"Snake Oil Legislators"

CalWatchdog:

As legislators stand in front of the microphone and pitch their irrelevant bills, they do not see the voters any more, or the constituents, the fathers and mothers, and the young adults who work at a menial jobs to pay the bills. Legislators have lost the concept of the collective good while focusing on the special interests and unions.

This week, some of the bills being heard in Assembly committees exemplify the out-of-touch legislation and business-as-usual:

A.B. No. 1650 Feuer. Public contracts: state and local contract eligibility: energy sector investment activities in Iran;

A.B. No. 1787 Swanson. Administrative procedure: regulations: narrative description;

A.B. No. 1802 Hall. Pupil health: diabetes: insulin injections;

A.B. No. 1822 Swanson. Massage therapy. (Urgency);

A.B. No. 1878 Lieu. Statewide Forms Management Program;

A.B. No. 1916 Davis. Pharmacies: prescriptions: reports;

A.B. No. 1922 Davis. Civil rights education: California Civil Rights Education Commission;

A.B. No. 2052 Hayashi. State surplus personal property: centralized sale;

A.B. No. 2077 Solorio. Centralized hospital packaging pharmacies;

A.B. No. 2181 Hagman. State Contract Act: contracting by state agencies. (Urgency);

A.B. No. 2256 Huffman. Product labeling: flushable products;

A.B. No. 2466 Smyth. Regulations: legislative validation: effective date;

A.B. No. 2472 Huffman. Building standards: green innovation permit program;

The state is in a full-blown economic crisis in California, and legislators are conducting hearings about the statewide forms management program, civil rights, hospital pharmacies, green business and “flushing products.”  Most of what the Legislature deals with should not even be state business – this is known as “busy work,” designed to make it look as if they are working hard, but most of it is pure drivel.

Personally, I think calling them "snake oil legislators" is being too kind, and an offense to snake oil salesmen everywhere.

what he means by "tax cuts"

An interesting meme that I've been hearing about in the last few days is how Obama has actually "cut taxes" for "95% of working Americans," or variations thereof.

(I won't even comment at the arrogance that comes across when liberals say, "They should be thanking the president for cutting their taxes instead of protesting" — something that both Bob Beckel and Alan Colmes have both implied in recent appearances on Fox News.)

Then there's the confrontation between our local Tea Party participant and the "party crasher" who kept insisting that Obama had cut taxes but couldn't name a specific one.

I had not seen any cuts in tax rates in the last two years, and, if anything, the income tax rates are due to increase when the Bush tax cuts expire.

So what is this "Obama cuts taxes" meme all about?

Well, finally, Bob Owens on Pajamas Media provided elucidation by citing this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article written in 2008, When Barack Obama was still a candidate:

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase “tax credit.” Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals. …

Here’s the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this “welfare,” or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a “Demogrant.” Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable “tax credits” would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare.

It's never been about tax cuts: it's always been about redistribution of wealth.

And the march continues

I don't ever want to hear another liberal claim that the Democrats are not taking over the health care industry.

Fearing that health insurance premiums may shoot up in the next few years, Senate Democrats laid a foundation on Tuesday for federal regulation of rates, four weeks after President Obama signed a law intended to rein in soaring health costs.

After a hearing on the issue, the chairman of the Senate health committee, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said he intended to move this year on legislation that would “provide an important check on unjustified premiums.”

Mr. Harkin praised a bill introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, that would give the secretary of health and human services the power to review premiums and block “any rate increase found to be unreasonable.” Under the bill, the federal government could regulate rates in states where state officials did not have “sufficient authority and capability” to do so.

"Why California is a failed state"

California Senate debates bill allowing citizens to decline delivery of a telephone book

With minor issues like a $20 billion budget deficit still looming, a California legislative committee has taken a major progressive step forward on a far more important issue to protect the entire state's precious environment.

In a stunning 6-4 vote that drew remarkably little attention outside the committee room, the state Senate's Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications has passed an almost pioneering measure that would allow California's many millions of telephone subscribers to opt out of receiving annual telephone books, a right that many citizens may have thought they already possessed without legislative authorization.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Leland Yee of the Bay area who is, of course, a Democrat.

(emphasis added)

(via The Feed)

We have to follow the Texas model and have the legislature meet for only 120 days every two years (or better yet, two days every 120 years). These people obviously have waaaay too much time on their hands.

Krauthammer on the Dodd financial regulation bill

From NRO:

I think what is so interesting about the bill that’s now proposed is that it is Congress once again voluntarily emasculating itself.

The bailout as proposed in the bill would allow the executive branch on its own — without any appropriation from Congress, any approval from the Congress – to . . . essentially seize a firm that it designates (again: unilaterally) as systematically risky, take it over, have the Treasury back all of the bad loans, and then have the Fed print the money to pay them off.

Now, when we did the Chrysler bailout, or the bailout of the TARP, which we had in 2008, you had to get the Congress [to go] along. This is an interesting and, I think, a disturbing trend where so much arbitrary power is not only in Washington, but only in the executive. There is no check, no balance.

That means you get a few powerful people in Washington — [the] secretary of the treasury, head of the FDIC. You walk into a large institution and you say we might designate you systematically risky. We want you to do "x," "y" and "z." I can assure you they‘re going to do "x," "y" and "z."

And that's the way it happens in Putin's Russia . . . It's not the way it should happen here. I think Congress ought to stay engaged, and how it's willingly giving up its balancing prerogatives is remarkable. . . .

There is a huge irony in this, pointed out by Larry Lindsey . . . He also did this analysis of the Treasury and the Fed unilaterally acting —and that is that the big institutions and the banks like this, because if you know that if you lend money to these large institutions, in the end the Treasury and the Fed will come in and guarantee all the loans. That means you will preferentially lend to these institutions and it’ll end up exactly like Freddie and Fannie. They’re going to be able to then borrow at lower rates and have a competitive advantage.

So ironically, it strengthens the fed[eral government] and it also favors the big, big institutions and hurts the smaller ones. . . . [As with] Freddie and Fannie, they have an implicit guarantee. . . .

It passes. Everybody hates Wall Street. Anything that’s against Wall Street will pass.

ridicule is the downfall of tyrants

Not just tyrants, but officious preening political prats in general.

I feel inexplicable glee to see the treacly billboards of David Cameron vandalized artfully enhanced. I wish we could see similar bouts of voter expression and creativity in our own elections.

(original billboard)

Wheels begin to fall off LibDem

Well, that didn't take long:

Nick Clegg was forced on to the defensive last night over his expenses and lobbying activities.

The Lib Dem leader regularly claimed more than Gordon Brown and David Cameron and charged the taxpayer for three kitchen upgrades in six months.

He also billed for foreign phone calls, napkins, cake tins and for hundreds of pounds to prune his fruit trees.

Questioned over his expenses relating to his constituency property, he hit back, bizarrely saying: 'It's not my home, it's yours.'

I still think the three British party leaders are peas in a pod and that Britain is in deep trouble no matter who wins the elections. But Mr. Clegg is particularly troubling. As a commenter at a Times of London story, "Nick Clegg nearly as popular as Winston Churchill," put it (via Don Surber):

With respect, the Americans posting that Clegg is our Obama, know very little about British politics. Clegg is a nice man, but prime ministerial he isn’t. A month ago on the BBC’s politics show he could barely answer a single question put to him. And look at his policies — Clegg wants the UK to join the Euro, He wants to let criminals out of prison, he wants to increase immigration and he wants to put up taxes on entrepreneurs and people who run businesses. Clegg and the LibDems are the last thing Britain needs at this moment in time. The crazy thing is, his policies were exactly the same the day before the debate — no one was claiming he was Churchill then. 90 minutes of TV coverage later and our dumbed-down X-factor electorate decide to vote for him. Absolute madness. The UK is in terminal decline.

Mr. Surber promptly added:

Nice man? Check.

Could barely answer a simple question? Check.

Wants to join EU? Check.

Wants to let criminals out? Check.

Wants to increase immigration? Check.

Wants to put up taxes on entrepreneurs and people who run businesses? Check.

I would say it was Disgruntled Yorkshireman who does not know Barack Obama very well.

(Sorry, Don, for lifting your post pretty much wholesale. Can't improve on perfection.)

Some Tea Party news

First, the Utah Tea Party is announcing that it has effectively taken over the state GOP:

In a surprising development that sets the stage for a dramatic political showdown, tea party and grass-roots conservatives tell Newsmax they have seized control of Utah's GOP delegate system, and are now in a position to select which candidates will represent the party in the midterm elections.

"Our feeling is that the majority of the Republican Party delegates are now tea party people," Brian Halladay, one of the founders of the grass-roots Utah Rising organization, tells Newsmax.

Utah GOP leaders say they can't be sure, but concede the activists' assessment may be accurate.

For as long as the Utah Tea Party is on the side of the angels (us!), that is good news, and what I think most local and state Tea Parties should aim for. Third party bids are not viable, and the best way forward that I can see is to take over the GOP machinery and return the GOP to its republican roots.

The next item is a little more disturbing:

When the Tea Party Express last week endorsed Idaho Rep. Walt Minnick — the only Democrat to receive the backing of the conservative grassroots group — one of his Republican challengers said he was simply baffled to learn the news, considering Minnick’s past votes that line up with Democrats on bailouts, the estate tax and Guantanamo Bay.

“He voted for Nancy Pelosi. I mean all these things — I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. This is the guy you guys want to get behind nationally?’” said Republican Vaughn Ward, an active Marine Corps reserve officer whose candidacy for Minnick’s seat was endorsed by Sarah Palin.

The Tea Party Express caused some stir a year ago when it attempted to hijack the Sacramento Tea Party. From what I remember of the issue, the TPE is not an organic member of the Tea Party but rather an entity of Our Country Deserves Better PAC which explicitly raises funds for Republicans. The Tea Party Patriots, which is a loose "organization" (if you can call it that) of Tea Party groups around the country, had tried to maintain nonpartisanship and distanced itself from the TPE.

Unfortunately, the TPE is much more media savvy and has portrayed itself as the voice of the Tea Party.

I guess that comes from not having an actual leader to the movement: anyone can just step up and claim the mantle.

Anyway, knowing the background of the TPE and the actual Tea Party and the fact that the TPE's name is misleading, TPE's endorsements shouldn't really count for much, especially not in the context of the Tea Party.

TPE does not have a grassroots movement under it. From what I can tell, all it has are shiny buses and media connections. The Idaho Tea Partiers have every right to tell the TPE to buzz off.

Finally, this bad turn in a Tea Party event in South Carolina:

Over the weekend, an even-crazier-than-usual Tea Party event was held in Greenville, South Carolina, and it was, by one account, "probably the craziest, most violence-strewn Tea Party event so far."

Put it this way: former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) was the keynote speaker, and he called on Americans to send President Obama "back" to Kenya. He was preceded by a Baptist preacher who said he's prepared to "suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what [the military] trained me to do."

But it was William Gheen, the head of a right-wing, anti-immigrant effort called Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, whose remarks were especially ugly. Lindsey Graham wasn't on hand for the event, but Gheen addressed the senator directly: "I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey, but as our U.S. Senator I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure you being gay isn't it."

Granted that this was made through the filter of TPM's glasses, but still. We don't need this kind of rhetoric in the Tea Party. It validates every feverish left-wing paranoid delusion that we'll never hear the end of now.

We should be about ideas and principles, and those are about fiscal conservatism and a constitutionally-limited government. Immigration and birther talk should not be a key part of the Tea Party platform.

"sipping chamomile"

Classy. (And that wasn't meant as snark at all.)

The Tea Partiers are taking the high road. Just because Oregon middle school teacher Jason Levin has publicly denounced them as a bunch of "racists, homophobes and morons," they say that's no reason for him to lose his job.

All Levin really needs, they say, is some sensitivity training and some anger management therapy.

Levin, who declared his mission to "dismantle and demolish" the Tea Party on his "Crash the Tea Party" website, was placed on administrative leave last week while a state education board and his school district investigate whether the technology teacher promoted identity theft against Tea Party activists and misused school property.

But the Oregon Tea Party seems to be sipping chamomile. It doesn't want his neck -- just an apology from Levin and the Beaverton School District.

"We don't want to see Jason Levin fired, we want to see him helped," said Oregon Tea Party founder Geoff Ludt. "We want to reach out to him and we want to use his actions to create a teachable moment."

Added: I wish we'd stop demanding for an apology every time we disagree with someone. Mr. Levin should not have to apologize for who he is. We can ignore him, we can engage him, but we should let him continue to embarrass himself to the entertainment of the rest of the world. I'd rather he do this out in the open than have him skulking in the dark where we can't see what he's up to. The same thing goes for everyone else.

"Wall Street"

Gary Varvel.

more on the unions

Mr. Barone has this to say:

[T]his is a legitimate national issue. One-third of the 2009 stimulus money went to state and local governments--an obvious payoff to the public employee unions which gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Democrats and got hundreds of billions of dollars in return, to insulate public employee unions from the effects of the recession which has affected everyone else.

He links to a press release of my favorite Democrat (and I don't even break out in hives when I say that!) who is running against Barbara "Don't Call Me Madam" Boxer:

President Obama is “swooping” into Los Angeles today to try to save Senator Barbara Boxer--the same way he saved Gov. John Corzine in New Jersey and would-be Senator Martha Coakley in Massachusetts!
…
What Obama and Boxer don’t seem to realize is that they—like Corzine and Coakley--are on the wrong end a taxpayer rebellion. For decades, Californians paid high taxes but got good services in return: good schools and roads, an excellent university system. But now, after favor after favor to the unions from their pliant political pawns, we have bloated payrolls, unfireable teachers who are the highest-paid in the nation, state workers who retire at 55 and make more money not working than when they were working.

We’re paying high taxes but we’re getting low services. Worse, the unions’ pay-today-forget-about-tomorrow attitude failed to plan for an economic downturn. As a result, the state and many cities and towns are looking into the abyss of insolvency.

It is all coming to a head this year. Obama and Boxer are on the crushable side of a tsunami of voter discontent.

Mickey Kaus has too much sense to be a Democrat.

And for good measure, here, once again, is the infamous Boxer clip:


Greg Gutfeld suggested that Kaus' slogan should be "Call me Ma'am. I don't mind. Kaus for Senate!" (Gutfeld is hilarious as always in his interview with Kaus below.)

it must be the end of something

I think this is ridiculous. And I really should be more upset about it, what with the freedom of the press and all. But a certain amount of schadenfreude can't be helped, considering how the press has bent over backwards to accommodate our self-styled overlords.

I'm also not sure what is the purpose of chasing the reporters away. If I were a gay rights activist, I'd be incensed because I will see this as the White House's attempt to muzzle the gay rights protesters and keep their protest from being reported in the media or at least trying to minimize it. You go to all that trouble of dressing up in uniform and handcuffing yourself to the White House gate, and the big story tonight is how no one got a picture of you doing it.

Ooh. Infringing freedom of the press and stepping on the gay activists' right to protest. A two-fer! Way to go, Obama White House!

(This should in no way to be construed as a mockery of the gay activists. I'm all for peaceful protests, and I think they have a valid reason to protest. But mockery of the press is wholly intended.)

Police chased reporters away from the White House and closed Lafayette Park today in response to a gay rights protest in which several service members in full uniform handcuffed themselves to the White House gate to protest "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

People who have covered the White House for years tell me that's an extremely unusual thing to do in an area that regularly features protests.

A reporter can be seen in the YouTube video above calling the move "outrageous" and "ridiculous."

(h/t Dan Riehl)

lies, damned lies, and statistics

Remember when Obama and his minions were selling the stimulus bill with claims that it will create or save 2.8 million jobs? And instead, the unemployment went up while the number of jobs decreased to 129.7 million from 133.9 million?

Well, Obama's Department of Labor is caught fudging the numbers. And embarrassingly so.

An inconvenient truth, at least for the Obama Administration, is that once upon a time, in their January 2009 Romer/Bernstein Report they told America that without their stimulus there would be 133.9 million jobs. That’s right, in order to make it look like their stimulus has “created or saved” 2.8 million jobs, the Obama Administration first had to whack 7 million jobs from their previous estimates."

What it comes down to is that the baseline for jobs keeps moving as unemployment rises. We could lose 20 million jobs and Obama's Ministry of Truth will still claim that we actually "created or saved" some.

If Bush did this, we'd never hear the end of it. With Obama, we never hear about it at all except in the new medium of the internet. I don't know which one I'd hang first: the media "elite" or the politicians.

Founding Fathers Quote of the Day

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Benjamin Franklin

Giuliani endorses Grayson for Senate

I guess this sets up a showdown with the Sarahcuda, who endorsed Rand "Son of Ron" Paul for the US Senate.

Tea Party folks set Olbermann straight

From Reason.com:

A couple of months back, in response to criticism about his multiple characterizations of Tea Party activists as racists, MSNBC oxygen-generator Keith Olbermann issued this agonized open letter to his antagonists:

[A]sk yourself, when you next go to a Tea Party rally, or watch one on television or listen to a politician or a commentator praise these things or merely treat them as if it was just a coincidence that they are virtually segregated. Ask yourself: Where are the black faces? Who am I marching with? What are we afraid of? And if it really is only a President's policy and not his skin, ask yourself one final question: Why are you surrounded by the largest crowd you will ever again see in your life that consists of nothing but people who look exactly like you?

Instead of asking himself, Nathanial Alexander Stuart took a video camera to one of the hundreds of Tax Day rallies April 15, and asked a handful of black protesters.

Best line:

"I'm afraid of the President because he's a white man. What does Keith Olbermann have to say about that?"

Heh.

It's never been about race. And what one of the gentlemen said about Uncle Tom is right. I don't know how "Uncle Tom" became a pejorative when he clearly was a hero.

None so blind…

From Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt (that he sends via email to his subscribers) is this part that made me laugh:

Yesterday, a whole bunch of Second Amendment activists got together to hold protests in D.C. and Virginia -- armed in the Commonwealth, honoring local gun restrictions in the District -- and to the best of my knowledge and according to all reports, there were no incidents of violence.
…
I love this detail from the Post's coverage: "[Lauren Austen, who lives nearby in Mount Vernon] and her husband and her friend, Martina Leinz, were the lone three counter-protesters. 'We wanted to show,' Leinz said, 'that this is a very tiny group of fringe extremists focused on a radical ideology.'"

I suppose you could argue that nothing screams "The other guys are the tiny fringe" like three people coming out and screaming "The other guys are the tiny fringe."

Tories wobble

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner had this:

This memo by a prominent British PR man is a little over the top, and the idea of Ken Clarke as some sort of deus ex machina is unconvincing (the europhiliac Mr. Clarke is a divider, not a uniter), but the broad drift is correct:

The stakes are now very high. If David Cameron does not become PM on 6/7th May the electoral system will be changed. The first past the post system will be abolished and there will not be a Tory government for a very long time if ever again. Perhaps John Major will go down in history as the last Tory PM…

This time all the Tory Party had to do was to ask the electorate a very simple question: “Do you want five more years of Gordon Brown?” The answer would be no. The election campaign strategy was therefore all about giving the electorate the reasons for voting against the PM. The M&C Saatchi adverts were a good start. As I have mused before the Tory opinion poll lead was always based on the public’s loathing of the PM rather than any real affection for David Cameron. The election campaign should therefore have been negative in tone and focused entirely on the PM’s failings. Whatever the focus groups may say negative campaigning works. There doesn’t appear to be any strategy. The ‘big society’ idea has come and now disappeared. The most popular Tory politician Ken Clarke has become the invisible man. He may be campaigning in marginal seats but he should be on our TV screens every morning, noon and night. And then there is the policy that dares not speak its name. Immigration. Every canvasser I have spoken to from every party has told me that the issue that keeps coming up on the doorstep is immigration. This is a Tory issue and yet I am told that there will only be one day when it is raised. What is going on?…

So is the election campaign lost for the Tory Party? I don’t think it is. Nick Clegg’s policy agenda is very attackable. As Alan Johnson put it in Saturday’s Times: “The Lib Dems are soft on crime, inept on asylum and bloody dangerous on national security.” How Labour candidates must wish he was the PM…

The Tory Party needs to mobilise its key assets such as Ken Clarke and talk about Tory issues such as low tax, immigration and Europe. It needs to connect with Tory voters and indeed anybody who doesn’t want Gordon Brown for another five years. Thatcher’s great strength was her ability to connect with ordinary voters, particularly those who wanted to better themselves. Politics is all about helping people to realise their dreams. We seem to have forgotten this.

Stuttaford ended with, "[I]f Cameron's nauseating, nannying 'big society' has been strangled at birth, that will be something to celebrate."

I couldn't agree more regarding Cameron. I don't watch European matters as much as my husband does, but having witnessed the three-way debate among the LibDem, the Tory and Labour frontrunners, David Cameron did not distinguish himself from the other two at all. I had listened to Daniel Hannan, the British MP in the EU, and he espouses the same principles that the Tea Party and the Founding Fathers believe in. Not so David Cameron. As far as I can tell, Cameron would be right at home in any Democrat district in the U.S.

This is something I'm afraid some Republicans will end up doing here, too. Just as the Americans seem to be waking up to the dangers of big government, there is not much reassurance from the entrenched Republican political class that they get it.

When 80% of Americans say they don't trust the government or only trust it sometimes, you'd think an anti-big government campaign would be a major focus for the Republicans.

You'd be thinking wrong, at least when watching the D.C. pols.

The good news is that the Tea Party isn't letting them get away with it again. Many stayed home in 2006 and 2008 because the choice between Democrats and Republicans was practically indistinguishable. Today, the same people who excused themselves in those two elections are more engaged, especially in the primary process.

We won't let ourselves become Britain. Not in 1776. Not in 2010.

I hope.

"Pew — Something Stinks"

Hope n' Change:

The trend is certainly gratifying.