There is an increasingly nasty battle brewing in the Republican race for the nomination to run against Democrat incumbent Tim Bishop in the First Congressional District in New York.  With jobs and the economy the number one issue across the nation, the petty personal attacks may result in potential Republican voters staying home in disgust.

In an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “New York’s GOP Never Learns,” Kim Strassel concludes her article by saying, “The effect has been to enrage and divide a New York party that should have bigger things on its mind. Say, winning this fall.” 

Chris Cox is trying to play catch-up to the front runner Randy Altschuler who has been actively campaigning for more than a year.  The difficulty for Mr. Cox is that his positions are not that different than those of Mr. Altschuler.  So, while Mr. Altschuler has been taking on the Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop and Bishop’s lockstep voting with Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Cox has resorted to attacking Mr. Altschuler.  Not to leave his flank unprotected, Mr. Altschuler has been forced to respond and now the race, with two weeks to go before the primary on September 14^th, has degenerated into a mudslinging contest.  There is a third candidate, George Demos, who is lobbing attacks from the rear with little effect.

Each candidate is calling themselves the “true conservative,” and Mr. Cox has garnered the support of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project the self-proclaimed “Largest Tea Party organization in Suffolk County.”  Mr. Cox’s father, Ed Cox, is the head of the New York State GOP.  Ms. Strassel reports that the senior Mr. Cox, backed Steve Levy over Rick Lazio for governor to curry favor with the Suffolk County GOP chairman to back his son.  It is all the kind of backroom political dealing that have attracted a rush of newcomer candidates and put incumbents of both parties on the endangered species list.

The Tea Party Endorsement

What caught my eye was the endorsement of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project and the announcement by Bob Meyer, co-founder.  He gave as one of his primary reasons that, Randy Altschuler was one of those people, “getting rich off the backs of hardworking Americans by outsourcing their jobs.”  That sounds more like Jimmy Hoffa, Andy Stern, or Barack Obama’s class warfare than any Tea Partier I know.  A commenter on the 9-12 Project’s site, Judyann Joyner added, “Randy is credited with the creation of ‘white collar sweatshops in India.’”  Pretty strong stuff.  I don’t know if Ms. Joyner or Mr. Meyer visited the company that Mr. Altschuler co-founded in India, but Business Week magazine did.

“The lights burn day and night in the gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street in the southern Indian city of Madras. Here at OfficeTiger, 1,500 young men and women peer into computers 24 hours a day, analyzing and processing U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission reports and other documents drawn up by lawyers and bankers on Wall Street. Walking the floor, sometimes even at 3 a.m., is 34-year-old co-founder and co-Chief Executive Joseph Sigelman.”

Just because the office operates 24 hours per day, don’t been conned into thinking the same people are at their desks 24 hours a day.  “Gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street,” yup, sounds like a hellhole to me.  Business Week added, “Indeed, OfficeTiger is the only successful startup in India’s $5 billion outsourcing industry that is owned and managed by a U.S. entrepreneur.”  So we have an American company making money in India, in what seems to be a rather large and competitive field, and this is a bad thing?  Since when did conservatives turn into protectionists?  But what about the jobs they replaced?  Okay, let’s examine that. 

You have some Wall Street firms that are in a competitive business.  A young entrepreneur comes up with an idea to reduce operating expenses by having an external company handle routine clerical tasks that are not one of the firm’s key competencies, that is, people don’t buy that firm’s services because of their typing skills.  The company outsources and reduces costs.  By reducing costs, they prosper and grow; by growing they create more high skill jobs like lawyers, accountants, financial analysts, IT people, etc.  Perhaps even some of the former typists, because of their computer skills can move of the ladder to spreadsheets, and databases.  Do some people lose their jobs, yes, just as buggy whip makers lost their jobs when the automobile came on the scene.  Okay, let’s shift to India.

In India white collar jobs are created; their standard of living improves; they buy consumer goods like iPods and iPhones and their offices need sophisticated IT equipment from companies like Cisco Systems which grow companies like Apple and Cisco creating jobs in the U.S. We live in a global economy and if we want prosperity and peace, the best way to get there is through free markets.  Even Mr. Cox in the policy section of his website blames government policies for companies outsourcing jobs overseas.  If it is the government’s policies that make these jobs uncompetitive here and Mr. Cox knows it, why is Mr. Altschuler wrong for reacting to it and helping American companies that use these services remain competitive?

After selling Office Tiger to RR Donnelly, Mr. Altschuler started another company in the U.S., CloudBlue, that recycles old IT equipment.  So we have an entrepreneur that has started a couple of companies that have created jobs around the world and that makes him a villain?  Perhaps Mr. Meyer should go back and read some of the quotes on his own website:

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.” – Dr. Adrian Rogers

“I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Meyer’s key criticism of Mr. Altschuler smacks of the government picking winners and losers.  This business is okay, but not that one.  If your business creates jobs overseas that is bad, but if it creates jobs here it is okay.  Well, Mr. Altschuler has done both and he has firsthand experience doing so, which is what we sorely lack in Washington.  If the strategy of Mr. Cox continues, including creating another party, the TaxPayer party, to run on and split the vote further, Mr. Cox might as well mail his strategy over to the Bishop campaign as I am sure they will find it very useful in the general election.  Not my cup of tea.

The focus should be on defeating the out of control spenders in Congress who got us into this mess, not fighting each other to the death and let the incumbent waltz back into office.  The time is now.  Mr. Cox should focus on what he would do as a Congressman that is better than Tim Bishop and Mr. Altschuler.  If he can’t articulate that, he should drop out.  He is not going to win a lot of support by throwing mud at his fellow Republicans.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure I have done some volunteer work for the Altschuler campaign

President Obama wants to have it both ways.  He wants to appear to be fiscally responsible and he knows that to do so, that something has to include Social Security.  However, to try to keep as many Democrats in office that he can he has to play that other favorite card of the Democrats, that Republicans want to push grandma in her wheelchair down the stairs by privatizing Social Security.

In a campaign stop in Racine, Wisconsin the president had this to say, “”I’ll fight with everything I’ve got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street. Because you shouldn’t be worried that a sudden downturn in the stock market will put all you’ve worked so hard for—all you’ve earned—at risk.”  Oh, really, Mr. President?  Then perhaps you can show us where all the Social Security money is that you don’t want to put at risk.  The problem is that the government spent it all.  That’s right, there’s no lock box, no account, no bank vault, no hole in the ground were the money is buried, earning nothing.  I only wish I was able to put “at risk” all the money that the government took out of my paycheck along with my employer’s contributions. 

Based on my last annual statement from the Social Security administration, the government collected about $170,000 from me and my employers on my behalf.  Had I the opportunity to put that “at risk” in the stock market, the Dow Jones 30 industrials to be precise, including all the ups and downs, that $170,000 would be worth about $800,000 today.  Thank you Democrats for keeping me safe from accumulating that amount of wealth and instead “investing” it in ethanol, turtle crossings in Florida, bridges to nowhere, airports in John Murtha’s district that no one flies to, etc.  By Social Security estimates, that money they took from me and my employers, will be paid back to me and run out about ten to twelve years before I expire.  So instead of having a real nest egg that I can live off of and pass the rest on to my heirs, my getting Social Security will depend on the next generation getting taxed to the eyeballs to pay me and they can hope the next generation does not rise up in arms when they get the bill.

Everyone who supports the Social Security system as it is today, acknowledging that we have to fulfill our commitment to those who have retired or are very near to retiring, should join Bernie Madoff in cell block C, for the Ponzi scheme the government created.  President Obama, it is time to stop lying to the American people.  We don’t want government to run our lives.  You have crammed your left wing agenda down our throats and we will give you our rebuttal on November 3.  Then your one term will be up two years hence.

When 300,000-500,000 of your closest friends, depending on who is doing the estimating, show up for a rally on the Washington Mall you would think it was somewhat newsworthy, no?  Of course it is, that’s why the New York Times published the story on page fifteen.  If you were walking by a newsstand and glanced at the front page, you wouldn’t have know that a half million of your fellow citizens got together with Glenn Beck to restore honor in America.  The front page would entice you with:

• Graft-Fighting Prosecutor Fired in Afghanistan
• For Obama, Steep Learning Curve as Chief in Time of War
• Upstarts Chip Away at Power of Feudal Pakistani Landlords
• Years Later, No Magic Bullet Against Alzheimer’s Disease
• In Hard Times, One New Ban (Double-Wide)

I guess our friends at the times couldn’t find any fabricated stories of someone shouting the “N-word” at Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King, who was one of the featured speakers, to elevate the story to the front page.  Perhaps it would have been too embarrassing to mention on the front page that Al Sharpton’s counter-demonstration where “several hundred people packed a football field at Paul Laurance Dunbar High School to stage a rally commemorating Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”  Yesterday, you would have thought both rallies were the same size with crowd estimates of several thousand for each.  Perhaps this shows the true value of racial politics today.  America is tired of the race baiting and the false charges.   President Obama was elected with hope and change to become the post-racial leader of the country.  It appears the country has moved on without his leadership.

In another piece in the Times two Progressive women pine for a “Palin of Our Own”, to win the hearts and minds of America.  The problem is America doesn’t want to listen to Janeane Garofalo or Joy Behar sneeringly spouting off about Sarah Palin.  As far as any women Progressive politicians, who is there other than Hillary Clinton and we’ve seen that act and passed on it.

In another piece titled “Party Down”, Marc Ambinder tells us about the anti-incumbent mood, “Unlike parties, which often recruit candidates who would appeal to the average voter in a general election, these activists care only about nominating the person who accurately represents their own views and frustrations.”  Appeal to the average voter?  The problem with the Republican Party in the past is that they have been listening to the main stream media reports about who the “average voter” is.  So they have elected so called “moderates” who get their clocks cleaned by real Progressives in the election.  The left snickered in their sleeves while growing the government into the bloated, ineffective, couch potato that it is.  It alarms those on the left that the Tea Party movement has changed all this and tone deaf incumbents are getting tossed left and right.  They have unmasked the average voter to be conservative and by measuring candidates against a conservative yardstick, they have struck a chord with the voters who have long felt ignored and disenfranchised.  Now those voters are energized and can’t wait to get to the polls.  Reason for panic on the left, indeed.

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.

Revised GDP numbers suggest that going down is exactly what the economy is doing.  The government revised second quarter GDP growth from 2.4% down to 1.6%.  Even Paul Krugman is saying the stimulus didn’t work, but his solution is to drive the country into bankruptcy faster.  Krugman’s complaint was that the stimulus wasn’t big enough.  He also believe we should,” use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored lenders, to engineer mortgage refinancing that puts money in the hands of American families.”  Fannie and Freddie have already sucked $160 billion out of the Treasury and Mr. Krugman wants to back up and re-inflate the housing bubble.  Talk about failed policies of the past, sheesh!

The solution to the jobs issue is private industry.  The problem is that this is the most anti-business government in memory.  Business is the target of the administration’s ire, tax policies, health care policies, cap and trade schemes, repeal of the Bush tax cuts, card check, financial regulation, have I left anything out?  So business is sitting on its hands.  No matter how much cash it may be accumulating it does not want to take any steps, like expanding, until the full weight of all these choking policies are understood and priced out or until the Democrats are run out of the Congress and the anti-business sentiment is lifted there.

So let the Joe Biden show continue.  The man who says he know little about economics and proves it with every speech will go on telling us how the stimulus is working exactly as planned.  President Obama will continue to take a new vacation about every 90 days and we will cross our fingers that there is something left to recover when we recover our government from these inexperienced, clueless dolts.

In the August 23, 2010, New York Times, Paul Krugman decries that if we don’t let the Bush Tax cuts expire and thus have a massive tax increase in the midst of a weak Obama recovery, it will be so unfair, so evil… 

First let’s look at how twisted the logic of the left has become.  Mr. Krugman says, “These same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.” Er, not really, Paul, unless the richest 120,000 people are stupid enough, with all their financial advisors, to have that much tax withheld from their incomes.  You see, Paul, the only reason the government would have to cut them checks is if they paid too much in taxes during the year, and since the current rates are already in place it is unlikely that they would change their behavior to suddenly have an extra $3 million sent to Washington.  Here’s the problem with your thinking, Paul.  It is not your money, it is not my money, it is not the government’s money to begin with.  It belongs to the people who have earned it.  It is the people to provide revenue to the government.  It is not the government who gives money to those who produce.  Got it?

Like most on the left Mr. Krugman always associates tax cuts with a loss of revenue and tax increases with a gain in revenue, and ignores how people change their behavior with regard to these changes.

As this chart shows, at the end of the Clinton administration and the dot.com bubble the economy fell into recession.  The Bush tax cuts were implemented in 2001 and they were across the board tax cuts, not just for the wealthy.  A second set of tax cuts came in 2003.  As you can see revenues started to fall before the tax cuts, but bounced back sharply after the cuts in 2001 and 2003.  But Mr. Krugman would have you believe that if you cut taxes, revenues fall and if you leave them along or increase them, revenues increase.  You can also see that Clinton’s tax increase in 1993, didn’t have much effect in changing the rate of revenue growth, but when the Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and instituted tax cuts in 1997 you can see the slope of the curve bend upwards and it is even steeper with the Bush tax cuts.  So in the absence of the 2001 recession, revenues collected increased with tax cuts, not tax increases.

Let’s look at who is paying what share of the taxes.  The follow chart shows what percentage of the tax burden was paid by what percentile of the income earners by Adjusted Gross Income.

So even as the Bush tax cuts reduced tax rates across the board, the “evil” rich still ended up carrying a larger share of the overall tax burden than they did before the cuts.  So just what is Mr. Krugman’s beef? 

I argue that were are nearing a dangerous threshold politically, where the majority of voters may soon find they pay no taxes and the minority pays all.  If that tipping point is reached, what is to prevent this majority from voting for massive tax increases that will only affect the minority?  All Americans should carry some share of the cost of government.  It should not be a free ride for some and a minority pays the tab. 

To further emphasize the fairness issue look at the following chart from the IRS in 2004.  The brown bars show the share of the income that the percentile on the vertical axis earns.  The blue bar shows the share of the total income tax bill they pay. 

The problem folks is spending.  As the first chart makes pretty clear, we have not been suffering from a revenue problem, we have been suffering from a spending problem.  This administration and their instigators, like Mr. Krugman, have been urging reckless spending upon reckless spending and even decrying that the administration has not spent nearly enough.  Krugman is sloppy in making his case and tries to convince his readers that we will be carrying buckets of money to the wealthy when the truth is that he wants to open the spigot wider from those who produce in this country to the profligate government who can then spend it on more turtle crossings in Florida, and to prop up the unions, and bankrupt states.  Stop spending, cut taxes, shrink the federal beast, and we will be in good shape in short order.

As many people have said, “I never got a job from a poor man.”  In looking back at my own career, I have worked for several companies that were started by entrepreneurs and who became wealthy. Do I care if they were wealthy?  No.  Do I wish they were taxed to the eyeballs?  No.   If they were, those are jobs I would probably wouldn’t have had.  Opportunity is what made America the country where people around the world fight to get into, not bashing the successful.  All who stive to come here want to become those wealthy successful people and give the same opportunity to their children.

In today’s New York Times there is a story about Rick Lazio latching on to the Ground Zero mosque issue as his new campaign theme.  The first television ads I have seen regarding his run for governor are about this issue.  He is strongly opposed.  Okay, but he wants us to  elect him governor to do what, exactly?  New York has a lot of problems, from a state government that is completely dysfunctional to being broke and since everyone seems to agree that the mosque at Ground Zero is not about the right to build there but about the propriety of building there, what does it have to do with the office of governor?

When he pinch hit for Rudy Giuliani running for the senate against Hillary Clinton, after Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the race with prostate cancer, Mr. Lazio took a similar tack.  You probably remember their first debate when Mr. Lazio famously walked across the stage to a startled Mrs. Clinton and asked her to sign his pledge on campaign finance reform.  She refused and that was his theme.  The problem is that although many people feel our political process is corrupt, when it comes to campaign finance reform, most people don’t care about it.  Those who care about it are incumbents, who want to cripple those who run against them.  Some of the so called “reforms” have politicians spending so much time chasing $50 donations that they can’t do what they were elected to do.  Either that or we can only run multi-millionaire candidates who can spend their own money without limits.  (Simple solution: let anyone contribute any amount to any campaign at any time and just post the information on the Internet within 72 hours in a database that is fully searchable. Done.)  It only took a little time for the novelty of the debate video to fade and Mr. Lazio had no campaign.

Another challenger in this year’s governor’s race, Carl Paladino, one of the aforementioned millionaires, has been hitting the airwaves more frequently and more effectively than Mr. Lazio.  He is not a one trick pony.  His first ads hit Andrew Cuomo on being a career politician and that he, Paladino, was a business man who knows how to create jobs.  What do we desperately need now?  Jobs.  What are we sick of? Career politicians, like Mr. Cuomo, who played a role as HUD Secretary in the Clinton administration of feeding the real estate frenzy and the subsequent housing collapse that created the financial crisis.

On the mosque situation, agree or disagree with him but Mr. Paladino says exactly what he will do about it.  He will take the property away under Eminent Domain (thanks to the activist judges on the Supreme Court who gave us Kelo v. City of New London) and use the property to create a war memorial.  He doesn’t just say he will oppose it he tells us what he will do about it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I contributed to Rick Lazio’s senate run in 2000 and I have no connection with the Paladino campaign.  But if Mr. Lazio is serious about defeating Andrew Cuomo for governor, he has to find some issues that not only resonate with the people of New York but that are the responsibility of the governor to address.  If not, rather than split the conservative vote, he should step aside and help ride the anti-incumbent wave that Carl Paladino is surfing.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, newly elected Republican Congressman from Hawaii Charles Djou called Birthright Citizenship a GOP Achievement.  And to think I was happy to hear Mr. Djou was elected in an unusual special election where he ran against two Democrats simultaneously.  They split the vote and he won.  Birthright Citizenship is not a GOP achievement it is an accomplishment of judicial activism, pure and simple.  Mr. Djou says, “The Citizenship Clause of the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment provides that a person born in the United States is automatically a citizen, regardless of the race, ethnicity or citizenship of his parents.”  Where the hell does it say that? 

The Amendment actually reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”  These, so called conservatives, like the first part of the clause but seem to go ignorant or blind at the second part.  If you are a Constitutional Originalist, you look to the meaning of the Constitution first in the actual text, then to any information that you can glean from what was discussed at the time of its passing.  This is a case where that information could not be any clearer.

Senator Jacob Howard of Ohio was the author of the citizenship clause of the 14^th Amendment.  He said:

 “[E]very person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.  This will not [emphasis added] , of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.  It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are not citizens of the United States. “

How much clearer could “not include aliens” be?  Aliens are outside the jurisdiction of the United States and are subject to their home country.

Linda Chavez, who presents as her conservative credentials that she served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, points to English Common Law as the basis of the Birthright Citizenship.  Since under Common Law you are immediately and forever a citizen of the place of your birth.  However, with the Declaration of Independence we did away with that custom of English Common Law.  Under Common Law, you could not renounce your citizenship, and if we are still under that law, we are still all Englishmen.  It was also one of the causes of the War of 1812.  The British did not recognize our process of Naturalization.  They were stopping our merchant ships and taking off sailors they deemed to still be English citizens and pressed them into service in the Royal Navy.  The concept that Ms. Chavez is arguing supports Birthright Citizenship is from feudalism, where the serfs belonged to the land.  They received the lord’s protection and in return gave their lord a lifetime of service.

At the time of passage of the 14^th Amendment, whose purpose was to grant citizenship to the freed slaves, the debate was whether it would also confer citizenship on the American Indians.  Under Mr. Djou’s logic and Ms. Chavez’s they were born here, it was automatic.  But it wasn’t.  Not because of discrimination but because they were members of their tribes which were considered sovereign nations.  The United States signed treaties with them.  In the Supreme Court case Elk v Wilkins the court ruled:

“Indians, born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of and owing immediate allegiance to one of the Indian Tribes, an alien though dependent power, although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more born in the United States and ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ …than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children, born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign Nations.”

That was the law until 1898 in the Supreme Court case United States v Wong Kim Ark, where the majority used the Common Law argument to ignore what was written in the text of the Amendment, what was discussed at the time of the Amendment by the author of the Amendment and its supporters and the prior Supreme Court case.  This is judicial activism at its baldest.  In the dissenting opinion by Chief Justice Fuller he made it clear:

“when the sovereignty of the Crown was thrown off and independent government established, every rule of the common law and every statute of England obtaining in the colonies, in derogation of the principles on which the new government was founded, was abrogated.”

The American Revolution did away with that definition of Birthright Citizenship under the Common Law.

So along comes Lindsey Graham, who can’t decide if he is for open borders or against them, so his suggestion to amend the Constitution to end Birthright Citizenship sounds somewhat hollow.   It is also irrelevant.  Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly grants the Congress the power “To establish an (sic) uniform Rule of Naturalization..”  This does not require an amendment, just a simple clarifying law that Birthright Citizenship does not exist in the United States.

The irony is that the 14^th Amendment was created to make it more difficult for future Congresses to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said pretty much the same thing as the 14^th Amendment and it was changed with the stroke of the pen of an activist Supreme Court.  Perhaps we need to consider the idea of Mark Levin in that perhaps we need to have a legislative veto of Supreme Court decisions.  If the role of the Supreme Court is to interpret laws written by Congress, why not let Congress with a two-thirds vote, explain what the Supreme Court misinterpreted?

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”  — XIV Amendment of the Constitution of the United States

Well that’s a pretty bold statement.  Who am I to say that children of Illegal Aliens are not Citizens upon birth?  I say that because of the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that most people choose to ignore.  It is a two part statement.  The first part concerns being born or naturalized in the United States and the second part states that you must be subject to the jurisdiction thereof.  It’s not either or, the requirement is that both conditions must be met.

We have in the news talk about Lindsey Graham introducing a new Constitutional Amendment to bar children of illegal aliens becoming citizens upon birth.  I don’t think that step is necessary.

Let’s look at the history.  The infamous Dred Scott decision said that no black of African descent could be a citizen of the United States, even if they were freed blacks.  After the Civil War Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which stated:

“All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Prior to the passage of this law, citizenship was conferred on individuals by the states and U.S. citizenship flowed from that.  This law reversed the process.  Why?  Because some southern states could have prevented blacks from becoming U.S. citizens by blocking state citizenship.  By turning it around, they were U.S. citizens first and then citizens of the states in which they lived.  Similar language was included in the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent subsequent Congresses from repealing the 1866 Act.  In the Fourteenth Amendment, the language regarding Indians was dropped.  There were some concerns raised that this would automatically confer citizenship upon Indians, who also had allegiance to their tribes.  Senator Jacob Howard who was the author of the Citizenship clause said this:

“Indians born within the limits of the United States, and who maintain their tribal relations, are not, in the sense of this amendment, born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Senator Lyman Trumbell, who was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof {meant} not owing allegiance to anybody else…subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.”  Indians were not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because they owed allegiance, even if only partly, to their tribes.

So if an illegal immigrant comes to the United States and has a child, is that child automatically a United States citizen?  Does this action comply with the Fourteenth Amendment?  To the first part yes, they are born here; but to the second part, no.  The mother is a citizen of her home country and is thus subject to the jurisdiction of that country, not the United States.  Secondly, she is here illegally so she is exempting herself from rather than subjecting herself to, our immigration laws.  As for the child, a newborn can hardly swear allegiance to any country, so in all cases it fails the second part of the Citizenship Clause.  Consider diplomats who may be assigned to the United States.  If the French Ambassodor’s wife has a baby while posted here, is her child not French?

Let’s take another look at the history.  In Elk v Wilkins (1884), the Supreme Court held that a “native Indian who had renounced allegiance to his tribe did not become ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States by virtue of the renunciation.”  It went on to state, “The alien and dependent condition of the members of the Indian Tribes could not be put off at their own will, without the action or assent of the United States.”  So that would mean an illegal alien could not come to the United States and declare in the delivery room, “I renounce my allegiance to [fill in country here],” and then her child would be a citizen.  “Neither the ‘Indian Tribes’ nor ‘individual members of those tribes,’ no more than ‘other foreigners’ can ‘become citizens of their own will.”  In other words there has to be a treaty or other legislation that allows the renunciation.  Congress began extending citizenship to various Indian tribes beginning in 1870.

In a later Supreme Court decision United States v Wong Kim Ark “conferred birthright citizenship to legal residents of the United States.”  It appears that the language of the majority opinion is broad enough to allow interpretation that this also extends to children of illegal aliens, but it should only take a Supreme Court challenge or legislation to clarify the meaning of the Citizenship Clause to do what the authors of that clause originally intended.  There is no need for the arduous process of a Constitutional Amendment.  With the will of the American people as strong as it is for regaining control of the immigration situation, this could be done with a new Congress in January.

Reference: The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, Regnery (Washington, 2005)

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.