To say today’s “Restoring Honor” event in Washington will be historic is an understatement.  Gauging by the biased reporting on the news pages of the New York Times and the seething, sputtering outrage from Bob Herbert and Charles Blow on the Op-Ed pages should give you a pretty good indication of the focus this event will garner.

Kate Zernike opens her report, titled “Where Dr. King Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle”, saying it is the ultimate “thumb in the eye” to stand on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in the place he stood and talk about restoring honor.  How dare he?  Isn’t that what racists said of Dr. King when he stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial with these words?

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”

Ms. Zernike reminds us of the case of Shirley Sherrod, who was fired by the Obama administration when a videotape of her redemptive speech about how she first discriminated against a white farmer but later helped him was shown across the Internet.  She writes about video tape being heavily edited by failing to show how she mended her ways and helped that farmer.  But Ms. Zernike doesn’t finish the story where later in her speech Ms. Sherrod says that those who opposed Obama’s health care plan had racist motives because President Obama is black.  Ms. Sherrod’s redemption is far from complete.

She then says that the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights raises the specter of Jim Crow and George Wallace.  But it was the federal government that passed and enforced the Fugitive Slave laws and it was independent states of the north, exercising their states’ rights, who supported the Underground Railroad and refused to actively assist returning slaves to the South.  So states’ rights cut both ways.

She concludes that, “Even if Tea Party members are right that any racist signs are those of mischief-makers, even if Glenn Beck had chosen any other Saturday to hold his rally, it would be hard to quiet the argument about the Tea Party and race.”  It’s hard to quiet the argument because those on the left keep falsely making it.  They cannot prove racism so they feel that by repeating often enough, they can make it stick.

I was at a street fair manning a booth for a Tea Party organization this spring.  An African-American teacher approached us tentatively to ask what we were about.  I asked her if she wanted the rumors or the truth and she opted for the truth.  I told her that we were a policy based organization focusing on accountable government, fiscal responsibility, limited federal government and following the Constitution.  She said she didn’t know any of that, she got e-mails from Moveon.org all the time and before leaving she signed our e-mail list.  When the truth reaches the ears of people over the screeching of the New York Times and the main stream media, it is generally well received.  The racial of mix of the Tea Party rallies will change over time when we can speak to the folks one on one without the lies of the left.

The Opionators

Bob Herbert begins his Op-Ed piece in a very open minded fashion, “America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure.”  Thank you for sharing that, Bob, but there’s no need to pull punches here.

“There is a great deal of hatred and bigotry in this country, but it does not define the country. The daily experience of most Americans is not a bitter experience and for all of our problems we are in a much better place on these matters than we were a half century ago.”

So why to you and your fellow travelers throw down the race card every time someone disagrees with a policy, if they are not of the same race?  Object to ObamaCare, that’s racism.  Object to the stimulus, racism.  Wanting Obama to fail to turn America into a socialist states, racism straight up.  Yes there is hatred and bigotry in this country, but it is primarily coming from the left.

Not to be outdone in the outrage department, Charles Blow titled his Op-Ed piece, “I Had a Nightmare.”  Mr. Blow said the following, “I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.”  This would be an excellent point, if he could point to 3,000 blacks that Glenn Beck has murdered in the name of restoring honor.  But Mr. Blow can make no such connection, so his analogy to the Ground Zero mosque falls flat.  Curious indeed.

After venting his spleen, Mr. Blow suggests we re-read Dr. King’s speech “and to recommit ourselves to the nobility of righteous pursuits.”  Let’s do that.

“But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

How do the actions of the left, throwing down the race card at every turn, accusing everyone who disagrees with Barack Obama to have racism at the core of that disagreement comport with not “drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred”?  It arrogantly assumes that it is impossible not to see the glorious benefit of the government running every last aspect of our lives, therefore the only reason to disagree has to be racism.  With regard to violence, where do we see the violent demonstrations on the left or the right?  Breaking windows, looting, SEIU members beating down street vendors for selling anti-Obama buttons, etc. are all on the left.  When the police show up at rallies organized by the left they show up in riot gear, at Tea Party rallies the mounted police have to decide whether to let people pet their horses or not.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

Didn’t America elect an African American President of the United States with 53% of the vote?  More than voted for Clinton either time, or Jimmy Carter?  Barack Obama wasn’t elected by minority votes alone.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

Who more closely shares that dream, Glenn Beck, or those on the left who insist that forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King gave his speech that blacks can’t get into college or get a job without affirmative action; that black families have not been destroyed by government programs like welfare that drove fathers away; that government run schools that can’t graduate its students are far better for blacks than school vouchers that will let them escape those hellholes?  Dr. King’s speech says nothing about racial preferences.  Dr. King’s speech talks about color blindness.  Dr. King’s speech says give us an equal chance.  Glenn Beck believes that.  Those on the left do not.  It is those on the left who believe African Americans cannot compete without more government programs to help them.  Glenn Beck believe they can succeed if government gets out of their way and if the left stops the lies of dependency that hold them back.  It is the New York Times, Charles Blow, Bob Herbert who wrap themselves in racial division and then say, “Why can’t we come together?”  If you want us to come together, stop standing in the way.

Many states have a constitutional requirement to balance their budgets while the federal government has no such limitation.  As such, a number of stately are longingly looking toward Washington to throw some cash their way so they don’t go bankrupt.  It is not going to get better.

If you think Washington awash in debt, is a problem, it is chump change compared to what is brewing at the state level.  Trillions in unfunded pension liabilities are looming and those who are benefiting from those generous plans or who are going to, don’t care about the rest of us who have to pay for them and then go provide for ourselves.

Lawsuits are starting to be filed to stop states from altering the terms of these plans.  The time to act is sooner rather than later, but that is lost on one teacher in Colorado who says, “Why is the state so quick to break its promises.”  Perhaps we should explore how these promises were made, in both directions. 

Unions backed Democrats almost exclusively.  Democrats riding union support into office had a debt to repay.  They repaid it by supporting the kinds of contracts that the unions wanted and the unions returned the favor with their loyalty.  Who paid the bill?  The rest of us.  How much say did we have in the process, next to none.  In private industry, unions negotiate with management.  Unions have almost no say in who gets hired into management and will sit across from them at the bargaining table.  So the adversarial relationship has management supporting the shareholders and unions backing the workers.  As management became more enlightened and took better care of their employees, the need for a union middleman faded away.  That is why in private industry union representation is down to about 7% and falling while in the public sector is around 37% and growing.

The public employees argue that their generous pension plans is merely deferred compensation to make up for their salaries during the time they worked.  The only problem is that the unions did a good job not only on the pensions but on the salaries as well, so that the average public sector employee makes about 34% more than his private sector counterpart.  Fair being fair, our public sector friends would probably recognize their good fortune and agree to help fix the problem, right?  No chance.  As one put it, “I shouldn’t be responsible for past pension underfunding and foolish risks managers made with my money long after I retired,”  Okay, let’s give that a closer look.

Why do you think the pension is underfunded?  Could it be that the government entity could not afford to make the extravagant  payments the union contract required and still balance the budget?  If they tried to raise taxes to cover the shortfall then even the unions with all their political muscle couldn’t get those responsible re-elected.  So it was better to sweep it under the rug for a future administration to deal with.  What about those risky investments?  Well, with risk goes reward.  If you need bigger payoffs on your pension assets to make up for the shortfalls in funding that you didn’t want to make, you may take bigger chances to make a bigger payoff.  But if you are wrong, instead of fixing the problem, you make it worse.  So the real problem is that the unions and the politicians they fought to elect negotiated contracts that were unrealistic and unsustainable.  What does the union member say. “I’ve got mine, you go get yours.”

What are some of the onerous changes that states are asking for?  In New Jersey, Chris Christie asked for a one-year freeze on public employees pay and for them to contribute 1.5% of their salary toward their retirement.  Outrageous!  How about in Colorado where they asked for a 2% cap in the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for retirees instead of 3.5%, in an environment with 0% inflation.  Dastardly!  One individual’s justification was that he does not and cannot pay into Social Security so the pension is all retirees have to live on.  He fails to point out that being prohibited from contributing to Social Security puts 6.2% more of his salary in his pocket, since he pays no Social Security taxes, and if he had the self discipline to take that and invest it in the Dow Jones Industrial Average he would have far more money of his own than he would ever get from Social Security.

This problem is not going away.  Once upon a time, public sector employees did earn less in salary than those in the private sector, but those days are long gone.  They earn more, can retire earlier, can retire with more money for longer periods of time and put the burden on all taxpayers who have to cover their pension while providing for their own.  Their “too bad” attitude is shameful.

Republicans have to learn to stop fighting by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, while Democrats, bite, kick, pull hair, scratch and hit below the belt.  Yes, Christ told us to turn the other cheek, but he also overturned tables, formed a whip out of cords and drove the money changers from the temple.  In other words, sometimes you have the hit the bully hard between the eyes before he learns to stop being a bully.

So if the Republicans regain control of Congress in November, they should open the new Congress in January with detailed hearings on what happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and don’t pull any punches.  By that I mean if they need to put Andrew Cuomo in the witness chair, even if he is the governor of New York, which he probably will be, then they should do so.  It’s time to stop playing patty-cake.

For all the hoopla of the Dodd-Frank Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were left out of the new regulations.  Oh, we’ll get to those later.  Okay, let’s get to them with the Republicans in charge.  Let’s expose how it was our government that got us into the housing mess and let’s do this before the Democrats re-write history and paper over their culpability in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.  It’s time to put the big lie to “it’s all Bush’s fault and Republican policies.”

The papering over has already started by none other than Franklin Raines the former head of Fannie Mae who received bonuses of over $90 million while at the helm of Fannie Mae and was also charged with cooking the books that helped him receive those bonuses.  He reached a settlement with the SEC and gave back about $1.8 million from the profits in the sale of Fannie Mae stock and gave up $5.3 million in future benefits related to his pension.  But he essentially kept the rest, what the Wall Street Journal called a “paltry settlement.” 

Mr. Raines claims the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to which taxpayers have already coughed up $145 billion, was due to bad credit decisions made after he left the firm.  To put it in his own words:

 “The Journal had been warning for years that the on-balance sheet portfolios of Fannie and Freddie would lead to their demise. Mr. Carney suggests that excessive leverage was the culprit. Unfortunately, neither of these were involved. Nope. Just bad credit judgments. Decisions made, by the way, while operating under close regulatory scrutiny.”

According to the Wall Street Journal “What he doesn’t say is that Fan and Fred had a political and legal mandate to support low-income housing.”  To meet this mandate which had increasing goals each year, Fannie and Freddie had to cast a wider net to find these borrowers and the wider they cast the net the lower their standards had to be.  Thus more creative types of mortgages were created to lower the bar such as, interest only loans.  This scheme would continue to work as long as housing prices kept rising but that could not go on forever.  When the music stopped a lot of people were left standing without chairs and we all lost.  People’s credit ratings were destroyed, mortgage securities were worth far less than face value, people walked away from houses, and taxpayers were forced to pick up another “too big to fail” enterprise.  By the way, where in the Constitution does it authorize the federal government to get involved in helping people buy houses?

The secret veil put in place by the main stream media has been lifted.  With the Internet and the bloggers and cable television and talk radio, the main stream media can no longer keep information that does not comport with their agenda hidden from the American people.  The American people are energized and informed but that may not last long after the election, if we don’t continue to engage them.  Uncovering the true “swamp” that is our federal government and draining it should begin by letting the sun shine in.  So let’s do away with the good ol’ boy politics of not rocking the boat when you gain control so that they won’t rock the boat when they get it back.  If we don’t have a new class of non-incumbents who are willing to go to Washington and clean it up, really clean it up, we need to get rid of them and put new people in their place.  If that means replacing Republicans with better Republicans or Democrat incumbents with better Democrats, so be it.  We have to end the process of only being able to choose between two pathetic life time politicians who have never lived in the real world.

The Democrats like to point to the Clinton presidency as proof of their fiscal responsibility.  It was a period of strong growth, balanced budgets, and prosperity.  They then point to the Bush presidency, all eight years of it, and deride it for deficits, and ultimately a very severe financial crisis.  But it is worth taking a moment to recall that the federal government is made up of three co-equal branches of government with built in checks and balances.  The Congress is not subordinate to the president and it does not work for him.  It is an equal branch of government that checks and balances the power of the presidency.  For the purpose of this discussion, I will leave out the third branch, the judiciary.

Despite the famous 1992 Clinton campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” the recession had already ended in March 1991.  When Clinton took office he had a Democratic Congress and he pushed through a massive tax increase in 1993 without a single Republican vote.  We know what happened to Congress in 1994, the Republicans took over for the first time in 40 years.  Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tried to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which was included in the Republicans’ Contract with America.  It passed in the House but failed by one vote in the Senate.  After losing this round, Gingrich met with the Republican leadership and put forth  the idea of acting as if the amendment had passed and just start submitting balanced budgets.  They succeeded in the last three years of the Clinton presidency to produce budget surpluses and decrease the national debt.  This included a tax cut by the Republican Congress in 1997, and the economy grew much stronger after the Republican takeover of Congress than under an all Democratic government.

In the 1996 election, the Democrats regained control of the Congress under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Up until that point the economy had grown steadily under President Bush despite two wars.  With Bush in the White House and the Republicans in control of Congress we had tax cuts and seven years of economic growth.  In December of 2007  the economy went into recession, almost one year after the Democrats regained control.  Now with a Democrat in the White House, and the Democrats in control of Congress we are looking at massive growth in government, a whopping tax increase bearing down on us that will hit on January 1, 2011, and a growing debt that may eventually bankrupt us.

So what is all this talk about eight years of failed Republican policy?  Under Clinton and a Democrat Congress it was two years of a tax increase and modest growth.  Under Clinton and a Republican Congress it was six years of tax cuts, budget surpluses and strong economic growth.  Hmmm….same president, different parties controlling Congress.  Under Bush we had seven years of growth and tax cuts with a Republican Congress.  Under Bush and a Democratic Congress, recession, fiscal crisis.  Hmmm…same president, different parties controlling Congress.

But don’t expect honesty on the campaign trail from the Democrats.  It’s just not the Chicago way.

We currently have a commission investigating how to deal with our ballooning deficit and Brobdingnagian debt.  In the past we have had a commission on military base closings and I am sure there were others that don’t immediately come to mind.  Why do we need them when Congress and the President have the necessary power to make these changes?  Cowardice.  It may be a harsh charge, but that is basically it, no one wants to go on record making tough choices, but if they can get an unelected bipartisan commission to make a recommendation that Congress can vote “all or none” then there are plenty of political fig leaves to go around.

“Well, I didn’t vote for that one, I voted for this one, but it was an all or nothing deal so I couldn’t separate them out.”  We pay these people $174,000 each in base pay and they punt the hard choices to a commission.  Why?  Because they see their primary job as keeping that $174,000 per year job, something that gets easier once you are an incumbent, so long as you don’t make a major mistake, like a hard decision for the benefit of the country.

If you look at the Constitution, the powers granted to the federal government were few and defined, as Madison put it in Federalist No. 45.  With such limited and defined powers, the federal government should focus on a limited number of items and deal with them directly.  But the size and scope of the federal government has grown enormously and the current administration wants to grow it even more enormously.  So don’t look for any tough choices.  Look for more and more commissions to deliver up “solutions” that the weak kneed members of Congress can vote up or down for.  This is gridlock by design.

Once you move most government functions to the federal level, how can anything possibly be accomplished?  How do you pass a law that benefits New York and doesn’t harm Alaska?  How much do Alaska and New York have in common?  Perhaps that is why most major pieces of legislation coming out of Congress run into thousands of pages?  Look at it this way, if a bill of twenty pages is applied differently to fifty states, you soon have 1,000 pages.  But what the Constitution says is that there are a few enumerated powers given to the federal government and everything else is left to the states and the people.  Let the people of Mississippi pass a law of twenty pages that suits the people of Mississippi and let the people of Idaho pass their own.  This will bring about the ability for the other 48 states to look at these two examples and decide for themselves which one would work better in their state or choose a completely different path or none at all.  But if it is all at the federal level you can yell and scream and jump up and down on your Congressman’s desk for all that matters and he can say, “Gosh, I’m just one of 435 members here.  I agree with what you are saying, but…”  If  the issue is at the state level you have more clout and at the local level even more so.

But what we have is a government whose spending is out of control.  We have a commission that will not report until after the mid-term elections and as sure as I draw a breath, their report will be full of new taxes including a Value Added Tax (VAT) to bring buckets of tax revenue to put out the spending conflagration.  Sure there will be some spending cuts, mostly in the discretionary areas that don’t add up to much of the budget anyway, but probably make for good media coverage.

We need to shrink the monster.  We need to take away from the federal government those responsibilities that are not spelled out in the Constitution and let the states and their residents decide how to handle the rest, if at all.  If we don’t take these steps, the gridlock we see today will continue.  The only difference will be that our Congressional representatives will be making over $200,000 a year before long to do what would get them fired in the private sector.

I do not like to throw around a charge of mendacity without good reason particularly after listening to the mainstream media and liberal blogosphere accuse Bush of this all day long.  But the more I listen to what comes out of this administration and the actions they take it is getting harder to hold my fire.

Take for example the brouhaha over the immigration law that hasn’t even gone into effect yet in Arizona.  From the start the administration has falsely portrayed the law as racial profiling, but when asked if they had actually read the ten page law, both Attorney General Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano said they had not.  How do people in such senior positions in any administration make such a bold claim without reading what they are opposing?  It begs the question, do they know they are talking about?

The federal government has gone forward and is suing Arizona over the law claiming that it preempts federal law.  But here are some interesting questions:

• If the Arizona law preempts federal law and that is a bad thing, why does the federal government not sue San Francisco and other cities who have openly professed that they are Sanctuary Cities and immigration law will not be enforced therein?
• A recent news report is that there is a law on the books in Rhode Island that is virtually identical to the law in Arizona and it has withstood judicial challenge?  Why isn’t the federal government suing Rhode Island?
• The thrust of the federal government’s pique with the Arizona law is their claim that it is discriminatory.  But this same administration has just ordered that a case be dropped against a radical hate group, the Black Panthers, for putting armed thugs outside a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008.  According to six career Civil Rights attorneys in the Justice Department, the case was a slam dunk and they had already gotten a default judgment from the court, but this administration chose to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  The Justice Department’s claim is that the facts did not fit the law.  Anyone who has seen the video of the incident knows that is a bald faced lie.  Is this administration for discrimination or against it?

The latest move by this administration against the rest of us is the recess appointment of Donald Berwick as the head of Medicare.  The lie in this case, is that the Republicans were stalling the appointment for “political purposes.”  Now other presidents have used recess appointments.  Both Clinton and Bush used them many times, however it was typically when they could not get the Senate to act on their nominee.  In this case, Max Baucus (D – MT), had not even scheduled hearings and eleven weeks after the nomination, the administration had not yet completed the nominating paperwork.  So was this action taken because of inaction on the part of the Senate or was the administration lying because they really didn’t want a public debate on Dr. Berwick?

Dr. Berwick has said he is, “Romantic about the National Health Service,” of Britain.  For all the false claims by the Obama Administration that if you are happy with your current health insurance you will be able to keep it, they stealthily appoint a socialized medicine disciple.  Dr. Berwick has also famously said:

 “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Let’s see, the Obama Administration appoints Dr. Berwick head of Medicare.  Medicare is the health care program for the elderly.  Dr. Berwick is plain about health care rationing and suggests the way to do it is with our eyes open.  While the term “death panel” may have been used by Sarah Palin partially for its shock value to drive home her point, changing the name to a “rationing” panel would make it different in what way?

Here is the key distinction.  In the hands of the individual and their family, they can decide what kind of care they want to provide their loved ones.  They can decide when enough is enough or whether to press on.  In a free market, insurance policies would be true insurance not medical payment plans.  But regardless you would have the liberty to decide.  In this administration’s world, some bureaucrat makes the decision and after they have driven all the alternatives out of business, other than those available to the wealthy, you will have no choice but to succumb to the will of Big Brother.

We are currently surrounded by news of massive government failures in regulation in the areas of finance and the oil industry and we are to believe that they will be superb in running one-sixth of the economy.  Do you believe the lies?

An in depth article in the New York Times titled, “Lapses Found in Oversight of Failsafe Device on Oil Rig,” covers at length the problems surrounding the technology and methods employed to prevent the disaster that we see every day on our television screens, newspapers, and the Internet.  It also points to the nearly complete lack of oversight and enforcement by the federal government to protect us.  Politicians like to write legislation and put flowery titles on the same and gather for the cameras for signing ceremonies, but when it comes to the heavy lifting of enforcing the laws put in place they often fall down on the job.

When disaster strikes the typical Washington reaction is to add more regulations that eventually become so complex and contradictory that compliance becomes nearly impossible (e.g., Internal Revenue Code).  In the case of the oil spill in the Gulf the article points out that studies were conducted in 2003, seven years ago, on failure points to prevent the situation we are living with today, but no requirements to put them in place or test them were instituted.

The article focuses on a device called a blind shear, whose purpose is, in the event of an accident like what happened on the Deepwater Horizon, to activate a pair of shear blades to cut the pipe that rises from the well and seal the well shut.  The reliability of single blind shears has only proved to be about 46%.  With this empirical data, new wells are installing two such devices for redundancy and backup.  Such a recommendation was made to the Materials Management Service (the government agency regulating drilling) in 2001, nine years ago, but the MMS took no actions on the recommendation.  In 2003, the MMS received a recommendation that would require the necessary underwater robots and testing of emergency backup systems, but again the MMS, demurred.  The practice has been that the MMS simply took the drilling industries word that they were taking steps to prevent problems.

In 2003, the Deepwater Horizon rig has a problem in a storm that caused the rig to break away from the well it was drilling, the blind shear worked perfectly in that case giving the company a false sense of confidence in the technology.  What happened next is revealing:

The following year, BP opted to remove a layer of redundancy from the blowout preventer. It asked Transocean to replace one of the blowout preventer’s secondary rams with a “test ram” — a device that would save BP money by reducing the time it took to conduct certain well tests. In a joint letter, BP and Transocean executives confirmed that BP was aware that the change “will reduce the built-in redundancy” and raise Transocean’s “risk profile.” – New York Times, 20 June 2010, pA1

Since the MMS did not require two blowout preventers, BP was in the clear to remove one.  Also, consider the term “risk profile,” and think of this in terms of a free market where insurance companies played a role.  If you increased the risk profile and didn’t want to have your policy canceled in its entirety for hiding that fact, the insurance company would no doubt increase BP premiums for the increased “risk profile.”  Since this effort was a cost saving measure, having to pay more in insurance might have changed the equation such that BP would leave things as they were with two blowout preventers.  But the government encouraged deep water drilling, the government put a cap on the amount of damages that a drilling company would have to pay that created a moral hazard, the government ignored recommendations to required greater safety measures and the government was lax in enforcing those regulations it had in place, instead relying on taking the industry’s word that all was well.

On a separate issue regarding the cleanup, in an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The President Does a Jones Act,” it states that in the two weeks following the disaster, thirteen countries contacted our government offering assistance with the clean up.  Our government turned the offers down.  As the State Department put it:

“While there is no need right now that the U.S. cannot meet, the U.S. Coast Guard is assessing these offers of assistance to see if there will be something which we will need in the near future.” One month later, many of these offers are still outstanding. – Wall Street Journal, 19 June 2010

The Belgians reportedly have the ships and technology that could clean up the mess in the Gulf in one-third the time than is currently estimated.  All it requires is suspending the Jones Act of 1920.  Bush did it almost immediately in the wake of Hurricane Katrina so that foreign ships could come in and provide temporary housing for the hurricane victims.  Officials in the Obama Administration weakly respond that “no one has asked them yet,” to suspend the Jones Act.  What are they waiting for?  Doesn’t Obama and everyone in his administration to hit the Sunday talk shows tell us that they has been on top of this since day one?  One plausible reason for the hesitation is that it might offend the maritime unions. 

We are continually told by this administration that we need more government expertise telling us how to run our lives.  Surrender your liberties, we’ll take care of you.  I don’t think so.  What do you think?

Yesterday, at a joint session of Congress, Filipe Calderon the President of Mexico addressed the joint body.  In his address he openly criticized the new immigration law recently passed in Arizona.  This law was passed by a duly elected legislature in Arizona and signed by the governor.  To their great disgrace most, if not all, Democrats as well as President Obama’s cabinet members gave the Mexican president a standing ovation.  These Members of Congress took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.  Are these Members of Congress going to now claim, well… Mexico is a friend, not an enemy so we can actually help them wipe their feet on the Constitution?

An analysis done by Megyn Kelly, an anchor on Fox News and an attorney, compared federal law and Supreme Court decisions to the new Arizona law. She found that current federal law is tougher than what was recently passed in Arizona.  Under federal law, police can stop anyone for any reason or no reason and ask them for their immigration status.  In Arizona, a police officer can only ask immigration status if, while in the course of stopping the individual for another reason and they suspect the individual may be in the country illegally, for example, if they don’t have a valid driver’s license.  If they can produce a valid driver’s license, the inquiry is over.

So let’s recap.  Existing federal law is tougher than the recently passed Arizona law regarding asking an individual for proof they are here legally.  The federal government is AWOL on enforcing immigration law.  Arizona acted where the federal government failed.  Attorney General Eric Holder calls the Arizona law discriminatory and a potential law suit target, but without actually reading the law.  It is also clear, he does not know the federal laws he has sworn to uphold.  Janet Napolitano also has not read the law and she has a sworn duty to secure the homeland.  She also does not know the federal laws in place that she should be enforcing.  Both of these individuals along with most, if not all, Democrats in Congress give a standing ovation to a foreign head of state who criticizes a properly passed state law.  The whole lot of them are a disgrace to this country and should be booted out of office at the first opportunity.

If you have been following the Obama administration closely it’s hard to be surprised by some of the things that they do but… never say never.  Yesterday, Michael Posner whose title is, are you ready for this, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor brought up in discussions with China, the recent law passed in Arizona to control the number of illegals flooding into that state. This is a law that was passed to address this and the previous administration’s miserable failure to control the border.

The Chinese had counterpunched in response to a report on Human Rights issued by the State Department, as required by U.S. law, that was particularly critical of China, North Korea, and Iran and their restrictions on the Internet, other communications means and their treatment of minorities in their respective countries.  This is what the Chinese said:

“The United States not only has a terrible domestic human rights record, it is also the main source of many human rights disasters worldwide,” the Chinese report said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

“Especially a time when the world is suffering serious human rights disasters caused by the global financial crisis sparked by the U.S. sub-prime crisis, the U.S. government has ignored its own grave human rights problems and reveled in accusing other countries.”

So, after being required by law since 1976 to issue an annual report on Human Rights and not wanting to be excoriated by Congress if they made it a puff piece, our socialist leaning administration felt it necessary to walk it back in meetings with the Chinese by bringing up the new law in Arizona, “early and often”.

The Chinese must have been stunned with their good fortune.  Here was the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, going out of his way to point to a new immigration law passed in Arizona to say America might be encouraging discrimination.  Here is the question from a reporter and Secretary Posner’s response:

QUESTION:  Did the recently passed Arizona immigration law come up?  And, if so, did they bring it up or did you bring it up?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER:  We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society.

The Chinese, who under Mao killed millions of their own citizens, force families to have abortions after their first and only child is born, forcefully relocated peasants to Beijing to build the Olympic facilities and them sent them back to their farms, refuse to let information flow to their citizens over the Internet, completely dominate and subjugate Tibet, and we are criticizing our own behavior to them for passing a law in Arizona?

In testimony before Congress after publicly making remarks that the new Arizona law is discriminatory and may trigger a lawsuit from the federal government Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that he had not read the Arizona law.  The Arizona law takes up all of ten pages and the Attorney General has not found the time to read it, but somehow knows the law is discriminatory.

In testimony before Congress Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano also admitted that she had not read the bill.  The speedy Secretary, who was quick to point out that things were running swell at the Department of Homeland Security after a Muslim extremist in an Army uniform killed thirteen at Fort Hood and that the Times Square bomber was a “lone wolf” before investigators found numerous international ties, wasn’t quick enough to read the ten page law before testifying to Congress.

This is an administration and Congress that can crank out thousands of pages of laws that will change the landscape of liberty in America and then rams them through without reading them and cannot read a ten page law before declaring it discriminatory.  It makes you wonder if anyone in this administration knows how to read, which would explain a lot about their ignorance of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

It was like the movie Rocky the Democrats (Rocky) were getting pounded left and right over their heavy handed tactics.  They crammed through a health care bill that an overwhelming majority of the country opposed.  They moved on to financial reform and they still couldn’t get any traction.  Their poll numbers continued to drop and it was looking like a dismal election coming up in the fall. 

 And then, just like in the movie Rocky swings from his heels and connects knocking the champ to the canvas.  In this case it was the SEC charging Goldman Sachs with fraud.  Now they could fire a full fusillade of class warfare at the Republicans and either get Republicans to help pass the financial reform bill or be tarred as the party of the evil bankers and greedy Wall Street robber barons.  But unlike the movie, right after knocking the opponent down, when the referee sends Rocky back to a neutral corner he slips in his own sweat, flips on his back and knocks himself out.  By that I mean the news came out that employees of the SEC spent an inordinate amount of their time watching porn instead of the financial markets.  How do you expand the role of government on the heels of that disclosure?

 Trying to Make Up for Bernie Madoff?

When Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme was in full swing, Harry Markopolos brought the scam to the SEC practically tied in a bow.  The SEC did not respond.  Perhaps they were too busy…, well never mind.

With the Democrats trusty weapon, class warfare, holstered it’s time to delve more deeply into this financial reform legislation.

In a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid and minority leader Mitch McConnell, luminaries including former SEC Chief Accountant Lynn Turner, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, hedge fund owner Jim Chanos, former Lehman Brothers Vice Chair Peter Solomon, former S&L investigator Bill Black, former Senate Banking Committee Chief Economist Rob Johnson, economists Dean Baker, Barry Eichengreen and others pointed out that Dodd’s proposed financial reform legislation wouldn’t have prevented the current crisis … and won’t prevent the next crisis.

So tell me again why we are doing this?  It’s all about more government control and more power in Washington, not about fixing any real problem.  Where are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in this bill?  They were at the very core of the financial meltdown.  In other words it’s all politics and it’s all straight out of the Saul Alinsky tome Rules for Radicals:

 Rule No. 13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.  In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…

     “…any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When your ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…’

     “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.” (pps.127-134)

The target in this case, is Wall Street and the Banks.  Demonize them.  When the “others”, meaning the Republicans, come out to challenge the ineffectiveness of the bill, then they can be attacked as being for the fat cats and against the little guys; class warfare at its ugliest.

 Follow the Money

But who is really in bed with the fat cats?  The Political Action Committees (PACs), employees, families of employees and other associates of Goldman Sachs gave almost $1 million in campaign contributions to Obama.  In this legislation, the concept of too big to fail remains untouched.  There will be a $50 billion fund created with money from the top banks to standby if needed for a bailout, but this also gives the impression that the largest banks are now safer because of this fund and therefore can get a lower interest rate on their borrowings compared to smaller banks.

 Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman said:

 “The Dodd bill has unlimited executive bailout authority. That’s something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn’t dare ask for. The bill contains permanent, unlimited bailout authority.”

 Why ask for it when the Obama administration will give it to you.  All you have to do is let them smack you around a bit to prime the class warfare pump, and you’re all set.

If you are backstopped by unlimited executive bailout, go ahead, take bigger and bigger risks.  The government will step in if you fail.  So here we have yet another fat cat (Wall Street/Big Banks) wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing (the little guy; Main Street). 

 If you want real financial reform, then in the name of capitalism, the big banks and Wall Street have to learn to play with their own money. If they hit a home run, good for them.  If they strikeout, they should lose their own money and if they don’t have enough to cover their losses, goodbye.   They should not be allowed to take huge risks and if they pay off, everybody there gets a new mansion in the Hamptons, but if they go bust, hand the bill to us.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we were told were private entities, not part of the government, but wink, wink, nudge, nudge, everyone knew the federal government was standing behind them and would not let them go bust.  So they too, got the kind of interest rates, half a point lower than their competitors, based on this implied backing not based on the strength of their balance sheet.

We have to fight this one too.  This is just more smoke and mirrors from the Obama administration.  Another power grab without any substantive benefit to the American people.