Link: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/31/the_hostility_follies_104993.html

An excellent article about the pathetic temper tantrum being thrown by Democrats over the absolute, righteous, and supremely moral indignation of conservatives who are losing their country to socialism and Marxism.

Not that anyone cares, but he left out of his denunciations the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, who ridiculously claimed, just yesterday, that:

For decades now, the most serious threat of domestic terrorism has come from the growing ranks of paranoid, anti-government hate groups that draw their inspiration, vocabulary and anger from the far right … The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction – the right, not the left.

Somehow this guy won a Pulitzer Prize once. Unbelievable.

Link: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11612

As Congress starts to move on financial reform, Richard Rahn brings out this article arguing against the “Too Big to Fail” stupidity that gave us $700 billion in TARP debt and a financial crisis that decimated peoples’ life savings. The following paragraph reiterates the kind of argument that Rahn and others have been pounding ever since the crisis began:

When government becomes a player and tries to prevent the failure of market participants, its decisions are almost invariably corrupted by the political process. Government overseers tend to be less attentive and careful because they are playing with taxpayers’ money rather than their own. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the poster children for what is wrong with “state capitalism” or “economic fascism,” in which the government leaves nominal ownership in the hands of private individuals but exercises control by regulation and taxation. Despite warnings from knowledgeable critics, Fannie and Freddie engaged in unsound financial practices for years, often at the behest of their political masters in Congress. Rather than being allowed to go into bankruptcy, broken up, truly privatized and reorganized, they were bailed out by Congress. As a result, bad practices continue, and the taxpayers will once again be stuck with hundreds of billions of dollars in additional liabilities.

It has been reported in the media (starting from the AP) that Caterpillar, John Deere, and other corporations have this week announced substantial expected financial losses from the passage of Obamacare. The company I work for, 3M, can now be added to that list. At 4pm today, I received the following email from 3M Human Resources:

We recognize that many of you have questions about how the new health care bill will impact your 3M benefits. We need to take time to understand and analyze the new laws before we make any changes to our medical programs.

A provision that will impact the company immediately relates to the Medicare Part D subsidy. 3M will be subject to federal income taxes on the subsidies it receives for providing prescription drug benefits for our retirees and their eligible dependent(s). The government provided this subsidy to help offset the financial burden of offering prescription drug benefits to retirees and with the goal that retirees would be less likely to rely on the Medicare Part D program.

Although the tax doesn’t take effect until 2013, 3M is required to recognize the impact in the period in which the law was signed. 3M will record a one-time non-cash charge to earnings in the first quarter of 2010 of approximately $85 to $90 million after tax, or approximately 12 cents per share. 3M issued a press release today describing this adjustment.

The scope of the bill is far reaching and complex. We will be providing updates once we understand the provisions more clearly.

(Emphasis added.)
My question is, why did these corporations keep mum until after passage?

Last year witnessed the ascendance of the Tea Party movement in response to a public disgust with irresponsible federal spending, surging deficits, and anticipated future tax increases. In the shadow of residual (yet unjustified) suspicion of private sector culpability in the financial crisis of 2008-2009, most of this backlash focused not on the regulatory functions of government but on the welfare state and an endless liberal appetite for wealth redistribution entitlements.

The Just Economic Distributions (JED) ratings are the perfect metric for this populist sentiment. They measure the degree to which members of Congress respect the property of those who earned it and look with suspicion on handouts, means-testing, and class distinctions. The ratings are cannon-fodder for those who would tar lawmakers who routinely favor big-government solutions and large welfarist entitlement programs.

It is certain that legislators who favored or continue to favor welfare state policies will be embattled in the 2010 Congressional elections like never before. The following are the JED ratings for the last three years for senators who have not announced retirement and are up for re-election this year (best to worst):

Note that the deviation between the score of the latest year (2009) and the average of the last three years (2007-2009) for most of these senators is positive. This could indicate that those senators who know they are up for re-election in the 2010 cycle have decided to scale back their redistributionist tendencies.

In the Senate, top JED honors for 2009 go to Tom Coburn (OK), James Inhofe (OK), and Jim DeMint (SC), who all scored a perfect 100. Coburn and DeMint also got perfect scores in 2007, and Inhofe did in 2008. Socialist Party senator Bernie Sanders (VT) inhabits the other extreme, as he was the only senator in 2009 to receive a score of 0.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) scored 25. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) scored 77. The Republican/Democratic Party split continues to be highly predictive of distributive justice concerns, as the highest-scoring Senate Democrat, party cross-over Arlen Specter (PA) had the same score (61) as the lowest-scoring Senate Republican, Olympia Snowe (ME).

In the House, Reps. Paul Broun (GA-10), Jeff Flake (AZ-6), and John Shadegg (AZ-3) garnered perfect scores for their performance. On the other extreme, twenty-four Democrats shared the dishonor of having a zero score, voting for economic injustice on all 26 measured votes.

Among the House leadership, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-8) scored a 9, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (MD-5) scored 17, and Minority Leader John Boehner (OH-8) scored 84. Rep. Parker Griffith (AL-5), who recently switched to the Republican Party on Dec. 22 (afer all the votes that make up the JED score), would have been the highest-scoring Democrat with a 62; now that distinction will be shared by Reps. Bobby Bright (AL-2) and Walter Minnick (ID-1), both of whom scored 61. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18) again scored the lowest among House Republicans (with 58), repeating a feat from 2008.

This year’s criteria for the Senate included twenty-two roll call votes, distributed as follows: six votes on taxes, four on health care (including Obamacare #22), three on consumer choice, two on labor issues, two on housing, two on energy/transportation issues, two on macroeconomic stimulus, and one on the federal budget. The criteria for the House ratings used twenty-six roll call votes, including: nine on labor, unemployment, and compensation issues, four on health care (including Obamacare #24), three on housing, three on the federal budget, two on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and one each on macroeconomic stimulus, energy, taxes, small business, and the U.S. census.

The complete 2009 JED results are available at www.tonyquain.com/ratings.php. The scores are intended to reflect the percentage of legislators in the members’ respective chambers who are more likely than the scored member to vote for policies that tax success and subsidize failure. The JED ratings introduction page referenced above outlines the JED rating system.

Link: http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/24/dont-buy-it

Jacob Sullum on the constitutionality of the new individual mandate to buy health insurance. Is there anything beyond the reach of the federal government? When the domain is total, the government evolves totalitarian …

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/16/AR2010031603322.html

There is plenty to gripe about on domestic policy, especially with the health care bill up for a vote (or non-vote) this week. Nevertheless, Robert Kagan shows in the linked article that things are also falling apart on foreign policy.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6213R520100310

On May 25, 2009, President Obama and Congressional Democrats set a deadline for the end of July for passage of a health care bill.

On July 23, 2009, when lawmakers said they could not get it done by the August recess, President Obama set a deadline for December. “I want it done by the end of this year,” Obama said. “I want it done by the fall.”

Democrats lost the ability to pass bills in the Senate without Republican support after Scott Brown was elected U.S. Senator from Massachusetts on January 19.

Yesterday, President Obama set a deadline of March 18 for Congress to find some way to push a Frankenstein bill through without Republican support.

The linked Reuters article shows how this deadline is being received by his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D, MD) said, “None of us have mentioned the 18th other than [Obama Press Secretary] Mr. Gibbs". No Democratic lawmaker even gave lip service to upholding the deadline.

Dick Durbin, the John Madden of politics:

“Deadlines are both a blessing and a curse,” said Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “They are a blessing because they get you focused on making a decision but they are a curse if you can’t make them, and this has happened over and over again.”

Nancy Pelosi, a progressive for progress:

“We’re making good progress and if we get some final figures from the Congressional Budget office we can even make more progress,” she said.

Of course, health care reform is not the only area where Barack Obama has set deadlines and let them lapse. The closing of Guantanamo Bay was supposed to happen within a year of taking office, and it’s still open. A decision on the augmentation of troop levels in Afghanistan was supposed to come in July, then November, but wasn’t made until December. And of course, Iran passed its September and December deadlines to make concessions on its nuclear program without any consequences whatsoever.

With all these fake deadlines, what respect does this Democratic Congress have for our Democratic president? About the same respect that foreign leaders have for him.

Back in July of last year, asked why he felt so strongly about his deadline for the end of that month, Obama replied, “because if you don’t set a deadline in this town, nothing happens.” Someone needs to explain the difference between setting a deadline, and enforcing it.

After one or two empty threats, people get wise to the fact that you can walk all over someone. Children figure this out with soft parents. So after three missed health care deadlines (and various others), what have the sharp minds on Capitol Hill figured out? What have the American people figured out? What have our allies and enemies abroad figured out? That like much of his rhetoric, Obama’s deadlines are meaningless.

If President Obama can not stand up to Congress and show that missed deadlines have consequences, how can we expect that he will stand up for our country?

In fact, liberal policies are all inherently acquiescent. If someone fails to pay their mortgage, liberals demand banks give them time and taxpayers give them money. If automakers can’t sort out their own problems and hurl themselves toward bankruptcy, liberals bail them out with our earnings. If a welfare recipient screws up and has a fourth child, liberals give them even more of other people’s money. If foreign nations fail to live up to their diplomatic agreements, liberals pursue … more diplomacy. In every case it is about (supposedly) solving the problem in the moment, rather than seeing how such acquiescence creates the problems in the first place. They may claim it is about forgiveness. It is not. It is about weakness.