It’s Friday, April 27th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up in the last edition of the week, as the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel has discovered,….

The President Has a List

Barack Obama attempts to intimidate contributors to Mitt Romney’s campaign.

 

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check. Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for “betting against America,” and accuses you of having a “less-than-reputable” record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

Are you worried?

Don’t make me angry, America….you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!

Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust. Unlike senators or congressmen, presidents alone represent all Americans. Their powers—to jail, to fine, to bankrupt—are also so vast as to require restraint. Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats. This is why presidents since Nixon have carefully avoided the practice.

Save Mr. Obama, who acknowledges no rules. This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled “Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney’s donors.” In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having “less-than-reputable records,” the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that “quite a few” have also been “on the wrong side of the law” and profiting at “the expense of so many Americans.”

These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having “outsourced” jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a “lobbyist”) and Thomas O’Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a “bitter foe of the gay rights movement.”

These are wealthy individuals, to be sure, but private citizens nonetheless. Not one holds elected office. Not one is a criminal. Not one has the barest fraction of the position or the power of the U.S. leader who is publicly assaulting them.

“We don’t tolerate presidents or people of high power to do these things,” says Theodore Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general. “When you have the power of the presidency—the power of the IRS, the INS, the Justice Department, the DEA, the SEC—what you have effectively done is put these guys’ names up on ‘Wanted’ posters in government offices.” Mr. Olson knows these tactics, having demanded that the 44th president cease publicly targeting Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, which he represents. He’s been ignored.

The real crime of the men, as the website tacitly acknowledges, is that they have given money to Mr. Romney. This fundraiser of a president has shown an acute appreciation for the power of money to win elections, and a cutthroat approach to intimidating those who might give to his opponents.

He’s targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street—letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts. Companies could bid but lose out for donating to Republicans. Or they could quit donating to the GOP—Mr. Obama’s real aim.

The White House has couched its attacks in the language of “disclosure” and the argument that corporations should not have the same speech rights as individuals. But now, says Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, “he’s doing the same at the individual level, for anyone who opposes his policies.” Any giver, at any level, risks reprisal from the president of the United States.

It’s getting worse because the money game is not going as Team Obama wants. Super PACs are helping the GOP to level the playing field against Democratic super-spenders. Prominent financial players are backing Mr. Romney. The White House’s new strategy is thus to delegitimize Mr. Romney (by attacking his donors) as it seeks to frighten others out of giving.

The Obama campaign has justified any action on the grounds that it has a right to “hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable,” but this is a dodge. Politics is rough, but a president has obligations that transcend those of a candidate. He swore an oath to protect and defend a Constitution that gives every American the right to partake in democracy, free of fear of government intimidation or disfavored treatment. If Mr. Obama isn’t going to act like a president, he bolsters the argument that he doesn’t deserve to be one.

Argument, hell; it’s a fact….as plain as the over-sized ears on his lying, hypocritical head.  We’re the first to admit we had a certain distaste for Bill Clinton, purposefully passing up the opportunity to shake his hand on a golf course.  And while we thought George W. Bush a good man, we had little respect for his performance as President.

But outside of our utter disdain for Jimmy Carter (a product of his post-presidency policies rather than his term in office), nothing even remotely approaches the level of contempt and scorn we hold for Barack Obama.  He’s a lying, hypocritical opportunist, a con artist and Socialist scoundrel of the first order.  He is, as we’ve often referred to him, The Dear Misleader, a man willing to lay an entire country in ruins to ensure the feeding of his insatiable narcissism and ego.

And those are his good points!  Bottomline: The Obamao’s the Seinfeld of modern Progressive politics; and just like Jerry, he’s a….

Speaking of The Great Prevaricator, the Heritage Foundation highlights the facts that belie one of Tick-Tock’s most monumental whoppers:

Yeah….that’s right: the top 10% of American earners pay 71%….SEVENTY-ONE PERCENT….of income taxes.  And the top 25% pay EIGHTY-EIGHT PERCENT.  All told, 50% of the country pays virtually ALL of the taxes, leaving approximately half of all Americans paying NO TAX AT ALL, in fact, actually RECEIVING money back; after paying nada….zip….zero.

So tell us again how the “rich” aren’t paying their “fair share”?

Which brings us to our Money Quote, courtesy today of Peggy Noonan and this snippet from her regular Friday column:

“Maybe the 2012 election is simpler than we think. It will be about Mr. Obama:

–  Did you like the past four years? Good, you can get four more.

–  Do the president and his people strike you as competent? If so, you can renew his contract, and he will renew theirs.

–  If you don’t want to rehire him, you will look at the other guy. Does he strike you as credible, a possible president? Then you can hire him.

Republicans should cheer up.“

And since we’re on the subject of The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight, James Pethokoukis, writing at the Enterprise Blog, identifies….

Romney’s three keys to victory in November

 

Assuming a continued stagnant, “more of the same” economy, this is going to be a razor-close presidential election. And although the current RealClearPolitics average has Mitt Romney down four points to President Obama, it’s definitely a winnable race for the former venture capitalist and Massachusetts governor. But if Romney is going to become America’s 45th president, he has to successfully do three things:

1. Define the past. What caused the Great Recession? The answer to that question provides a guide to what economic policies America should purse going forward.

Now, according to the president, the financial meltdown was caused by too little government and “trickle-down” economics. Deregulation let bankers run wild and the Bush tax cuts increased income inequality, causing middle-class America to borrow heavily to maintain its standard of living. Dr. Obama’s prescription: more regulation and higher taxes to fund critical government “investment” that will create a “shared prosperity.”

Romney needs to present an alternate (and more accurate) history, a story about rent-seeking elites and how crony capitalist Washington created an incentive for bankers to take crazy risks (via a “too big to fail” backstop and the Fed’s superlow interest rates) and used Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lower lending standards to make housing a new welfare entitlement. As Ronald Reagan put it, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Romney should say the same.

2. Define the present. Obama, as part of his “I kept us out of a depression” theme, will argue that without his stimulus policies, the economy would be much worse. And, hey, at least it isn’t falling back into recession like Europe. So be patient, America; it gets better.

The Romney counter-theme should be “Obama kept us from prosperity” as he highlights all the ways Obamanomics has failed to deal with problems that caused the Great Recession (banks are still TBTF, for instance). And instead of rejecting crony capitalism, Obama has made it worse through his clean-energy industrial policy (Solyndra) and Obamacare, which injects more government into the healthcare sector. It’s not just that Obama is a big spender, it’s that his statist policies will reduce America’s growth potential.

Oh, and Romney might want to mention now and again that this is the weakest recovery since the Great Depression and that incomes are actually falling three years into a “recovery.” As JFK said in 1960, “The country is ready to get moving again.” Romney should say the same.

3. Define the future. Obama’s vision of the future is really a vision of the past, of a sort of idealize 1950s America where less globalization and less technology meant taxes could be higher and unions stronger, of an America where the central government and wise bureaucrats are the prime economic actors in key sectors such as energy and healthcare. A General Motors economy of Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government working together. A Mad Men economy.

Romney should offer a vision of an Apple/Google economy of decentralization, consumer choice, and private-sector innovation where jobs are the result of value creation, not crony-capitalist rent seeking. Pro-market but not pro-business. It’s a vision of how market forces can reform the social safety net and make it affordable. Not a Welfare State economy or a Warfare State economy, to quote economist Alex Tabarrok, but an Innovation Economy of courage, hope, and prosperity. An economy where America competes by embracing our inherent entrepreneurial strengths, not by trying to copy someone else’s.

Defining the past as one of crony capitalist errors …  the present as one of problems unsolved … and the future as one of economic freedom and free enterprise and abundance. That’s Romney’s mission.

The only question now is whether he decides to accept it.

In a related item, Ann Coulter details what she and we feel is one of Mitt’s truly intrepid policy positions….

Romney Doing the Job Republican Establishment Just Won’t Do

 

The actual Republican Establishment –- political consultants, The Wall Street Journal, corporate America, former Bush advisers and television pundits — are exhorting Mitt Romney to flip-flop on his very non-Establishment position on illegal immigration. Both as governor of Massachusetts and as a presidential candidate, Romney has supported a fence on the border, E-Verify to ensure that employees are legal and allowing state police to arrest illegal aliens. He is the rare Republican who recognizes that in-state tuition, driver’s licenses and amnesty are magnets for more illegal immigration.

These positions are totally at odds with Establishment Republicans who pander to the business lobby by supporting the cheap labor provided by illegal immigration, and then accuse Americans opposed to a slave labor class in America of racism. If this continues, America will become California and no Republican will ever be elected president again. Big business doesn’t care and Establishment Republicans are too stupid to notice.

If you’re not sure how you feel about illegal immigration, ask yourself this: “Do I have a nanny, a maid, a pool boy, a chauffeur, a cook or a business requiring lots of cheap labor that the rest of America will have to subsidize with social services to make up for the wages I’m paying?” Press “1” to answer in English.If the answer is “no,” illegal immigration is a bad deal for you. Cheap labor is cheap only for the employer. Today, 70 percent of illegal immigrant households collect government benefits — as do 57 percent of all immigrant households — compared to 39 percent of native households.

Immigrant households with the highest rate of government assistance are from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (tied at 75 percent), based on the latest available data from 2009. Immigrant households least likely to be on any welfare program are from the United Kingdom (7 percent). British immigrants aren’t picking the tomatoes Karl Rove doesn’t want his son to pick. (That’s how he justified Bush’s amnesty proposal.) You can either pay a little more for tomatoes picked by Americans or you can pay a lot more in welfare to the illegal immigrants who will pick them as well as to generations of their descendants.

Yes, many illegal immigrants work hard, but it’s not our responsibility if their employers don’t pay them a living wage. This is known as an “externality,” which we hear a lot about in the case of greedy businesses polluting the land, but not when it’s greedy businesses making the rest of us support their underpaid employees.

Romney is one of the few Republicans to recognize that there is no need to “round up” illegal aliens (in the lingo of amnesty supporters) to get them to go home. Illegal aliens will leave the same way they arrived. They decided to walk across the border to get jobs — and welfare, apparently — and they’ll walk back across the border as soon as the jobs and welfare dry up.

Obama has a similar plan, but instead of using E-Verify to stop illegal aliens from taking American jobs, he did it by destroying the entire job market. Hmmmm, drug-war ravaged Ciudad Juarez, or Obama’s America … I’ll take Juarez! Under the booming economy President Romney is going to produce, we’re going to need a really high fence. It didn’t take a government administrator “rounding up” foreigners and putting them on buses to get 20 million illegal aliens here, and it won’t take a government program “rounding them up” to get them home.

While Romney’s views on immigration are wildly popular with Americans, they are extremely unpopular with the Republican Establishment sucking up to business interests — Bush, Rove, McCain, Huckabee, Perry, Gingrich, Giuliani, Krauthammer, Kristol, Gillespie, etc, etc. (Maybe it’s the Establishment that’s been calling Romney “Establishment.”)

So now the elites are demanding that Romney “moderate” his position on immigration. To justify their underpaying the maid, they claim support for illegal immigration is crucial to victory! Obama’s ahead among Hispanics! How are you going to get the Hispanic vote? You’ve got to take Rubio as VP! And could somebody remind Esperanza to pick up little Chauncey from his play-date at 4:00 p.m.?

The truth is, a tough stance on illegal immigration can only help Romney, not only with the vast majority of Americans, but with any Latino voters who would ever possibly consider voting Republican in the first place. As Romney said in one of the early debates, Republicans appeal to Latinos “by telling them what they know in their heart, which is they or their ancestors did not come here for a handout. If they came here for a handout, they’d be voting for Democrats. They came here for opportunity and freedom. And that’s what we represent.”

Romney crushed pro-amnesty Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary, winning a huge majority of that state’s substantial Hispanic population. And Gingrich promised Hispanics their own moon base! Before the primary, Gingrich played up his support for amnesty, while accusing Romney of wanting to “round up” illegal alien grandmothers. The one thing every Florida primary voter knew was that Romney said he’d veto the Dream Act, giving citizenship to illegal alien children.

And then Romney won the primary with an even larger percentage of the Hispanic vote than Florida at large. Romney beat Gingrich statewide, 46 percent to 32. But among Latino voters, Romney routed Gingrich, 54 percent to 29 percent. It’s not just Florida. In 2006, Arizona Hispanics supported four anti-illegal immigration propositions by 40 to 50 percent — which is a lot more than voted for pro-amnesty Republican presidential candidates John McCain or George W. Bush.

Among the propositions supported by Hispanics in larger numbers than they typically vote Republican was one making English the official language of Arizona (49 percent). As governor of Massachusetts, Romney pushed English-immersion programs. That’s my kind of Hispandering! These are our Latinos — the ones, as Romney said, who came here for opportunity and freedom. Any race-mongering, welfare-collecting, ethnic-identity rabble-rousers are voting for the Democrat.

The GOP in general, and Team Romney in particular, needs to stop worrying about voters they haven’t a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning over and concentrate on gaining traction with the 5-10% of the population still unaware of the totality of the havoc The Obamao will wreak given another four years.

Next up, Kay Hymowitz details the dope on….

Why Women Make Less Than Men

In studies from the U.S. to Sweden, pay discrimination can’t explain the disparity. Women earn less because they work fewer hours.

 

First, the Atlantic magazine announced “the end of men.” Then a Time cover story in March proclaimed that women are becoming “the richer sex.” Now a Pew Research Center report tells us that young women have become more likely than young men to say that a high-paying career is very important to them. Are we really in the midst of what Pew calls a “gender reversal?”

You want some o’ THIS?!?

One stubborn fact of the labor market argues against the idea. That is the gender-hours gap, close cousin of the gender-wage gap. Most people have heard that full-time working American women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Yet these numbers don’t take into account the actual number of hours worked. And it turns out that women work fewer hours than men.

The Labor Department defines full-time as 35 hours a week or more, and the “or more” is far more likely to refer to male workers than to female ones. According to the department, almost 55% of workers logging more than 35 hours a week are men. In 2007, 25% of men working full-time jobs had workweeks of 41 or more hours, compared with 14% of female full-time workers. In other words, the famous gender-wage gap is to a considerable degree a gender-hours gap.

The main reason that women spend less time at work than men—and that women are unlikely to be the richer sex—is obvious: children. Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they have kids, giving men the hours, and income, advantage.

One study by the American Association for University Women looked at women who graduated from college in 1992-93 and found that 23% of those who had become mothers were out of the workforce in 2003; another 17% were working part-time. Fewer than 2% of fathers fell into those categories. Another study, of M.B.A. graduates from Chicago’s Booth School, discovered that only half of women with children were working full-time 10 years after graduation, compared with 95% of men.

Women, in fact, make up two-thirds of America’s part-time workforce. A just-released report from the New York Federal Reserve has even found that “opting-out” by midcareer college-educated wives, especially those with wealthy husbands, has been increasing over the past 20 years.

Activists tend to offer two solutions for this state of affairs. First is that fathers should take equal responsibility for child care. After all, while men have tripled the number of hours they’re in charge of the kids since 1970, women still put in more hours on the domestic front. But even if we could put a magic potion in the nation’s water supply and turn 50% of men into Mr. Mom, that still leaves the growing number of women with no father in the house. Over 40% of American children are now born to unmarried women. A significant number—though not a majority—are living with their child’s father at birth. But in the next few years when those couples break up, which is what studies show they tend to do, guess who will be left minding the kids?

Angry Feminist: is there any other kind?!?

Which brings us to the second proposed solution for the hours gap: generous family-leave and child-care policies. Sweden and Iceland are frequently held up as models in this regard, and they do have some of the most extensive paternity and maternity leave and publicly funded child care in the world.

Yet even they also have a persistent hours and wage gap. In both countries, mothers still take more time off than fathers after the baby arrives. When they do go back to work, they’re on the job for fewer hours. Iceland’s income gap is a yawning 38%—that is, the average women earns only 62 cents to a man’s dollar. Even Sweden’s 15% gap—though lower than our 23% one—is far from full parity.

All over the developed world women make up the large majority of the part-time workforce, and surveys suggest they want it that way. According to the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, in 2008 only 4% of the 70% of Dutch women who worked part-time wished they had a full-time job. A British Household Panel Survey interviewing 3,800 couples discovered that among British women, the happiest were those working part-time.

A 2007 Pew Research survey came up with similar results for American women: Among working mothers with minor children, 60% said they would prefer to work part-time, while only 21% wanted to be in the office full-time (and 19% said they’d like to give up their job altogether). How about working fathers? Only 12% would choose part-time and 70% wanted to be full-time.

Some counter that the hours gap would shrink if employers offered more family-friendly policies, such as flexible hours and easier on-off ramps for moving in and out of the workforce. We don’t know if there is a way to design workplaces so that women would work more or men would work less or both. What we do know is that no one, anywhere, has yet figured out how to do it. Which means that for the foreseeable future, at least when it comes to income, women will remain the second sex.

But still on average outlive their husbands….er,….male counterparts by more than 5 years.

And in the Environmental Moment, more details on the specifics of Team Tick-Tock’s “All-of-the-Above” energy strategy, courtesy of Carl Polizzi:

EPA official apologizes for call to ‘crucify’ oil companies, senator investigating

 

 A top EPA official has apologized for comparing his agency’s enforcement strategy to Roman crucifixion — as Republican Sen. James Inhofe launched an investigation and told Fox News the comments are part of a campaign of “threats” and “intimidation.” Al Armendariz, the EPA administrator in the Region 6 Dallas office, made the remarks at a local Texas government meeting in 2010. He relayed to the audience what he described as a “crude” analogy he once told his staff about his “philosophy of enforcement.”

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean,” he said. “They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them. “And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years,” he said.

Armendariz went on to say that “you make examples out of people who are in this case not complying with the law … and you hit them as hard as you can” — to act as a “deterrent” to others. Armendariz issued a statement apologizing after Inhofe slammed the comments on the Senate floor, and fired off a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson highlighting them.

“I apologize to those I have offended and regret my poor choice of words,” Armendariz said. “It was an offensive and inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential violations of our nation’s environmental laws. I am and have always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of those laws.”

Yeah….he regretted his “poor choice of words” so much he repeated what he himself termed a “crude” analogy; crude, but nonetheless absolutely accurate.  And emblematic of the policies of an Administration committed to crippling the U.S. economy to further it’s redistributive policies on both a national and global level….all the while preserving the wealth, power and privilege of accumulated by those “more equal” than others.

Make no mistake about it; this has NOTHING to do with greenhouse gas emissions, environmental issues or a supposed scarcity of fossil fuels.  It’s about one thing and one thing only: complete control over what you think, use, do and say.

On the Lighter Side….

And in the “That Dog Won’t Hunt” segment….

Edwards’ defense gets tough with ex-aide after days of lurid testimony

 

Yeah….right!

Finally, we’ll call it a week with what we’ll term The Wide, Wild World of Sports meets News of the Bizarre:

Boy field hockey star kicked off girls’ team for being ‘too good’

 

A 13-year-old Long Island boy who has been a star of a local high school girls’ field hockey team for the past two years has been kicked off the team for being too dominant of a player, MyFoxNY reports. Keeling Pilaro was told he could no longer play for Southampton High School’s varsity girls’ field hockey team this year after becoming the team’s star over the past two years.

Section 11, which oversees Suffolk County’s high school sports, determined that as a boy, Keeling had too significant an advantage over the other players. “(Keeling is) having a significant adverse effect on some of his opposing female players,” Section 11 claimed according to MyFoxNY. “The rules state he would be allowed to play if he wasn’t the dominant player.”

Section 11’s executive director, Ed Cinelli, told MyFoxNY, “As a sport, it’s a girls sport. When a boy plays, it leads the way for other male players to come in and take over.”

Andrew Pilaro, Keeling’s father, said his son was raised in Ireland and played field hockey for most of his life. In many European countries, the sport is widely popular. (What a surprise….just like soccer!  But then, the Pilaros don’t LIVE in Europe anymore, do they?!?) But on Long Island, there were no field hockey leagues with boys available for Keeling compete, his father said. At 4 feet, 8 inches tall and 82 pounds, Keeling says he does not feel he is at an advantage, or that he is even significantly better than his opponents. He says some of the girls he has played against are faster and stronger than he is. (And being that Keeling’s Irish undoubtedly have certain other appendages of significantly greater proportion than his!)

“In my opinion, my son is comparable to any of his teammates,” Andrew Pilaro told FoxNews.com. “He fits in well with the team’s dynamic.” The teen’s father said he’s never heard any negative comments from teammates or opponents and said if his son was “6’2, 200 pounds we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” “As a dad, I’m trying to be as supportive as possible to my son,” Andrew Pilaro said. “I’m trying to protect him a little bit from what’s going on.” (No….you’re acting like an idiot.)

Keeling and his parents have already lost his initial appeal, but they will plead their case again in May. “I do hope they let me play,” he told MyFoxNY. “I really like these girls — they are my family.”

The decision to remove Keeling from the team raises questions about the school’s compliance with Title IX, a federal law that states both men and women should have an opportunity to play a sport if the school offers it to the opposite sex, Dana Edell, the executive director of SPARK movement, a girls activist organization.

“If he’s not allowed to try out for the team, that opens up the door for all kinds of discrimination,” she said. Edell said the school should allow Keeling to try out for the team or create a boys field hockey team. (Yeah….and considering no other schools in the entire country have boys field hockey, who exactly will they compete against?!?) She said, worst case scenario, under the law, if he’s not allowed to play the girls team should be disbanded. “It’s the coaches responsibility to make sure the players are safe,” she said. “And a boy should not be penalized because he’s good.”

No….it’s the parents responsibility….to stop coddling little Keeling, put a lacrosse stick in his hand and let him go out and compete in a man’s sport.

Enjoy your weekend!

Magoo