Link: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/23/government-motors-repayment-fraud/

I was as surprised as anybody to hear GM CEO Ed Whitacre claim in a recent commercial that “we have repaid our government loans in full — with interest — five years ahead of the original schedule". As pointed out by a lead editorial in the Washington Times and by a Fox News report, a government watchdog has indicated that $4.7 billion of the $6.7 billion repaid came from another bailout account, and the FTC could become involved to investigate truth-in-advertising violations. And that’s not to mention that, even if the money flow had come directly from auto sales (which it didn’t), as the administration has been trying to say, the claim in the commercial leads the listener to believe that the company is free of all bailout debt (i.e. “repaid our government loans in full” seems to mean all government loans).

So you have a government-financed company lying on taxpayer-funded commercials that the taxpayer funding has been paid back. That’s rather creepily familiar: Democratic government employees used taxpayer funds in the stimulus package to lie to the taxpayers about how many jobs were being created or “saved” by the stimulus package itself. You are paying for your government to lie to you about whether it is actually working.

There have been a lot of empty promises in the age of Obama. And much that is Orwellian. But this is about as inimical to transparency and clean government as anything I’ve yet seen.

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://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.

How progressives and supposed unbiased journalists in the last few days, both in anticipation of Brown’s victory and in its aftermath, have been telling Democrats in Congress to push forward with health care reform regardless? Heaps. Here’s a small sample:

The Boston Globe editorial board
Ezra Klein
Dan Kennedy
Jacob Hacker, Daniel Hopkins
Paul Waldman
Tim Fernholz
Jonathan Alter
Jonathan Cohn
Jonathan Chait (are all these guys named Jonathan?)
Paul Krugman
… and on and on.

These people will kill the left-wing agenda for decades. My greatest hope is that the Massachusetts election would come and go, Brown would get elected, and these people will convince Democrats to carry on their merry way to the political abyss of government-run health care. It would have been better if this Great Warning was hidden, but it’s just as good if it’s out in the open and is completely ignored.

Part of their problem is the human urge to be utterly defiant. No, they scream, what we are doing is not illegal! We can dither on seating Scott Brown! We can find creative legislative solutions to pass Obamacare! You will not kill our agenda with the election of merely one senator!

Do Republicans or conservatives claim that what the Democrats are doing is illegal? That the Democrats can’t find a crafty way to pass Obamacare? That Senator-elect Brown speaks for more than just Massachusetts? No, no, and no.

These fools are confused. People, through their words and their votes, are not telling them what they can and cannot do. They are telling them what they should or should not do. Not even what they should do “for the good of the country” or “to obey the public trust” or anything like that. But what they should do for their own good. But they don’t listen. Hooray! Down with the progressives and their odious agenda! Off the cliff they ride and … (dusting off of hands) … good riddance!

Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704586504574654602781512842.html

The attached WSJ article is a fairly reported rundown of events so far in the Massachusetts special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy. Of special note, however, is the following paragraph:

Support for the state’s universal health-care law, close to 70% in 2008, is also in free fall; only 32% of state residents told Rasmussen earlier this month that they’d call it a success, with 36% labeling it a failure. The rest were unsure. Massachusetts families pay the country’s highest health insurance premiums, with costs soaring at a rate 7% ahead of the national average, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

What Obamacare (the Frankenstein conference report of the two major health reform bills that passed the House and Senate) offers is not exactly the same as what the state of Massachusetts offers. To be sure, it is worse. But its goal of universal coverage and its means of an individual health insurance mandate make the Massachusetts law a fair laboratory experiment for what change in this direction would bring, in costs, in premiums, and in public opinion.

The Massachusetts Senate race is not just a thermometer of how the most liberal state in the country feels about the Obamacare legislation in Congress; it measures how the most liberal state in the country feels about the closest thing to an experiment of Obamacare.