Why it Will be Difficult to Revitalize Amerian Manufacturing -- By Mark Hemingway, The W

 It's not that our labor force isn't cheap enough. It's that government is too big.

Bloomberg recently ran a great series on the challenges to expanding America's manufacturing sector that's worth reading in light of the president's State of the Union rhetoric on jobs. It opens with this distressing anecdote:

“I’d love to make this product in America. But I’m afraid I won’t be able to.”

My host, a NASA engineer turned Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has just conducted a fascinating tour of his new clean-energy bench-scale test facility. It’s one of the Valley’s hottest clean-technology startups. And he’s already thinking of going abroad.

“Wages?” I ask.

His dark eyebrows arch as if I were clueless, then he explains the reality of running a fab -- an electronics fabrication factory. “Wages have nothing to do with it. The total wage burden in a fab is 10 percent. When I move a fab to Asia, I might lose 10 percent of my product just in theft.”

I’m startled. “So what is it?”

“Everything else. Taxes, infrastructure, workforce training, permits, health care. The last company that proposed a fab on Long Island went to Taiwan because they were told that in a drought their water supply would be in the queue after the golf courses.”

So begins my education on the hollowing-out of the American economy, which might be titled: “It’s not the wages, stupid.”

Read the whole thing here.

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Lead the Race to Space -- by Jeffrey H. Anderson, The Weekly Standard

During last night’s debate, Mitt Romney responded to Newt Gingrich’s proposal that America establish a lunar colony by the end of the decade by saying that if someone presented him with that proposal, “I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’” While one might think Romney justified in firing someone who pitched Gingrich’s specific proposal, Romney gave the distinct impression that he also might have fired John F. Kennedy back in 1962.

Compare the two men’s thoughts on space exploration, delivered 50 years apart (and presented in reverse chronological order). Here’s Romney:

“[R]ight now I want to be spending money here [rather than in space]. Of course the Space Coast has been badly hurt, and I believe in a very vibrant and strong space program. To define the mission for our space program, I’d like to bring in the — the top professors that relate to space areas and physics, the top people from industry. Because I want to make sure what we’re doing in space translates into commercial products. I want to bring in our top military experts on space needs.

“And — and finally of course, the — the people from — the administration, if I had an administration. I’d like to come together and talk about different options and the cost. I’d like corporate America as well as the defense network and others that could come together in a — in a part — in, if you will, a partnership basis to create a plan that will keep our space program thriving and growing. I — I believe in a manned space program. I’d like to see whether they believe in the same thing.”

Referring back to Gingrich’s proposal, he added, “I'd rather be rebuilding housing here in the U.S.”

Here’s J.F.K.:

“[M]an, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

“…But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?...

“But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented…and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun…and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out — then we must be bold.”

To be sure, we live in a different day than Kennedy’s.  Despite President Obama’s pretend (or real?) lack of awareness of it, our colossal national debt is now of paramount concern. But even before Obama exploded our deficits and decimated our space program, NASA consumed well under 1 percent of the federal budget. We could eliminate NASA entirely, and 99.4 percent of federal spending would remain.

The central premise of Romney’s book, No Apology (subtitled, The Case for American Greatness) is that he believes in American exceptionalism. Yet it’s hard to square that notion with the United States of America no longer being able to get into space without bumming a ride from the Russians (actually, without paying them $63 million per astronaut — or whatever they subsequently might decide to demand). And it’s hard to square it with letting the Chinese become the first country to put a man on the moon during the lifetimes of most people who would witness it, thereby doing something glorious that our nation can no longer do. 

We shouldn’t settle for Obama’s low horizons. Going back to the moon and onto Mars is something that America should accomplish — and soon. Rather than concerning himself with whether corporate America, among others, believes in a manned space program, or whether that program would translate into commercial products, Romney should propose to lead. 

Romney should emulate the bold spirit of Kennedy and heed his words — as well as the more recent words of Marco Rubio — remembering that “no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.”

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Gingrich Campaign: Debate Audience Stacked For Romney -- by Andrew Joseph, National Journal

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich rode a strong performance and crowd enthusiasm at a debate in South Carolina to victory in that state’s primary, but the crowds at two debates in Florida this week haven’t been as wild for Gingrich. Now his campaign is claiming that rival Mitt Romney’s campaign stacked the audience at Thursday’s debate with its supporters to shift the energy toward Romney, the Huffington Post reported.

“They definitely packed the room," Kevin Kellems, a Gingrich adviser, told the Post.

But that’s not the case, according to both the Florida Republican Party and the Romney campaign. The party, which doled out 900 of the 1,200 tickets, says most of them went to “rank and file” Republicans.

“We did a very thorough job of getting them to the rank and file, vetting them to make sure they went to registered Republicans and then making sure they went out to people that were not knowingly affiliated” with the campaigns, Party spokesman Brian Hughes told the website.

A Romney spokesman said the campaign was given a number of tickets that he assumed was the same number as the other campaigns received.

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FACT CHECK: Some Romney Housing Investments Were Not in Blind Trust -- By Naureen Khan, National Journal

In Thursday night's CNN debate, Newt Gingrich accused Mitt Romney of making investments that fueled the housing crisis.

“He has an investment in Goldman Sachs, which is, today, foreclosing on Floridians,” Gingrich said. “Maybe he should tell us how much money he's made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments.”

Romney answered the charge this way: “First of all, my investments are not made by me. My investments for the last ten years have been in a blind trust, managed by a trustee. Secondly, the investments that they made, we learned about this, as we made our financial disclosure, had been in mutual funds and bonds. I don't own stock in either. There are bonds that the investor has held through mutual funds.”

Yet, according to Romney's financial disclosure forms, not all of his mutual funds were part of a blind trust. The Boston Globe reported in September that Romney owned between $250,001 and $500,000 in a mutual fund called the Government Obligation Fund that invests in debt notes of various government entities, including mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and he made between $15,001 and $50,000 in interest from those investments.

Since those assets were considered a charitable trust rather than a blind trust, Romney could have reviewed them himself.

Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul said that the fund was managed by a trustee for Romney, not by the candidate himself, and that the asset has since been sold.

Romney has not always defended blind trusts. He was a blistering critic of them when he was running for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994.

“The blind trust is an age-old ruse. You give a blind trust rules. You can say to a blind trust, don't invest in properties which would be in conflict of interest or where the seller might think they're going to get an advantage from me.” Romney told The Boston Globe in 1994. "'A United States senator has an obligation to tell its blind trust what it cannot and can invest in," he later told the Associated Press. CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

The Death of Pragmatism -- Here lie the remains of pragmatic politics. Killed by excessive ideology and rank partisanship -- by Rick Moran, PJ Media

It’s the “Politics of Envy” versus the “Politics of Resentment” in the 2012 election. President Obama has adopted the cover story of “fairness” to mask his drive to convince middle-class Americans that the real reason some people are better off than they are is not because they’re smarter, or work harder, or have a better idea to sell in the American marketplace, but because they cheat — climbing to the top on the backs of overworked, overtaxed, and underpaid Americans. The solution: Re-elect me and I’ll make the rich squeal like stuck pigs, rule by executive fiat, turn the EPA into an avenging Angel of Death for carbon emitters, and embrace the Muslim Brotherhood as, well, brothers.

It won’t solve anything but it will make a lot of people feel better in their misery.

The GOP counters by telling the middle class that the real problem is that there are a sizable number of citizens — including some of your neighbors — who are leeching off your tax dollars and getting a free ride through life. Health care, college tuition, food stamps, housing assistance, unemployment insurance — almost anything that Washington subsidizes is a waste of tax dollars and goes to undeserving reprobates (or illegal aliens) who are the cause of the gigantic growth in the size and scope of the federal government.

The solution: Elect a Republican and we’ll put poor kids to work after school as janitors, and make their parents dig ditches on a chain gang for their food stamps. We’ll build an electrified fence that the Mexican illegals will get a real charge out of, and then take us back to the good old days when everyone knew their place, gays were in the closet, abortions were in the back alley, God was in our science textbooks, and the federal government’s biggest worry was what to do about the inefficiency of the Post Office.

Missing from this unfolding debate are solutions on how to lift us out of this gigantic hole we’ve dug ourselves over the past 50 years. One might prefer to view this crisis as a 4 or 8 year problem, caused by one party or the other, and that if only the voters would give us another chance (Democrats) or throw the bum in the White House out (Republicans), the answer to your prayers would be at hand.

But this is nonsense. Both parties, liberals and conservatives, have contributed to the rapid growth in the federal government and the crushing debt with which we must now deal. Ask Ronald Reagan or either President Bush about shrinking the size of government or ask every Democratic Congress between 1948 and 1994 about prudence, responsible governance, and the efficacy of trying to foresee unintended consequences to their social engineering schemes. The Tea Party gets one thing very, very right: it is a culture in Washington that must be changed as much as the people who are part of it.

Meanwhile, we are treated to television spectacles that are designed largely to distract us from the real plight of the nation, eschewing truth and facts for fear mongering and character assassination. The fictional president Andrew Shepherd in the film The American President comes close to nailing it:

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character.

The entertainment value — if there ever was any to this sideshow — has long since passed and we are left watching ghostly images on the tube of a president speaking before Congress while being held in thrall to the extremists of his party’s far left-wing base, while the extremists in the GOP are actually running things.

The evidence that the extremes of both parties have a stranglehold on power in Congress is fairly convincing. The center, for all intents and purposes, is gone. Almost all Democrats are liberals today and all Republicans are conservatives.
Ryan Lizza:

According to the political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have devised a widely used system to measure the ideology of members of Congress, when Obama took office there was no ideological overlap between the two parties. In the House, the most conservative Democrat, Bobby Bright, of Alabama, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Joseph Cao, of Louisiana. The same was true in the Senate, where the most conservative Democrat, Ben Nelson, of Nebraska, was farther to the left than the most liberal Republican, Olympia Snowe, of Maine. According to Poole and Rosenthal’s data, both the House and the Senate are more polarized today than at any time since the eighteen-nineties.

It isn’t just polarization that has afflicted Washington. It is ideological extremism that is largely to blame for the inaction of Congress in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — what one scholar who has studied the problem refers to as “asymmetrical polarization.”
Lizza again:

The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.

The use of 1975 as a baseline is a little strange. If Professor Hacker had used the year 1972 or even 1974 to plot his graph, he would have found a huge shift among Democrats to the far left as the ’75 "Watergate babies" — almost universally “New Left” liberals who replaced more moderate or conservative Democrats — would have substantially evened the gap between Democrats and the GOP in the House.

No matter. The point is made. For a large number of conservatives and many liberals who are being taunted with the epithet “RINO” or “DINO,” the fact remains that they have not left their party. Their party has left them. Those who can’t stomach the extremism, the obstructionism, the radicalism of the neo-liberals and Tea Party conservatives who both seek to hammer each other into the ground on a daily basis are largely left on the outside, viewing the slow-motion train wreck that politics has become with a feeling of abject helplessness.

It’s not a question of “moderates” not holding power. One can be liberal or conservative and be pragmatic enough to work with the other side on the big issues of the day. The problem is, pragmatism is dead — killed by the excessively ideological base of both parties who view compromise as treason, and comity as cowardice. Both sides are so besotted with a warped and tangled view of each other that they occasionally — unintentionally — provide comic relief for our political culture.

The debt ceiling deal reached by President Obama and Speaker Boehner is one such example of a mirthful interlude.  Both sides screamed bloody murder that their guy had botched it and had been taken by the other. It would do no good to point out that it would have been impossible for both sides to be “taken” on any one deal, so one side has to be in error. Guessing which one means that you will be acknowledged a genius by 50% of the extremists from both parties.

This kind of idiocy aside, the lack of pragmatism in both parties means that even the formerly simple tasks of government become ideological mountains to climb. Back in the good old days when Congress was made up of sane crooks and charlatans, the president’s appointments were mostly pro-forma exercises in governance. Cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries were supported (or at least, unopposed) by the opposition as a matter of course. The president was not begrudged the courtesy of being able to pick his own people. Judges — unless they were closet cases or rabid racists (and even then they were sometimes given a pass) — were confirmed by voice vote or desultory roll calls with few dissenting votes.

Today, both parties go to war over federal judges, undersecretaries, ambassadors, and other appointees as if the fate of the republic hung on whether an appointee was too far left or right. Democrats did it to Bush as much as Republicans have done it to Obama. The process is broken and the consequences are a hobbled government at all levels. Whatever efforts to achieve a pragmatic solution — such as the "Gang of 14" who came to an agreement in 2007 regarding some of President Bush’s judicial appointees — are derided by both sides, undermined, and then destroyed by partisan sniping.

If one defines pragmatism as viewing the world as it is, prioritizing what’s important, and recognizing the validity and good faith of the other side in order to work together to solve problems, then there is a gravestone somewhere on Capitol Hill that might read:

Here lies the remains of pragmatic politics. Killed by excessive ideology and rank partisanship. Survived by the American republic — but for how long, no one can say.

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Clueless: Obama Still Trying to 'Reset' with Russia -- By Kim Zigfeld, PJ Media

Putin threatens war over U.S. policy, but see-no-evil Obama continues "smart diplomacy."

“There have always been rumors because I have written about certain subjects that that is what I am coming to do here. That’s crazy. Just because you write about cancer doesn’t mean you advocate cancer. I’m a social scientist. I’ve written about democratization, but that’s my previous life.”

That was our new ambassador to Russia speaking to the New York Times about his first week in the country. It was an amazingly candid statement — Michael McFaul openly admitted that neither he nor his boss Barack Obama intend to stand up for American values in any way or form.
An American advocate democracy? That would be, in McFaul’s own words, “crazy.”

 What McFaul and Obama intend to do instead is “execute and deepen and strengthen” the now-infamous Obama “reset” policy with Russia, a policy with which McFaul stated he has been “intimately involved every step of the way.” They will do this so they can try to claim some type of foreign policy success in connection with Obama’s reelection bid.

Buzzing like a schoolboy on Twitter, McFaul announced: “This is going to be fun.” Then he stated his modus operandi:

All in the open, all the time. Secrets only reinforce stereotypes. Cold war over long ago. Our time to do differently.

Cold War over? The Russians didn’t get that memo.

Simultaneously, they were threatening the United States with cold war (indeed, maybe even hot) on three different fronts: Syria, Iran, and space.  Russia announced a major new sale of military aircraft to Syria, and warned the West that Russia would not tolerate any form of military intervention in either Syria or Iran. Then Russia blamed the United States for using its secret evil powers to down a major Russian space probe. Pravda read just like it was still being written by the Politburo.

It’s easy to see why Obama is so drawn to Russia. His willingness to simply lie about basic facts — and his belief that the American public is so clueless that he can get away with it — is truly neo-Soviet in nature. McFaul actually tweeted a photo of Obama about to call Dmitri Medvedev soon after taking office, as if the world wouldn’t remember how Medvedev’s “presidency” has been exposed as a Potemkin sham, and Obama as a naïve sucker who fell for Putin’s gambit.

McFaul has filled his Twitter feed, supposedly about Russia, with shameless propaganda about Obama’s "brilliant" staff and his economy that "works for everyone."  What he hasn’t seen fit to mention are issues like the exclusion of Russia’s leading mainstream opposition politician, Grigory Yavlinsky, from the March presidential ballot despite gathering over two million signatures in support of his candidacy. The Kremlin simply claimed a quarter of the signatures were bogus and tossed him out.

Nor has McFaul seen fit to mention any of the vicious, vitriolic anti-American hatred spewing from high-ranking Kremlin officials over Syria and Iran. Instead, in a particularly telling tweet, he asked Congress to unilaterally repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment that demands human rights concessions from Russia, just as Obama previously unilaterally withdrew the U.S. missile defense commitment to Eastern Europe.

He’s actually rewarding Russians for stating they wish to kill us.

As former Bush State Department official Paul Saunders explains, the “reset” is blowing up in Obama’s face. The Russians won’t even tolerate the propaganda smokescreen of empty rhetoric and meaningless gestures towards democracy that Obama needs to cover his tracks. When McFaul had a brief meeting with opposition leaders during his first week, state-controlled media exploded in vitriol.

Even if Russia wasn’t getting everything they wanted, they still wouldn’t actively support Obama’s agenda in the Middle East: it’s not in Russia’s interests to do so. Russia profits mightily in Syria and Iran both by selling weapons and by seeing the value of its oil reserves soar as commodity markets fret over the instability Russia foments in the region. What’s more — in case Obama and McFaul have forgotten — Russia is ruled by a proud KGB spy about to become “president for life” who spent his entire career learning how to hate and destroy the U.S. Helping the U.S. advance its foreign policy in the Middle East simply isn’t consistent with Putin’s worldview.

The Kremlin’s forces have been quite clear in warning the U.S. that it better not elect a Republican in November, lest it face global war, both hot and cold, from Russia. Former Kremlin insider Andranik Migranyan was particularly blunt about McFaul, accusing him of making a "costly mistake" in paying lip service to the opposition — slavish obedience is the only thing the Kremlin will tolerate:

[McFaul] now will have to devote effort to smoothing over his mistake, just as Obama did when he put forward some unpalatable claims about Prime Minister Putin before his first official visit to Moscow. Then he had to lavish upon the man plenty of compliments once he arrived to limit the damage caused by his clumsy behavior.

Make no mistake — Obama will do it. He is using McFaul’s reputation to camouflage a policy of appeasement. Meanwhile, the Kremlin will continue — with Obama’s assistance — to obliterate American values in Russia. Kremlin-funded propaganda network Russia Today trumpeted the words of nationalist parliamentarian Vladimir Zhirinovsky as he warned that any member of parliament who met with McFaul would be ostracized from the body. Putin is likewise snuffing out entrepreneurship in business, while Medvedev, with Obama’s blessing, feels free to repeatedly ignore the meeting of his own human rights panel.

Obama has brought America the perfect storm, the worst of all possible worlds. We are seen as betraying the friends of democracy and capitalism in Russia, as supporting the return of Soviet-style repression. We suffer the consequences of dealing with yet another dictatorship, rather than a democracy where we know the rules of the game. And at the same time, we haven’t seen any significant enhancement of Russian support for our foreign policy; to the contrary, we find ourselves openly threatened with war in the Middle East.
I guess I’m “crazy,” but to me it seems like the most essential regime change where Russia is concerned must happen in Washington, D.C.

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What's So Bad About Obama? -- by Jay Cost, The Weekly Standard

In his latest Bloomberg column, Ezra Klein pushes back on the GOP critique of the president. As far as he is concerned, the president is really a pragmatic center-leftist.

 “President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial,” Mitt Romney says. But fear not, because the former governor of Massachusetts “will offer the American ideals of economic freedom a clear and unapologetic defense.”

Romney makes it sound as if he’s running against Vladimir Lenin. But what has Barack Obama actually done or proposed to do? He continued the Bush administration’s rescue of the financial system and auto industry. He passed a health-care law modeled on reforms Romney passed in Massachusetts. He passed a financial-regulation bill that erected a protective scaffolding around the banking system, but shied away from fundamentally reshaping it. He wants to extend most, but not all, of the Bush tax cuts. He has insisted that deficit reduction include some tax increases, though he has signaled he is willing to accept as many as three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in increased taxes. He wants to raise the effective tax rates of people making more than a million dollars annually. He wants to invest in infrastructure.

You can disagree with this list without pretending it is radical or somehow inimical to free enterprise. Obama has pursued an ambitious, center-left agenda. Capitalism will survive his efforts to use market-based means to accomplish traditional liberal ends.

From a certain perspective, I think Klein is right: Obama is not “radical,” at least not in the way we usually define the concept.  But that actually points to the big the problem with this president and his worldview. The progressive ideology dating back to the turn of the last century, and in which Obama is comfortably situated, was never really about overturning the established order, but rather in co-opting it.

For instance, the Bull Moosers of 1912 wanted to regulate the “great malefactors of wealth,” as TR put it, but they also were happy to keep the protective tariff regime, which was the source of that wealth in the first place. Similarly, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) – the two hallmarks of the First New Deal – were all about grand bargains between government, labor, farmers, and capital owners. The point was to draw all classes to the bargaining table, with the meeting chaired by the progressives, naturally. So it goes for modern-day progressivism. Both Clintoncare and Obamacare did not try to implement “socialized medicine,” but rather strike a grand bargain that would encompass all of the “stakeholders” to manage the nation’s health care. 

So, Klein is also correct in that Obama has not set out to destroy capitalism. He is no socialist in the traditional sense of the word. He is not interested in controlling the means of production, as Marx put it. He’s happy to let commerce and industry remain in private hands, but that does not mean he's a free market advocate in any politically relevant sense of the phrase. He wants the free market to do its thing, so long as the government can socialize an ever-greater amount of the profit, and also take an intimate role in managing the private sector to “socially beneficial” ends.

This view of government has long provoked a very intense, negative reaction from a broad class of Americans. Skepticism of an interventionist government date back to Jefferson and Jackson, who both feared the nexus of big business and big government. Woodrow Wilson designed his “New Freedom” program precisely to combat TR’s “New Nationalism” during the 1912 campaign, but the ever-pragmatic Wilson ended up implementing most of the Bull Moosers' program once in office. It’s oft-forgotten, but FDR’s First New Deal infuriated many establishment Democrats like John Davis (1924 nominee), John Jakob Raskob (former DNC Chair), and Al Smith (1928 nominee). And as soon as the “Solid South” went from being benefit-receivers to benefit-payers in the progressive scheme, they started bolting (with the first revolt coming as early as 1937).

The principal reason for this opposition is that there has always been more than a whiff of anti-republicanism to the progressive agenda. Just consider the name "progressive," which implies a social, epistemological, or moral vanguard -- hardly the hallmark of true republicanism. And what one person views as “socially beneficial," another may rightfully call political patronage. For instance, the New Deal was full of payoffs – small and large – to Democratic constituencies. Scholarly study after study has shown how electoral calculations factored into the distribution of relief dollars during the New Deal, but perhaps the best (worst?) example is the original Social Security program. This program remains a huge point of pride for liberals, but when you look under the hood, you find some shockingly illiberal items. In particular, it was a huge bonanza for Southern plantation owners. They were cash-poor, so they remunerated their (largely black) tenants in non-cash services like old-age assistance. The planters did not want their sharecroppers to have an alternative source of income, so the Democratic Congress in 1935 amended the bill to exclude that class of workers. On a dollars and cents level, this was one of the largest political payoffs up to that point in the nation's history, far outstripping the so-called "spoils system" of the Jacksonian age. The Southern agricultural gentry similiarly won illiberal carve-outs on the AAA as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

There is a temptation to view the government as nothing more than the avatar of the public interest, but this is foolhardy. The reality is that just as market forces induce private behavior, political forces induce congressional and presidential behavior. And so, factions with a tight connection to elected officials are going to receive a better deal when the government swoops in to reform private behavior. And the larger the scope of government, the larger the potential payoffs. This is why Republicans who engage in this kind of patronage -- and there are far too many -- are behaving in an anti-conservative way. Unfortunately, the progressive tradition of ever-bigger government is like catnip for clientelism on a massive scale.

And so, the Democrats’ grand dreams of a “Fair Deal” always stink of unfairness to conservatives in the republican tradition. The examples are so numerous and stretch so far back into history, I could literally write a book about the subject.  And Barack Obama, the president who promised to bring change to Washington, has been a very diligent patron to his party's extensive list of clients. On item after item, the topline claim to benefit the national interest is regularly belied by the particularism of the fine print. Klein mentions three items in particular in his column – the auto bailout, the financial reform bill, and the health care bill – that were all justified on purely nationalistic grounds, but peel off the top layer and the stench of clientelism will overwhelm you. To this list I would add the stimulus bill, the jobs bill that Obama proposed in the fall, and the cap-and-trade bill. Liberals look upon them all as fulfilling a great national purpose, but republicans (small "r") see massive payoffs to core Democratic groups.

If you want to understand the seething anger on the conservative side of the aisle, this is what you need to appreciate: It’s not just that Obama is a big government guy in the progressive tradition, which conservatives have opposed for more than a century. It’s also that he’s a client guy, meaning that his idea of big government inevitably has special payoffs hidden in it somewhere. And more than even this, he's a boundless client guy in what should be an age of restraint. Payoffs to party clients are one thing when the economy is growing at a four percent rate per year; that is a situation where the times are so prosperous that government patrons are really just drawing upon the national surplus to satisfy their partisans. But when the economy is growing at less than two percent per year, barely enough to keep up with population growth, paying off party clients is actually like robbing from Peter to pay Paul. And while Obama and congressional Democrats have put off that bill -- in the form of our trillion-plus deficit -- conservatives are not fools. They know they'll be asked to pay up sooner or later, and with a stagnant economy that means less money in their pockets, in part because the president wants to hold together his voting coalition.

That's what's so bad about Obama.

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'It's Not Worth Getting Angry About' -- Tell that to the Tea Party -- By Jeffrey H. Anderson, The Weekly Standard

More than anyone else during any of the previous Republican presidential debates, Rick Santorum took dead aim tonight at the similarities between Romneycare and Obamacare. Arguing that those similarities could pose great problems for the Republican party and for the prospects for repeal if Mitt Romney were to win the nomination, Santorum implored GOP voters to remember, “We can’t give this issue away in this election.”

The exchange over Romneycare and Obamacare began when Santorum responded to a health care question from an audience member. He said, “Governor Romney was the author of Romneycare, which is a top-down government-run health care system which, [I] read [in] an article today, has 15 different items directly in common with Obamacare, everything from the increase in the Medicaid program…to [the] mandate you buy something [as] a condition of breathing, [the] mandate that you buy an insurance policy….”

Santorum argued that Romney’s Massachusetts health care overhaul is “pretty much a model for what Obamacare is going to look like: the highest health care costs in the country, 27 percent above the average...[and] 94 percent of the people in Massachusetts are now insured, but there was just a survey that came out and said one in four don’t get the care they need because of the high cost. So, you have a card, you’re covered, but you can’t get care.”

In his book, No Apology, Romney admitted that getting “overall health-care costs for everyone [in Massachusetts] to actually go down…is the task that remains.” However, in response to Santorum’s critique, Romney stood by Romneycare:

“The system that we put in place in our state was something we worked out with the labor community, the health care community, business, and the citizens of the nation. We came together, it was voted [on] by a 200-person legislature. Only two voted no.

“Our system has a lot of flaws, a lot of things I'd do differently. It has a lot of benefits. The people of the state like it by about three to one.”

Romney didn’t mention that the people of that state also voted for Barack Obama by nearly two to one.

Without having said how Romneycare differs from Obamacare, Romney concluded by saying, “We consider it very different than Obamacare.” He then shifted his focus to Obamacare itself, saying, “If I were president, [on] day one I will take action to repeal Obamacare. It’s bad medicine. It’s bad economy. I’ll repeal it.”

He added, “I believe the people of each state should be able to craft programs that they feel are best for their people. I think ours is working pretty well.”

Santorum pounced:

“What Governor Romney just said is that government-run top-down medicine is working pretty well in Massachusetts, and he supports it. Now, think about what that means — going up against Barack Obama…you are going to claim, well, top-down government-run medicine on the federal level doesn’t work, and we should repeal it. And he’s going to say, wait a minute, Governor. You just said that top-down government-run medicine in Massachusetts works well.

Santorum added, “Folks, we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom.”

Romney then replied by issuing a defense of Romneycare that sounded a lot like the defense that Obama (who might have even been taking notes) is likely to give of Obamacare:  “I didn’t say I’m in favor of top-down government-run health care.  Ninety-two percent of the people in my state had insurance before our plan went in place.” (For Obamacare, it’s nearly the same percentage of people, only nationwide)  “And nothing changes for them.  They own the same private insurance they had before.” (As Obama likes to say, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”) “And for the 8 percent of people who didn't have insurance, we said to them, if you can afford insurance, buy it yourself, any one of the plans out there, you can choose any plan.”  (The same is true for Obamacare — except, as in Romneycare, for the large numbers of people who get shuttled onto Medicaid.)  “There’s no government plan.”  (There isn’t one in Obamacare either, as the public outcry caused the “public option” to be nixed.)

Referring to the individual mandate, Romney added, “We are insisting on personal responsibility.”

Santorum responded, “Does everybody in Massachusetts have a requirement to buy health care?”

Romney replied, “Everyone has a requirement to either buy it or pay the state for the cost of providing them free care.” 

Santorum said, “Just so I understand this, in Massachusetts, everybody is mandated as a condition of breathing in Massachusetts, to buy health insurance, and if you don’t, and if you don’t, you have to pay a fine.”

Moments later, as the discussion over Romneycare and Obamacare continued, Romney rebuked Santorum, saying, “First of all, it's not worth getting angry about.” 

Romney then reiterated that his fundamental objection to Obamacare, apart from it being an affront to federalism, is apparently that he doesn’t like the way it’s funded:  “Look, I know you don’t like the plan that we had [in Massachusetts]. I don’t like the Obama plan. His plan cuts Medicare by $500 billion. We didn’t, of course, touch anything like that. He raises taxes by $500 billion. We didn’t do that.” 

Romney then repeated his claim that somehow Obamacare, which requires that essentially everyone buy government-approved health insurance, deals with “100 percent of the people of the country,” whereas Romneyacare, which requires that essentially everyone buy government-approved health insurance, only deals with “the 8 percent of the people that were uninsured.” 

Moments later, he asserted, “If I'm president of the United States, I will stop it [Obamacare]. And in debating Barack Obama…I will be able to point out that what he did was wrong.” He then repeated his mantra: “It was bad medicine, it's bad for the economy, and I will repeal it.”

Santorum got in the last word: “[W]hat Governor Romney said is just factually incorrect. Your mandate is no different than Barack Obama’s mandate. It is the same mandate….You take over 100 percent [of health care], just like he takes over 100 percent....The same fines that you put in place in Massachusetts are [the] fines that he puts in place in the federal level. Same programs.”

The exchange offered a stark reminder of one inescapable set of facts:  President Obama spent the bulk of his first 15 months in office ramming his signature legislation down the throats of the American people. Yet, as his State of the Union Address made clear, he’d rather not bring it up. So if Republicans are going to have a mandate to repeal this unprecedented threat to liberty and fiscal solvency, they will have to bring it up — or, rather, their nominee will have to bring it up. And he will have to know why he opposes it — not merely that he does.

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Anti-Colonial Troll Studies At Harvard -- By Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest

Is there something wrong with the Boston-Cambridge water supply? Via Meadia has written previously about the plague of so-called "awesome" courses in the academies that nestle along the banks of the Charles. To understand the failures of our higher educational system, one need look no further than college classes on topics ranging from “Puppetry” to “Surfing and American Culture” which provide little educational value, no marketable skills, and essentially serve to defraud irresponsible college students (and their parents) out of tuition money and student loans.

Add Harvard to the list of institutions promoting the proliferation of such nonsense, as evidenced by its Spring offerings. Now, most entries in the Crimson course catalog are what one would expect from America’s most fabled university. But alongside respectable intellectual offerings one finds such gems as:

Scandinavian 102: Trolls, Trolldom and the Uses of TraditionExamines Scandinavian folklore and folk life, with an emphasis on narratives, supernatural beliefs, and material culture from the 17th to the early 20th centuries, and the anti-colonial and nation-building uses of these traditions.

Visual and Environmental Studies 80: Loitering: Studio CourseYou will hang out in the vicinity of culture and make things in response to it. This class is not thematic or linked to any particular discipline.
Note: No previous studio experience necessary.

Sign us up for the anti-colonial troll studies class, please.  Though we have some qualms; the word ‘troll’ is redolent of lookism and many other forms of hate speech. We have half a mind to rat Harvard out to the National Committee for the Protection of Forest Persons.

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The Great Game: Philippine Edition -- by Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest

The Obama Administration may soon come to an agreement with Philippines to station U.S. troops or naval vessels on its territory. The talks are still in the early stages, but officials from both countries have said they are inclined to strike a deal within the next few months.

An agreement with Manila would come close on the heels of two other upcoming moves: American Marines soon to bestationed in Australia and several U.S. warships moving to Changi Naval Base in Singapore.
Asian nations are learning that the United States is prepared to offer a real balance against China’s new assertiveness in the region. In the Philippine case, this dovetails nicely with the country’s interests—especially with respect to the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands, geographically closer to the Philippines than China. Manila has occasionally stationed troops on the islands, and it operates a number of offshore oil fields in waters claimed by China. Having American ships docked in its ports, if not also American boots on Philippine soil, will no doubt be a confidence booster for Manila in these and other disputes. CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

The economic chart that may doom the Obama presidency -- by James Pethokoukis, The American

In his State of the Union response the other night, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels neatly summed up Mitt Romney’s (who has a roughly 90 percent chance of being the GOP nominee according to Intrade) economic case against President Barack Obama: “The president did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight, but he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse.”

In other words, the Obama Recovery stinks. Even if today’s GDP report — for the fourth quarter of 2011 — shows 3 percent growth or better, it would be just the fourth time that has happened since the economy began turning up in June 2009: 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2010, and 3.8 percent in the second quarter of 2010. But no 3 percent-plus quarters since then.

The first nine quarters of the Reagan Recovery, by contrast, looked like this:  5.1 percent, 9.3 percent, 8.1 percent, 8.5 percent, 8.0 percent,  7.1 percent, 3.9 percent, 3.3 percent, 3.8, percent, 3.4 percent. In fact, the Reagan Boom went from the first quarter of 1983 until the second quarter of 1986 without notching a sub-3 percent GDP quarter.

So while the Reagan Recovery quickly made up for lost years of growth, not so much for the Obama Recovery, as this chart in today's Wall Street Journal makes clear:



And few economists are expecting the Obama Recovery to take off anytime soon. The IMF predicts just 1.8 percent growth for 2012 (and that’s assuming no EU sovereign debt meltdown). And the Federal Reserve sees growth in the 2.2 percent to 2.7 percent range with unemployment around 8.2 percent to 8.5 percent. Ugh!

The WSJ offers two explanations for the anemic rebound:

Economists say the nature of the recession helps explain the slow recovery. Aftershocks from the financial crisis have left banks reluctant to lend, making it hard for companies, and especially start-ups, to get access to capital. The housing market, which has historically helped lead the economy out of recession, remains deeply depressed.

Many business leaders say they are also being held back by policy-related uncertainty, everything from the threat of new regulations and higher taxes to the fear that political gridlock could hamper the government’s ability to respond to a new crisis. Recent economic research has given some weight to those complaints. A study by a trio of academic economists found that policy uncertainty has risen in recent years, and that periods of uncertainty have in the past corresponded with rising unemployment and slowing growth.

Whichever explanation holds more weight with voters may go a long way toward deciding who’ll be America’s next president. CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Look at just how progressive the U.S. tax system is -- By James Pethokoukis, The American

Great, great table from the Tax Foundation looking at the average real income tax rate for various income groups. People with adjusted gross incomes of less than $100,000 pay 8 percent or less. People making $500,000 or more pay no lower than 22 percent on average. The overall average rate is 11 percent. Looks pretty progressive to me …

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Actually, we should not keep all students in high school until they are 18 -- By James Pethokoukis, The American

Should teenagers be forced to go to high school? Here’s President Obama from the State of the Union speech on Tuesday:

We also know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma. So tonight, I call on every State to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen.

Another idea that sounds good as a bullet point in a speech, but not so much in reality.

1. As the Los Angeles Times points out, 17 states already mandate compulsory education until age 18, including California. But the most recent figures show that 18.2 percent of California students drop out.

2. A 2009 study, also noted by the LA Times, by the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy (the source of the accompanying chart) found such mandates ineffective:

The primary rationale behind raising the compulsory school attendance age to 18 is the belief that it will decrease the number of students who drop out and increase the number of students who graduate. However, our review revealed that there is little research to support the effectiveness of compulsory attendance laws in achieving these goals. As we have described, the evidence that does exist is dated. The research suggests that these laws had an impact on high school students in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when the circumstances behind the decision to drop out were likely quite different than they are today. In addition, the findings themselves suggest that the impact of laws requiring students to stay in school until they are 18 has decreased over time.

3. In his must-read book Real Education, AEI’s Charles Murray (whose new book, Coming Apart, I will soon write about) notes that whatever the educational advantage of charter schools over government schools, they certainly succeed in providing students a safe and orderly classroom for those who want to learn. “The worst inner-city schools … contain classes in which competent teachers cannot be heard over the din … daily student-on-student and student-on-teacher altercations, frequent assaults … and the occasional assault with a deadly weapon.” In response, Murray offers a few basic rules:

1. Disruptive students are not permitted to remain in class.

2. Students who are chronically disruptive are suspended.

3. Students who in any way threaten a teacher verbally or physically are expelled.

Now, Murray realizes that “alternative schools” may not be able to absorb all the disruptive students and many may end up on the streets. But that may be a price we have to pay to reestablish order in our schools. And just how high a price is it really?

Students who are suspended are often learning nothing when they are in school — literally nothing … Nor are their hours in the school building keeping them out of trouble. The kinds of activities that get teenagers into trouble in the inner city (or anywhere else for that matter) do not usually take place from 8:00 a.m to 3:00 p.m. … Most of them are already on the street for all but a few hours of the day when they are preventing teachers and other students from learning. … The overriding priority for inner-city schools must be the children who are trying to learn. It is morally unacceptable to sacrifice their futures … just because we do not know how to reach the children who are not trying to learn.

Keep every kid in school no matter how disruptive they are? A perfect example of government creating a mandate without thinking through the unintended consequences. CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Obama's Misstatements on the Union -- by David Limbaugh, Creators.com

Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation.

Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space.

Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record.

He said, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more." But everyone knows he's had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, "Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse."

Obama said, "I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors." Well, that's mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the "programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors" is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan's plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.

Obama said, again, that to avoid Warren Buffett's secretary's paying a higher tax rate than her boss, we should adopt the "Buffett rule," prescribing that "if you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes." The Heritage Foundation tells us that according to Congressional Budget Office data, the top 1 percent of income earners already pay 30 percent of their income in all federal taxes. In addition, when wealthy people pay a lower effective income tax rate, it's a result either of lawful deductions (often charitable) or of capital gains and dividends on property they've acquired with money that has already been taxed. Also, before the wealthy realize many of these gains, the businesses that produce these gains have already paid a corporate income tax rate of 35 percent (the highest in the world).

 This means that Buffett, on much of this income, pays an effective rate of 50 percent (35 percent corporate plus 15 percent capital gains). Indeed, 99.4 percent of millionaires and billionaires pay far more in taxes in actual and relative terms than middle- and low-income earners, and for Obama to suggest otherwise is not only deeply deceitful but also damaging — because of the class envy he constantly stokes — to the social fabric of this country.

Obama said he wants to lure American companies home yet has steadfastly refused, notwithstanding his SOTU rhetoric, to agree to rectify the primary reasons they leave: punitive corporate income tax rates and onerous regulations.

Obama suggested that he is not only a pioneer in clean energy but also bullish on domestic energy. His record on the former is disgraceful, and both his claim and record on the latter are insulting. He has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on quixotic green-energy programs with Solyndra and its cousins, spending $5 million for every single "renewable energy" job he has created. He has defiantly refused to take responsibility and is continuing to pursue more. He has waged war on domestic coal, natural gas and oil. He not only imposed a punitive moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf but also lawlessly reinstituted another one after federal district and appellate courts shot down his initial moratorium. When he lifted this revised moratorium, drilling remained in limbo because of the administrative obstacles his administration had imposed on drilling permits. His actions caused devastating losses to the Gulf economy and jobs, which rippled throughout the nation's economy. Most recently, to placate his environmental extremist base, he blocked the job-producing Keystone XL pipeline for no legitimate reason.

Obama threatened to withhold federal subsidies to colleges unless they hold tuition costs down without recognizing that one of the main reasons they've skyrocketed is the profligate subsidies he continues to increase.

He railed against bailouts after having established a record as President Bailout. He blamed banks again for causing the housing crisis and economic meltdown by making loans to people who couldn't afford them, without admitting that government, mainly his party, was the primary culprit.

He said he'd established the closest military cooperation with Israel in history, but he has bullied that nation for three years, and our relationship has rarely been more strained.

Believe me, I could go on. CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Michelle Obama reports for campaign duty -- By Neil Munro, The Daily Caller

Michelle Obama is playing a growing role in her husband’s reelection campaign, partly as a fundraiser, but especially as a cheerleader for her husband’s female supporters.

The first lady attended at least two Jan. 26 fundraisers in Florida, where she ticked off a list of the president’s progressive accomplishments, promised more government intervention and ended with urgent appeals for audiences to join the campaign, according to the White House transcripts of her remarks.

Roughly 250 people paid a minimum of $500 to attend a lunchtime fundraiser in Sarasota, according to the transcript.

MRS. OBAMA: “So let me ask you one final question:  Are you in?

AUDIENCE:  Yes!

MRS. OBAMA: Wait. Are you in?

AUDIENCE:  Yes!

MRS. OBAMA:  Because I am so in.  (Laughter.)  I am so very in.

Prior to the 2010 mid-term election blowout, the first lady played only a minor role in her husband’s campaign plans. But her role has increased markedly since then.

Mrs. Obama has attended 17 fundraisers organized by the Democratic National Committee since June 2011, including five in Florida, three in California, and others in Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Illinois and Louisiana.

On Jan. 11 she attended two campaign fundraisers in Virginia on the same day that the president hosted one in their home town of Chicago.

Next week she is slated for a California trip, where she will attend two fundraisers and appear on two television shows. One is Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show,” and the other is “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” whose host is a vocal supporter of the president.

The first lady has also appeared at more events that showcase her non-political role in Washington. Since November, for example, she has headlined a “Toys for Tots” drive, a job fair, several events for soldiers and their families, a trouble-free appearance on the iCarly kids’ TV show and a quick appearance at a NASCAR rally.

Mrs. Obama is well-regarded by most Americans but engenders animosity in some, owing to the anonymous but corroborated tales about her clashes with White House officials including former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former press secretary Robert Gibbs.

For example, in a Marist poll of 1,042 registered voters in October, 63 percent had a positive impression of her while just 21 percent had an unfavorable view. Her support among Democratic women, especially African-American women, is likely far higher.

Thursday’s trip included two fundraisers at expensive mansions in Palm Beach and Sarasota, plus a public event at a Tampa supermarket that featured a Hispanic food company and an audience that included numerous Hispanic and African-American children.

The trip put the first lady, and her politically correct healthy-food campaign, on Florida TV alongside the increasingly aggressive and hard-nosed GOP primary candidates.

She pushed a very ambitious progressive agenda at both fundraisers, arguing that university-trained professionals in government should protect people from corporate executives and from their own mistakes in the free market.

“We know that in this country we rise and we fall together. … We know that if we make the right choices, if we have the right priorities, we can ensure that everyone — everyone — gets a fair shake and everyone has a chance to get ahead,” she told her Sarasota audience.

The Palm Beach event was held at the $40 million Palm Beach home of Howard and Michele Kessler, who are major contributors to Democratic causes.

The Sarasota event was held at the ocean-view home of Richard and Caren Lobo. He’s a former chairman of the Florida Public Broadcasting Service and CEO of the PBS station that serves Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota.

She told similar stories about President Obama to both audiences.

“Barack has a memory like a steel trap. … If he’s had a few minutes with you and a decent conversation, he might not remember your name but he will never forget your story. … That is where Barack gets his passion.  That is where he gets his toughness and his fight.”

She also tried out a few cautious jokes, telling her Sarasota audience that “we all know that this isn’t just about one extraordinary man — although I admit I’m a little biased.  I think he’s kind of cute.”
But at both events, she amped up her appeal for support and help.

“We don’t have time,” she told the Palm Beach audience of 140 donors. “We need you fired up and ready to go and ready to make it happen. … So I am counting on seeing all of you out there, doing whatever it is you do best — taking your neighbors and shaking them a little bit. (Laughter.) Going to church and making sure people are registered to vote.  Yelling from the rooftops.  Pulling women aside — just shaking them. (Laughter.) We need you.”

That’s a much stronger appeal than what she offered donors at a Pasadena mansion last June. “I hope that you all are ready to go — (applause) — because it is going to take all of our energy to keep moving towards the future,” she told the wealthy California audience.

It was also stronger than her September pitch to a lunchtime fundraiser in Cape Elizabeth, Maine: “We are going to work our butts off to make this right.  So we need you behind us.  Thank you so much, Maine.  Thank you.  Let’s get going!  Let’s get to work!”

The Palm Beach audience got the same urgent appeal as the Sarasota donors, some 10 months before her husband stands for re-election amid economic uncertainty and a growing portfolio of White House scandals.

“This is going to be hard,” Mrs. Obama said. “We can’t take anything for granted and we need everyone — every single one of you — to be laser-focused, creating those smart women. Right? (Applause.) Building up that base. Telling people the truth of who this president is and what he’s done for so many across the country and around the world. … We have to get it done.”

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USDA Hikes Discrimination Awards for Hispanics -- By Corruption Chronicles, Judicial Watch

The U.S. government’s minority cash giveaway for “discriminated” farmers has reached a new level, with an improved process that makes it faster and easier for Hispanics to get awards much larger than previously announced.

The goal is to make amends to those who suffered discrimination when seeking farm loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency charged with doling out billions in reparation money. A few years ago black farmers got $1.25 billion to settle discrimination allegations and last summer the Obama Administration announced a new pot of “compensation” cash—$1.33 billion—for women and Hispanics.

Originally, under that plan, Hispanics who felt they were victims of USDA discrimination could get up to $50,000 to make up for their suffering. To get the word out the feds launched an impressive bilingual advertising and public relations campaign that includes national outreach tours by top USDA officials as well as Justice Department bigwigs because that agency is sort of overseeing it.

This month the USDA quietly increased the amount of money that each discriminated Hispanic farmer can collect by five times, to $250,000.  The agency also announced an “updated claims process” that simplifies and speeds things up so the victims can get their government cash faster. Victims are encouraged to participate in the simplified process and are assured that there is no filing fee or other costs.

The updated process is part of the USDA’s efforts to ensure that all its “customers” have equal access to its programs, according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. It’s also part of the president’s mission to end discrimination at the agency. “The Obama Administration has made it a priority to resolve all claims of past discrimination at USDA, and we are committed to closing this sad chapter in USDA’s history,” Vilsack said.

Under Obama, the agency has served as a key tool to help minorities through a variety of costly programs, mainly the First Lady’s $4.5 billion effort to bring affordable healthy foods to inner cities nationwide. Under the plan, the USDA has dispersed huge sums of money to community groups that promise to make available affordable healthy foods in poor neighborhoods.

The agency has also allocated $8.8 million to train “underserved” Hispanic students to someday work for it. The money is paying for programs that tackle global food security and hunger, climate change, bio-based energy development, childhood obesity (Michelle Obama’s favorite topic) and food safety. In all, 20 “Hispanic-serving institutions” got grants to help the targeted population “develop a skilled American work force” that will someday join the USDA ranks.  CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Laser Hair Removal A Constitutional Right For Transgender Inmate -- By Corruption Chronicles, Judicial Watch

In a classic “only in America” case, a federal court has found that prison officials in one state violated a transgender inmate’s constitutional rights by refusing to provide taxpayer-funded laser hair removal treatments.

The bizarre case comes from Massachusetts where a male inmate, who identities as female, is serving a sentence at a correctional institution in Norfolk. The criminal, Christine Alexander, was diagnosed with “gender identity disorder” in 2003 and receives hormone replacement therapy and psychological counseling as he progresses “towards feminization.”

As if this weren’t outrageous enough, Alexander also wants taxpayers to finance the cosmetic beauty treatment of laser hair removal because in his case it’s medically necessary, according to his attorneys. That’s because the inmate has a rare medical condition, according to court documents cited in a legal report this week; he “suffers from facial and body hair, and male pattern baldness.”

Evidently prison officials drew the line and refused the laser hair removal, so Alexander sued in federal court, claiming that corrections department officials are violating his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. Alexander asserts in his complaint that the failure to provide him with laser hair removal (referred to as “medical treatment”) will lead to serious bodily harm, untreated mental illness and continued depression.

A federal judge in Massachusetts agreed, ruling that Alexander’s allegations are sufficient to establish that he has a serious medical need (presumably for laser hair removal) which has not been adequately treated under the Eighth Amendment standard. Appointed by Richard Nixon in 1972, the judge (Joseph Tauro) found that prison officials knew of Alexander’s need for “medical care” yet failed to provide it.

Many states across the county spend thousands of taxpayer dollars annually to provide transgender inmates—diagnosed with gender identity disorder—with hormone treatments, hair removal, makeup and women’s underwear. A few years ago a separate Massachusetts inmate, convicted of murdering his wife, sued the Department of Corrections to pay for an expensive sex-change surgery, claiming that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body.

For a couple of years Wisconsin was the only state with a law prohibiting the Department of Corrections from using tax dollars for transgender inmates’ hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery. The measure was legally challenged and overturned by a federal court in 2010, however. The Clinton-appointed judge who heard the case ruled that denying convicted male felons hormones that help them look like women violates both the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments. Only in America!  CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Romney's Big Healthcare Lie -- By Daniel Horowitz, RedState

Almost a full year into the presidential campaign, Romney finally received a full-fledged beatdown for his mendacity over healthcare.  He has the nerve to feign outrage over Obamacare, even while he touts Romneycare – a carbon copy of Obamacare – as a virtuous success, supported by 90% of Massachusetts residents.  Santorum did his homework, and called him out on the hypocrisy.  Romney was never able to answer why the same market intervention and distortions – mandates, subsidies, and Medicaid – which form the bedrock of Obamacare , supposedly worked so well in Massachusetts.  The reason he couldn’t answer the question is because Romneycare was a complete failure.  It is the canary in the coal mine for Obamacare.

The reality is that Romneycare did not merely affect the 8% that were uninsured, as Romney has suggested; it punished everyone with record high premiums.  It is incontrovertibly clear that MassCare has engendered the highest premiums in the nation, while dumping thousands of people onto federally funded Medicaid and disincentivizing people not to earn  more money.

In other words, Romneycare, at its core, is exactly like Obamacare.  When Romney could not articulate any fundamental difference between the two pernicious government takeovers, he wandered off into ancillary differences.  He pointed out that Obamacare contains 2600 pages, raises taxes, and cuts Medicare.  However, those are all nebulous differences related to the packaging or funding of the proposal.  At the core, they are the same; mandates, subsidies, and Medicaid.  That core is what Romney recently dubbed as fundamentally a conservative principle.

Last year, Romney let the cat out of the bag when he said “I hope we’re ultimately able to eliminate some of the differences, and repeal the bad and keep the good.”  After all, why would you want to completely repeal a fundamentally conservative idea?  He would replace the tax increases in Obamacare, replacing them with more borrowing to service the mandates, subsidies, and expansion of Medicaid.  Maybe he’d reduce the number of pages in the bill by 50% or so.

Santorum was right to suggest that Romney would be caught flat footed in a debate with Obama over healthcare.  It’s better we realize that now – before we are stripped of our most effective weapon in the general election. CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Neither liberty nor safety -- By Roger Hedgecock, Human Events

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," said Benjamin Franklin in 1759.

Liberals everywhere were in full-throat roar protesting George Bush's Patriot Act and his War on Terror in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11.  What price in liberty to be safe from terrorism?  Barack Obama himself decried the loss of liberty, the loss of personal freedoms, declaring in 2005 that the Patriot Act "puts our own Justice Department above the law."

Today only crickets from the Left as Obama assaults liberty and freedom of choice on a nearly daily basis.

Consider the list of Obama's assaults on liberty.  Any one of these done by a Republican President would bring down the wrath of the Left.  Done by Obama, the action is noted in the Obama reelect media for a single news cycle and then dropped

Obama's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is more arrogantly intrusive than ever.  The Fourth Amendment protection against "unreasonable" searches and seizures has been repealed at your local airport.  Rep. John Mica, who authored the TSA legislation, observes that the unionized TSA now strip-searching grannies and detaining Senators bears little resemblance to his original idea.

Doctor-patient confidentiality?  ObamaCare is requiring doctors and hospitals to make records of every aspect of your personal health, and health history, for use by Obama's Department of Health and Human Services.  For use by the "death panels"?

ObamaCare tramples First Amendment religious freedom by ordering Catholic hospitals to cover free contraceptives, requiring Catholic adoption agencies to adopt kids to gay couples (resulting in the adoption agencies closing), and requiring Catholic taxpayers to fund federal abortion grants.

"No Child Left Behind" has been expanded to collect not only student test scores and grades, but the government now keeps permanent records on students' disciplinary actions, economic status, and even pregnancies.  Worse, the feds discourage the states from allowing parents to access these "permanent records."  What police state has ever done without such record keeping?  Old East Germany's Stasi would be proud.

The federalization of K-12 education continues under Obama.  A group of Bay Shore, Long Island, high school students will soon be wearing electronic monitors to allow school officials to track their physical activity around the clock to fight obesity.  Is any excuse sufficient to ban all privacy?

The Obama EEOC has ruled that a private employer's requirement for a high school diploma to qualify for a job might violate the Americans With Disabilities Act.  The act does not cover this issue, but Obama's EEOC thinks it should.

Obama wants restrictions on guns sold to Americans in violation of the Second Amendment even as his Justice Department runs the Fast and Furious program to allow the same guns to walk across the border into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.

EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), a privacy advocacy group, sued Obama's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discover through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that DHS is monitoring political dissent.  EPIC has more than 300 pages of contracts and memos detailing work done by General Dynamics for DHS.  One "tracking report" titled "Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI" summarizes dissent on blogs and social networking sites, quoting commenters by name.

Angry that FOIA requests and lawsuits were revealing the extent of Obama's liberty-shredding actions, Obama's "Justice Department" issued new rules allowing federal agencies to deny the existence of requested documents even when the agency knows they in fact do exist.  The Right to Lie to protect the public from knowing about the loss of their liberties is now the official policy of the Obama administration.

Obama's FBI has obtained a court order against an American woman accused of mortgage fraud to force her to decrypt her PGP-scrambled hard drive so that the FBI can fish around without a warrant in her personal computer for incriminating evidence.  The judge said the Fifth Amendment did not apply.  For Obama, the Constitution (that "list of negative rights") does not apply whenever it acts to restrain his objectives.

The State of the Union?  Slipping into dictatorship.  Where's the ACLU?
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Obama's crony capitalism -- Friends of the president are given billions in government largesse -- Editorial, The Washington Times

President Obama said in his State of the Union address that one of the American values that must be reclaimed is “an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” For three years, he and his political allies have been undermining this vision. They see government as a means of rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies. For the Obama circle, rules apply only to other people.

Obamacare is a growing burden to American businesses, but not if you have friends in high places.  Mr. Obama's signature and highly unpopular legislative achievement was sold as a measure that would require shared sacrifice but bring lasting benefits to all Americans. Yet as soon as the law was implemented, hundreds of waivers were issued that allowed the recipients to duck under Obamacare requirements. The vast majority of recipients were labor-union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments with strong Democratic connections. One in 5 waivers issued in April 2011 went to upscale nightclubs, bars and hotels in Rep. Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district.  Mr. Obama is not even covered by his own law.

In his speech, Mr. Obama made the case for bigger government energy programs, claiming “government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.” It certainly helps if you have given money to the Obama campaign. A CBS News investigation found that 80 percent of the $20.5 billion in energy Department loans for “green” energy went to Mr. Obama's top donors. The half-billion-dollar government loan guarantee to the bankrupt solar-panel company Solyndra is a model of Obama-style crony capitalism.

At the center of this sweetheart deal was oil billionaire and major Obama backer George Kaiser, whose family-foundation investment fund was a major stakeholder in Solyndra.  The loan was rushed through despite warning flags that it was a risky investment. When failing Solyndra sought to restructure the loan, investors such as Mr.  Kaiser were put ahead of taxpayers for recouping their investments. But unlike this insider, most taxpayers don’t enjoy “intoxicating” two-hour dinners in Las Vegas with Mr. Obama to discuss energy policy.

During the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama promised to “end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all.” Don’t tell that to his friends. In May 2011, the pharmaceutical firm Siga Technologies, headed by Obama intimate Ronald Perelman, received a $443 million sole-source, no-bid, no-questions-asked government contract for an unnecessary anti-smallpox pill. Siga previously had been awarded a $3 billion contract after placing former Service Employees International Union boss and frequent White House visitor Andy Stern on its board.

Never in modern history has the U.S. government been used so extensively as a vehicle for benefiting political cronies at the expense of the rest of us. In his speech, Mr. Obama said America shouldn’t “settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by.” Given this administration’s rampant favoritism, special treatment and backroom deals, restoring fairness is a major argument against Mr. Obama's re-election. CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE Sphere: Related Content

Help the unemployed off the rolls -- Time to end 99-week unemployment subsidies -- By Emily Miller, The Washington Times

When it comes to job creation, President Obama has no clue. Under his leadership, the average amount of time spent in the unemployment lines more than doubled from four to nine months. Rather than push those down on their luck toward new opportunities, Mr. Obama wants to make sure they stay on the government dole for 99 weeks.

The House of Representatives offered reforms on the unemployment benefit-extension package adopted in December, but it was blocked by the Democratic Senate.  It’s now up to a conference committee to do something more than just pay people not to work for an additional 10 months, extend the payroll tax cut and find billions to pay for both.

Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been pushing to fix the current system. While it’s technically a requirement that recipients look for work while collecting benefits, it doesn’t always happen. The Michigan Republican wants states to strengthen the ways they verify that a recipient is actively seeking work, whether by posting a resume online or other quantifiable methods.

Mr.Camp thinks recipients of jobless benefits who have not finished high school should at least enroll in a GED program. After a few weeks out of a job, the average person only spends about 40 minutes a day looking for work. There’s plenty of time left to spend four hours a day getting a high-school diploma, if not an associate’s degree.

“These bipartisan reforms provide those who need it with continued assistance during hard times while helping more Americans get back to work - which is the real goal of this program in the first place,” Mr. Camp’s spokesman explained.

Mr. Obama started adding benefit extensions in his failed 2009 stimulus bill, but the money gushing out of Washington failed to get people back to work. The GOP fears unemployment could become another budget-busting entitlement program and seeks to immediately cut out 20 weeks of added benefits, slimming the total number down to 59 weeks by summer.

The House also wants to give states more flexibility with federal funds to find new, improved re-employment programs. “The entire debate in Congress has been over how many weeks of benefits we can provide while leaving the system intact,” said James Sherk, senior policy analyst in labor economics at the Heritage Foundation. “The waiver program is the most important reform because it would allow you to change the system. A dynamic governor could create a better system that could be a model for the national unemployment system.”

Unemployment insurance is supposed to be insurance you paid for in the event of losing your job at no fault of your own. Over the past three years, it has turned into a benefits program that a minority of people believe is a deserved check in the mail for doing nothing. Congressional Republicans should not compromise with Democrats and need to take a stand for common-sense reform.

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