It’s Thursday, May 10th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, yet another reason we’d like Paul Ryan to remain in the House, controlling the public purse strings:

Liberals: exactly what The Temptations had in mind when they sang, “Politicians say more taxes, will solve everything….and the band played on!”

In a related item, Michael Frank, writing at National Review Online, reveals….

A Stealth Expansion of the Welfare State

 

Our national-security capabilities are set to implode next January. That’s when tens of billions of dollars in across-the-board cuts will take effect, hitting every Pentagon account with an immediate 10 percent cut. In the words of the Obama White House, these cuts will be “devastating” and “undermine our national security.”

The nation’s top military leaders agree. They have told Congress that over the course of the next decade, military spending would fall $1 trillion below what’s needed to keep us safe. The resultant reductions in operations, maintenance, and training would produce an “unacceptable level of strategic and operational risk.” The Navy will suffer a “severe and irreversible impact” (emphasis added). The Marine Corps will struggle to carry out even one major contingency operation. America will, once again, have a “hollow” military force, just as it did during the Carter era.

Next week, the House will vote on a proposal to forestall these cuts (along with scheduled cuts to some domestic programs). The proposal would restore the first year’s portion of the decade-long sequester, some $78 billion in defense and other spending, and would offset those expenditures within three years with reductions to various domestic programs that ultimately add up to $260 billion over the next decade.

Predictably, groups on the left have assailed the proposed cuts in domestic spending. “House Republicans,” one such criticism begins, “are asking low- and middle-income families to sacrifice health care and basic services to preserve redundant defense systems.” Specifically, they accuse Republicans of wanting to:

   “slash funding for child and elder abuse prevention, Meals on Wheels, and foster care.”

   “raise taxes on the families of 5.5 million low-income children,” and

   “force hundreds of thousands of working families to forgo health coverage.”

Such carping completely misses the point. Politicians routinely say they will reduce spending by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but rarely do they identify the specific steps they will take to achieve that goal. This plan identifies four areas where Obama-administration officials, often in cahoots with liberal welfare-advocacy groups, have expanded the boundaries of the welfare state well beyond what Congress intended when it passed the relevant laws.

Here they are:

1. Forty states and the District of Columbia enable families to receive food stamps by sending them brochures funded through a federal welfare program (TANF) or referring them to a federal 800-number telephone hotline. (Federal law allows presumed beneficiaries of TANF to receive food stamps without meeting any further eligibility requirements.) Thirty-nine of these jurisdictions impose no asset test whatsoever when conferring these benefits; 27 allow food stamps to go to families with gross incomes above the approved federal poverty guidelines. Since food stamps are paid for with federal money, this costs the state governments almost nothing. Closing this loophole would save $11.7 billion over the next decade.

2. The so-called “heat and eat” loophole allows states to expand eligibility for food stamps by up to $130 per month simply by sending a family a $1 check from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). (The program is aimed at families whose heating/cooling bills are included in their rent, rather than being paid directly. By paying families a token $1 of heating/cooling aid, the state qualifies them as “fuel assistance households,” which entitles them to increased food-stamp allowances.) The savings here amount to $14.3 billion over a decade.

3. An anti-fraud proposal would simply require taxpayers to include their Social Security numbers on tax returns in order to claim the portion of their child tax credit that exceeds their overall tax liability. Savings: $7.6 billion over ten years.

4. When enacting Obamacare, Congress neglected to include a mechanism to recoup the excess subsidies taxpayers will receive from the new health-insurance exchanges. These excess payments can amount to thousands of dollars per year. This proposal would require full repayment of the excess. The savings here are enormous, amounting to a cool $43.9 billion over ten years.

In attacking these reforms, the Left is establishing a new and breathtaking precedent. In essence, they maintain that there should be no limiting principle to the modern welfare state. If you can identify a loophole, real or imagined, that creates millions of new wards of the state and shovels tens of billions of additional tax dollars into the cornucopia of welfare programs, the Left will defend it with no questions asked.

Welfare….good!  Work….bad!

Unlike previous welfare-reform battles, where conservatives pursued statutory changes to place limits on program eligibility standards or benefit levels, this fight is simply about enforcing the agreed-upon contours of current law. In its opposition, the Left seeks to undermine the considered judgment of previous Congresses and let unelected bureaucrats rewrite federal welfare laws so that virtually anyone can qualify for federal benefits.

It is a battle well worth waging, not only because Congress needs to restore the irresponsibly damaging cuts to our national-security programs, but also because we cannot let the federal administrative state outflank Congress and expand our failed welfare state through stealth and deception.

It’s classic sleight of hand; focus the public’s attention over here (the mythical “War on Women”), while wreaking havoc over there.

And while we’d question the author’s statement suggesting ANY Congress has exhibited “judgment”, considered or otherwise, the fact remains, in the words of Victor Davis Hanson:

“….We have had 38 months of 8% plus unemployment. We are setting records in the numbers of Americans not working and the percentage of the adult population not employed. GDP growth was a pathetic 1.7%. The borrowing hit $5 trillion under Obama, who between golf outings and campaign hit-ups of wealthy people, adds $1 trillion plus each year in more debt. To question how to pay it back is to pollute the air or abandon the children.“

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, as Conn Carroll’s Morning Examiner suggests, The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight had best become accustomed to the fact….

The Tea Party is here to stay

 

Newsweek, the same magazine that declared “We Are All Socialists Now” after President Obama was elected, reported back in February of this year that, “The Tea Party is Dead.” Just as the Tea Party proved Newsweek wrong at the polls in November 2010, the Tea Party proved Newsweek wrong again yesterday in Indiana.

Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who was backed by grassroots conservative groups like the Tea Party Express, Club for Growth and Freedom Works, beat 35-year incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., in a 60-39 percent landslide. “This race is not about animosity,” he said. “It is about ideas. It is about the direction of the Republican Party. It is about the direction of our country.”

And what is the direction that Mourdock and the Tea Party want to take the country? One need only to look at the issues that divided Lugar and Mourdock.  In their first and only debate of the campaign, Mourdock promised to fight all “mandates from the federal government” including corn ethanol mandates that drive up the cost of gasoline. But Lugar defended the ethanol mandates because “producing it on farms here that have meant higher values for corn and certainly higher land values here in this state.”

This is exactly what the Tea Party is all about: ending big government interference in the United States economy regardless of whether or not it might benefit some politician’s home state. For too long, Republicans like Lugar preached free market principles, but then brought home the bacon to their constituents. Replacing Lugar with Mourdock is the Tea Party’s way of saying ‘no more.’

Not that Mourdock can rest easy. He still faces a formidable general election opponent in the form of Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind. If Mourdock loses the general election, Republican moderates and their lobbyist friends on K Street will paint the Tea Party as extremists who can’t win elections. They will will try and define the Tea Party movement as the party of Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, and Joe Miller. But if Mourdock wins, the Tea Party will be the center of the Republican Party, embodied by Sens. Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, Scott Brown. Republican incumbents will be forced to stick to real limited government principles.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, courtesy of Guy Benson and Townhall.com, in the West Virginia Democratic primary, The Obamao faced surprisingly stiff resistance from a rather unlikely source:

Meet Federal Inmate #11593-051

 

“More than 40 percent of the Democrats picked a crook over a sitting president.”  They may well have considered the crook the lesser of two evils!

Next up, John Stossel delineates the difficulties of realizing a Liberal dream:

Creating a Risk-Free World 

 

A child leaving home alone for the first time takes a risk. So does the entrepreneur who opens a new business. I no more want government to prevent us from doing these things than I want it to keep us in padded cells.

Everyone has a different tolerance for risk. One person takes out a second mortgage to start a business. Another thinks that sounds nerve-racking, if not insane. Neither person is wrong. Government cannot know each person’s preferences, or odds of success. Even if it did, what right does it have to tell them what to do?

When government gets in the business of deciding which risks are acceptable and which aren’t, nasty things happen. This includes government’s attempt to improve life by regulating gambling and the use of medicine, banning recreational drugs and mandating safety devices in cars.

In what sense are we free if we can’t decide such things for ourselves?

Through the Food and Drug Administration, the government claims to protect us. But some people suffer because of that protection: Some die waiting for drugs to be approved. Don’t we own our own bodies? Why, in a supposedly free country, do Americans, even when dying, meekly stand aside and let the state limit our choices?

The Drug Enforcement Administration jails pain-management doctors who prescribe quantities of painkillers that the DEA considers “inappropriate.” It’s true that some people harm themselves with Vicodin and OxyContin, but it’s hard for doctors to separate “recreational” users from people really in pain. Some cancer patients need large amounts of painkillers.

After the DEA jailed doctors, some pain specialists began to underprescribe. The website of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons warns doctors: Don’t go into pain management. “Drug agents now set medical standards. … There could be years of harassment and legal fees.” Today, even old people in nursing homes sometimes don’t get pain relief they need.

Even the best safety regulations have unexpected costs. Seat belts save 15,000 lives a year, but it’s possible that they kill more people than they save.

University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman argues that increased safety features on cars have the ironic effect of encouraging people to drive more recklessly. It’s called the Peltzman Effect — a variation on what insurance experts call “moral hazard.” Studies show that people drive faster when they are snugly enclosed in seat belts.

Also, while passengers were less likely to die, there were more accidents and more pedestrians were hit. Perhaps the best safety device would be a spike mounted on the steering wheel — pointed right at the driver’s chest.

There’s another reason to think seat belt laws have been counterproductive. Before government made seat belts mandatory, several automakers offered them as options. Volvo ran ads touting seat belts, laminated glass, padded dashboards, etc., as the sort of things that responsible parents should want. I concede that government action expanded seat belt use faster than would have otherwise happened, but by interfering with the market, government also stifled innovation. That kills people.

Here’s my reasoning: The first government mandate created a standard for seat belts. That relieved auto companies of the need to compete on seat belt safety and comfort. Drivers and passengers haven’t benefitted from improvements competitive carmakers might have made.

If every auto company were trying to invent a better belt, today, instead of one seat belt, I bet there’d be six, and all would be better and more comfortable than today’s standard. Because they would be more comfortable, more passengers would wear them. Over time, the free market in seat belts would save more lives.

We don’t know what good things we might have if the heavy foot of government didn’t step in to limit our options.

In a free country, it should be up to adult individuals to make their own choices about risk. Patrick Henry didn’t say, “Give me safety, or give me death.” Liberty is what America is supposed to be about. Let’s start treating people as though their bodies belong to them, not to a controlling and “protective” government.

Excepting of course the rights of the unborn to the preservation of their persons, we couldn’t agree with Stossel more.  His point is not that government should knowingly permit the sale and marketing of products known to be faulty, dangerous or deadly.  Like Paul Ryan, he’s saying proponents of Big Government never stop to assess, let alone admit, the downside associated with every regulation they put in place.

 There’s a cause and effect for every public policy put in place; we only hear about the supposed problem….never an assessment as to the efficacy of the cure.

Since we’re on the subject of glaring government failures you won’t learn about from the MSM, the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger discusses….

The Great Human-Rights Reversal

The Democratic left has conceded human rights to the conservatives.

 

It’s a question that keeps coming up: Is it just everyone’s imagination or has the human-rights agenda been demoted by Barack Obama?

The unflattering word often associated with Mr. Obama and human rights is “ambivalence.” When Iranian students took to the streets in 2009, enduring beatings from security men, the president’s muted reaction was noted. So too with the Arab Spring and when Libyans revolted against Moammar Gadhafi. Yes, the administration responded in time but, again, with “ambivalence.”

Now comes a human-rights advocate from central casting: the blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who showed up unannounced on Uncle Sam’s Beijing doorstep. The U.S. government appeared displeased with Mr. Chen’s ill-timed decision to go over the wall.

The blind leading on the blind.

Liberals and Democrats who work on human-rights issues won’t like to hear this, but with the Obama presidency, human rights has completed its passage away from the political left, across the center and into its home mainly on the right—among neoconservatives and evangelical Christian activists.

Conservatives didn’t capture the issue. The left gave it away.

The official formulation of the left’s revision of human rights came two months into the Obama presidency, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s widely noted comment in Beijing that the new administration would be going in a different direction: “Our pressing on those issues [human rights] can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”

Human-rights groups went ballistic, perhaps on hearing their cause would compete for the president’s time with the “global climate change crisis.” Whether Iran, Libya or China, human rights as understood for a generation was on the back burner, with the heat off.

Human rights became an explicit concern of U.S. presidents under Jimmy Carter. (Which of course meant it was doomed to failure!) Mr. Carter in 1977 was not a man of the left. On foreign policy he was a starry-eyed liberal. He elevated the State Department’s human-rights office to assistant-secretary status and gave the job to a fellow stargazer, Pat Derian.

Most of Mr. Carter’s human-rights initiatives fell apart, but the idea didn’t die. In varying degrees, his successors all made human rights part of their formal agenda. Worth noting here is that in the late 1990s, Christian evangelical groups (the “religious right”) began a successful effort to create an office of religious freedom inside the State Department. Today these Christian groups are the primary human-rights workers on behalf of Chinese and North Korean dissidents and refugees. (For more on the horrors of No-Ko human-rights abuses see Jeff Jacoby’s latest: http://townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/2012/05/09/the_ghastly_hellhole_of_camp_14)

The big disruption, the event that drove the Democratic left off the human-rights train, was George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda.”

More than any previous president, George Bush joined human-rights issues to the support of democracy, including in Iraq. With the Bush presidency, human rights and democracy-promotion were combined into a single issue. That in turn joined two groups working these veins for years—neoconservatives and religious human-rights groups. The left went into opposition.

The standard, almost official explanation for this administration’s equivocations on human rights is that the current generation of Democratic foreign-policy intellectuals want the U.S. to pursue its goals inside the “pragmatic” framework of international institutions or alliances, rather than “going it alone.” Progressive realpolitik.

Thus Barack Obama supported the Libyan rebels only after public opinion believed France, Britain and such were along for the ride. Under Mr. Obama, the U.S. joined the U.N. Human Rights Council.

There’s more to the turn than this.

Barack Obama is not a traditional, internationalist Democrat in the mold of such party elders as John Kerry or Joe Biden. Mr. Obama is a man of the left. His interests are local. The Democratic left can only be understood on any subject if placed inside one, unchanging context: the level of public money available for their domestic policy goals.

It’s never enough. And standing between them and Utopia is a five-sided monument to American power across the Potomac.

Whether a U.S. president is arguing on behalf of a single human-rights dissident (Chen Guangcheng), a whole nation’s anti-authoritarian aspirations (Syria, Libya, Iraq) or against nuclear-weapons programs (Iran, North Korea), the possibility of exercising U.S. military assets sits inevitably in the background. Across the entire, 60-year postwar period, that reality and the spending necessary to maintain it has been the real source of the left’s “ambivalence” toward the projection of American power into the world.

The intellectual arguments on behalf of subsuming U.S. interests inside international agencies and the like is mainly about diluting formerly bipartisan justifications for maintaining postwar spending levels on the American military.

The Obama White House put a bull’s-eye on the defense budget from the start. This February, Mr. Obama proposed cutting $487 billion over 10 years, atop the threatened automatic sequester of $500 billion. That’s their untapped pot of domestic gold.

Such a strategy implies a drawdown of U.S. capability to lead in the world. For the left and Barack Obama, the trade-off in terms of revenue feedbacks into domestic spending is worth it. As such, the human-rights problem of a Chen Guangcheng in faraway Shandong is a distracting footnote to the new Democratic generation’s larger purposes.

Liberals discomfited by this will have to come to terms with the fact that it will take a different kind of Democratic presidency to alter their party’s stated equivalence between human-rights aspirants and climate change.

And for what?  Simply to preserve their grip on power and expand their control into every facet of your life; it’s like a drug….and they’d throw their own grandmothers under a bus to maintain it.  The Dear Misleader already did!

Following up on our earlier items detailing Elizabeth Warren’s bogus Cherokee ancestry, in today’s installment of Tales From the Darkside, Breitbart.com‘s Michael Leahy informs us….

Elizabeth Warren Ancestor Rounded Up Cherokees For Trail of Tears

 

Smells more like “Sitting BullSH*T” to us!

For over a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Warren has described herself as a Native American.  When recently asked to provide evidence of her ancestry, she pointed to an unsubstantiated claim on an 1894 Oklahoma Territory marriage license application by her great-great grand uncle William J. Crawford that his mother, O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford, Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, was a Cherokee.

After researching her story, it is obvious that her “family lore” is just fiction.

As I pointed out in my article here on Sunday, no evidence supports this claim. O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford had no Cherokee heritage, was listed as “white” in the Census of 1860, and was most likely half Swedish and half English, Scottish, or German, or some combination thereof. (Note, the actual 1894 marriage license makes no claim of Cherokee ancestry.)

But the most stunning discovery about the life of O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford is that her husband, Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, was apparently a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes in the Southeastern United States and herded them into government-built stockades in what was then called Ross’s Landing (now Chattanooga), Tennessee—the point of origin for the horrific Trail of Tears, which began in January, 1837.

Collective “GASP”!  We’ll assume Warren won’t be listing that little factoid next time she updates her resume.

But since we’re on the subject of questionable ethnic characterizations, here’s news of the Irish in Iowa:

Think about it: potatoes and cabbage, 24/7….can’t jump….and plumbing not visible to the naked eye from 10 yards away.  And the Jews think THEY’VE suffered!

Which brings us to The Lighter Side….

Then there’s this rather curious co-tenancy courtesy of Jeb Bittner:

As Taylor Chess noted, what Jeb’s photo didn’t catch was the Chinese restaurant and taxidermy studio on the other side.

British: Don’t Say ‘Obese’

 

You know….like The Obamao on gay marriage….or any other hare-brained policy Liberals promulgate; then, when confronted with overwhelming adverse reaction, suddenly claim their thoughts on the matter are “evolving”.

Magoo