But the Conquered, or their Children, have no Court, no Arbitrator on Earth to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did, to Heaven, and repeat their Appeal, till they have recovered the native Right of their Ancestors, which was to have such a Legislative over them, as the Majority should approve, and freely acquiesce in.
-John Locke

Monday, November 28, 2011

Barney Frank Fallout

Before folks start rejoicing too much at the news that Barney Frank will not be seeking re-election, we need the sobering thought that Maxine Waters is next in line to be the ranking Dem on the Financial Services Committee.  Yes, you read that right: Maxine Waters is poised to take over from Barney Frank.  And she knows it, too.  In fact, today she made the point in a statement regarding Barney's decision to allow America to prosper not seek another term. 

Interestingly, it puts the Dems in a tough spot - pass Waters over and risk the ire of the CBC, or support her and have to deal with her three pending ethical violations charges which all tie into her position on the Financial Services Committee.  Pity them.

Is this a big deal?  Well, that depends on what you view as "a big deal."  If you are at all concerned that the Dems will re-take the House in 2012, and you recognize that banks play an enormously important role in our economy, then this might be a "big deal," or as VP Biden likes to say, "a big f#*&ing deal!"  If you don't think the Dems will re-take the House, this is still a "Big f#&*ing deal" because Maxine Waters hates banks and doesn't understand finance.

Business Insider has this on the prospects:

Unfortunately for the banking sector, the next Democrat in line to succeed Frank as the committee's ranking member is none other than Rep. Maxine Waters, the controversial California congresswoman best known for her questionable ethics and apparent lack of understanding about how the U.S. financial system works.
If the 2009 TARP hearings are any indication, Waters's ascension will likely have Wall Street longing for the days of Dodd and Frank. During those hearings, Waters totally befuddled bank CEOs — and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — with crazy, rambling questions and conspiracy theories about Goldman Sachs.
She also introduced a bill calling for a ban on credit-default swaps and, more recently, called on President Obama to rein in "gangsta" banks and "tax them out of business."
Hold on to your hats!

In all seriousness, the Republicans should be using this fact to remind voters exactly why it is important to not the Dems regain the House.  Let the Dems deal with the problem of their own making.


BREAKING NEWS!!!

Barney Frank will NOT seek re-election in 2012!!!

After 16 terms in congress (that's 32 years!), the man whom many view as the architect of the (now-burst) housing bubble will finally leave. 

Good riddance!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Why The Super Committee

John Hinderaker at Powerline offers a history lesson regarding the Debt Crisis, Budgets and the ultimate need for the Super Committee.  I am copying his entire post here, but do make a point of visiting his site at least daily.


The Supercommittee is now officially a failure. On balance, I think that is a good thing, in part because the whole approach of trying to solve our country’s deep-seated fiscal problems with a closed-door, back-room deal is fundamentally wrong. Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, reminds us of the history that gave rise to the present crisis and points the path toward a more sensible, if inherently difficult, approach: 
All of us had hoped that the supercommittee would succeed in producing the sound, long-term plan this country desperately needs. But in order to properly understand why they did not, we must recognize the strategic decision made by the president, and Senate Majority Leader Reid, at the beginning of the year. 
The budget process began with the submission of the president’s budget plan. Analysis of that plan quickly revealed that the president’s $1.6 trillion tax increase proved totally inadequate to offset the enormous levels of new spending that would occur. Under this plan, over ten years, we would accumulate another $13 trillion in debt, never produce a single deficit less than $748 billion, produce a deficit in the tenth year of $1.2 trillion, and leave entitlement programs like Medicare in grave financial peril. 
For this, the president was widely and correctly rebuked. 
Next, the newly-elected House Republicans—dispatched by voters to restrain Washington’s big spenders—introduced and passed a budget plan as required by law. It was a detailed, honest, and concrete plan to put our nation on a sound footing. 
The Senate Democrat majority then made a decision: Rather than introduce a plan of their own, they chose to ignore the law and craft no budget at all. Majority Leader Reid even said it would be ‘foolish’ to have a budget. After the president’s disastrous budget rollout, Democrat leaders knew their rhetoric would not hold up on paper—that the public would not accept the level of spending, taxing, and borrowing their fiscal vision requires. It was simply easier to avoid accountability. 
From that point forward, the president and Senate Democrats did everything possible to avoid having to develop a concrete plan to address this nation’s most dire long-term challenges. The president ignored three consecutive Medicare funding warnings—even though this trigger, by law, requires him to submit a plan to resolve Medicare’s fiscal imbalance within 15 days of submitting his budget. They left the serious policy playing field to fight on the political one, even as America’s balance sheet tipped us closer in the direction of Greece. Should America go down that path, those with the fewest resources, the poorest among us, would be hurt the most; there is nothing compassionate about economic disaster. 
A series of secret meetings ensued—meetings of the Gang of Six, talks with the vice president at the Blair House, talks with the president at the White House, and, most recently, the supercommittee. These secret meetings disengaged the congressional process and prevented the serious national and legislative debate we need from taking place. It also allowed Democrats—who still had no real budget plan—to continue avoiding accountability for the fiscal and economic consequences of their political agenda. Indeed, in the first two years of the president’s administration, non-defense discretionary spending surged 24 percent—and by the end of the first three years, gross debt will have increased almost $5 trillion.
Had the president made clear he wanted an agreement, a deal would have been achieved. It seems clear he wanted a campaign issue instead. Rather than confronting the great threat of our time—our $15 trillion debt—the commander-in-chief fled the battlefield. That’s not clever; it’s irresponsible. 
Progress must, and will, be achieved. But the kind of deep, systemic, and far-reaching solutions that are ultimately needed won’t be achieved with an 11th hour deal or secret meeting. It will require the full and vigorous participation of the public, the Congress, and the president. It will require a sometimes messy, public, democratic process. And it will require senators and congressmen to cast many public votes and to be held accountable by the American people.

Super Committee Failure?

Yes and no.

Yes, it appears the congressional Super Committee created as the compromise kick-the-can-down-the-road solution to the past summer's debt ceiling crisis is on the verge of failing to accomplish, well, anything.  That's a bit harsh, actually.  It has failed to accomplish the stated goal of finding $1.2 trillion of spending cuts that would be implemented over the next decade. 

However, if you look at the fact that this was simply an exercise in posturing that would in no way bind any future budgets or other congressional spending, then you can conclude that this was doomed from the start, or that it accomplished exactly what was expected: nothing.  Hence, success or failure is moot.

But what did we learn? 

We already knew that in the current political climate, Republicans and Democrats cannot get along, so no surprises there.  With the Dem's intent on raising taxes, and the Republicans dead-set against doing so, there is no middle-ground, especially when the only stakes involved are political positioning.  All this has done is reinforce where the battle-lines are drawn.

Each side will point fingers at the other, so it's useless to discuss whether one side or the other is "at fault."  Since nothing actually happens until 2013 under the deal, both sides have another year in which to work something out.  Also, there is an election next year, so it will likely turn out that many of the people who get to vote on such things will be replaced before the clock actually strikes midnight on the NEXT debt-ceiling crisis.  And, in the meantime, the Supreme Court will rule on Obamacare, so the whole budget and economy will be in flux.

what we really learned is that we have populated Washington with folks who are far more motivated to protect their elected positions than they are in making serious decisions and helping the nation.  The notion of the Super Committee was broken from the start, given that it could do nothing better than make suggestions AND that the "failure" option meant nothing.

As I have stated before, these are examples of why we should enact term limits.  At the very least, Congress should not be allowed to receive paychecks if they have not passed a budget! 


Saturday, November 19, 2011

Obama Versus The Economy

There has been a lot of discussion during the last three years regarding Obama's handling, if you will, of the economy.  The left's view seems to be that Obama inherited a mess entirely of George W. Bush's making, and that but for Obama's herculean efforts and vision, America would have plunged into a Greater Depression.  It looks like that line of thinking has finally hit the wall, as the CBO has acknowledged that the stimulus programs have a negative effect on long-term economic growth. 

Meanwhile, on the right, the debate is whether Obama is simply ignorant and inept regarding the economy, or whether he is a sly fox who knows exactly what he is doing and his design is to weaken the economy and increase the number of Americans who are dependent upon the government.  I have long believed that Obama falls into the latter category, and that part of his plan is to create a permanent bloc of democrat voters, and squeeze the country until we all give up and consign everything over to a larger federal government, resulting a giant social democracy. More on this in a future post.

Getting back to the present, Charles Krauthammer wrote a nice piece in Friday's WaPo about the Keystone XL Pipeline.  It also addresses the schism between Obama's economic political decision-making.  In short, Krauthammer observes that Obama realized that green lighting the pipeline would not garner him a single additional vote, but stalling it - no matter what the cost to our economy - could gain him the support of thousands of "environmentalists."  The cost to our economy?  Thousands of actual jobs; easy access (read: cheap) to oil (read: ENERGY that we don't have to buy from the Middle East).  This decision was probably win-win for Obama - politically expedient AND curbs economic growth.

Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker takes up the same point with Obama's decision to halt shale gas drilling in Ohio.  His colleague Steven Hayward carries that story a few yards farther in his post, Obama to Ohio: Drop Dead.


Tuesday, November 8, 2011

OWS-ers Exposed as The Dimwits We Were Waiting For

The following video (H/T: Powerline) gives a not-so-surprising glimpse into the OWS mind.  What is clearly lost on the occupiers (at least, before the film-maker Evan Coyne Maloney spoke with some of them!) is the irony of a movement that seems to want the government to do something about the "evil" of banks and Wall Street, when the current President is so beholden to those very banks.  What part of the logic of  "if BoA is a terrible institution - it is! -then the politicians it strongly supports should be suspect" is the stumbling block?



Cain Accuser Update

According to an article in the Chicago Sun-Times, Cain-Accuser Sharon Bialek was spotted HUGGING Cain at a TEA Party event 6 weeks ago. (Hat Tip: Lucianne)

So, we seem to have a woman who, according to her descriptions, is nothing more than the subject of a clumsy pass made by Herman Cain (who, if the accusation is true, honored her decline of the advance), demanding an apology for something that supposedly happened years ago, but was comfortable and friendly with Cain mere weeks ago.

At what point can we start to definitively say that the appearance of Gloria Allred signals the disappearance of credibility?  How can you tell when someone is lying? Gloria Allred is at her/his side.


Monday, November 7, 2011

So that's Where She's Been

According to an article in the New Yorker, Nancy Pelosi has held 311 fund raising events this year.  Three Hundred and Eleven!!!  I'm no mathematician, but by my count we have only had 310 days thus far (as of today - Nov. 7th) in 2011. 

 How on earth do these numbers do anything to dispel the perception that Washington is broken?  That's literally a fundraiser every day, plus one.  That doesn't have the appearance of working to help fix the nation; it smacks of elected officials working hard on nothing more than getting re-elected. 

File this story as one more argument supporting the need for term limits.  Being in Congress should be about serving the country, and not merely feeding at the public trough for a living.

And to be clear, this goes for both sides of the aisle.