arge corporations have long argued that class action lawyers are nothing more than extortionists who shake down big companies every time their stocks fall, forcing them to settle or risk fiscal ruin from a big jury verdict. Given what’s known now about how Lerach operated his law firm, it’s hard to say that the perception is only spin.” (Mencimer, Stephanie; “The Fall of a Corporate Crime Fighter,” Feb. 14, 2008)
The Republican-led Congress responded aggressively to the Enron and WorldCom scandals earlier this decade. Now the Democrat-led Congress needs to do its job and examine the scandal at Milberg Weiss, which potentially has deeper and more far-reaching implications. Nearly three months have passed since Mr. Lerach was sentenced, but this Congress has yet to conduct even a single hearing to determine the extent to which crimes such as his are occurring in the rest of the industry.
If in fact the crimes committed by Mr. Lerach and his colleagues are an “industry practice,” as Mr. Lerach himself confessed, then the United States Congress is sitting idle while criminal behavior in the trial lawyer industry threatens American jobs and feeds like a parasite on the prosperity of working families. The American people deserve answers.
· How many of these cases are brought as a result of illegal payments to plaintiffs?
· What other types of conflicts exist between trial lawyers and the injured investors they purport to represent?
· What reforms should Congress enact to eradicate these abuses from our judicial system?
We respectfully request that the House Committee on the Judiciary schedule a hearing by May 19 to begin the process of answering these questions in a complete and bipartisan way. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
cc: The Honorable Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Speaker of the House |
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It is unlikely that any other individual in American politics has been more ignorantly criticized on the editorial and news pages of the nation's major dailies during the past week than North Carolina Republican state chairman Linda Daves, as a result of the now-infamous "Obama is too extreme" television spot. For example, The New York Times news reporter Michael Luo, for example, opined under his news byline that the "the ad a injects a potentially divisive racial element" in North Carolina's upcoming Democratic presidential primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Luo thus echoed Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean's claim that the ad was "racially divisive." But how exactly can a television spot be racially anything when it only makes two factually unchallengeable statements and offers one entirely reasonable opinion about the implications of those two statements for North Carolina voters? Now Daves is challenging her media critics (and those elsewhere) by demanding equal time. She's asking them to publish her response. My prediction is that fewer than half of them will. In any case, here's Daves' response: In Defense of Our Ad By Linda Daves I flatly reject the accusations of racism directed at our party by the left-leaning editorial boards that have condemned our “Extreme” ad in the last week. From the beginning of this controversy, both in my public statements and my private conversations, I have repeatedly made clear my belief that race is not an appropriate factor by which to judge any candidate for public office. Our ad has absolutely nothing to do with race. If Hillary Clinton was the candidate whose pastor had made these remarks and the two Democrats running for Governor had endorsed her, we would be running the exact same ad this week. Not one of the left-leaning editorial boards or liberal media outlets who have accused our party of racism has given one shred of evidence for their claims, but instead they have merely leveled their condemnations based on innuendo and conjecture. This is not only unprofessional and unfair. It is also dishonest. Our “Extreme” ad presents a simple question about the judgment of two Democrat candidates for Governor in North Carolina, Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore, who have both endorsed Barack Obama. While Obama has attempted to distance himself from the comments made by Reverend Wright, Perdue and Moore have failed to do so and continue to refuse to address this issue. Not to make clear their position on the unpatriotic and offensive comments made by Reverend Wright shows poor judgment. While even Obama acknowledged this past Sunday that his association with his former pastor is a “legitimate political issue,” Perdue and Moore have remained silent about the issue. If elected to office, the judgment of these candidates will affect the lives and welfare of millions of North Carolinians. Their judgment, therefore, must be of the highest quality. It is not too much for the voters of North Carolina to ask Perdue and Moore to make clear their position on the comments of Reverend Wright even if they continue to endorse Barack Obama. There is a vast difference between racism and the mere allegation of racism with no basis or any factual evidence. Portraying me or the North Carolina Republican Party in a false light and accusing us of racism by innuendo does not serve the cause of equality or justice. It instead degrades the ongoing dialogue about race taking place everyday in our society and causes people to become so calloused to the claim that when actual racism is evident, it may be ignored. In this cause, I do not believe this paper’s editorial board has served its readership well. While I will continue to hold and defend my position on our ad steadfastly, I do not expect readers to accept my argument at face value. I also do not expect readers to accept the characterization of our ad made by this paper’s editorial board at face value. Instead, I invite you to visit www.ncgop.org and view the ad yourself. After viewing the ad, readers are entitled to form their own opinion as to its content. Politics |
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Just imagine that the biggest part of the taxes you pay isn't to Uncle Sam in far-away Washington, but rather to your local community, the one controlled by an elected Mayor and a town council. And you know every one of these people because they are friends, neighbors, acquaintances from work or familiar faces from around the town. And they know you, too, and not just because when you have a problem with something they are doing, or not doing, you know where to find them. And you do. Sometimes they agree with you and sometimes they don't, but they know who you are and like to keep you happy because your taxes pay their salaries. Sound like an impossible dream? Well, not so long ago, that was the daily reality for most Americans. Donald Devine, vice president of the American Conservative Union and editor of its Battle Line publication, offers this description of the way we were: "As recently as 1900, local government raised twice the revenue as the national government and six times as much as state governments. Then progressivism set out to eliminate small government diversity. From using the multi-service county rather than creating additional municipalities, to municipal consolidation reforms (creating one large city from scores of towns), to the encouragement of annexation of nearby unincorporated land, to simply making it difficult to create new municipalities, progressive reforms smothered new local governments. "Today there are hardly more municipalities, townships and towns than there were at the turn of the last century, even with the incredible growth of population. For school districts, it is even worse. While there were 127, 000 independent school districts as late as the 1930s, now there are only 14,000." Devine's comment comes in the midst of his article in the latest edition of Battle Line on New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine's latest proposal - or maybe thinly veiled threat would be a more accurate descriptor - to consolidate his state's many small townships into larger, "more efficient units" that are better able to take advantage of economies of scale." Devine's analysis of why local government works better and thus has been a primary target of liberals , socialists and progressives for many decades is well worth reading and copying to friends and neighbors. One observation I offer in this regard is the possibility that the Internet's power of linking people will be a factor in reinvigorating decentralization of power and authority in this country. FULL DISCLOSURE: Back in my pre-journalism days, I worked for Devine when he was President Ronald Reagan's Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal civil service workforce. I was Assistant Director for Public Affairs. That was my last job (November 82 - June 85) before I joined the reporting staff of The Washington Times and embarked on my career as a journalist. Politics |
.jpg) The Senate will vote sometime this afternoon on competing amendments to the Technical Corrections bill from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, regarding the Coconut Road earmark scandal. The earmark was originally included in the 2005 transportation bill, but was mysteriously retained after Florida officials said they didn't want the funds. Coburn's amendment would establish a bipartisan congressional investigative panel to determine who changed the bill's language regarding the earmark. The amendment from Boxer, who chairs the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee that has jurisdiction over highway funding, has offered an alternative amendment asking the Justice Department to investigate. But Boxer's amendment is seen among the Senate's band of earmark reformers as tantamount to no investigation because separation of powers disputes between the executive and legislative branch would tie a Justice Department probe up in the courts before it ever got anywhere. Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton recently explained in The Washington Examiner how the Supreme Court "took a dive" on those very separation of powers issues in the case of Rep. William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, who is accused of taking bribes. FBI officials found $90,000 stashed in his freezer. This afternoon, one of Boxer's senior staffers has circulated the following memo, which makes clear to wavering senators that if they vote for Coburn's amendment, it will mean no election-year goodies. And Senate Democratic leaders have imposed a 60-vote super-majority requirement on the amendments. Taken together, these development almost certainly mean no Coconut Road earmark investigation will ever happen. Here's the text of the Boxer staffer's memo: OPPOSE THE The Coburn Amendment raises major Constitutional issues under the “Speech and Debate Clause” because it allows one chamber to investigate another’s members. The Constitutional concerns are very likely to prevent the Technical Corrections bill from becoming law, because the House has serious Constitutional concerns—the Coburn amendment is a poison pill. If the Technical Corrections bill is not enacted, the controversial The Boxer Amendment provides an alternative approach that ensures that a proper investigation of the The Boxer amendment has not raised similar concerns in the House, and so will not hinder passage of the Technical Corrections bill. Senator Coburn’s resolution is a political one. It creates a Select Committee appointed by Senators and House Members that could well interfere with a Justice Department investigation. Senator Reid strongly supports the Boxer amendment and strongly opposes the Coburn amendment. UPDATED: Coburn amendment wins vote, loses on supermajority The Coburn amendment won on a 49-43 roll call vote, but lost because of the parliamentary game played by the Senate Democratic leadership to impose a 60-vote super-majority requirement on the proposal. UPDATED: Boxer amendment approved, Coburn statement As expected, the Senate approved the Boxer amendment by a sufficient margin, 64-29, to make it part of the Senate's version of the Technical Corrections bill. Coburn released this statement following the Boxer amendment vote: “The Boxer amendment sets the troubling and bizarre precedent of turning the Attorney General into the de facto Senate and House Parliamentarian. Violating congressional rules is not a crime, yet Congress has just given away its right to police itself with this misguided amendment. If this earmark should be investigated by DOJ perhaps all earmarks should be investigated as well,” Dr. Coburn said.
Porkbusters |
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Winston Churchill put it best when he said of appeasement that it is nothing more than bribing the alligator to eat you last. Churchill was referring to Hitler and the Nazis and their designs on conquering the world. But the principle he enunciated is equally valid in the context of fighting all forms of virulent statism, from the mosque-state extremists of the Jihad to the environmental fanatics intent upon using global warming as the pretext for imposing a soul-less, unaccountable bureaucratic tyranny. So what has sparked this observation, you ask? Check out President Bush's Rose Garden speech today proposing new steps by government "to put our nation on a path to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of our greenhouse gas emissions." The key assumption underlying Bush's approach is seen in what he said in the paragraph just prior to the one where the above quote appeared. There, Bush framed the essential issue (and note that he referred throughout his speech to the problem as "climate change," rather than global warming, a term that is rapidly losing its credibility with the public): "Climate change involves complicated science and generates vigorous debate. Many are concerned about the effect of climate change on our environment. Many are concerned about the effect of climate change policies on our economy. " Not a word about the fact the public debate on global warming/climate change has undergone a radical transformation during his seven years in the White House, most notably in recent months as the public has become more familiar with facts like the 10-year decline in global temperatures. In other words, just as the tide of the debate has begun to turn from the rhetorical terrorism of advocates claiming "there is no longer any debate about global warming" to a more sober and fact-based assessment, Bush concedes the basic argument to the alarmists and statists And he tries to appease them with a package of half-measures that undercut his ability to oppose the inevitable demands to go much further, especially after he is out of the White House. With his speech today, Bush has handed the global warming extremists a priceless gift by enabling them to claim "even Bush agrees with us now." For a more extensive and utterly devastating critique of the specifics of the Bush initiative, check out this post on Human Events by Chris Horner. What Bush is doing on this issue is classic "Me, Too, Republicanism" - Offer a white flag on the issue but try to pretty it up by proposing a slower pace of change. Bush is returning to the political mentality of the old Eastern GOP Establishment exemplified by Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller and the "Modern Republicanism" of the Eisenhower years. The essence of MTR - or, to use a more contemporary acronym, Republican-In-Name-Only (RINO) - is the idea that the only way Republicans can win elections is by promising the same things the liberal Democrats promise but with patrionizing assurances of doing it more efficiently. It's promising the Great Society or New Deal on the cheap. Ronald Reagan heartily rejected that kind of thinking in all of his presidential campaigns and succinctly described the foundation of the conservative alternative to the welfare state when he declared in his first inaugural address that "government is not the solution, government is the problem." That is the basic truth statists of all stripes refuse to concede - more government always means less individual liberty. This is because, as Reagan said earlier in his career, the Founders "knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose." The MTR/RINOs have been undermining the conservative cause in Congress and the White House for decades, usually by voting with Democrats for "moderate" proposals that at best merely slow the rate of expansion of government. Current exemplars of this breed are senators like Jim Jeffords (who finally left the party in 2001), Olympic Snowe, Arlen Specter, Lamar Alexandar, etc. The MTR/RINOs presently make up about half of the GOP ranks in the Senate and around 30 votes among the GOP minority in the House. They are sufficiently strong to regularly frustrate most attempts of conservatives to restrain the growth of government power, taxes, regulation and spending. I've been involved in the American public policy debate since the night in 1964 when Reagan delivered The Speech. As long as I can remember, these people who keep the GOP shackled with their MTR/RINOs nostrums bear a major responsibility for the success of Democrats in protecting and expanding the Liberal welfare state, and thus encouraging the continuing destruction of American individual liberty, perhaps more so than any Democratic president since LBJ. The day will come, perhaps sooner than later, when these people are all the GOP has left. Politics |
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Imagine how different things would be for all of us if all we had to do to file our taxes was fill out a simple, one-page return as part of a flat tax system? No spending hours tracking down all those receipts and other documents to insure that you get all of the deductions you are entitled to, replacing lost forms, going blind trying to read those endless, confusing IRS explanations of how to compute this and calculate that, sorting through a computer software program to prepare your return, etc. etc. etc. We won't be freed of those burdens until Congress gets with it and abolishes the present monster of a tax system and replaces it with the justice and simplicity of a flat tax that treats every taxpayer equally. For now, we're stuck with the monster. The National Taxpayer's Union released its latest study of the cost and complexity of the tax system and the study provides page after page of documentation of how abusive and costly the system is, making you marvel that taxpayers continue to put up with this absurdity. NTU's Andrew Moylan notes these "lowlights" detailed in the study:
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 Drudge is linking to a news story in The Los Angeles Times on a new advertising campaign for Swedish Abolut vodka sales in Mexico. As you can see above, the campaign is focused by a map of Mexico drawn as if the lands from which became the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California were never ceded to the United States. I wonder how Swedes would feel if Budweiser began an advertising campaign in which Sweden, Denmark and Norway are all incorporated into the German state? Vodka never "did anything" for me (and, in any case, I haven't had a drink of any alcohol in more than 17 years), so I have no idea where Absolut ranks among the world's vodka brands. But if I were an American vodka drinker, I'd be thinking seriously of removing Absolut from my list of acceptable vodka makers. |
| Suitably Flip has the goods on U.S. Mainstream Media outlets echoing an unusually blatantly biased report earlier this week in The Independent in Great Britain that said the recent increase of Food Stamp use to record levels is indicative of a U.S. economy in depression. |
 Sen. Hillary Clinton has recently adopted the phrase "insourcing" to describe her pallet of anti-job creation and economic growth proposals, but BizCentral.org's Todd Malan has the backstory on the origins of that particular sobriquet. By the way, if you aren't checking BizCentral.org regularly, you should be, as it brings together a dozen or so of the top minds from across the field of business-related associations that follow policy debates and developments in Washington. BizCentral.org is the brainchild of Pat Cleary, the former National Association of Manufacturers communications guru who is now toiling away at the Washington office of Fleishman-Hillard Digital, the online branch of the storied public relations firm. Yes, he's gone over to the dark side, but don't hold that against Patrick, as I know him to be a good guy. Politics |
Mark Tapscott tracks the internet revolution in media and government.
- Noonan is right, the GOP is dying
- Boehner calls on Conyers to hold hearings on Milberg Weiss scandal
- North Carolina GOP chairman challenges critical dailies to publish her response on Obama/Wright ad
- Now that your taxes are filed, think about this
- Senate Democrats are trying to kill congressional probe of Coconut Road earmark scandal(UPDATED)
- Me, Too, Republicans are smothering the GOP
- NTU tcomplexity study shows absurdity of progressive taxation
- Time to boycott Absolut
- Increase in food stamps proves what?
- BizCentral.org on the real meaning of 'Insourcing'
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