It’s Monday, April 23rd, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!
Our lead story of the week comes via the WSJ and a member of the Sunshine State chapter of The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight, where we learn of an upcoming….
Tea Party Test in Orlando
Let’s see; the pretty blond freshman or the 20-year establishment bureaucrat with the bad rug?!?
Conservatives in Congress and tea party activists are infuriated with GOP Rep. John Mica, the 20-year veteran from Florida, for deciding to run for re-election in the Orlando-area district of popular freshman Sandy Adams. Mr. Mica, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, had met with his colleague and assured her that he would not run in the newly drawn Seventh Congressional District.
“After they drew the new lines and I saw we both lived in the same district, I went to see him on the House floor,” said Ms. Adams in an interview. “He said, ‘Sandy, don’t worry about it. It’s not going to be a problem. I lived outside my district the first 10 years I was in Congress.'” She notes that the Sixth Congressional District on the new maps, which is Mr. Mica’s current district, “contains more than 70 percent of his current voters.”
After her conversation with Mr. Mica, Ms. Adams decided to run in the new Seventh District. That’s where more than half of her constituents live, where she was a state legislator and where she patrolled when she was deputy sheriff. Two weeks later, Mr. Mica changed his mind and said he would run against her in that same district. According to Ms. Adams, “He said to me, ‘Sandy, you have to move. I will have $1 million in my account.'”(A portion of which Mica should spend immediately on a better toupee!)
What has everyone puzzled about this bullying tactic is that polls show that the Sixth District was easily winnable for Mr. Mica. In fact, it’s more Republican than the one he decided to run in against Ms. Adams, a tea party favorite. We’re told that the House Republican leadership tried to persuade Mr. Mica not to run against an incumbent freshman whom the party invested so much money in to get elected. Mr. Mica dismissed the request, reportedly saying, “I took a hit for the team 10 years ago,” the last time new district lines were drawn.
The early head-to-head polls show Mr. Mica with a narrow lead, but Ms. Adams wins when voters are told that her primary opponent has been in Congress for two decades. As head of the Transportation Committee, Mr. Mica has access to lots of trade association money. He raised $450,000 in the first quarter of this year, or more than twice the amount raised by Ms. Adams. She estimates that at least $2 million will now be spent on this Republican vs. Republican head-on collision, which figures to be a key test of how much clout tea party activists still have in GOP primary politics.
Here’s a thought: Mica represents everything wrong with the Republican establishment. Let’s send both of them a message the Tea Party and its ideals are still alive and well by helping Sandy Adams send Mica packing. $10 won’t hurt anyone, and $25 from each of us would certainly go a long towards setting not only the Republican party’s leadership straight, but its presumptive Presidential candidate as well.
Gee; imagine anyone thinking Lugar might be a bit too cozy….
….with the opposition.
Since we’re on the subject of those more than willing to fraternize with the enemy,
No More “Mr. Obama Is a Nice Guy”
There is a reflexive desire among a certain species of moderate Republicans to be perceived as “civil” by liberal opponents who believe that the mere existence of free-market, limited-government conservatism is an indecent affront to humankind. All aboard the U.S.S. Lost Cause.
This disastrous, bend-over bipartisanship is a hard habit to break. In 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain rode the “Barack Obama is a nice guy, but vote for me” wave to crashing defeat.In 2012, McCain’s endorsee, Mitt Romney, has made “Barack Obama is a nice guy but in over his head” a standard stump-speech talking point.
Conservatives of good will (and any intelligence whatsoever) who’ve watched President Obama brutalize his enemies have one question for the nice-guy niceties: Why, GOP, why?
Romney’s smarter-than-thou strategists explain that he can’t scare off independents and Democrats with straight talk about Obama’s thuggery. But he’s turning off the conservative base, on whom his hold is tenuous. More importantly, Romney’s McCain-lite impersonation is also writing off independents and Democrats who’ve come to realize what the myriad targets of White House bullying have learned the hard way over the past four years: Barack Obama is not a “nice guy.”
Ask Gerald Walpin, the former AmeriCorps inspector general who was pushed out of his job by the Obamas after exposing fraud and corruption perpetrated by Democratic mayor of Sacramento and Obama friend Kevin Johnson. Walpin was unceremoniously fired and smeared by Team Obama. The White House baselessly questioned the veteran watchdog’s mental health and never apologized for slandering him.
Ask the family, friends and co-workers of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. They have been forced to sue the Obama administration to combat the Operation Fast and Furious cover-up of deadly policy decisions that led to their hero’s death. “I think they are liars, and I would tell them that,” Terry’s father, Kent, said of Obama’s henchmen.
Ask Townhall editor Katie Pavlich makes clear in her devastating new book, “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up,” the president, his corrupt attorney general, Eric Holder, and their minions weren’t “in over their heads.” They knew exactly what they were doing and have obstructed investigations into the bloody consequences of their policies ever since.
That’s not “nice.” It’s rotten to the core.
Nice? Ask those who have felt the wrath of Obama: tea party members, bitter-clinging gun owners and voters of faith; budget-reform leaders, such as Wisconsin’s GOP Rep. Paul Ryan and Gov. Scott Walker, Chrysler creditors and dealers, and Delphi auto-parts workers strong-armed and cut out of the White House auto bailout negotiations with United Auto Workers; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity and their donors; Fox News, conservative talk-radio giant Rush Limbaugh; the Congressional Budget Office and the Supreme Court.
There is nothing shameful about shattering the left’s defining fraudulent narrative — which was promoted again this week by myth-making first lady Michelle Obama — that the president has “brought us out of the dark and into the light.”
There is nothing hateful about exposing Team Obama’s hardball tactics and government witch-hunts against taxpayers, businesses and political opponents.
There is nothing unbecoming or un-presidential about questioning the Obama administration’s Chicago gangster treatment of dissidents, whistleblowers and watchdogs. (As detailed in Friday’s Cover Story detailing Dimocrats’ shameful defense of NRC chairman Greg Jaczko.)
Let it be noted that Mr. “Nice Guy” never goes out of his way to show his opponents respect.In 2008, Obama openly bragged that his campaign strategy is: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
Remember when he sneered at millions who turned out for the nationwide Tax Day tea party protests in 2009: “You would think they’d be saying thank you.”
Remember when he taunted GOP leaders: “We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”
Remember when he told Republicans to shut up during the stimulus debate: “I want them just to get out of the way” and “don’t do a lot of talking.”
Remember when he outrageously insinuated before the 2010 midterms that conservatives were racist: He called critics of his amnesty policies “enemies” who needed to be “punished” by Latino voters because they were not “the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.”
Remember when he remained silent about his surrogates’ misogynistic attacks on GOP vice presidential candidate and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Remember when he remained silent about the vulgar rallying cry of Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa, who introduced Obama at a Detroit Labor Day rally by urging union members to work against Republicans and “take these son of a bitches out.”
Romney’s surrogates insist that conservatives should “stick to the issues.” But Obama’s by-any-means-necessary ruthlessness is an issue.(Or, perhaps more accurately, it SHOULD be!) Like Chiffon Margarine said, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” And it’s not nice to delude the American electorate in the name of comity, politesse and simpering civility.
Romney might as well be, quite literally, in a Chicago street fight and be using the Marquis of Queensbury Rules. We’d advise Mitt to drop the John L. Sullivan pose and commence to brawlin’.
Speaking of Tick-Tock’s adopted hometown, here’s an item from FOX News in Chicago the Apologizer-in-Chief, The Reverends and the rest of the MSM seem to have missed in their laser-like focus on George Zimmerman’s guilt:
Suspect: I Beat Up White Man Because I Am Mad About Trayvon Martin Case
Alton L. Hayes III, a west suburban man charged with a hate crime, told police he was so upset about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida that he beat up a white man early Tuesday. Hayes and a 15-year-old Chicago boy walked up behind the 19-year-old man victim and pinned his arms to his side, police said. Hayes, 18, then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, “Empty your pockets, white boy.”
The two allegedly rifled through the victim’s pockets, then threw him to the ground and punched him “numerous times” in the head and back before running away, police said. Hayes and the boy are black; the victim is white.
After being arrested, Hayes told police he was upset by the Trayvon Martin case and beat the man up because he was white, Cook County State’s Attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said, citing court records.
Meanwhile, back in Baltimore, police have no leads yet in a startlingly similar assault….
….Charm City authorities still refuse to classify a “hate crime”. Sure….Police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld “doesn’t believe race was a factor”….except of course for the fact the attackers were all Black, the victim White; that must be because the assailants kept referring to their victim as “nigger”.
In a related item, Larry Elder details the….
Five Myths of the ‘Racist’ Criminal Justice System
Calling America’s criminal justice system “racist” is not confined to “civil rights leaders” like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Then-Sen. Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign, said it, too. Blacks and whites, said Obama, “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates (and) receive very different sentences … for the same crime.” When the man who became president of the United States says this — the No. 1 law enforcement officer — it must, therefore, be true.
Let’s examine five major assumptions behind this assertion:
1) Blacks are arrested at higher rates compared to whites — but wrongly so.
Not true. While only 13 percent of the population, blacks accounted for 28 percent of nationwide arrests in 2010 and 38.1 percent of arrests for violent crime (murders, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault). But are they unfairly arrested? Studies find that arrest rates by race are comparable to the race of suspect identification by victims.
For example, in a given city, x number of robbery victims describe their assailants as black — whether or not the suspect has been apprehended. It turns out that the race of those arrested matches the percentage given by victims. This has been found repeatedly across the country, in all categories of crime where the race of an assailant is identified. So unless the victims are deliberately misidentifying their assailants — unconcerned about whether the suspect is apprehended and knowingly give a false race — blacks are not being “over-arrested.”
2) Blacks are convicted at higher rates and given longer sentences than whites for the same crime.
Not true. Differences in conviction and sentencing rates by race are due to differences in the gravity of the criminal offenses, prior records or other legal variables. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases in the country’s 75 largest urban areas actually found lower felony prosecution rates for blacks than whites and that blacks were less likely to be found guilty at trial.
3) The sentence disparity between powder and crack cocaine is racist and accounts for a large percentage of imprisoned blacks.
Not true.(Are you beginning to detect a pattern here?) Concerned about the deadly effect of crack within their own communities, black members of Congress led the charge to pass the 1986 federal drug laws. The bill that was passed — which included the crack/powder sentencing disparity — did so with the support of the majority of black congresspersons. None at the time objected to the sentencing disparity as “racist.”
In 2006, the feds tried 5,619 crack sellers, and 4,495 of them were black — out of the 562,000 blacks in state and federal prisons at the end of that year. Add in county and city jails, and the figure rises to 858,000. And states’ crack cocaine laws are not the culprits. Only 13 states employ differing sentencing guidelines for crack vs. powder — and their differential is much smaller than that of the feds.
4) The “War on Drugs” accounts for a large number of blacks behind bars.
Not true. In 2010, blacks were 31.8 percent of all arrests for drug crimes. But arrests for drug offenses are only 12.4 percent of all non-traffic arrests in the country and accounted for 14.2 percent of the offenses for which blacks were arrested.
5) More blacks are in jail than in college.
Not true. “More blacks (are) in jail than college, in every state,” said Jesse Jackson in 2007. That same year, presidential candidate Sen. Obama, echoed: “More young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America.”
If Jackson and Obama refer to black men of the usual college-age years, their claim is not even remotely true. The Washington Post “Fact Checker” wrote: “According to 2005 Census Bureau statistics, the male African-American population of the United States aged between 18 and 24 numbered 1,896,000. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 106,000 African-Americans in this age group were in federal or state prisons at the end of 2005. … If you add the numbers in local jail (measured in mid-2006), you arrive at a grand total of 193,000 incarcerated young black males, or slightly over 10 percent.
“According to the same census data, 530,000 of these African-American males, or 28 percent, were enrolled in colleges or universities … in 2005. That is five times the number of young black men in federal and state prisons and two and a half times the total number incarcerated. If you expanded the age group to include African-American males up to 30 or 35, the college attendees would still outnumber the prisoners.”
Racism against blacks exists, but it is no longer a meaningful obstacle to success. People are not angels. Some people are rotten. Humans make mistakes — and always will. But the facts do not show a “racist criminal justice system.”There may be votes in teaching people to think like victicrats. But the problem of the high rates of black imprisonment will not be solved by falsely screaming racism.
Moving from myth to reality, we learn….
Democratic congressman Jefferson reporting to prison in two weeks
A former Louisiana congressman who infamously was caught with $90,000 in cash hidden in his freezer will have to begin serving a 13-year bribery sentence within the next two weeks, a judge ruled Friday.Democrat William Jefferson, who represented parts of New Orleans for nearly 20 years, was convicted and sentenced back in 2009 for taking roughly $500,000 in bribes and seeking millions more in exchange for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.
But he has been free on bond, living in New Orleans while appealing his conviction.
In other news concerning crooked, conniving Communists, the WSJ describes….
Elizabeth Warren’s Tax Epiphany
The liberal heroine finds an ObamaCare levy to repeal.
Regrets, they’ve had a few. North Carolina Democrat Brad Miller recently said that “we would all have been better off—President Obama politically, Democrats in Congress politically, and the nation would have been better off” if his party had tabled ObamaCare. Even bellwether liberal Barney Frank recently chimed in that “I think we paid a terrible price for health care” and suggested Democrats should have done something else after Republican Scott Brown’s January 2010 Senate election victory.
Now Mr. Brown’s November opponent is recanting as well. Yes, none other than progressive heartthrob and presumptive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has a problem with the Affordable Care Act. One particular, Bay State-centric problem.
In an op-ed for the ages in the Massachusetts Medical Devices Journal this week, Ms. Warren came out against ObamaCare’s 2.3% excise tax on medical device manufacturers that kicks in next year. Such a levy has no place in a “fair tax system,” she says, and she favors repeal. Ms. Warren even uses that word, repeal, which in the context of government health care might raise an eyebrow or two on Boston Common or whatever park her followers are occupying these days.
When “Congress taxes the sale of a specific product,” Ms. Warren explains, “it too often disproportionately impacts the small companies with the narrowest financial margins and the broadest innovative potential.” She adds that in the medical devices case such taxation “pushes companies of all sizes to cut back on research and development for life-saving products.”
So Ms. Warren is conceding that when the government taxes something we get less of it, though you’d have to be a Harvard faculty member to believe otherwise. But how come she thinks this insight only applies to innovative medical devices and not to, say, investment or even other boring old businesses?
The fact that Massachusetts is a hub of the medical device industry may have something to do with it. With its cluster of universities, research hospitals and biotech, the Commonwealth is a good place to develop medical products—home to Boston Scientific, Haemonetics, Analogic, Zoll, Covidien and more than 400 other smaller companies and start-ups.
Ms. Warren notes that the device makers are responsible for 24,000 in-state jobs and account for 12% of Massachusetts exports. Some of those firms, we’re guessing, might even refuse to donate to the campaign of a candidate who favors the device tax.
The liberal heroine adds that she supports “an appropriate offset” to cover the $20 billion or so that the device tax is supposed to raise over a decade, without “forcing Americans to fight the whole health-care battle all over again.” Anything but that. She doesn’t say, however, who she wants to soak instead.
Perhaps Congress should hike ObamaCare’s 3.8% Medicare surtax on “unearned income”—that would be capital gains, dividends, etc.—unless of course investors put their money into device makers or some other industry that Elizabeth Warren is carrying water for. (Never end a sentence in a preposition.)
By her logic, insurance companies are also out because they support a lot of jobs in Hartford, Indianapolis, Minnetonka and Louisville. Maybe Congress should repeal ObamaCare’s other taxes and the indirect tax of regulation on them too. The same goes for the levies on drugs, hospitals and other businesses that Ms. Warren would probably call special interests.
Run down the list of all the things ObamaCare will harm and every item is important to somebody somewhere. So here’s a simpler idea: Given that so many Democrats are unhappy with these results, by all means let’s get rid of the whole thing and re-fight health care all over again to get a less destructive result.
For more on the hypocritical Ms. Warren, we turn to Daniel Doherty and the pages of Townhall.com….
Yep, It’s Official: Elizabeth Warren Did Not Pay Voluntary Higher Tax Rate in MA
Earlier this week Elizabeth Warren was asked by the Boston Globe a seemingly simple and straightforward question about her taxes: In 2011, did she pay the 5.85% rate (which is voluntary) on her Massachusetts state tax form? Since 2001, as I explained in a previous post, residents of the Commonwealth have had the option – if they so choose – to pay a higher tax rate than the 5.3% minimum.
And since the former consumer advocate raked in more than $700,000 last year, the Globe believed their inquiry was an appropriate and reasonable one. At the time, however, she refused to answer the question and though I was quick to criticize her silence, I acknowledged that it was still possible she paid the top rate. Unsurprisingly – according to the Brown campaign – it’s clear she did not:
After avoiding the question all week, Elizabeth Warren finally confirmed today that she did not pay the higher 5.85% rate on her state tax form, a legal option available for Massachusetts taxpayers who believe they should pay more. For the last few weeks, Warren has lectured others about their moral responsibility to pay higher taxes. In 2011, Warren earned more than $716,000, and has a net worth of as much as $14.5 million.
“The problem with running a campaign based on self-righteousness and moral superiority is that you had better live up to the same standard you would impose on everyone else,” said Jim Barnett, Campaign Manager for Scott Brown. “Millionaire Warren lectures others about their obligation and responsibility to pay higher taxes, but she refuses to pay the optional higher rate available in Massachusetts. This is the sort of hypocrisy and double-speak voters are sick and tired of hearing from politicians, especially those who can’t keep their hands out of others’ pocketbooks.”
To be sure, I’ve written a number of posts on Elizabeth Warren’s hypocrisy and duplicity before, but this is almost too good to be true. In short, her innocuous decision to pay a lower tax rate in Massachusetts – when she had the option to pay a higher one — seems to vindicate my longstanding belief that all people (even liberal Harvard professors), want to keep a larger percentage of their annual income.
More importantly, what makes these startling revelations particularly painful for Democrats is that Elizabeth Warren has been on the campaign trail for months demonizing the wealthy (“there is nobody in this country who got rich on their own,” she once said) and castigating top income earners. In other words, how are Massachusetts voters, in the last analysis, supposed to take a Senate candidate seriously when she clearly doesn’t practice what she preaches? At a time when Americans are growing increasingly tired of the partisan gridlock in Washington, why on earth would we want to replace one of the most moderate, bipartisan lawmakers in the Senate with a shameless demagogue? Of course, virtually every poll in America shows the warring candidates locked in a dead heat. And it’s certainly possible that Scott Brown might lose his reelection campaign. Still, as voters become more familiar with Elizabeth Warren’s hypocrisy, I’m confident they’ll be less inclined to vote for her in November.
Then again, Massachusetts voters repeatedly returned the founder of the Chappaquiddick Swim Club to the Senate, so electing a hypocritical Communist that’s never killed anyone….at least personally….doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch!
Which brings us to today’s Environmental Moment, and this item from the Editorial Page of the WSJ detailing more potential trouble for The Dear Misleader:
Democrats for Keystone
Obama is losing support for his pipeline obstructionism.
President Obama continues to stand in the way of the Keystone XL pipeline, though increasingly he’s standing alone. A growing number of Democrats are rejecting the President’s fealty to green interests, aware that it will be an electoral liability this fall. That’s the message from this week’s House vote on a short-term highway bill, which included the latest provision to expedite the pipeline.The bill passed 293-127, as 69 Democrats broke with Mr. Obama to support the $7 billion project to move oil from Canada and North Dakota’s Bakken Shale to the Gulf Coast.
That’s 22 more Democrats than the 47 who voted for the Keystone XL last year, and the total House vote would be enough to override a Presidential veto. The White House issued a veto threat on Tuesday to try to reduce the House margin—to little effect. Big Labor and Western Governors such as Montana Democrat Brian Schweitzer support the Keystone for the thousands of jobs it will create, which is adding to the pressure on Capitol Hill Democrats.
The House vote will in turn raise the pressure on Senate Democrats, who are being asked once again to walk the plank for the President’s re-election effort.When the Senate last voted on Keystone in March, 11 Democrats joined all 47 Republicans in favor of the pipeline.
That vote fell short of the 60 votes to break Harry Reid’s filibuster only after Mr. Obama personally lobbied pro-pipeline Democrats to vote no. Virginia’s Mark Warner voted no, for example, though he says he supports the pipeline. Nebraska’s Ben Nelson also voted no, though perhaps he’s angling for a job in a second Obama Administration because he is retiring from the Senate this year.
Mr. Obama realizes Keystone is damaging his party, which explains his recent splashy sojourn to Cushing, Oklahoma to endorse the southern leg of the Keystone XL.But no one needs his approval for that portion.
What the country needs is for the State Department to sign off on the cross-border rights so the oil can flow from Canada. The State Department has twice conducted lengthy reviews that found no major environmental risks from the pipeline, but the White House intervened to block approval to please Mr. Obama’s green financiers. The U.S. and its workers are paying a heavy price for this obstructionism, and Mr. Obama’s party may pay its own heavy toll in November.
On the Lighter Side….
Finally, we’ll call it a day with the “We Guess That Leaves YOU Out!” segment, courtesy of Barbara Boxer appearing on the Reverend Al’s Hypocrisy Hour:
One has to give Babs credit for cajones; using the term “self-respecting human being” while speaking with the Reverend Al. We can only imagine what’s next; discussing the merits of marital monogamy with Slick Willy and John Edwards?!?
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