Forced Equity Trumps Individual Choice

The Motivation Behind Your Health Care Changes

The ObamaCare Awakening

Americans are losing their coverage by political design.

WSJ Editorial, October 30, 2013

For all of the Affordable Care Act's technical problems, at least one part is working on schedule. The law is systematically dismantling the individual insurance market, as its architects intended from the start.

The millions of Americans who are receiving termination notices because their current coverage does not conform to Health and Human Services Department rules may not realize this is by design. Maybe they trusted President Obama's repeated falsehood that people who liked their health plans could keep them. But Americans should understand that this month's mass cancellation wave has been the President's political goal since 2008. Liberals believe they must destroy the market in order to save it.

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Until this month, consumers who weren't insured through their jobs were allowed to buy insurance that provides the best value based on their own needs. One of every 10 private policies is sold through the individual market, covering about 7% of the U.S. population under age 65.

Some states have ruined this market through regulation and price controls, and in others costs can be high. But the individual market works well for millions of people, who can choose from many plans—from Cadillac coverage to cheaper protection against catastrophic illness.

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Bloomberg News

The political problem for the White House is that these choices are a threat to ObamaCare. If too many people keep these policies instead of joining the government exchanges, ObamaCare could fail. HHS has thus reviewed the decisions of people in the individual market and found them wanting. HHS believes as a matter of political philosophy that everyone should have the same kind of insurance, and in the name of equity it wrote rules dictating the benefits that all plans must cover and how they must be financed.

In most cases these mandates are more comprehensive and thus more expensive than the status quo, but the ObamaCare refugees aren't merely facing higher costs. The plans they want and are willing to pay for have been intentionally outlawed. Ponder that one.

Liberals claim the new insurance should cost more because it's better, at least as defined by liberal paternalism. But the real reason they want policies to cost more is to drive as many people as possible out of this market and into the subsidized ObamaCare exchanges.

The exchanges need these customers to finance ObamaCare's balance sheet and stabilize its risk pools. On the exchanges, individuals earning more than $46,000 or a family of four above $94,000 don't qualify for subsidies and must buy overpriced insurance. If these middle-class ObamaCare losers can be forced into the exchanges, they become financiers of the new pay-as-you-go entitlement.


Best of the Web Today columnist James Taranto on The White House's admittance that health care plans won't be unaffected by ObamaCare. Photo: Getty Images

The political press corps is reporting this as a shocking discovery, and we suppose it is if you believed Mr. Obama's promises. NBC News even reports as a "scoop" that the White House knew all along that millions would lose their policies. But HHS's trail of purpose has been there for anyone willing to look.

The text of the Affordable Care Act said that none of its language "shall be construed to require that an individual terminate coverage" that existed as of March 23, 2010, or the date the law was enacted. But as early as June 2010 HHS published a regulation reinterpreting this "Preservation of Right to Maintain Existing Coverage" to obviate that promise.

The Motivation & Debacle Behind Your Health Care Redesign

The ObamaCare Awakening

Americans are losing their coverage by political design.

WSJ Editorial, October 30, 2013

Even minor policy changes, such as increasing a copay by as little as $5, means that a plan cannot be renewed without rewriting it to obey all of ObamaCare's regulations. In HHS's "regulatory impact analysis" published in the Federal Register, the department estimated that between 40% and 67% wouldn't qualify as a permitted plan, and this was the point—to prevent such policies "from being bought and sold as a commodity in commercial transactions." HHS knew that lightly regulated policies might be popular, especially compared to the restricted choices in the exchanges.

Next, HHS applied very prescriptive mandates to all plans, including those sold outside the exchanges. The law's 10 very broad categories of statutory benefits like hospitalization, prescription drugs or maternity care were construed so that 79.6% of current individual plans didn't meet the targets, according to HHS's own analysis. The rule even put floors under cost-sharing to prevent consumers from paying out of pocket.

HHS wrote that the purpose was to offer merely "a small number of meaningful choices." Letting people make tradeoffs for themselves "would have allowed extremely wide variation across plans in the benefits offered" and "would not have assured consumers that they would have coverage for basic benefits." Forced equity again trumped individual choice.

Hard to believe, but at the time liberals complained that this HHS "essential health benefits" rule wasn't restrictive enough. Pediatric services stop being required at age 19, not 21, and what about speech therapy, medical foods or lactation services?

Liberals needn't have worried. Once customers are herded into the exchanges, HHS has the power to further standardize benefits, further limit choices by barring certain insurers from selling through selective contracting, and generally police the insurers to behave like the government franchises they now are. The state-run exchanges in Vermont and the District of Columbia have already barred individual coverage outside their exchanges.

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None of this is an accident. It is the deliberate result of the liberal demand that everyone have essentially the same coverage and that government must dictate what that coverage is and how much it costs. Such political control is the central nervous system of the Affordable Care Act, and it is why so many people can't keep the insurance they like.

Shutdown Roots

The Bigger Battle Behind the Shutdown

A staggering $250 billion per month, 80% of spending, runs on autopilot without congressional

By DAVID MALPASS, WSJ Opinion, October 10, 2013

At its core, the shutdown is part of a much bigger battle to restrain the federal government. It is spending $3.6 trillion per year without a budget, and its expenditures are expected to increase rapidly in the years ahead.

Meanwhile, the government has piled up $17 trillion in debt and $60 trillion more in unfunded spending promises. The Federal Reserve will borrow $1.1 trillion in 2013 alone to buy bonds—and it reserves the right to borrow unlimited amounts for future bond purchases without congressional or presidential permission.

These are crisis-level problems. Whether the government is open or closed, they are surely grounds for immediate talks between the president and Congress on ways to pare ineffective federal programs, restrain spending and reduce borrowing.

Ducking governance decisions year after year will leave the U.S. too weak to face global challenges. Big government has meant slow growth, painfully high youth and minority unemployment and falling median incomes—except in the Washington, D.C., area, which recent census data show is growing ever richer.

Under current law, the federal government and Federal Reserve are in a sharp upward trajectory in their power and the riskiness of their policies. Federal domination of the economy and financial markets is only increasing. The government shutdown reflects a Republican demand for permanent new checks and balances—to restrain a government that spends wildly without a budget, buys $1 trillion per year in overpriced bonds from an already-rich Wall Street, and micromanages federal medical care but exempts unions and Congress from the sting of regulations that affect others.

Washington's panic prior to the budget sequester that took effect earlier this year gave a glimpse of the truth: Much federal spending can't be justified. The government shutdown is giving more insight into the problem—a staggering $250 billion per month, 80% of spending, runs on autopilot without any congressional involvement or control. So much for the Constitution's bedrock principle that "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law."

To break the impasse, and to address the government's disastrous finances, the president must lead the way. Mr. Obama has made clear that he will not change ObamaCare, but given the challenges the country faces, a blanket insistence on keeping the whole government unchanged isn't defensible.

One good starting point for presidential leadership is the fraud-plagued federal disability programs that cost taxpayers $200 billion annually. There are innumerable other such programs, as well as roughly 200 independent federal agencies, many with little purpose and certainly not enough purpose to justify more debt.

To avoid future stalemates like the current one, making a legislative change is clearly imperative: The current debt-limit law, despite its name, operates to make the debt larger, not smaller. The law should be rewritten to mandate continuous spending restraint when debt exceeds the ceiling.

Fortunately, an actual default is a red herring. The president has sweeping powers through Treasury to continue paying the national debt. Mr. Obama alluded to this on Tuesday by listing the non-debt obligations that might be paid late, including government contractors, veterans and Social Security recipients (whose checks are due Nov. 1). In effect, the government would choose to pay them late and use newly arrived tax revenues to maintain debt payments.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's weekend appearances on four major networks made the same point. He complained about Republicans extorting the president—then defined default as "choosing not to pay bills on time."

The administration is frustrated that Wall Street is largely ignoring its talk of default, hence the president's cautioning the stock and bond markets—on Tuesday afternoon, in the heart of the trading day—about the potential for catastrophe.

Democrats are hoping that the political consequences of a broader shutdown of government payments, what the president is calling an economic shutdown, will force House Republicans to allow a vote on a short-term extension of the debt limit.

Maybe so, but the president might have a tough time convincing House Democrats to vote for more debt with no reforms. The better course would be to agree on reforms now—there's ample common ground—and put an end to the downward spiral in rhetoric.

Rather than discuss restraint, the administration has increasingly turned to the Federal Reserve as a crutch. The Fed is borrowing and spending $85 billion per month on bonds, and it claims the legal authority to increase its debt at will. Wall Street is intensely focused on supporting this profligacy and profiting from it. The Fed's debt will reach $4 trillion at year-end, with at least $200 billion of it not counted properly in the national debt.

The Fed is choosing to buy long-term bonds with short-term debt. The result is a rapid shortening in the effective maturity of the national debt that benefits current politicians but puts taxpayers at risk. Like an adjustable-rate mortgage, the borrower, in this case the government, gets a lower interest rate now but will have to refinance at higher rates later.

Compounding the taxpayer risk, Treasury has scheduled a November launch of a new class of floating-rate debt that will compete with the Fed's debt when interest rates begin to normalize. This leaves a huge portion of the national debt exposed to higher interest rates. And as Europe's weak southern flank demonstrated in their 2010-12 crisis, financial markets treat floating-rate and short-term debt like blood in the water.

The president keeps telling the public that Republicans would, in effect, "burn down your house" if he doesn't negotiate. Republicans should ignore the outrageous charges of extortion and blackmail coming from the other side and continue to seek positive change. The upside is clear: Growth, jobs, the dollar and financial markets would surge if the shutdown leads to restraint.

Mr. Malpass is president of Encima Global LLC. He served as deputy assistant Treasury secretary in the Reagan administration.

Government Bloat - We've Only Just Begun

What Did You Expect?

WSJ Editorial, May 23, 2013

The Unaccountable Executive

If the President doesn't run the government, then who does?

Every day brings new revelations about who knew what about the IRS targeting conservative groups during President Obama's re-election campaign, but the overall impression is of a vast federal bureaucracy run amok. While the White House continues to peddle the story of a driverless train wreck, taxpayers are being treated to a demonstration of the dangers of an unwieldy and unaccountable administrative state. Look, Ma, no hands!

In his press events, Mr. Obama has said that while he learned about the Cincinnati rogues on the news, he plans to "hold accountable those who have taken these outrageous actions." But the White House began its response by pushing the line that the IRS is an "independent agency," and Mr. Obama has since given the impression that he sits atop a federal government which he does not, and could not possibly, control.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfieffer encouraged that fable on this Sunday's news shows, implying that the Treasury's internal process for handling the unfair treatment of political targets trumped the President's right to know. When CNN political correspondent Candy Crowley asked Mr. Pfieffer why the White House and top Treasury officials weren't notified, he explained that Treasury's investigation was ongoing and "Here's the cardinal rule: You do not interfere in an independent investigation."

Now there's a false choice. The Treasury Inspector General's report, for starters, was an audit, not an inviolable independent investigation. He lacked subpoena power and could bring no criminal charges. Having the President know of the IRS's mistakes so that he could act to correct the problem was not a bridge too far or even clouding the purity of the process. Those things could have been done simultaneously without compromising Treasury's investigation.

At Darrell Issa's House oversight hearing on Wednesday, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George was criticized for not notifying Congress of the IRS wrongdoing when he became aware of it in July 2012. Emails between the IG's office and committee staff show the IG's office repeatedly evaded Congressional inquiries on the progress of the investigation.

All IGs appear before Congress, but they are really answerable to the President who is responsible for what goes on in the IRS and what the agency actually does. If the IRS is not operating in a way that treats taxpayers evenhandedly and in accordance with its guidelines and mission, it is up to him to change the personnel and make any other corrections so that the taxing power of the federal government is legal and fair. If that isn't the case, voters deserve to know exactly who is accountable for the decisions of the agency that takes a healthy fraction of their income every year.

Mr. Obama's lesson in lack of political accountability also seems to be trickling down: Lois Lerner was in charge of the IRS division that discriminated against conservative groups. But rather than take responsibility, Ms. Lerner on Wednesday invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify at the House hearing, though not before she read a statement saying that she had "not done anything wrong."

Asked by Texas Senator John Cornyn at a Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday whether he owed conservative groups an apology, former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said that he was "certainly not personally responsible for creating a list that had inappropriate criteria on it" though he was sorry that it had happened on his watch.

There's a certain infantilization of the federal government here that should be especially alarming to taxpayers who have ever crossed paths with the IRS. The agency has the power to make citizens lives miserable, ruin their businesses and garnish their wages. Anyone facing an audit is unlikely to get away with the evasions now in display in the federal bureaucracy.

If the scandal is showing anything, it is that the White House has a bizarre notion of accountability in the federal government. President Obama's former senior adviser, David Axelrod, told MSNBC recently that his guy was off the hook on the IRS scandal because "part of being President is there's so much beneath you that you can't know because the government is so vast."

In other words, the bigger the federal government grows, the less the President is responsible for it. Mr. Axelrod's remarkable admission, and the liberal media defenses of Mr. Obama's lack of responsibility, prove the tea party's point that an ever larger government has become all but impossible to govern. They also show once again that liberals are good at promising the blessings of government largesse but they leave its messes for others to clean up.

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Alexander Hamilton and America's Founders designed the unitary executive for the purpose of political accountability. It is one of the Constitution's main virtues. Unlike grunts in Cincinnati, Presidents must face the voters. That accountability was designed to extend not only to the President's inner circle but over the entire branch of government whose leaders he chooses and whose policies bear his signature.

If the President isn't accountable, then we really have the tea party nightmare of the runaway administrative state accountable to no one. If Mr. Obama and his aides are to be taken at their word, that is exactly what we have.

One of These Presidents Was/Is A Defender of Liberty

Which, of course, Is Where the Word 'Liberal' Comes From

Tough Swallow

Would You Like Tea With Your Pie?

Republican Tea Party Racists

Scott's Progress

The Senate's only African-American will be a Republican.

WSJ Editorial, 12/18/12

Liberals tend to overemphasize racial diversity, especially in politics, but the diversity lobby was notably missing in action Monday after South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's announcement that she chose Tim Scott to replace departing Senator Jim DeMint. It is a striking moment nonetheless.

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A Republican Governor who is the daughter of immigrants from India appointed a Republican who will become the only sitting African-American Senator in the 113th Congress. Mr. Scott, who was born in 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act passed, defeated the son of the late Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in a GOP primary for a House seat in 2010. The former businessman represents Charleston, where the Confederacy fired the first rounds of the Civil War, and he will be the first black Senator from the Deep South since Reconstruction.

Mr. Scott's appointment requires him to stand for a special election in 2014, though he has a record as a House conservative in sync with Palmetto State values and emerged with the Tea Party. It's also worth noting that the movement deplored by liberals as retrogressive has done more than anything in years to increase diversity in politics—and not merely of thought. Think Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Ms. Haley herself.

The best news is that Senator-designate Scott's story isn't about racial grievance and preference. It's a measure of personal achievement, political conviction and the opportunities available in modern American politics.

Not Meant For Swing State Voters

The Libertarian Case for Gary Johnson

Nick Gillespie|Reason.comOct. 30, 2012 11:32 am

The libertarian case in favor of voting for Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson is pretty self-evident and exceptionally strong. 

Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of the overwhelmingly Democratic state of New Mexico, is not just the single-most qualified candidate the LP has yet to field for president. At this stage in his life, he's got more experience in managing actual political reality and bureaucratic state operations than the one-term former governor Mitt Romney has or the wet-behind-the-ears senator Barack Obama had when he moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Or for that matter, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had when the good Dr. No ran for the LP in 1988.

As a bonus as big as the Mt. Everest that he actually climbed (on a recently busted leg, for god's sake!), Johnson actually happens to be a full-throated champion of strictly limited government and maximally empowered individuals, of free minds and free markets, of marriage equality, engagement with the world through trade not aid (or drones or boots on the ground), of open borders, of social tolerance, and more. (Go here for Johnson's platform.) When he was running the show in the Land of Enchantment, he held the line on spending and taxes and vetoed hundreds of bills while pushing school choice, prison reform, competitive outsourcing, and many other good things. He never once threatened to invade Texas or Arizona or Colorado, or even Mexico.

Lord knows that finding experienced and comitted-to-the-cause candidates hasn't always been easy for the LP. Four years ago, the party nominated former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) a notorious social conservative, war hawk, and drug warrior who embraced libertarian values only after being bounced from the House due to redistricting shenanigans. Even as the LP's standard bearer, Barr was not fully at ease with the non-interventionist foreign policy that's deep in the party's roots as an emanation of right-of-center dissent from Vietnam. When LP is not putting forward recent and sometimes-ambivalent converts, it has a knack for anointing folks who may not quite be ready for their day in the sun. In 2004, the LP put forward Michael Badnarik, a nice and smart guy who nonetheless became best known for refusing to acquire a Texas driver's license. Badnarik finished with just 0.32 percent of the vote, one of the worst performances among the generally desultory performances of LP candidates.

This isn't to say Johnson is all things to all libertarians (broadly defined as believers in fiscal responsibility and social tolerance). He's said some odd things on the campaign trail, most notably about U.S. military support for capturing Joseph Kony, the leader of the Ugandan cult, the Lord's Resistance Army. In a Daily Caller interview earlier this year, Johnson unconvincingly called the LRA "possibly the worst terrorist group that's been on the planet for the last 20 years." Um, no. It took Johnson a while to find his voice in explaining what he calls the "fair tax," or a consumption-based tax that would replace all existing personal and business income taxes. I personally find the widely circulated video of him crowd-surfing to be one of the greatest moments of the 2012 campaign (right up there with Clint Eastwood's Empty Chair improv), but I understand why latter-day Hobbesians find it unsettling to see a potential ruler literally put his life in the hands of the rabble.

But geez-louise, this guy Gary Johnson is everything any party could hope for in a presidential candidate: He's accomplished in private and public life, he's vibrant and energetic, and especially since kicking free of the final parts of his Republicanoid past like a butterfly leaving the cocoon for good, he's genuinely charismatic when stumping on the differences between his own views and those of Obama and Romney. A few weeks back, I saw him bring about 500 people to their feet at a University of Cincinnati rally by forcefully detailing the ways in which he and he alone is talking about government spending and debt, ruinous foreign policy, and federal buttinskys dead-set on policing the boardroom and the bedroom. He's the best of both worlds: A leader who can move an audience but who always stresses that you and your choices - as opposed to some nutty coercive agenda - come first. He's the perfect candidate for a post-best-and-the-brightest DIY world. We don't need a maximum leader, we need someone who will set and enforce simple rules for a complex world.

So if you vote and think your vote should express your political beliefs, there's nowhere else for libertarians (and Libertarians) to look.

But of course, Gary Johnson is not going to win the election. Indeed, if past is prologue, he will likely finish with less than 1 percent of all votes cast. So the real case for Gary Johnson - a tougher case to make - is arguing for why you should think about pulling the lever, tapping the screen, or punching the butterfly ballot for the guy knowing that he's a bigger lost cause than the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series, the Gilmore Girls movie getting made, and the release of Dr. Dre's Detox put together.

As it happens, Johnson has addressed this very question in his forthright manner. "A wasted vote," he says, "is a vote for someone you don't believe in." He's even exhorting people to "waste" their vote, telling an audience at New York University, "We can make a difference in this election. Waste your vote!” How will pushing Johnson's total above the 1 percent mark - and ideally, higher than the spread of votes separating Obama and Romney on November 7 - make a difference?

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Crony Obamanomics Continues

$249mm in Taxpayer Money Lost- This is the Shit the Tea Party Rallies Against

Electric Car Battery Maker A123 Systems Files Bankruptcy

By Dawn McCarty and Craig Trudell - Oct 16, 2012, Bloomberg News

A123 Systems Inc. (AONE), a maker of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, filed for bankruptcy after failing to make a debt payment that was due yesterday.

The company listed assets of $459.8 million and debt of $376 million as of Aug. 31 in Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware.

A123 didn’t expect to be on time with an interest payment due yesterday on $143.8 million of notes expiring in 2016, or to make a payment due yesterday on $2.76 million in outstanding 6 percent notes, the Waltham, Massachusetts-based company said yesterday in a regulatory filing.

“The company may not have sufficient cash to fund operations and may need to seek the protections provided under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code,” A123 said.

The bankruptcy filing may fuel further political debate over government financing of alternative-energy and transportation businesses. Federal grants and loans to companies including A123, Fisker Automotive Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc. have drawn scrutiny from congressional Republicans following the September 2011 bankruptcy filing of solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC two years after it received a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Energy Department.

Shares Fall

A123 fell as much as 16 cents, or 70 percent, to 7 cents a share in over-the-counter trading as of 9:43 a.m.

A123, which received a $249.1 million federal grant in 2009 to build a U.S. factory, needed a financial lifeline after struggling with costs from a recall of batteries supplied to Fisker, the plug-in hybrid luxury carmaker. A123 announced in August that it was working on a deal with Wanxiang Group Corp., China’s largest auto-parts maker, for financing in exchange for a majority ownership stake.

Wanxiang plans to invest as much as $465 million in A123, giving the Hangzhou, China-based company a stake of as much as 80 percent, A123 said in an Aug. 16 statement. In yesterday’s filing, A123 said it was considering strategic alternatives including “one or more potential transactions” to address its liquidity problems. There is “no assurance” that A123 will be able to find a way to continue to operate its business as a going concern, the company said.

Obama’s Call

President Barack Obama called A123 Chief Executive Officer David Vieau and then-Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm during a September 2010 event celebrating the opening of the plant in Livonia, Michigan, that the company received the U.S. grant to help build.

“This is about the birth of an entire new industry in America -- an industry that’s going to be central to the next generation of cars,” Obama said in the phone call, according to a transcript provided by the White House. “When folks lift up their hoods on the cars of the future, I want them to see engines and batteries that are stamped: Made in America.”

Electric-vehicle sales since 2011 totaled fewer than 50,000 through September, just 5 percent of Obama’s target to have 1 million such vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last month that Obama has picked “losers” for alternative-energy loans and grants. His running mate, Paul Ryan, has called for all green-energy subsidies to be eliminated.

A123 has posted at least 14 straight quarterly losses. Its shares have fallen 85 percent this year to 24 cents at yesterday’s close in New York and traded at 16 cents at 8:29 a.m. before the start of regular trading.

The case is In re A123 Systems Inc., 12-49658, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington). 

While Hating the Tea Party...

The Magnitude of the Mess We're In

The next Treasury secretary will confront problems so daunting that even Alexander Hamilton would have trouble preserving the full faith and credit of the United States.

By George P. Shultz, Michael J. Boskin, John F. Cogan, Allan H. Meltzer and John B. Taylor, WSJ Opinion, September 17, 2012

Sometimes a few facts tell important stories. The American economy now is full of facts that tell stories that you really don't want, but need, to hear.

Where are we now?

Did you know that annual spending by the federal government now exceeds the 2007 level by about $1 trillion? With a slow economy, revenues are little changed. The result is an unprecedented string of federal budget deficits, $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and another $1.2 trillion on the way this year. The four-year increase in borrowing amounts to $55,000 per U.S. household.

The amount of debt is one thing. The burden of interest payments is another. The Treasury now has a preponderance of its debt issued in very short-term durations, to take advantage of low short-term interest rates. It must frequently refinance this debt which, when added to the current deficit, means Treasury must raise $4 trillion this year alone. So the debt burden will explode when interest rates go up.

The government has to get the money to finance its spending by taxing or borrowing. While it might be tempting to conclude that we can just tax upper-income people, did you know that the U.S. income tax system is already very progressive? The top 1% pay 37% of all income taxes and 50% pay none.

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You Couldn't Time It Better

Democrats Kickoff Convention on the Day Debt Clock Crosses $16 Trillion

31% of Gay Voters Go GOP

Is the GOP deeply anti-gay? Hardly

Though there are such sentiments in the Republican Party, polling data show large, overlooked pockets of tolerance among its rank and file.

By David Lampo, LA Times, July 16, 2012

It's an axiom of modern American politics that most Republicans are reflexively — even stridently — anti-gay. The hiring, then forced resignation in May, of openly gay foreign policy expert Richard Grenell by the Romney campaign enhanced the party's, and Mitt Romney's, anti-gay image.

To be sure, anti-gay sentiments still run deep in the GOP. Yet if one digs deeper than the conventional wisdom, one finds large, overlooked pockets of gay tolerance among rank-and-file Republicans. Polling data reveal four common myths about right-of-center attitudes toward gay rights.

Myth No. 1: Most Republicans oppose gay rights in any form. A review of polling data from GOP voters shows a starkly different reality. A 2011 poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research showed 66% of Republicans support workplace policies banning discrimination against gays and lesbians.

TIMELINE: Gay marriage chronology

But Republican support for gay rights doesn't stop there. In a 2008 Washington Post/ABC News poll, 64% of conservatives supported allowing openly gay service members into the armed forces; a recent National Journal poll showed a majority of Republicans satisfied with the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" law. Only 37% of Republicans expressed support for a federal amendment to ban gay marriage nationwide.

Myth No. 2: Evangelicals are a gay rights wasteland. In spite of the long record of opposition to gay rights on the religious right, the new reality is not as absolute. A 2010 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 41% of Christian conservatives supported legal recognition for gay couples (14% in favor of marriage equality and 27% in favor of civil unions). A 2011 poll by the same organization found 44% of evangelical millennials — those ages 18 to 29 — in favor of same-sex marriage.

Myth No. 3: There is little support overall among Republicans for recognition of same-sex relationships. Even on this contentious issue, there has been substantial growth on the right in support for marriage equality and civil unions. An August 2010 CBS News poll found 59% of Republicans support either same-sex marriage or civil unions (25% for marriage, 34% for civil unions). A May 2011 poll by Public Policy Polling showed a majority of Republicans — 51% — in favor of either same-sex marriage (12%) or civil unions (39%). While the percentage of Republicans supporting same-sex marriage varies from poll to poll, all of them show a majority of Republicans favor legal recognition of gay couples.

Myth No. 4: The "tea party" and the religious right hold the same views on gay and lesbian issues. Despite the significant overlap between these two large groups of voters on fiscal issues, a 2010 Washington Post survey of tea party members found the issue of same-sex marriage near the bottom of their long list of priorities. Only two issues ranked lower: abortion rights and gun rights. Religious right organizations, on the other hand, put their battle against both abortion and gay rights at the very top of their agenda.

The Public Religion Research Institute's 2010 American Values Survey, the largest study of tea party attitudes ever done, found that 53% of tea party members support legal recognition for same-sex couples — 18% for same-sex marriage and 35% for civil unions. This is an astonishing finding in light of the widespread perception that these two movements are virtually one and the same. A 2010 CBS News/New York Times survey of tea party supporters found similar results: 16% in favor of marriage and 41% favoring civil unions.

Leading religious organizations and their spokesmen argue that gay rights are simply incompatible with conservative principles and policies. Yet an examination of polling data shows that most rank-and-file Republicans view gay rights issues — including the repeal of state sodomy laws, equal access to the same legal rights and privileges as heterosexuals, and the right to serve in the armed forces — as compatible with core Republican principles of individual liberty, limited government and free enterprise.

Now that the campaigns have moved to general election calculus — keeping the party base intact while wooing independent and moderate voters — the Romney campaign, and Republican candidates nationwide, would do well to take heed.

David Lampo of the Cato Institute is the author of "A Fundamental Freedom: Why Republicans, Conservatives and Libertarians Should Support Gay Rights."

My Children: "That's Not Fair!"

Inconvenient Facts for the Party of Fairness

A Fairness Quiz for the President

Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama's largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees?

By STEPHEN MOORE, WSJ Opinion, February 7, 2012

President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?

Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?

Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?

Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?

Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?

Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones?

Is it fair that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel and other leading Democrats who preach tax fairness underpaid their own taxes?

Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007?

Is it fair that roughly 88% of political contributions from supposedly impartial network television reporters, producers and other employees in 2008 went to Democrats?

Is it fair that the three counties with America's highest median family income just happen to be located in the Washington, D.C., metro area?

Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy—pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is "subsidized"?

Is it fair that those who work full-time jobs (and sometimes more) to make ends meet have to pay taxes to support up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits for those who don't work?

Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?

Is it fair that thousands of workers won't have jobs because the president sided with environmentalists and blocked the shovel-ready Keystone XL oil pipeline?

Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama's largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees on their investments in renewable energy projects that went bust?

Is it fair that federal employees receive benefits that are nearly 50% higher than those of private-sector workers whose taxes pay their salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office?

Is it fair that soon almost half the federal budget will take income from young working people and redistribute it to old non-working people, even though those over age 65 are already among the wealthiest Americans?

Is it fair that in 27 states workers can be compelled to join a union in order to keep their jobs?

Is it fair that nearly four out of 10 American households now pay no federal income tax at all—a number that has risen every year under Mr. Obama?

Is it fair that Boeing, a private company, was threatened by a federal agency when it sought to add jobs in a right-to-work state rather than in a forced-union state?

Is it fair that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids—who never voted for Mr. Obama—will have to pay off the $5 trillion of debt accumulated over the past four years, without any benefits to them?

Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

Tea Party vs Occupied

Tea Party Spending Accomplishment - Disheartening

A New Spending Record

Washington had its best year ever in fiscal 2011.

Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2011

Maybe it's a sign of the tumultuous times, but the federal government recently wrapped up its biggest spending year, and its second biggest annual budget deficit, and almost nobody noticed. Is it rude to mention this?

The Congressional Budget Office recently finished tallying the revenue and spending figures for fiscal 2011, which ended September 30, and no wonder no one in Washington is crowing. The political class might have its political pretense blown. This is said to be a new age of fiscal austerity, yet the government had its best year ever, spending a cool $3.6 trillion. That beat the $3.52 trillion posted in 2009, when the feds famously began their attempt to spend America back to prosperity.

What happened to all of those horrifying spending cuts? Good question. CBO says that overall outlays rose 4.2% from 2010 (1.8% adjusted for timing shifts), when spending fell slightly from 2009. Defense spending rose only 1.2% on a calendar-adjusted basis, and Medicaid only 0.9%, but Medicare spending rose 3.9% and interest payments by 16.7%.

The bigger point: Government austerity is a myth.

In somewhat better news, federal receipts grew by 6.5% in fiscal 2011, including a 21.6% gain in individual income tax revenues. The overall revenue gain would have been even larger without the cost of the temporary payroll tax cut, which contributed to a 5.3% decline in social insurance revenues but didn't reduce the jobless rate.

The nearby table shows the budget trend over the last five years, and it underscores the dramatic negative turn since the Obama Presidency began. The budget deficit increased slightly in fiscal 2011 from a year earlier, to $1.298 trillion. That was down slightly as a share of GDP to 8.6%, but as CBO deadpans, this was still "greater than in any other year since 1945."

Mull over that one. The Obama years have racked up the three largest deficits, both in absolute amounts and as a share of GDP, since Hitler still terrorized Europe. Some increase in deficits was inevitable given the recession, but to have deficits of nearly $1.3 trillion two years into a purported economic recovery simply hasn't happened in modern U.S. history. Yet President Obama fiercely resisted even the token spending cuts for fiscal 2011 pressed by House Republicans earlier this year.

The table also shows how close the federal budget was to balance as recently as fiscal 2007, with a deficit as low as $161 billion, or 1.2% of GDP. Those are the numbers to point to the next time someone says that the Bush tax rates are the main cause of our current fiscal woes.

Under those same tax rates in 2007, the government raised $2.57 trillion in revenue but it spent only $2.73 trillion. Four years later, the government raised $265 billion less thanks to the tepid recovery, but it spent nearly $900 billion more thanks to the never-ending Washington stimulus.

The lesson for Congress's super committee contemplating fiscal reform is that faster economic growth and spending restraint are the keys to reducing deficits. Higher taxes will hurt growth and feed a Washington spending appetite that is as voracious as ever, despite the claims of political sacrifice.

Maxine Waters: Most Racist, Hateful and Vulgar

Let Me Add: Dumbest - If you watched her during the financial crisis your jaw must have dropped 

Kerosene Maxine to Tea Party: "Go to Hell!"

By Larry Elder, August 25, 2011

"I'm not afraid of anybody. ... And as far as I'm concerned, the tea party can go straight to hell." -- Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

Waters' list of insults, vulgarities and blame-whitey scapegoating easily makes her the Al Sharpton of Congress.

Let's go to the videotape:

Waters once said of the then-sitting president: "I would like to ... say ... very clearly that I believe George (H.W.) Bush is a racist." She routinely refers to the Republican Party as "the enemy." She also referred to Republican former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan as a "plantation owner."

She called the 1992 Los Angeles riots a "rebellion," and bellowed, "No justice, no peace!" She defended looters: "There were mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, to take some bread, to take some shoes. Maybe they shouldn't have done it, but the atmosphere was such that they did it. They are not crooks." Waters said: "One lady said her children didn't have any shoes. She just saw those shoes there, a chance for all of her children to have new shoes. Goddamn it! It was such a tear-jerker. I might have gone in and taken them for her myself."

In 1973, the former Black Panther Joanne Chesimard shot and killed a New Jersey state trooper. Found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison, Chesimard escaped from a New Jersey penitentiary and fled to Cuba. Congress passed a resolution urging Castro to extradite her to this country. But Waters wrote Castro a letter, urging him to keep the "persecuted ... political activist" and likened the cop killer to Martin Luther King, since Chesimard had been "persecuted for her civil rights work"!

Waters wrote a foreword for a book, "Dark Alliance," that accused the CIA of playing a prominent role in the Los Angeles area drug trade. Never mind that practically every major newspaper -- The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post -- all examined and rejected the charge. She even pressured former CIA director John Deutch into coming to Los Angeles to explain the CIA's alleged role. During a town hall meeting, Waters bellowed, "If I never do anything else in this career as a member of Congress, I am going to make somebody pay for what they have done to my community and to my people!"

Waters' concern for the drug epidemic affecting "my people" apparently begins and ends with town hall meetings. In the '90s, a joint federal and local Houston DEA task force pursued cocaine-dealing allegations of James Prince, a childhood friend of Maxine Waters' husband. Waters wrote a letter to then-Attorney General Janet Reno calling the investigation racially motivated, and demanded an end to the probe. She succeeded. This infuriated local DEA agents, one of whom later publicly stated: "The Justice Department in Washington turned their backs on a good agent and a good investigation. It appears the object was to get them to stop their investigation, and it appears that worked."

Waters rarely sees a white officer/black suspect encounter she cannot turn into a racial episode. In the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, a white police officer slammed a black youth on his car and later punched the youth because, according to the officer, the teen grabbed the officer's genitals.

Why, shades of Rodney King, according to Waters, who said: "I don't see white police officers slamming the heads of little white boys into police cars. I haven't seen them abusing white males. What I see is white police officers abusing black males, and young black males particularly. Yes, I believe it's racially motivated." Note: Inglewood, a town of over 100,000 people, consists of nearly all black and Hispanic residents. This automatically makes any white officer involved in a scuffle with practically any Inglewood suspect a target of accusations of racial discrimination and police brutality.

The congresswoman can dish it out, but what happens when people fight back? When an anonymous letter claimed that the Los Angeles Police Commission president, at a meeting, called her a "bitch," Waters went ballistic. She unsuccessfully demanded his resignation: "If it is all right for the Police Commission president to call a congresswoman a bitch, is it all right for police officers on the street to call women bitches?"

Waters currently faces an investigation by the House ethics committee. She phoned then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in 2008, asking his office to meet with minority bank owners. He complied. But most of the bankers in attendance were from OneUnited Bank -- a bank in which Waters' husband owned shares and on whose board he once served. OneUnited asked for a special bailout, and three months later, it received $12 million. The basis of the House ethics inquiry is why Waters failed to disclose to Paulson her personal financial interest in the bank bailout.

Waters' tea party attack once again exposes her as one of the most racist, hateful and vulgar members of Congress -- prompting Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum to call her "vile." He was far too kind. 

Rick Santelli Goes Off: “We’d Be BBB Without Tea Party!”

Never Take A Hostage You're Not Prepared To Shoot

Debt-Limit Harakiri

Mitch McConnell isn't selling out Republicans.

Wall Street Journal Editorial, July 13, 2011

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday he's concluded that no deal to raise the debt ceiling in return for serious spending restraint is possible with President Obama, and who can blame him? We've never thought the debt ceiling was the best leverage for a showdown over the entitlement state, and now it looks like Mr. Obama is trying to use it as a way to blame the GOP for the lousy economy.

This may have been the President's strategy all along: Take the debt-limit talks behind closed doors, make major spending cuts seem possible in the early days, but then hammer Republicans publicly as the deadline nears for refusing to raise taxes on business and "the rich."

This would explain the President's newly discovered fondness for press conferences, which he has rarely held but now rolls out before negotiating sessions. It would also explain why Mr. Obama's tax demands have escalated as the August 2 deadline nears. Yesterday he played the Grandma Card, telling CBS that seniors may not get their August retirement checks. Next he'll send home the food inspectors and stop paying the troops.

 

The reality is that Mr. Obama is trying to present Republicans with a Hobson's choice: Either repudiate their campaign pledge by raising taxes, or take the blame for any economic turmoil and government shutdown as the U.S. nears a debt default. In the former case Mr. Obama takes the tax issue off the table and demoralizes the tea party for 2012, and in the latter he makes Republicans share the blame for 9.2% unemployment.

Reveal rest of post >>

How Self-Appointed "Rational" Liberals Think

Piers Morgan interview Ann Coulter

This is a fascinating interview and our friends at NewsBusters.Org do an excellent job dissecting this part of Ann Coulter's appearance on Piers Morgan. No matter how you feel about Coulter, Morgan or Sarah Palin (partial subject of the discussion), the insights into the media elite are interesting...

Piers Morgan asks Ann Coulter if Tea Party is Modern Version of Hitler and Mussolini's Followers | NewsBusters.org