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RedState's Morning Briefing for Thursday, May 14, 2009
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Morning Briefing for THURSDAY, May 14, 2009
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A must see video
The Democrats Airport for No One
1. Chuck Schumer on ‘torture:’ ‘do what you have to do’
Wouldn’t want to politicize it, now would we?
2. Congressman Michael McCaul: Keeping Our Eye on National Security
There is a reason America hasn’t been attacked since 2001. We need to show the world, and the terrorists that we intend to keep it that way.
3. White House Invites Unions to Set Public Policy
Are you surprised?
4. Charlie Crist is the diversity candidate?
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s endorsement is more and more looking like a complete failure
5. U.S. troops shouldn’t have to battle to exercise their right to vote
Help is on the way.
6. The Skinny on Obama’s Supposedly ‘Watershed’ Health Care Meeting
Ready for the sugar tax?
7. Obama Brings “Transparency” To Federal Budget Accounting
Where transparency means anything but
A must see video
The Democrats Airport for No One
1. Chuck Schumer on ‘torture:’ ‘do what you have to do’
Wouldn’t want to politicize it, now would we?
As the Democrat-controlled Senate conducts sanctimonious hearings on enhanced interrogation methods, several Senate Democrat leaders, including Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer, announced support for delaying any prosecutions of Bush administration interrogation methods until after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence finishes investigating the issue.
This is a good time to recall what Schumer said about torture at a June 8, 2004 Judiciary Committee hearing. “There are times when we all get in high dudgeon. We ought to be reasonable about this. I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake. Take the hypothetical: If we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believed that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most senators, maybe all, would say, ‘Do what you have to do.’So it’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the foxhole, it’s a very different deal.”
2. Congressman Michael McCaul: Keeping Our Eye on National Security
There is a reason America hasn’t been attacked since 2001. We need to show the world, and the terrorists that we intend to keep it that way.
Recent history has shown us that terrorists test new presidents early in their terms. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing happened in the first year of President Clinton’s first term. 9/11 was carried out within eight months of George W. Bush’s inauguration.
Yet, actions in Washington have the world questioning America’s commitment to security and defense. While I applaud the Obama administration for listening to General Petraeus and shifting our military focus away from our successes in Iraq and to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, I believe we are falling short in other key areas.
Pakistan is an ally in the War on Terror. However, I believe aid to Pakistan must be contingent on Pakistan’s commitment to combating terrorist cells that have sought safe haven in its Tribal Areas and to reforming its education system. Last week both President Zardari and Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, reinforced to me the fact that Pakistani madrassas emphasize a curriculum of Islamist extremism, are breeding grounds for anti-American sentiment and serve as recruitment centers for terrorists.
The closing of Guantanamo is a mistake. I toured the facility in February, days after President Obama signed executive orders to close it, and it was a chilling experience. The prison houses some of the terrorists who are responsible for 9/11 and as we have already seen, many of the detainees would not hesitate to carry out another attack if they are allowed to go free. Placing high value terror suspects in a civilian justice system could afford them rights to which they are not entitled under military law, and could ultimately result in their release into foreign countries and their ability to rejoin their anti-American cause.
3. White House Invites Unions to Set Public Policy
Are you surprised?
ABC and others report that the Obama administration has invited union representatives to participate in conference calls with state and local officials, which have been held to set guidelines for how ’stimulus’ money is spent.
In one sense, the State of California is learning the same lesson that TARP recipients have learned: that if you take federal money, Uncle Barack may want to dictate how you spend it. That’s more or less what’s happening here - except that the Obama administration has decided to farm out some of the decision-making authority to state employees, through their union. Thus HHS sided with the state initially, but two weeks later - when an official decision was made - the unions had managed to reverse the decision.
If the Obama administration is not content to simply let states decide how to spend the money, there are many ways to wade into the decisionmaking process. A good approach might be to take the side of the patients affected by potential cuts. Or they might work with the state and the unions to deliver these services in a less-costly way - so everyone wins. Or they might attempt to prioritize among state programs, and offer assistance for those they consider the most valuable or important.
4. Charlie Crist is the diversity candidate?
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s endorsement is more and more looking like a complete failure
I’m reminded of a quote from the media a couple of months ago that conservatives could not support Charlie Crist in Florida because of his support for diversity initiatives. The reporter failed to them point out that these white Christian conservatives were supporting the Latino candidate.
What reminded me was this quote
Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida GOP, said popularity always trumps ideology, and he predicted Crist easily would win the Republican nomination.
That, he added, that might be good for the party as a whole.
“There are not enough blue-eyed, white, blond guys and girls who go to church three times on Sunday and once on Wednesday to make up a majority for the Republican Party almost anywhere,” Slade said. “If we don’t broaden the party, there won’t be much of a party left.”
Yes, so let’s broaden the party by electing a white guy instead of a Latino.
Huh?
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5. U.S. troops shouldn’t have to battle to exercise their right to vote
Help is on the way.
Every day, members of America’s military leave family and home to stand on the front lines to defend our freedom. To their surprise, these heroes must fight another battle: attempting to vote.
Each passing election highlights the difficulties for military personnel to cast ballots. Numerous obstacles prevent them from registering to vote, casting absentee ballots or voting at anywhere near the rate as their civilian counterparts.
Troops navigate a minefield of complexity, mail delays, indifference and errors, dampening their democratic voice and perhaps their democratic spirit.
The scope of this problem shocks the conscience. Texas boasts 16 percent of America’s active military personnel, or 272,000. In 2006, more than 484,000 U.S. military personnel (99,000 Texans) requested absentee ballots but did not return them.
That’s equivalent to almost a third of all active duty military personnel. Overall, only 26 percent of military personnel successfully cast their absentee ballots in 2006, compared with 85 percent of the general population who used the absentee option.
Unfortunately, Texas’ election laws reinforce this problem. In fact, a recent Pew Research Study ranked Texas among the 17 worst states in helping military personnel cast their vote. How can we rest as our voting system fails to serve ballots to those who unfailingly serve us in battle?
Texas can remove the obstacles impeding its military personnel and their families from voting. A bipartisan effort led by Republican Rep. Frank Corte and Democrat Sen. Leticia Van de Putte is working its way through the Texas Legislature.
The bills, HB 71 and SB 92, would remove many of the voting hurdles facing Texans in the military. By adopting some simple technological measures, troops can get ballots in time to actually cast them.
Texas pilot-tested these measures in the 2008 election, and the initial feedback was positive. We should expand these innovations statewide and set an example for the rest of the country to follow.
6. The Skinny on Obama’s Supposedly ‘Watershed’ Health Care Meeting
Ready for the sugar tax?
The Obama administration and its mouthpieces have spent a great deal of breath, airtime, and ink trying to tell America that, by the mere act of holding a press conference on heath care, President Obama has revolutionized America and proven he is a man of his word who “really intends to keep his campaign promises.”
Despite all the self-congratulations and arrogant talk about the historicity of this (as there is with every move the administration makes), Monday’s announcement of several chief health care players rushing to take seats at the table so as not to be eaten for dinner by the out of control leviathan our Democrat-dominated federal government has become was only a “watershed” event insofar as, to our neophyte president, every event that involves him or happens during his presidency is “unprecedented” or “watershed” (except, of course, for the negatives — all of those were “inherited”).
What this supposedly “game-changing” move consists of is an Obama administration doing what Democrats accused George W. Bush of doing for eight years: jumping into bed with the insurance companies and so-called “Big Health Care.” In exchange for future considerations (read: more lenient treatment in pending legislation), the five major health care trade associations are colluding to squeeze up to $2T out of patients and providers over the course of the next several years.
This is part of a natural progression that began in December, when AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) embraced President Obama’s election by calling on the incoming administration to make it the law of the land that every American had to purchase their product or face legal consequences. Despite the administration’s penchant for spending trillions of dollars it simply doesn’t have, the cost of subsidizing the portion of the population that would need assistance to comply with such a mandate (up to $2,000,000,000,000.00 a year) is too high for the federal government to afford right now.
7. Obama Brings “Transparency” To Federal Budget Accounting
Where transparency means anything but
This one is odd, and it has a few moving parts I haven’t figured out yet, but you still need to know about it.
In case you hear the Administration start bragging about a sudden reduction in this year’s deficit by about $175 billion, here’s what they’re talking about: they’re going to reduce the amount of the TARP outlays by that much.
No, that doesn’t mean they spent less than $700 billion. (Well, actually, a bit less than $600 billion has been spent so far, but they’ll spend the rest and may need more later.)
It means they won’t add the whole amount to what they say the deficit is.
How are they going to get away with that? By accounting for the TARP outlays on a net present value basis rather than as cash outlays. Think about it like this: the stimulus/porkulus funds are different from TARP. The government either borrows or prints money, and then hands it out to state governors to spend on salaries for unionized teachers, bureaucrats, and hospital administrators, and for things like the John Murtha Airport, bike paths to nowhere, and hamster subsidies for Nancy Pelosi.
Those are pure cash outlays. From our point of view as taxpayers, it’s pure waste, money flushed down the toilet.
But the TARP funds are, and always have been, different. Approximately $17 billion of the TARP was used to buy Christmas presents and holiday bonuses for unionized employees of GM and Chrysler (that money was wasted). The rest was used mostly to buy preferred stock (and in Citigroup’s case, common stock) in something like 200 banks and non-bank financial institutions.
As I’ve said from the beginning, these TARP outlays don’t represent a simple expenditure of cash. In theory, at least, they give the government (meaning, ultimately, we the taxpayers) a coupon-payment stream, plus some claim on the assets of the assisted banks.
In short, we should be getting back the money we put into TARP. It’s more of an investment than an expenditure. (Well, actually we should be getting back some fraction of the money, since it wasn’t a very good investment.)
Now the Administration’s budget people are looking at it that way too. They’ve decided to apply some kind of a present-value calculation to the shares that TARP purchased. And they’re going to tell you that the amount of the TARP outlay was less than it actually was by that amount, roughly $175 billion according to news reports.
Now there are obvious PR benefits to this. Obama loudly promises to cut the budget deficit in half by five years from now. He wants you to get the impression that he means he’ll cut it in half by what it was before he came to office, and certainly the news media do nothing to dispel that impression. In reality, he hopes to cut the deficit in half from his own first budget.
But Obama’s very first budget will be in deficit by at least four times as much as the previous record-high deficit in nominal dollars, and at 13% it will be the highest deficit as a proportion of GDP ever in peacetime. If he does reduce the deficit in half in five years, it’ll still be more than twice as high as the previous record.
It’s no joke that Obama would like to see his upturned nose on our currency someday, given how much of it he’s printing.
So to account creatively for the TARP expenditure will reduce his first budget deficit by about 10%.
But is it real? Government accounting is very different from the ordinary accrual accounting that large businesses use. It’s often said that the government keeps its books as if it were a candy store.
But that actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that the government has no use for retained earnings, as a business does. The government prints its own money, and every dollar that it spends simply “appears” in the commercial bank accounts that the Treasury keeps for this purpose. In a mechanical sense, the TARP outlays were accomplished simply by changing numbers in a few computer files.
If you’re a business and you have money left over at the end of the year, you pay taxes on it, and then you save or invest what’s left. If the government has money left over, it simply vanishes from the economy. It makes the most sense for the government to keep its books on a yearly cash basis.
So for them to say that TARP paid nearly $700 billion for securities with some kind of a stable long-term value, and then declare that those securities are now worth $175 billion, they would have to set up a separate capital account for those holdings. (The Federal Reserve, which does maintain a balance sheet, did something roughly similar with “Maiden Lane,” the vehicle that holds the assets taken out of Bear Stearns.)
But you have to match a credit in a capital account with an equal outlay somewhere else. I think they’re playing a game when they say that the deficit was reduced by $175 billion. There has to be an economic impact from the creation of that $175 billion, and someone has to reflect the $175 billion as a liability. If not the Treasury, then who?
You see how phony it is? The traditional way of doing it would be to consider the whole $700 billion TARP plan as a cash outlay (which is what they originally did). And then, as cash flows are realized from the assets that TARP purchased, those cash flows would be treated as cash revenue, offsetting future deficits.
Something tells me, given the “transparency” which is the great stated virtue of the Obama administration, that they’re going to try to have it both ways. They’ll reduce the stated deficit by $175 billion now, and they’ll reduce it again in the future as the TARP assets produce cash. Heads they win, tails we lose.
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