It’s Friday, April 20th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up on the last edition of the week, a provocative bit of prose from Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute; and for one of the few times we can remember, we have to say a member of the AEI isn’t just off base, he’s half-way to second:

The doomed marriage between Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans

Republicans in Congress belatedly closed ranks behind Mitt Romney this past week, with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell abandoning their neutrality in favor of the clear nominee. The goal is a happy political marriage until Election Day in November—and, ideally, beyond.

Arranged marriages of this sort—between presidential candidates and their parties’ members in Congress—are practically mandated by the election cycle. But historically, they’ve tended to produce shaky unions—and there’s good reason to believe the relationship between Romney and the Tea Party-driven congressional Republicans will be exceptional only in the severity of its uneasiness. This is not an example of passionate matrimony, but a mere wedding of convenience—and it’s safe to say the honeymoon won’t last long.

To be sure, there are always tensions between a presidential candidate and his congressional party. Their strategies are never in perfect alignment, because they need to reach different electorates. Presidential candidates focus on an electoral college map, which means emphasizing some states and ignoring others—the latter to the detriment of House and Senate candidates from those areas, who miss out on the money spent and raised by the top of the ticket, and the get-out-the-vote organization it sets up. For their part, all lawmakers share a paramount aim—assuring their own reelections, and keeping or winning a Congressional majority. If the presidential candidate can help, great. If not, as Newt Gingrich gleefully showed Bob Dole in 1996, they will readily throw the presidential candidate under the bus.

This often becomes apparent in the issues that compete for spotlight in an election year. Presidential candidates may focus on issues or send messages that congressional candidates would prefer to avoid—and congressional leaders may focus on issues that the presidential candidates want to shun. (Sometimes this is simply because the legislative timetable is out of sync with the presidential candidate’s needs.) So when Bill Clinton mentioned gun control and an assault weapons ban in 1992, it made Democrats in Congress from the South and Southwest cringe. When George W. Bush ran as a compassionate conservative in 2000, it drove uncompassionate right-wingers batty; when those Congressmen and Senators adopted a hard edge, he had to try to temper it.

But when it comes to Romney and his fellow Republicans in Washington, these inherent tensions are amplified considerably. At the center of the problem is the major gaffe of the campaign (gaffe in the Michael Kinsley sense: The utterance of an inconvenient truth): Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom’s admission that after securing the nomination, Romney would do a reset, shaking the Etch-A-Sketch to pivot from his hard-right positions toward the middle, where the crucial swing votes reside. Congressional Republicans have never had interest in facilitating such a pivot. Indeed, they are already taking steps to prevent it.

Start with the budget designed by Representative Paul Ryan, which House Republicans passed on a party line vote, and which Romney warmly endorsed. While that endorsement may have won Romney some credibility among conservatives, it also promises to tie his hands considerably if he wins the election. To take one example: The Ryan budget says that it will reduce all discretionary spending, domestic and defense, to 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050, less than half of what it is today; but Romney has also pledged to put an ironclad 4 percent of GDP floor under defense spending alone. Taken together, then, a Romney administration would be committed to abandoning the entirety of non-military government. No air traffic control, no Coast Guard, no transportation, energy program, NIH, CDC, Customs, FBI, NASA, and so on. None.

Of course, that is 2050, decades off. But the Ryan budget also poses headaches for Romney right now. It jettisons the bipartisan agreement reached last year to avert default, offering sharply lower discretionary domestic spending numbers for next year’s budget. That means there’s a looming confrontation between the House and the Senate over their respective spending bills, which could result in a government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins on October 1—less than five weeks before the election. For House Republicans, mostly from safe seats dominated by a feisty conservative base happy to have a confrontation, that is just fine. For Romney, not so much.

In the meantime, the Ryan budget numbers have been translated into a dozen specific spending ceilings for Appropriations subcommittees. That means the vague promises of cutbacks are in the process of becoming concrete proposals for cuts in specific programs. To pick an example, we already know that the House will propose a drastic cutback in funding for food stamps. At a time of high unemployment, that will allow President Obama to conveniently portray not just the GOP, but Romney personally, as bent on taking food out of the mouths of poor children for the purpose of protecting tax breaks for billionaires. The food stamp cut will be matched or exceeded in coming months by other even less popular cutbacks, in health research, farm subsidies, food safety, and a host of popular programs. The Romney campaign would probably like to distance the candidate from some or all of these cuts, but it’s exceedingly unclear if he’s prepared to deal with the subsequent blowback from the Republican rank-and-file.

But it isn’t just budgetary matters that the Republican Party has boxed Romney in on. As a general election candidate, Romney would no doubt like to broaden his appeal among women and reduce the huge gender gap that he currently faces—but such a pitch is complicated by the commitments that have been made by others in the party, and have subsequently earned his tacit endorsement. Nearly all congressional Republicans voted against the Lily Ledbetter Act on equal pay for women (most Senate Republicans filibustered against it); Romney, for his part, has remained silent on the issue. At the same time, Romney has offered full-throated support for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who faces a recall election in early June; Romney has yet to comment on the fact that Walker is about to sign a bill that repeals Wisconsin’s equal pay for women.

Mitt Romney would no doubt like to press a reset button, the better to appeal to voting blocs like women and Hispanics who now disdain him. He also clearly wants to sustain a united Republican party behind his candidacy. It does not appear, however, that he will be able to have both.

We don’t know what the AEI‘s been serving in their coffee, but Ornstein’s had enough.  First, let’s be clear about one thing: Paul Ryan’s budget cuts NOTHING….NADA….NOT A SINGLE FEDERAL PROGRAM.  All it does is decrease the rate of INCREASES!  If Ornstein doesn’t know this, the AEI should pull his Resident Scholar status; if he does and still wrote what he did, he should be traded to PMSNBC for a future draft pick.

Second, the vast majority of true Conservatives/Tea Partiers are backing Mitt despite his policies, not from any sense of support.  And regardless of what Ornstein may think, this Conservative block, the true heart and soul of the GOP, is counting on the House to rein in Romney’s RINO urges….and looking to position a like-minded candidate in the VP slot so as to groom a Conservative successor should the need arise to jettison Mitt if he strays from the Republican reservation.

Lastly, Ornstein assumes House Republicans will somehow be forced to vote on an actual budget between now and Election Day….as if!  Harry Reid would sooner surrender his seat than allow the Senate to vote on a budget….ANY budget; and without a Senate alternative, all anyone on Capitol Hill will be voting on is another continuing resolution to keep the lights on until after the election.  In the meantime, House Republicans and Mitt Romney have gone on record as willing to support a plan which would curtail the runaway spending that’s driving America into insolvency.

The way this election’s shaping up, this alone should allow the honeymoon to last at least until after President Romney’s inauguration.

As for anything Harry Reid thinks….

Reid: Save the Postal Service, seniors depend on junk mail

Pick us a winner, Harry!

Teacher Upset She Can’t Retire at 47

Terri List says she would tell her students not to become a teacher in Michigan. Why? One of the reasons is because the Saginaw Township Community School District English teacher won’t be able to retire at age 47 as she has hoped.

List was highlighted by the Michigan Education Association as one of the critics of Senate Bill 1040, which would require public school employees to contribute at least 5 percent of their compensation to their retirement plan. The MEA reported on its website: “Saginaw Township teacher Terry (sic) List had hoped to retire in the next three years when she was 47 years old. That wouldn’t be possible under SB 1040. List would have to work another 16 years to be eligible for health benefits.”

“By the time I’m 60, I would have put in 43 years of service, earning a salary at the top of the pay scale. How does that save the district money? You could hire two people for the cost of one and encourage young people to join the profession. Right now, I would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan.”

List didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

According to the school’s most recent teacher’s contract, List earns between $70,000 and $80,000 a year depending upon her level of education. Factor in expected pay raises over the next 15 years and it’s likely List would make more than $90,000 by the time she retires, said Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Van Beek estimated List’s pension would be $60,000 a year in retirement and it would increase 3 percent a year and she would get health benefits when she retired at age 60. Van Beek also said that it is likely that List bought “years of service” because she said she would have 43 years of service by age 60, a practice that is basically extinct in the private sector.

Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, called List’s comments “amazing.” “Wow. They have reached the politicians’ level of entitlement,” Drolet said. “She thinks she is entitled to retire at 47? Holy smokes. I don’t know what more to say to that. A government employee thinking that 47 is a reasonable expectation to retire shows just how deep inside their own bubble they live, insulated from the real world.”

Charles Owens, president of the Michigan chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, said tongue-in-cheek that List was “spot on” in her complaint. “If you want to retire if you are 47, apparently teaching is not the place to go,” Owens said. “The least Terri could do is provide a list of places other people could go so they can retire when they are 47.”

Hey, life’s a bitch, then you die; unless of course your a teacher in a state that’s rapidly approaching insolvency, in which case you retire at 47 and feed off the effort of others for the rest of your miserable life like a malevolent parasite.

Next up, a little 2nd Amendment history primer, courtesy of Ann Coulter:

Negroes With Guns

Liberals have leapt on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida to push for the repeal of “stand your ground” laws and to demand tighter gun control. (MSNBC’S Karen Finney blamed “the same people who stymied gun regulation at every point.”) This would be like demanding more funding for the General Services Administration after seeing how its employees blew taxpayer money on a party weekend in Las Vegas.

We don’t know the facts yet, but let’s assume the conclusion MSNBC is leaping to is accurate: George Zimmerman stalked a small black child and murdered him in cold blood, just because he was black. If that were true, every black person in America should get a gun and join the National Rifle Association, America’s oldest and most august civil rights organization.

Apparently this has occurred to no one because our excellent public education system ensures that no American under the age of 60 has the slightest notion of this country’s history. Gun control laws were originally promulgated by Democrats to keep guns out of the hands of blacks. This allowed the Democratic policy of slavery to proceed with fewer bumps and, after the Civil War, allowed the Democratic Ku Klux Klan to menace and murder black Americans with little resistance.

(Contrary to what illiterates believe, the KKK was an outgrowth of the Democratic Party, with overlapping membership rolls. The Klan was to the Democrats what the American Civil Liberties Union is today: Not every Democrat is an ACLU’er, but every ACLU’er is a Democrat. Same with the Klan.)

In 1640, the very first gun control law ever enacted on these shores was passed in Virginia. It provided that blacks — even freemen — could not own guns.

Chief Justice Roger Taney’s infamous opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford circularly argued that blacks could not be citizens because if they were citizens, they would have the right to own guns: “[I]t would give them the full liberty,” he said, “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

With logic like that, Republicans eventually had to fight a Civil War to get the Democrats to give up slavery. Alas, they were Democrats, so they cheated.

After the war, Democratic legislatures enacted “Black Codes,” denying black Americans the right of citizenship — such as the rather crucial one of bearing arms — while other Democrats (sometimes the same Democrats) founded the Ku Klux Klan. For more than a hundred years, Republicans have aggressively supported arming blacks, so they could defend themselves against Democrats.

The original draft of the Anti-Klan Act of 1871 — passed at the urging of Republican president Ulysses S. Grant — made it a federal felony to “deprive any citizen of the United States of any arms or weapons he may have in his house or possession for the defense of his person, family, or property.” This section was deleted from the final bill only because it was deemed both beyond Congress’ authority and superfluous, inasmuch as the rights of citizenship included the right to bear arms.

Under authority of the Anti-Klan Act, President Grant deployed the U.S. military to destroy the Klan, and pretty nearly completed the job. But the Klan had a few resurgences in the early and mid-20th century. Curiously, wherever the Klan became a political force, gun control laws would suddenly appear on the books.

This will give you an idea of how gun control laws worked. Following the firebombing of his house in 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King, who was, among other things, a Christian minister, applied for a gun permit, but the Alabama authorities found him unsuitable. A decade later, he won a Nobel Peace Prize.

How’s that “may issue” gun permit policy working for you?

The NRA opposed these discretionary gun permit laws and proceeded to grant NRA charters to blacks who sought to defend themselves from Klan violence — including the great civil rights hero Robert F. Williams. A World War II Marine veteran, Williams returned home to Monroe, N.C., to find the Klan riding high — beating, lynching and murdering blacks at will. No one would join the NAACP for fear of Klan reprisals. Williams became president of the local chapter and increased membership from six to more than 200.

But it was not until he got a charter from the NRA in 1957 and founded the Black Armed Guard that the Klan got their comeuppance in Monroe. Williams’ repeated thwarting of violent Klan attacks is described in his stirring book, “Negroes With Guns.” In one crucial battle, the Klan sieged the home of a black physician and his wife, but Williams and his Black Armed Guard stood sentry and repelled the larger, cowardly force. And that was the end of it.

As the Klan found out, it’s not so much fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.

The NRA’s proud history of fighting the Klan has been airbrushed out of the record by those who were complicit with the KKK, Jim Crow and racial terror, to wit: the Democrats.

In the preface to “Negroes With Guns,” Williams writes: “I have asserted the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense — and have acted on it. It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence.”

Contrary to MSNBC hosts, I do not believe the shooting in Florida is evidence of a resurgent KKK. But wherever the truth lies in that case, gun control is always a scheme of the powerful to deprive the powerless of the right to self-defense.

Just ask The Dear Misleader; after all….

….he knows everything!

And since we’re on the subject of Know-It-Alls, James Taranto relates how it….

Takes One to Know One

Yes Barry, yes Barry, three bags full!

“President Obama’s new health-care law will be his greatest liability as he attempts to once again win the critical swing state of Virginia, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) warned Wednesday,” reports the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty:

“I’ll be real frank here,” Webb said at a breakfast organized by Bloomberg News. “I think that the manner in which the health-care reform issue was put in front of the Congress, the way that the issue was dealt with by the White House, cost Obama a lot of credibility as a leader.” . . .

He faulted Obama for playing too passive a role. . . .

What happened in the end, Webb said, “was five different congressional committees voted out their version of health-care reform, and so you had 7,000 pages of contradictory information. Everybody got confused. . . . From that point forward, Obama’s had a difficult time selling himself as a decisive leader.”

No doubt Webb is 100% right. What he fails to note is that he could have saved America from ObamaCare single-handedly. On Christmas Eve 2009, Webb cast the decisive procedural vote that allowed this monstrosity to come to the Senate floor. If Obama is a poor leader, what does that say about a guy who followed him?

That’s easy….

Oh, Jim, by the way….Ollie North beat you like a rented mule in Brigade Boxing.

Which brings us to the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this bit of bad news from Carl Polizzi….

….and a couple of pretty good gas gags from John Berry:

Then there’s this in the “Your Tax Dollars At Work” segment:

Longtime city official accused of staggering $30M theft from tiny Illinois city

Allegations that a finance officer for a small northern Illinois city was able to steal a staggering $30 million from government coffers to run a nationally renowned horse breeding business inspired calls Wednesday for more rigorous oversight in small communities that typically face less scrutiny.

Dixon’s mayor pledged new measures to protect the city’s finances a day after FBI agents arrested longtime comptroller Rita Crundwell. She is accused of using the money to fund one of the nation’s leading horse breeding operations and feed a lavish lifestyle that kept her outfitted with cars and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry.

According to a criminal complaint, the siphoning of city funds went undetected for years until another staffer filling in as vacation relief became suspicious and discovered a secret bank account. How an enormous sum — it dwarfed the city’s current annual budget of $20 million — could be stolen and escape the notice of a yearly audit left many puzzled….

….Trying to explain how that much money could disappear unnoticed, Mayor James Burke said Dixon has struggled financially with big infrastructure expenditures, reduced revenues and cash flow problems made worse because the state is far behind on income tax disbursements. That provided plausible reasons to think the extra hole in the budget was related to those financial problems, he said.

How Crundwell could sustain such an extravagant lifestyle on an $80,000 salary was mostly attributed to her success in the horse industry, Burke said. “She definitely was a trusted employee, although I’ve had some suspicion for quite a while just because of her lifestyle she lived,” Burke said in an interview. “But there wasn’t anything that was brought to my attention or that I could see that would give cause to think that there was something going on.”

He said the city has appointed an independent panel that includes a certified public accountant, a banker and an attorney to recommend internal financial controls.

Marianne Shank, director of the Illinois Government Finance Officers Association, said more training is needed for officials in setting up such controls, including requiring dual signatures in issuing checks, monthly cash flow reports to document budget shortfalls and comprehensive annual financial reports. “The concern I hear most often is that there are not enough staff to have checks and balances,” she said.

Auditors also talk of the need to divide up financial duties among different staff members, each one acting as a potential check on the other, said Steve Carter, city manager for Champaign, Ill. “It’s a good lesson for all cities that these things happen and can be very dramatic if you’re not careful and really stress the importance of having those checks and balances in place,” he said.

Yeah….the mayor was had suspicions; but not enough to bother conducting an audit.  There’s no cure for stupid….or for complacency.

Finally, we’ll call it a week with the “I’m NOT Lovin’ It” segment, courtesy of the anti-Ronald:

Deputies: McDonald’s employee spit in sweet tea

Did he at least super-size it?!?

Magoo