Did You Miss Meat & Potatoes?

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Jobs, Afghanistan, & Health Care:

We break them all down on tonight’s Filibuster!

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Did You Miss Rep. Michaud & “To The Fed, Phred!”?

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Listen to our talk with Rep. Mike Michaud (D-ME) and activist Phred Barnett (who wants a public audit of the FED). We also discussed President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, NASA bombing the moon, and the latest from the world of baseball!

Matt Cavedon’s New Blog

Want to think about human nature, reason, morality, and the world?

Panelist Matt Cavedon has started a new blog devoted to natural law philosophy and how it applies to politics, economics, and culture, from Ramadan to the Shawshank Redemption to the criminal justice system. Feel free to check it out by clicking on the link above, and write to him at mcavedon@fas.harvard.edu if you are interested in contributing!

Miss Our “Town Hells” Hour?

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All round the country, enraged protesters are crashing and disrupting town hall events staged by Democratic members of Congress in an attempt to push their agenda on health care reform. Due to the disruptions, arrests, and violence at many of these events – they’ve been dubbed “town hells” by the media. Our panel spends the hour looking at every angle of these events. What are the goals of the protesters? What are these so-called “death panels”? What chance does real health care reform have of succeeding? We answer those questions, and many more.

Miss Sunday’s Show?

Did you catch The Weekly Filibuster Sunday night?  We spoke about the “birther” movement, the Government’s billion dollar “Cash For Clunkers” program, and new developments out of Venezuela.

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Tax Man Aims to Take a Bigger Bite Out of Junk Food Junkies

(Originally published as an Acton Weekly Commentary at http://is.gd/1SOcY)

Faced with high obesity rates and big-budget health care reform bills, some government officials are pushing a proposal to tax unhealthy foods and beverages. The aim is to subsidize expanded public health care with the new revenue. Do bureaucrats and politicians pushing for new sin taxes on junk food see a solution to health care that is just too big to fail?

Melissa Healy of the L.A. Times calls it “tough love for fat people” and says a tax on unhealthy foods “could be expected to lower consumption of those foods… it would also generate revenues that could be used to extend health insurance coverage to the uninsured.” Stephanie Condon of CBS News reports that administrators at the CDC agree: “A soda tax could plausibly pay for health care reform.”

In “The Sin Tax: Economic and Moral Considerations,” the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, has argued against the idea of taxing sins to pay for public services. If the government relies on taxes on unhealthy foods to pay for health care programs, how can it both fight obesity and maintain steady revenue? Sirico says it cannot: “Under a sin tax, the state finds itself professing to discourage certain behaviors while relying on their continuance as a source of revenue.” The government may say unhealthy eating is bad, but it would rely on it for tax money.

The problem of hypocrisy leaves aside the question of whether government is qualified to be the moral police officer of our pantries in the first place. Sirico points out that “the government’s sense of morality, especially when it is influenced by excessive power, is often at war with traditional standards and common sense.” With food taxes, eating apple pie would become more of a punishable sin in the eyes of the government than cheating on a spouse.

Did you catch Bob Barr?

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Did you catch our conversation with 2008 Libertarian Presidential Candidate and former GOP congressman Bob Barr?

We spoke to Congressman Barr about the ongoing Panetta-House Intelligence Committee CIA letter, cap-and-trade, and the future of the third party movement.  We also broke down the week in politics with the greatest panel in radio!

International Governance in Caritas in Veritate and The Road to Serfdom

(Originally published by the Acton PowerBlog at blog.acton.org)

In his new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI calls for an international political authority, “so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.” He tasks it with issues like human rights, ensuring access to necessities including food and water, and managing the global economy. What might an effective international governing body look like?

The Nobel laureate economist Friedrich Hayek asked the same question in 1944 in his book, The Road to Serfdom. Seeing his beloved Europe torn apart by war and gross economic inequalities, Hayek wrote, “we cannot hope for order or lasting peace after this war if states, large or small, regain unfettered sovereignty in the economic sphere.” He was referencing World War II, but it sounds like the Pope feels the same way about hoping for order and prosperity after this recession.

Click “Read More” to continue this article.

The State at Fault: Why No-Fault Divorce is Wrecking Marriage

(Originally published by UWIRE at http://uwireforum.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/the-state-at-fault-why-no-fault-divorce-is-wrecking-marriage/)

Matt Cavedon is working for the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty this summer. Attending Acton University 2009 was his first assignment, where for four days nearly 400 participants from almost 50 countries came to Grand Rapids, Mich., to learn about natural law, economics, religious morality and other essential elements of a free and virtuous society. This is the final column in a three-part series of columns related to Acton U.
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Why is marriage falling to pieces in America? A seemingly unrelated question sheds some insight: Why does the state protect private property rights?
Property is the way that people create wealth, and it demands time, resources and effort from its owners in order to bear fruit. Only when people know that they will be able to reap the rewards of their work will they invest themselves fully in their property. The state honors this commitment between an owner and his property because it is good for everyone when people get the most out of their property that they can and work as hard as they can to make things that other people want.

This is elementary economics, but the way that the state protects property in order to make sure that people get the most out of it is analogous to why the state has traditionally protected marriage and establishes legal structures to hold married people loyal to one another.

Only when there is a guarantee that people will be able to reap the rewards of a shared life will they give themselves entirely to each other and to their children in love. Property demands work and ingenuity; marriage demands fidelity and commitment. These are all serious investments, and it is in the best interests of the state to see that the rewards of each are fully enjoyed by society, either in the form of desirable products or in the form of family stability and good environments for children.

Marriage is once again becoming a hot-button political issue in light of the decisions of courts and legislatures in Iowa, California, New Hampshire and Connecticut to legally recognize same-sex marriages. Activists on the Left argue that it is time to expand legal rights to same-sex couples in the name of fairness and equality, while voices on the Right say that society needs to defend traditional marriage and deny the state the ability to change a natural institution.

Both arguments have merits and can be debated elsewhere, but is there more to say about fairness, tradition and marriage in the political sphere? It is hardly ground-breaking for me to say that marriage is in bad shape in America. Half of all marriages end in divorce. Only one-third of these divorces come out of high-risk situations, such as domestic violence or substance abuse. More and more people are opting to remain uncommitted even years into their relationships, meaning children have no guarantee that the union between their parents will be permanent. Single-parenthood is increasingly common and, while single parents are certainly competent, giving a child the attention she needs while working full-time to pay for her needs is extremely difficult. President Obama himself acknowledged this on the campaign trail when he and Michelle promised to help parents find ways to balance their work and family lives.

Marriage is not just another agreement of convenience that people make in their lives. Its very nature is to foster lifelong, total love, self-giving, and commitment between two people. It is also meant to let children love their parents fully and permanently. A sense of security is meant to pervade marriage, which is ultimately a united relationship that cannot simply be broken down into its members at any given time. To see marriages falling apart so much — and even being avoided by many Americans — ought to give concern to anyone interested in commitment, stability, and the fullness of love in private life. Is the decline of marriage an inevitable consequence of a changing culture, or are there institutional reasons for why marriage isn’t what it used to be?

Starting during the cultural revolution of 1968, state governments began to fundamentally change the institution of marriage by adopting no-fault divorce. By letting people freely break apart marriages and families for any reason whatsoever, the state redefined what marriage is. Instead of demanding permanent commitment and patient adaptability on the part of both partners, marriage became a status symbol in the eyes of the law. This mindset treats marriage like a contract between two individuals for a subjective set of purposes, instead of as a transforming union that forms the bedrock of the family and that is the way that people give themselves to each other and their children.

Marriage needs help in America, and repealing no-fault divorce laws should be at the top of the list. Marriage is not for everyone, like perhaps the eight-time wife Liz Taylor, and certainly the question of same-sex marriage shall continue to fuel debate for years to come. Cutting down on divorce rates, providing more stable family structures for children, and strengthening the expectations of commitment in marriage by mandating that people give valid reasons for dissolving their marriages, though, might just make the marriage debate worth having in the first place.

Pay it Forward: Transforming the way we do welfare

(Originally published by UWIRE at http://uwireforum.wordpress.com/)

Matt Cavedon is working for the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty this summer. Attending Acton University 2009 was his first assignment, where for four days earlier this month nearly 400 participants from almost 50 countries came to Grand Rapids, Mich., to learn about natural law, economics, religious morality and other essential elements of a free and virtuous society. This the second of a three-part series of columns this week related to Acton U.

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This year, the economy imploded. Every American was hurt, but as is always the case, the poorest people in our country were hit the hardest. Now that Congress is back in session, proposals are afloat to help the poor by expanding public health insurance, building more public housing and increasing funding for public education.

These measures identify the very real problems facing poor Americans, but they are not the best way to help. Subsidizing poor people to make their own choices in the marketplace is a far more effective and fair way to help.

Sin, Responsibility, and the Fall of Bernie Madoff

(Originally published at the Acton PowerBlog: http://blog.acton.org)

“Only if there are new human beings will there be a new world, a renewed and better world.”

When the Pope said these words at Vespers on Sunday, perhaps he had Bernie Madoff in mind.

Today, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for defrauding his investors of nearly $65 billion over the course of 20 years. His corruption and crimes ruined the livelihoods of thousands of businesspeople, charity workers, and families that trusted his sterling reputation to protect everything that they had worked to earn.

Unfortunately, Madoff is not the only man to have betrayed his financial responsibilities to others. The last few years saw financial scandals at Enron and WorldCom shake the public’s trust in corporations. Just two weeks ago, Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford was arrested by the FBI on charges that he used a bank in Antigua to mask his $8 billion fraud, stealing from his investors.

Click “Read More” to continue this article.

World Powers Give The Dollar A Run For Its Money

(Originally published as a letter to the editor in the Boston Globe on June 28, 2009)

BRAZIL, RUSSIA, India, and China might have been on to something when they considered dropping the American dollar as the basis for international currencies (“The world’s new power brokers,’’ Editorial, June 21). It was the inflation of the dollar during the Bush administration that lowered interest rates far beyond what the market would have allowed, meaning that far more mortgages and other loans were issued to people who wouldn’t normally be expected to be able to pay them back.

Click “Read More” below to continue reading!

WSJ letter to editor: Forced Purchases of Health Care Will Crush Many

(Originally published in the Wall Street Journal on June 25, 2009)

Sen. Ron Wyden’s plan to make every uninsured American buy health insurance makes about as much sense as would forcing every poverty-stricken and starving Haitian to buy food (“Wyden’s Third Way,” The Weekend Interview, June 20). Sure, having every American insure himself would save us all money from unneeded emergency room visits, but there are bigger things in the way of universal coverage than just imposing a legal mandate.

Requiring every American to buy health insurance would make millions of families change their economic priorities in ways that would lead to unfortunate consequences. Almost everyone believes that getting health insurance for themselves and their families is a high priority, but virtually no one thinks that insurance comes before food and housing. Even if the government passes the Healthy Americans Act or some other sort of mandate, and succeeds in making everyone buy insurance, the victory will be Pyrrhic. The needs that come before insurance for the 15% of Americans will still exist, but the money they use to meet these needs won’t.

According to research done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, National Public Radio, and the Harvard School of Health, health insurance costs individuals an average of $4,800 annually. The cost for families to get insurance is even higher, at around $12,000 annually. These kinds of costs would push many people over the edge financially. How does Sen. Wyden propose that we pay for more people who will be unable to afford food, housing and education if they have to pay for health insurance? Effective health-care reform would be better accomplished by other means. Sen. Wyden’s own proposals to switch America from employer-based to individual health-insurance markets, for example, would do a great amount of good by encouraging competition and innovation without making life harder for the people having the most difficult time getting insurance.

Matt Cavedon
Cambridge, Mass.

WSJ "Letter To The Editor": Forced Purchases of Health Care Will Crush Many

(Originally published in the Wall Street Journal June 25, 2009)

Sen. Ron Wyden’s plan to make every uninsured American buy health insurance makes about as much sense as would forcing every poverty-stricken and starving Haitian to buy food (“Wyden’s Third Way,” The Weekend Interview, June 20). Sure, having every American insure himself would save us all money from unneeded emergency room visits, but there are bigger things in the way of universal coverage than just imposing a legal mandate.

Requiring every American to buy health insurance would make millions of families change their economic priorities in ways that would lead to unfortunate consequences. Almost everyone believes that getting health insurance for themselves and their families is a high priority, but virtually no one thinks that insurance comes before food and housing. Even if the government passes the Healthy Americans Act or some other sort of mandate, and succeeds in making everyone buy insurance, the victory will be Pyrrhic. The needs that come before insurance for the 15% of Americans will still exist, but the money they use to meet these needs won’t.

Click “Read More” below to continue.

Did You Miss Ari Ne'eman?

Did you miss our roundtable with Ari Ne’eman, President of The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, about the politics of whether disability groups should be focusing on a cure or adaptability?

CLICK HERE TO CATCH THE SHOW!

This will be Ari’s second appearance on The Weekly Filibuster. He joined us on May 31st, 2009 to discuss his work and a recent profile in Newsweek magazine.

Virginia Democratic Primary Results – Deeds Wins

Creigh Deeds won the Democratic Party’s Gubernatorial Primary on Tuesday night with nearly 50% of the vote. Two weeks ago it appeared that Terry McAuliffe would win the nomination in close competition with Brian Moran. At that point, the polling looked like McAuliffe would get a huge lift from northern Virginia but relatively little support anywhere else, especially in the most rural areas. Not only that, but McAuliffe was able to raise over $7 million for his primary challenge alone.

However, that was just not how it turned out. About a week ago, McAuliffe, by some polls, fell nearly ten percent: firmly into second place. Creigh Deeds, who was a long shot behind McAuliffe and Moran just a week and a half ago, was able to make a strong showing in northern Virginia. His more moderate positions and rhetoric helped him gain way in the south and west. The result was a massive swing of undecideds to his candidacy in the final week.

Sunday, The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza joined us to preview the race.  Click here to listen.

Socialism.

President replaces CEO and private ownership of corporation with labor union. Can you spell “syndicalism”?

Sunday: State of the American Press

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Also …

Did you miss our interview with The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel?

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Weekly Filibuster On Twitter

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As you may know, each of the panelists have been on Twitter for quite some time.

Today we’re proud to present The Weekly Filibuster’s own Twitter account.

Follow us to recieve show updates, panelist commentary, news, and to give feedback on all things Filibuster.

Debate Over AIG: Was the Attorney General Right?

DID YOU CATCH KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL?

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Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Filibuster

CLICK HERE TO ON DEMAND!Join us at 10PM ET tonight for the FASTEST HOUR IN POLITICAL TALK!  We’ll talk about those Somali Swashbucklers who caused mischief on the high seas, and talk about the Vermont state legislature, active as ever!

Miss Rep. Dan Itse?

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Did you miss our conversation with controversial New Hampshire Representative Dan Itse?  Click above to listen to our groundbreaking interview.

DID YOU MISS 2010 TROUBLE?

A new Suffolk University Poll has Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick at 34%.  Governors Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and David Paterson (D-NY) aren’t in much better shape.  Is 2010 shaping up to be 1994?

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Swett, vanden Heuvel highlight 'Filibuster' April

You won’t want to miss a minute of the Weekly Filibuster in April!

Join us on April 5 as we talk with former New Hampshire Congressman and  the Former United States Ambassador to Denmark, Dick Swett, about foreign policy in the age of Obama, and his wife’s campaign for his old seat in the US House of Representatives.

On April 12, we’ll talk with Kevin Preblud about his new project, the In Denver Times, the first real post-print, city-based, online subscription newspaper featuring former Rocky Mountain Times writers.

And on April 19, The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel stops by to help us evaluate the Obama presidency on the eve of his three-month anniversary in office.  You won’t want to miss this exciting interview.

Great Cartoon in the Connecticut Post

I was reading through the newspaper and stumbled upon what I thought was a great cartoon.

Miss the show this week?

Politicos Meet the Radio!  Did you catch the fastest hour in political talk?!  With the nation livid over AIG bonuses, should Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner stay or go?  We spoke to the panel about Geitner, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, and President Obama’s “special” Tonight Show appearance.

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Miss Sunday's broadcast?

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Did you catch the fastest hour in political talk this week?  We spoke about the future of newspapers (after an awful week for the industry), the controversial AIG bonuses, and had a roundtable on the legacy of Andrew Jackson on his 242nd Birthday.

Did you catch Matthew Lesko?

You know him from television…or maybe you’ve read one of his bestselling books?  Sunday, we spoke to Mr. Lesko  about the state of the U.S. economy, and all that free government money floating around out there, and how YOU can get some government cash to help jumpstart our economy!

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Not All Americans Believe Healthcare is a Right

President Obama has proposed a bold new plan for restructuring out healthcare system to make it more accountable, more efficient, and to make it cover everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone sees this as a step forward. Congressional Republicans have been on the war path since the measure was called for. Representative Zach Wamp, in an interview that went from conservative to extreme began by saying: “It’s probably the next major step towards socialism.”

Making sure that people don’t die or go bankrupt because they can’t afford treatment is the next step towards a government controlled economy where everyone makes the same wage? Forgive me if I laugh.

He said that we are moving towards a system where the “government is bigger than the private sector.” Excuse me, do you know anything about government? The Federal Government, all told, spent $2.6 trillion last fiscal year. Half a trillion of those dollars were directly spent on hiring private contractors. So, real public sector spending is $2.1 trillion. While that is certainly a lot of money, it does not even begin to approach the amount of money spent in the private sector. Thinking further, how many of the services that you receive on a daily basis are from the government? Relatively few. These are scare tactics that should ring hallow.

He said that “of the 45 million people without health insurance, about half of them choose not to have health insurance.” Not to be impolite, but no they don’t. If they don’t receive health benefits from their employers, which normally means they make below the average American income, then they are expected to pay high premiums for purchasing their own insurance. That’s not to mention that the actual number of uninsured was 47 million before the economic collapse and is probably a lot higher now.

He then explains that Americans who do have health insurance would be taxed to pay for those who don’t currently have health insurance. After accurately describing taxes (as if we needed help) he called it “class warfare”. This is another moment where I have to pause the tape. Does a sitting congressman really believe that taxes are class warfare? If you take Rep. Wamp at his word, then yes. He could have stopped there but that would have merely made him look ignorant. Instead he dug himself deeper by saying that “healthcare is a privilege”.

You know, there’s a theory in psychology that therapists should repeat insane people’s words back to them in the hope that they’ll understand just how ridiculous they sound. I don’t put too much stock in it, but at this point in the interview, that’s what Tamron Hall tried. Here is exactly what he said: “for some people it’s a right, but for everyone, frankly, it’s not necessarily a right”. You’re right, that was frank.

“The problem with the Obama approach is: healthcare for everybody.” This is a point in the interview where I feel it’s important to actually be watching him puerilely wiggle with sarcasm as if the proposition were utterly ridiculous.

He closed with the following statement: “we better stand up and defend our system or it’s going to go away.” Let me address him directly. Congressman, I don’t think you’re going to get many takers for defending the current system. That anyone would defend our healthcare system speaks ill of our values as a nation. I’m not saying that everyone has to get behind Obama’s approach, but I don’t think it’s acceptable that there are people in this country that believe that healthcare is a privilege. People that believe that your chance to survive a disease should be correlated to your personal wealth. People who believe that our society should more vigorously defend the rights and lives of the rich than those of the poor. The transition to universal healthcare is ultimately an affirmation of the American value that “all men are created equal” and to attack that value is to attack the heart of our founding ideals. Ideals which we have yet to live up to, but for which we have fought for over two centuries.

Hear, Hear Mr. Brown! A Renewed Partnership of Purpose

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown finished his US visit with a speech before a Joint Session of Congress. In a tribute to the strength of the bond between our two nations he proclaimed that our friendship is “not an alliance of convenience” but “a partnership of purpose.” Through every trial of the last 100 years, the United States and Great Britain have stood together in forging a new way forward. And so we must do now.

Focusing on human rights, climate change, national security, and the economy, Mr. Brown laid out a framework through which the US and the UK would rally the global community to alleviate this moment of crisis. Calling trade “the engine of prosperity”, he recognized the need for all the nations of the world to pass economic stimulus bills to maximize the impact of each and rejuvenate the global economy. But recognizing that our prosperity is wounded by the absence of international law governing global finance he proposed that:

“So that the whole of our worldwide banking system serves our prosperity rather than risks it, let us agree at our G 20 summit in London in April to rules and standards for proper accountability, transparency, and reward that will mean an end to the excesses and will apply to every bank, everywhere, and all the time”

And speaking against the craven greed that led us to believe that sub-prime mortgages could back attractive securities, he recognized that “we have learned through this crisis that markets should be free. But markets should never be values-free.”

But he also reminded us of the liberal human values that unite our two nations in an understanding that we cannot forget “our duty to the least of these: the poorest of the world.”

“Let us never forget in times of turmoil, our duty to the least of these, the poorest of the world. In the Rwandan museum of Genocide there is a memorial to the countless children that were among those murdered, in the massacres in Rwanda. And there is one portrait of a child, David. The words beneath him are brief, yet they weigh on me heavily. It says, name: David, age: 10, favorite sport: football, enjoyed: making people laugh, dreamed: to become a doctor, cause of death: tortured to death, last words: the United Nations will come for us. But we never did. That child believed the best of us. That he was wrong is to our eternal discredit. We tend to think of a day of judgment as a moment to come. But, our faith tells us, as the writer says, that judgment is more than that: it’s a summary court in perpetual session.”

America’s bond with Great Britain is the indispensable alliance. In times of trial such as these, we must heed Mr. Brown’s call and renew our partnership for a new century of challenges that we must face together.

Alabama – Redistricting

Due to a strong Alabama Democratic Party, although national Democrats are less popular, the Democrats have control of 2/3 of Alabama’s state government. In 2008, there were two extraordinarily close races in Alabama. In the 2^nd District, Democrat Bobby Bright squeaked out a win with 50.2% of the vote against Republican Jay Love’s 49.6%. And in the 5^th District, Democrat Parker Griffith narrowly edged out Wayne Parker with 51.5% of the vote. As first term Democrats facing re-election in conservative Alabama, they will want help from new district lines assuming they make it past the 2010 elections. The 5^th district is boxed in by the 4^th which, because they earned a mere 25.1% of the vote in the last election, is a lost cause for Democrats. By reshaping the district lines slightly, they could bolster Congressman Griffith’s standing enough to help him fight back when rage against Republicans wanes. As for Congressman Bright, the2nd district is bordered by the 1^st, 7^th, 6^th, and 3^rd. By shifting some population with Rep. Artur Davis’ 7^th district stronghold, Bright could gain enough to hang on. Alabama is an excellent display of something that Democrats need to be thinking a lot about in redistricting: protecting vulnerable new members.

State of the States – Redistricting

With redistricting around the corner after the 2010 elections (a year and a half away), it’s about time to begin looking at partisan control in State governments now versus during the last redistricting in 2001. Although many of the current governors and none of the current sessions of state legislatures will be in office when it comes time to redistrict, it says something about what things are likely to look like in a year and a half.

My maps combine the Gubernatorial, State Senate and State House of Representatives maps into one map by indicating either all Republican, all Democratic, or two thirds of the bodies being in either direction. Here’s 2001:

First, a couple of quick notes about the grey spots on the map. In Minnesota, Governor Ventura (yes, the wrestler) was an independent while the Senate was Democratic and the House was Republican. In Washington, the House of Representatives was tied 49-49 while the Governor’s house and the State Senate were in Democratic hands. In Nebraska the governor was a Republican however they have a unicameral non-partisan legislature (hint: they’re still republicans). Meanwhile, Maine couldn’t get their stuff together so they had an Independent Governor, a tied State Senate, and a Democratic State House.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the numbers. The Democrats dominated government (all 3 posts) in states that had a total of 103 House seats. Republicans dominated government in states with a total of 103 House seats. Although they had parity there, the Republicans had control (2/3) of governments with a total of 125 additional House seats. Democrats came up short by only adding 71 Seats to their total by that measurement. Thus, in total, the Democrats had the opportunity to re-district 174 seats while Republicans re-districted 228 Seats (33 were re-districted by neutral governments).

However, it’s never that simple. At issue is that with the exception of Arkansas, constituents in the South were not about to vote for National Democrats despite the strength of their State Democratic Parties. Those states account for an amazing 59 Seats out of their 174 Seat total. Although their redistricting power might have blunted the power of Republicans there enough to dissuade me from flowing those 59 Seats to some non-partisan column, we certainly have to note that the Democrats didn’t get much mileage out of those opportunities. The actual number of Seats that the Democrats had the power to re-district to the benefit of the National Party was something closer to 115 Seats. Not surprisingly, the Republicans kept control of the House after this redistricting.

Now, to say the least, things have changed. Here’s the 2009 map:

In this model, Democrats dominate the redistricting process in 141 Seats (+38) while Republicans dominate in only 92 Seats (-11) with a net change of 49 Seats in favor of the Democrats’ power to redistrict. Where the real difference is is in control where the Democrats grab redistricting power over an additional 162 Seats (+91) while the Republicans hold sway over a mere  28 additional seats (-97) for a net change of 189 Seats! Totals are the Democrats majority power to redistrict over 303 seats and Republicans with the same power in 120 Seats.

There are other issues which I’ll address at length in later posts. First, Republicans dominate in several states that are at-large-districts which, of course, gives them no power to redistrict. Second, redistricting holds a limited set of advantages especially in urban districts and in states where the national party and the state level party have vastly different popularity levels. Third, the power to redistrict is distinctly opportune if your state is losing or gaining a seat. Fourth, many states sit on the edge of a party switch in 2010 that would greatly influence the outcome of redistricting. I’ll get to these issues and more in the next week.

It's Time to Call This what it is

It now appears that the structural challenges facing the American financial system are more serious than we previously thought. With massive amounts of illiquid assets and no capital on the balance sheets, Bank of America and City Bank are in an untenable situation. Simultaneously, the Dow is falling below 7,000 points. It’s hard to imagine that just one year ago, when we were first declaring a recession, the Dow stood at over 13,000 points. Since then, an unimaginable amount of wealth has simply evaporated. With all of this in the past week, people have begun to ask the big question. This morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, a financial analyst for the New York Times was asked if this was a depression. Here was his response: “Well, I’m depressed”.

So are we. A year ago, with forclosures rising and job availability drying up, I determined that this was a recession. But, at that point, I couldn’t have believed that we would reach this point. The economic definition of a recession is economic contraction for two straight quarters. That described the slightly unsettled waters of a year ago. That is utterly undescriptive of the economic hurricane that has rocked this country. How can a country lose half of it’s wealth and not call it a depression? Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t on the scale of a great depression, there is still only one of those. However, a recession is just not descriptive of the danger that our country now faces and the scale of the disaster that this is for middle and working class Americans.

Miss the show?

Did you miss our breakdown of the week in politics?  The greatest hour in political talk with guest panelist Erich Reimer? 

We spoke about President Obama’s address to congress, Bobby Jindal’s response, Kathleen Sebelius at HHS, and the new direction for US-Israel policy.  You can listen to the archive any time on demand, or subscribe to the podcast by searching “Weekly Filibuster” in iTunes.  Remember, the archived edition always has our special “Cloture” segment, unavailable during our live broadcast!  Listen in!

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(Il)liberal Intolerance

(Originally published in the Harvard Salient. Sorry for being absent to Bowen’s socialist propaganda – I had the site under a right-wing monopoly long enough for some wrongheadedness to get a chance again)

Your presence in this country will “threaten community harmony and therefore public security.” Your views are “one-sided generalizations.” You will be scrutinized in a court of law in your home country for broadcasting a subversive, divisive message. You will find no asylum here.

If the above paragraph were shown to Dutch parliamentary leftists without context, I suspect more than a few would rightly find it to be a detestable rejection of the right of free speech and the right of asylum that are so essential to the identity of that small country. Unfortunately for freedom’s sake, these insults were found in a notice to Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders from British Home Minister Jacqui Smith when he tried to enter the country in mid-February. Wilders returned home where the Dutch government, at the behest of its more leftist elements, continued its investigation of the MP for promoting intolerance.

Wilders is not a popular man among leftists in the Netherlands. Originally elected in 1998, Wilders is known worldwide for his vehement arguments against Islam. His vitriolic platform calls for such drastic measures as banning Islamic headwear in public and creating a limit of 5,000 political refugees in the Netherlands at any given time. His general attitudes towards Islam are best summed up by his own suggestion that the Dutch should “not tolerate the intolerant.”

Ironically, Wilders himself has not been tolerated by the Dutch and British governments. After creating a short film entitled Fitna, Wilders has come under investigation by his own government for inaccurately portraying Muslims. A group of British parliamentarians invited Wilders to present the film to them in England shortly after, but he soon received the Home Secretary’s notice declaring him persona non grata, and was sent back to the Netherlands.

Wilders’s case is disturbing for believers in free speech. The inability of the government to restrict certain views, no matter how distasteful, is a cornerstone of legal tradition in both Britain and the Netherlands. Unfortunately, the European Left seems to have a double standard for who exactly deserves protection under free speech laws. In many cases, the very same leftists calling for the prosecution of Wilders have advocated protection for radical Muslim activists. Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, for example, is a self-described socialist who invited Muslim preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi to talk about moderate Islam. Unfortunately for Livingstone, activists discovered that al-Qaradawi has spoken sympathetically in the past about suicide bombing, female genital mutilation, the killing of Israeli civilians, and the stoning of homosexuals. Livingstone was outraged that critics would point out these inconveniences, accusing them of pushing “lies and Islamophobia.” There is nothing fair, just, or free about Livingstone’s decision to give a podium to al-Qaradawi followed by his vocal support of the entry ban against Wilders. When Livingstone originally stood up for free speech, perhaps he ought to have just come out and specified that he only meant the kind that was convenient for delivering votes from his constituencies.

Wilders is an obsessive, irrational, fixated man. He scapegoats Muslim immigrants as responsible for crime, budget problems, and declining moral standards in his home country – ironic, given that Muslims do not tend to frequent the brothels and abortion clinics that Wilders’s Dutch predecessors made widely available. The point here is that Wilders’s views hardly deserve credence, but they, too, are entitled to tolerance. In a free marketplace of ideas, illogical hatred will be pushed to the margins. In a society that seeks to defend one group against another and to protect a minority from the views of a belligerent extremist, however, resentment will grow alongside sympathy for extremism. People will react strongly against what they perceive to be a threat to their liberties. So long as Muslims are correctly seen as appreciating freedom in the West, they will be welcomed and, over time, integrated. The moment that Muslims are seen as an excuse for censorship, otherwise indifferent people will begin to resent their presence.

The other unintended consequence of statements made by people like Minister Smith is that they actually reinforce Wilders’s point. After all, if Muslims truly are peace-loving people who respect liberty, why does the government have to prevent an extremist from entering in order to preserve the security of the community? In her own lefty way, Smith herself is embracing as much of a dangerous stereotype of Muslims as Wilders is. Unfortunately, when she enters another country, there won’t be a band of protestors to greet her.

Obama Unvails Bold New Budget

In a 134 page document released today, the Obama Administration unvailed it’s first budget proposal. Previous speculation in many circles rumored a delay in ending the Bush tax cuts and a modest move towards Universal Healthinsurance. Shattering those expectations, President Obama moved boldly to the left.

The blueprint advocates the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% remain on schedule for cancelation in 2011. It promotes a further increase in the taxes of Americans earning more than $250,000 annually. Those new taxes would cover the costs of adopting Universal Health Insurance by 2012. President Obama heeded the environmental community with a commitment to introduce a system of cap and trade on carbon emissions. These new commitments represent a step towards fulfilling the ideals of his inspiring Presidential Campaign.

While the changes in content over previous budgets are enormously significant, the structural changes are important and should gain bipartisan applause. Over the past 8 years, we have been dealing in budgets that hid key costs. Although the Bush Administration knew that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would cost large sums of money, they would ask for emergency appropriations of dozens of billions of dollars each year. Those appropriations remained obscure to the general public who were somewhat confused about how the government could end up in such massive debt with only moderately over-budget proposals. This new honesty about budgets is an absolute prerequisite to paying down the national debt over the next decade.

Read the Full Text

Tragedy for Camerons

David Cameron’s eldest son Ivan passed away yesterday at the age of 6. He lived all of his life with an extreme form of Cerebral palsy. We wish the Camerons all the best as they greive for their son.

“I know that, in an all-too-brief life, he brought joy to all those around him and I know also that, for all the days of his life, he was surrounded by his family’s love,”…”Every child is precious and irreplaceable and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure. Politics can sometimes divide us, but there is a common human bond that unites us in sympathy and compassion at times of trial and in support for each other at times of grief.”

- Gordon Brown

Alan Keyes how Obama will Destroy the Country

I saw this and it was so crazy that I had to share it.

He could afford to make his criticisms more sharp. I’m not really feeling it.

Priority 1: Primary and Secondary Education (UK)

Cameron starts off by promising to improve “discipline and behaviour in schools by shifting the balance of power in every classroom back in favour of the teacher”. I’m sorry, since when is that a policy? In practice, what does that mean? Since indeed, the British people would be paying David Cameron to be Prime Minister, I would expect him to take some kind of action.

He packed his green paper with other terrific proposals like a promise to deliver “more teaching by ability which streaches the strongest and nurtures the weakest.” Again, as an implemented policy, what would this look like? It would be nothing while looking like change, which actually fits Cameron’s m.o. just fine.

Finally, Cameron proposes increasing the number of private schools that are publicly funded. That, as it happens, is an actual initiative. Rather rare for him. However, current British law already allows for such schools. In 2000, the Government introduced a program by which a private individual or group (charity/corporation) could contribute up to 2 million pounds to defray the costs of the construction of a new school. The remainder of the funds, an average of 28 million pounds, is taxpayer funded. Under this law, such schools would be considered companies limited by guarantee, and granted charitable tax status.

The sponsoring group or individual would have the responsibility of most major decisions over the school. For example, they would pick the headteacher, be involved in the determination of the budget, appoint a majority of the governing board, and restrict the number of locally elected board members (the option remains for them to set the number at one). 83 such schools are in operation as of the posting of this article.

So, David Cameron’s only substantive proposal on education is to expand a program that would restrict the power of parents to influence their child’s education and transfer responsibility for the school from locally elected officials to unaccountable private entities able to shell out 2 million pounds. Does that sound like a good idea?

There would be another effect. Because he also proposes cutting taxes for the wealthy and paying down the British debt, new funding for private schools would almost certainly come at the expense of current public schools. Depriving public schools of funding isn’t going to help struggling families, and it isn’t going to increase opportunities for working-class citizens.

That’s all. David Cameron, the man who thinks he’s ready to be Prime Minister, has exactly 3 ideas on how to improve the UK’s education system. That’s it. You can’t make this stuff up. Never mind that two of the ideas wouldn’t actually translate into any government action. Never mind that the third idea doesn’t actually do anything that isn’t already being done.

However, his lack of actual ideas didn’t stop him from bloviating for the better part of a page. Here’s an excerpt:

In our open and dynamic world, people’s horizons are broader, their ambitions are greater, and they expect to be able to make more and more decisions for themselves. Advancing opportunity means shifting power from the state to individuals and civic institutions, in order to open up this new world of freedom to everyone.

What? His platitudes don’t convince you? This guy’s a snake oil salesman if I’ve ever seen one.

So, if you want someone to get up on TV and talk for half an hour about how kids should be more respectful (see proposal 1 of 3) then pick David Cameron. But, if you want to hire someone who will actually do something, pick someone else. Anyone else.

Full Text of Tory Plan: http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Opportunity_Agenda.aspx

David Cameron is Unprepared to be Prime Minister

In the United Kingdom, David Cameron has turned the Conservative Party around to a 20 point (48-28) poll lead over Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour party. This is a serious threat to Labour’s 11 year administration because Gordon Brown will have to call elections by the summer of 2010. Despite his lead in the polls, Cameron is a dangerously unprepared flip-flopper.

He opposed the National Minimum wage in 1998 (there was no British minimum wage prior to that). Even as his fellow Tory MP Peter Bone bragged that he was paying an employee 88 pence an hour. For those unfamiliar, that’s significantly less than $2 an hour. He opposed targeted tax cuts for the bottom brackets in the current recession. He’s proposed less financial regulation as a preventative measure for further recessions. He wants to slash maternity leave and eliminate paternity leave entirely. I suppose he believes that raising a child is only the mother’s job.

He first claimed that raising taxes after the recession was “inevitable” but after he was criticized, he entirely reversed his position, saying that the government would be able to afford tax cuts after the recession. Similarly, he supported the government’s move to shore up the British banking system until he dipped in the polls at which point he reversed his position and began criticizing Brown on the issue. 

As for the lack of experience, he had never held a shadow cabinet post (much less an actual cabinet post) until taking over as Conservative leader a few years back. In fact, most of his political experience comes from being a media executive.

The Conservative Party has released Green Sheets on 7 topic areas:

1) Primary and Secondary Education

2) Alternative Energy

3) Poverty

4) Crime

5) Responsibility

6) Healthcare

7) Apprenticeships

Each of these policy’s consists mainly of fluff and Cameron’s chief goal in releasing them is to appear ready to take charge and full of ideas because he’s betting that no one will actually read and criticize his plans. That’s why, for the next 7 days, I will address each of his major proposed reforms.

Hectic Show!

 

Thanks for joining us tonight — sorry for the trouble.
Tune in next week for another exciting installment!

It's Time for Universal Healthcare

Our healthcare system is in crisis. We annually spend $2.4 trillion dollars, a stunning 17% of GDP, on healthcare. For the extra 6.5% of GDP (compared to Switzerland who is the 2nd largest spender) we receive the 37th best healthcare system in the world according to the World Health Organization’s rankings. 47 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and millions more are underinsured. Our international corporations are suffering from competition with Japanese and European companies that do not bear the cost of healthcare for their employees. Our employer-based health insurance system is being torn apart.

In a fundamental misallocation of resources, private insurers spend anywhere from 14% to 18% of their income in administrative costs (it varies based upon provider). That money is used to hire employees that actively work to deny coverage. Just as unethically, health insurance companies spend much of your money ‘underwriting’. The word itself sounds mundane which is exactly what it’s supposed to sound like. What they really mean is if you have a family history of an expensive disease or you have a dangerous job (also likely to be a low paying job) you will either be denied coverage or have it offered at prohibitively high rates. The concept is fundamentally this: health insurance companies make money by charging you higher premiums while denying you coverage for expensive and necessary procedures.

The best solution would be universal, single-payer health insurance. To clear up a few things, this is not socialized medicine. In a socialized system, such as the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, the doctors are employees of the state. My proposal is a system in which the federal government pays for health insurance for all Americans. Let me reiterate: the single-payer system would only be a financing mechanism. You still have complete control over which doctor you receive care from and what kind of care you receive. All medically necessary services would be covered including primary care, prescription drugs, emergency care, long term care, dental, and vision. 

Many would argue that a government program could not be more efficient than private insurance. In most cases this is probably true. However, the Healthcare system the exception in this regard because of an incentive to deny coverage that is unique to private insurers. Medicare administrative costs are projected at 2% by the Department of Health and Human Services. The net gain of 16% would go a long way to covering the costs of those newly insured. In addition, the government would be able to negotiate bulk-orders of drugs as Canada does. A study commissioned by the US House of Representatives found that the cost of drugs from US manufacturers were 98% higher in the US than they were in Canada.

The opposition will attempt to scare you away from change by telling stories about long waiting periods. To this, I simply say: the plural of anecdote is not data. The statistics tell a different story about single-payer health insurance. In Canada, people undergoing voluntary treatments (plastic surgery) face long waiting times. However, people who need heart transplants aren’t forced to wait. It is time for us to put a system in place that recognizes that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

Matt Cavedon is an Investment Banker

Shocking news out of Harvard University today: Matt Cavedon is an investment banker. Just as true as his previous allegation, he took a large part in driving our economy into the ground and then taking million dollar tax-payer-funded bonuses.

BOB BOWEN IS A COMMUNIST!!!!!!!!!!!

And he doesn’t contribute nearly enough any more!
Consider this a call-out, comrade!

Did you catch Chris Myers Asch?

Did you catch our show Sunday night? We’ll broke down the latest in the political world, including the Stimulus Package, and Judd Gregg’s decision to withdraw his name from consideration for commerce secretary.  We also spoke with Chris Myers Asch about his proposal for the National Public Service Academy.  

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON DEMAND!

Fight agriculture subsidies!

They’re bad for the economy, the world, and farming. Sign our bipartisan petition to send them to the Dustbowl of history!

[Just a quick note for transparency: this petition is not endorsed by the show, and not necessarily the position of all panelists. - WF Online Editor]

Palin reconsidered

I loved her, then I hated her. This insightful commentary has me reconsidering her.

Thoughts?

Be proud to be partisan!

An argument against bipartisanship and political independence by the head of Harvard’s Government Department. I do not know her political leanings.

Medicare for Millionaires: thanks to the Democrats, Party of the Poor (C)

“Republicans wanted to deny the premium subsidies to people who had annual incomes of more than $100,000 or assets of more than $1 million. They also wanted to prevent people with more than $1 million of family income from taking advantage of the Medicaid option for the unemployed.

Democrats voted down those proposals in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. (emphasis mine)

Representative Nathan Deal, Republican of Georgia, said “the poorest of the poor” had long been subject to income and asset tests when applying for Medicaid. But, Mr. Deal argued, under the new option, a millionaire could get Medicaid benefits, financed entirely by the federal government, without being asked about such matters.

The committee chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said, “It’s highly unlikely that you are going to find millionaires who would like to go on Medicaid.”

Moreover, Mr. Waxman said, the purpose of the new options is to “streamline the enrollment process” and speed assistance to people who are unemployed.

“It’s going to set up an unnecessary barrier if we have any income test,” Mr. Waxman said, adding that the enforcement of a means test could require “a whole new bureaucracy.””

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/28health.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

Did you catch Bob Smith & HW Brands?

Did you miss Sunday’s show?

LISTEN ON DEMAND!  CLICK HERE!

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEKLY FILBUSTER PODCAST!

In a Weekly Filibuster exclusive, former New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith returns to the show to talk about Commerce Secretary-designate Judd Gregg.  Smith and Gregg together represented the Granite State in the United States House of Representatives (1984-1986) and Senate (1993-2003).  We’ll also ask Senator Smith about the President’s stimulus bill and reports that he is testing the warmer waters in Florida for a potential bid for the seat Mel Martinez will vacate next year.

In addition to breaking down the latest news in the political world, we’ll talk with the author of Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, HW Brands, about FDR’s legacy and the presidency today.

PODCASTING across America and the World…

It took us a year, but it’s finally here!
Now you can take the Filibuster with you wherever you go!

Download The Weekly Filibuster PODCAST on ITunes here!

New politics strike again!

Thank goodness we elected Obama and put an end to years of corruption, secrecy, waste, and divisive politics!

UPDATE: Yet another prospective nominee has joined the ranks of Tom Daschle and Bill Richardson in withdrawing herself from consideration. Ironically, this time it’s Nancy Killefer, Obama’s would-have-been chief performance officer.

Agricrap

My grandfather was a farmer; believe me when I say I’m all in favor of family farming as a lifestyle. But massive subsidies are wrecking markets, doing substantial humanitarian damage, and promoting environmental destruction. Stay tuned in the next few weeks for an opportunity to fight farming subsidies.

Did you catch our Halftime Spectacular?

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON-DEMAND!

Were you watching ‘The Boss’ at Halftime instead of The Filibuster Crew?  We’re not offended, as long as you listen to the ON-DEMAND replay of our half-hour special.  Join the Filibuster Crew as we talk Gregg for Commerce, new RNC Chair Michael Steele, say “Bye-Bye Blago,” and do the Super Bowl Shuffle!

Long live Britain! No more gun bans!

Miss Sunday's show?

Sunday night we discussed the possible political motives and implication of Gov. Paterson’s pick for Senate, spoke with victims of the Purplegate disaster, and discussed President Obama’s first round of Executive Orders.  Did you miss it?

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW

Hope for a change in the future

This week, America commemorates two momentous occasions. This year, the first African American president was inaugurated. He takes office on the promise of respecting the dignity of the poor, the needy, the sick, the immigrant, the prisoner, the homosexual, and the outcast. This is change we can believe in.

Hopefully, so is this.

No Show Tonight

The Monday night special edition of the Weekly Filibuster has been canceled. If you haven’t already, please check the archives for last night’s Republican round-table on the Bush Presidency.

Long Way to Dr. King's Dream

Four decades have passed since Martin Luther King fought overt discrimination in our legal system. Now, especially with the election of Senator Obama to the Presidency, we tend to view his dream as largely accomplished. However, it would be a mistake to view his work as merely a historical remnant to remind us of a time when there was racism. It exists today, and we need to acknowledge and fight it like we once did.

Four decades after the civil rights movement, African-Americans have an infant mortality rate twice that of white Americans while 20% of African Americans still lack basic health insurance. In a country with a corroding public school system and violent inner cities where homicide is the leading cause of death amongst people under 50 we have not yet achieved the dream. Racial profiling and police brutality are still far too common in our legal system. Look at our board rooms and our nation’s top colleges which remain difficult for African Americans to enter. African American unemployment is twice that of white unemployment.

But this stain on American society runs far deeper than the mechanics of our businesses, schools, and government. It is a part of who many Americans are. When Obama began his candidacy for President, there was an assumption that as a black American he could not be a ‘one of us’, a patriotic American, or as the McCain campaign termed most of the country, not “real Americans”. There were the rumors that he would not say the pledge of the allegiance. Far worse were the rumors that he was a Muslim. To this I must ask: so what if he was? He isn’t, but why would it matter. Dr. King’s most valuable ideal was the hope that we would one day judge each other by the content of our character. In a world in which the average American can not look beyond an individual’s religion, we have a long way to go.

In fact, one of the largest problems has become that we no longer recognize racism as a disease that ails our national system. We must recognize that that awful history is still a part of our society and we must do everything we can to combat it. I believe, that one day, if we do as Dr. King asked, we will be able to truly judge people by the content of their character.

Please take time today to think about Dr. King’s legacy, what he has sacrificed for our nation, and what we must do to rededicate ourselves to his memory and dream.

Obamatopia

Thanks to all of you who tuned in to our conservative roundtable about the Bush Presidency and our exclusive interview with Peter Schiff! As President-Elect Obama prepares to take office on Tuesday, it is important to remember why we need conservatives. To that end, I am pleased to share a look at what the next eight years may bring…

Miss our special "Conservative Edition?"

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Did you hear Senior Republican panelist Matt Cavedon guest-moderate our special “conservative” edition of the Weekly Filibuster?  We heard from author and former Ron Paul economic advisor Peter Schiff, who predicted the economic crisis months and months before anybody else. Schiff has a new book out. Then, our special “Conservative Roundtable Retrospective” on the Bush presidency, with Republican panelist Jay Gobeil and guest panelist Duc Luu at Harvard University. Plus, a live report from Washington, DC, where Moderator Ben Goodman and Senior Democratic Panelist Tom Dec are gearing up for Tuesday’s festivities.

Live From DC: Inauguration Coverage

Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration will be one of the most historic events in American history – so you know the Weekly Filibuster crew will be there with live wall-to-wall coverage.

Can’t make the trip yourself? Join us this Sunday and Monday at 10pm here at weeklyfilibuster.com for the inside scoop live from the Capitol. It’s the next best thing to being there.

And in true Weekly Filibuster fashion, you never quite know what’s going to happen – or which of the country’s political powerbrokers are going to show up.

Bush is a regulate and spend liberal!

Michael Tanner over at Cato is very, very right. Obama can blame Bush or he can blame the free market for America’s recent problems, but blaming both is just ridiculous. The massive trends towards privatization and deregulation in the past eight years that Obama went all Kucinich on during the campaign are not a part of observable reality. If anything, they stopped when Clinton left office.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/01/13/of-course-that-implies-he-had-principles/

“President Bush says that he ‘chucked aside my free-market principles’ when faced with the current financial crisis. Well, duh!

The president said that he had no choice because he was “concerned that the credit freeze would cause us to be headed toward a depression greater than the Great Depression.” Even if one accepts that rather contestable premise, one is tempted to ask what caused him to chuck aside conservative and free market principles when he:

* Increased federal domestic discretionary spending (even before the bailout) faster than any president since Lyndon Johnson.
* Enacted the largest new entitlement program since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, an unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit that could add as much as $11.2 trillion to the program’s unfunded liabilities;
* Dramatically increased federal control over local schools while increasing federal education spending by nearly 61 percent;
* Signed a campaign finance bill that greatly restricts freedom of speech, despite saying he believed it was unconstitutional;
* Authorized warrantless wiretapping and given vast new powers to law enforcement;
* Federalized airport security and created a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security;
* Added roughly 7,000 pages of new federal regulations, bringing the cost of federal regulations to the economy to more than $1.1 trillion;
* Enacted a $1.5 billion program to promote marriage;
* Proposed a $1.7 billion initiative to develop a hydrogen-powered car;
* Abandoned traditional conservative support for free trade by imposing tariffs and other import restrictions on steel and lumber;
* Expanded President Clinton’s national service program;
* Increased farm subsidies;
* Launched an array of new regulations on corporate governance and accounting; and
* Generally did more to centralize government power in the executive branch than any administration since Richard Nixon.”

9 reasons why SCHIP should not be expanded

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/10/17/how-to-argue-against-schip/

The Politcs Of Krispy Kreme

Popular doughnut maker Krispy Kreme, hoping to hop on the Obama Inauguration bandwagon by offering costumers a free doughnut this Tuesday, is facing a backlash from crazy pro-life groups.

“Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies — just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet ‘free’ can be.”

Yes, it seems the problem is that the phrase freedom of choice (even when talking about doughnuts) “is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand”.

So keep in mind, all you baby-killing chocolate iced glazed cruller eaters, that ” the next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme, you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama’s radical support for abortion on demand.” YOU WERE WARNED!

I always hear this argument about how the left is comprised of the “politically correct”. This goes a bit towards realizing that it is on both sides, and what is referred to by saying “politically correct” is the longstanding fight on both ideological sides over which words and phrases are used to describe and name things. The bailout is called the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” in order to make it sound more essential to our economic survival. Language on abortion is used to underline a particular side’s views, whether it is about “choice” or “life”. Words are powerful, bringing with them certain connotations and evoking certain feelings, so naturally there is going to be a fight picked over which words are used.

The “would be hilarious if it wasn’t so insane” press release from the American Life League, by clicking “read the rest”.

Bushism #4 – OB/GYNs

Inauguration Speech Generator

Some fun for Friday.

Bushism #5 – Neither Do We

While parallelism is good, maybe you shouldn’t get too far ahead of yourself Mr. President…

I wonder how Don Rumsfeld kept a straight face…

Just another day in Washington

David Bardallis takes on Obama’s new plan for the economy.

Bushism #6 – Pandemicflu.gov

Sometimes it’s just the way he says it…

International Filibuster Blog Launched

The International Filibuster has launched its new blog here. Check it out and don’t forget to comment.

The Financial Filibuster will be launching its blog in the next few weeks.

Bushism #7 – Bush and the G8

I think Bush could have been ruder…. I’m not sure how though….

Watch this one. Same summit. Wow, he was on a roll.

Bush: not so much with the diplomacy.

Ever seen a train coming down the tracks?

Funny thing is, 3 years and 30 million poor retirees later, the “progressive” media will still spin this to look like greedy corporations screwing helpless Americans.

Will Holder Have Problems in Judiciary?

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is required to recommend Eric Holder for AG before the vote passes on to the full Senate, has 19 members. There are 9 members from each side of the isle and one chairman, who, because it is a Democratic Senate, is a Democrat. However, Joe Biden is the 3rd ranking Democrat on the committee and will have to resign the Senate before the Holder nomination comes up for a vote. That will leave the committee at a 9-9 partisan tie and a tie vote is a failed motion. This is critical. Although it would take a lot of guts for Senate Republicans to take on a President this popular at the inception of his Administration, they have the option to attempt to cripple the Obama Administration with an embarrassing episode of weakness right out of the gate. What’s the downside for Senate Republicans? They’d look bad for a week and people would forget within a month. However, I don’t think that this scenario is likely, for that we have to look at the list of members of the Judiciary committee.

For starters, I don’t think there are any Democrats on the committee that there would be a remote chance of turning (Sen. Blanche Lincoln isn’t on Judiciary). Secondly, I think that while most Republicans would be hard to convince, there are several I don’t think would ever go for this play. Among them Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania). Take note, the Democrats would only need one Republican vote so even if Hatch (R-Utah), Kyl (R-Arizona), Sessions (R-Alabama), and Coburn (R-Oklahoma) decided to try to burn an incoming President, they’d probably be standing alone.

His Third Strike

From Dowd’s column Sunday: Asked by People magazine what moments from the last eight years he revisited most often, W. talked passionately about the pitch he threw out at the World Series in 2001: “I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough.”

I think this speaks for itself.

Bushism #8 – The Red Door of China

Yes, you’ve probably forgotten about this embarrassing episode from Bush’s visit to China, but it has always been one of my favorites. Enjoy!

Re: Obama Should Reinvest in Diplomacy

I’ll largely agree with you here, especially on the State Department funding. Diplomacy is an essential, inherent, constitutional duty of the government, and tending to it is very important. That said, efficiency as well as new funding is important…

1) Nuke control ought to be shifted out of State and Energy over to Defense. It would streamline the process, show that we are committed to nuclear non-proliferation, and reduce costs.

2) USAID spends about $2.5 billion every year in Gaza and the West Bank. Given that we are subsidizing Israel’s military, is that not self-defeating?

3) USAID spends $2.1 billion on explicitly development-related projects in Africa. The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, spends $8 billion every year subsidizing the production of staple crops in America, crushing the ability of African farmers to compete in American markets. Some consolation prize.

4) USAID has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Afghanistan fighting the production of opium. It would be far cheaper, effective, and beneficial for security and economics to legalize and regulate the production of the mild narcotic for medical and recreational reasons. American drug companies import all opium from India and Turkey; why not let Afghanistan’s poor farmers have a fair shot at cracking (no pun intended!) the market instead of selling to druglords or getting busted?

5) USAID has spent quite a bit on foreign aid handouts. Private investment, trade liberalization, and peace are far, far better models for economic development and elevating the human condition than state aid.

Miss Sunday's Show?

The ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Karen Kwiatkowski, and what the death of Oscar Grant tells us about the future of Black America.

Plus, a tribute to one year of The Weekly Filibuster.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

SNL – Roland Burris Cold Open

Obama Should Reinvest in Diplomacy

Whether the purpose is postconflict stabilization and reconstruction, promoting the rule of law, encouraging democracy, aiding economic development, combating disease, or preventing the proliferation of nuclear arms, the State Department and USAID need a significant increase in their manpower and funding. To give an idea of how small the departments have become, there are more members of the military bands then there are diplomats and while DOD’s annual budget now stands at $750 billion the combined budgets of USAID and DOS barely reach $31 billion. In fact, when you take into account spending through DOE on nuclear technology and through NASA on iintelligence technology, hard-power accounts for 99% of spending on National Security and Foreign Relations.

This constitutes a major threat to our diplomatic efforts abroad because our diplomatic efforts need a transition from a focus on Europe to a global focus with particular attention to previously ignored developing nations. To meet these emerging US interests will require a significant increase in both personnel and funding. Secretary of Defense Gates agrees saying “Congress has not been willing, decade in and decade out, to provide the kind of resources, people and authority that it needs to play its proper role in American foreign policy.” One of Secretary Gate’s major concerns when making that statement was the level to which DOS responsibilities could not be met because of funding and personnel shortages were transferred to a military that is not adequately trained for those responsibilities.

One of the major problems with cutting Foreign Service Officers is that it has a negative result on FSO training. For training and other purposes the DOD, even under its current strain, only keeps 21% of its personnel forward deployed. However, 68% of the Foreign Service is forward deployed leaving no back bench. If DOS want to give FSOs additional training for new operational responsibilities then they do so at the cost of leaving their job vacant for the remainder of the training. The result is that DOS is reluctant to give FSOs even necessary training. The crisis is even more critical at USAID which has seen a 75% decline in employees since the 1970s. That decline has reduced USAID to a shell of its former-self and transitioned much of their operational (but not planning) responsibility to the military. The negative effects of this decline are clearly seen in the US’s failure to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq because USAID is the department that hires the government’s experts in postconflict reconstruction, a much needed and lacked capability.

Unlike the US military, diplomacy is not capital intensive. Although long term spending will have to be multiplied by 2 to 3 times the current $31 billion budget, experts such as Ambassador Holmes believe that the DOS can make monumental strides forward with $2.5 billion annually for diplomatic operations (a 33% increase) as well as doubling the number of FSO, increasing USAIDS’s staff by 150%, and increasing the number of experts at State by 50%. All of this would come at an annual cost of $6 billion. While this seems like a hefty price to pay, it is currently 2 weeks worth of Iraq War spending  and in return the government builds the necessary capabilities to engage in postconflict stabilization and reconstruction.

Bushism #9 – Peance Freeance

With only 9 days left until Bush leaves office, I will shamelessly post a hillarious video each day, if for no other reason than that the joke won’t be relevant in a week and a half.

 

RE: If your state was a country, by GDP

So, let me get this straight: every single one of our fifty states has an economy at least as big as Bangladesh and up to as big as Russia and Italy, but you want MORE federal funding of health care, education, transportation, and economic regulation?

Dude, there’s a reason the UN doesn’t work. Let’s not copy it as a system for governing 300 million people over 5,000 miles from coast-to-coast. Put fifty states with nation-sized GDPs to work if you want, or, even better, follow the route of Third World countries and look at private development of airports, highways, bridges, aviation control, ports, and a whole slew of other infrastructure projects. The federal government (and the state governments, for that matter) funding these things isn’t going to create jobs without taking money out of the economy first. Don’t forget that unemployment was worse in 1939 after two terms of the New Deal than it was in 1931 when he started, or that GDP was worse in ‘39 than in ‘29.

Infrastructure may have merits in and of itself, but to think that massive public spending on infrastructure will create jobs and GDP is, as experience showed us under Roosevelt, Carter, Bush I, and Bush II and as experience showed Japan in the “Lost Decade” of the Nineties, delusional.

Of course, the government will simply brag about “creating 3 million jobs” and argue that the resulting unemployment increase is a justification for more taxing/inflating and spending…

$50 Billion Bread

CNN: Zimbabwe’s central bank will introduce a $50 billion note — enough to buy just two loaves of bread — as a way of fighting cash shortages amid spiraling inflation. The country’s acting finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, made the announcement in a government gazette released Saturday. Although Chinamasa did not give the date on which the $50 billion and new $20 billion notes would come into circulation, an official at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said the notes would be distributed to all banks by the end of Monday. Zimbabwe is grappling with hyperinflation now officially estimated at 231 million percent, and its currency is fast losing its value. As of Friday, one U.S. dollar was trading at around ZW$25 billion. When the government issued a $10 billion note just three weeks ago, it bought 20 loaves of bread. That note now can purchase less than half of one loaf.

If Your State Was A Country, By GDP

Want to Catch Up on Minnesota?

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com wrote an excellent piece that challenges a Wall Street Journal Editorial on the legitimacy of Franken’s win that was certified by the Minnesota Canvasing Board last Monday.

The original Wall Street Journal article is here -  for the other side.

Take a look, they’re both very interesting.

Administration Should Reconsider Public Transportation Spending

The incoming Obama Administration has begun circulating a $800 billion stimulus package and have told legislatures that the acceptable range of spending is capped at $1.2 trillion. Noticeably absent from the $800 billion plan is any funding for Public Transportation. A re-investment in Public transportation has enormous potential to stimulate the economy with good construction and engineering jobs, while enabling working-class Americans to cheaply arrive at their places of work, and helping the environment by reducing pollutants. Federal spending on Public Transportation is key because un-subsidised, Public Transport is simply too expensive to be commercially viable to its target audience. That can be undone with Federal funding just as it is in a majority of the World’s developed nations.

Critics of spending on Transportation note that it would take years to plan and implement any new transportation projects and therefore would be a poor form of stimulus. However, the Department of Transportation estimates that there are nearly $25.2 billion in transportation projects that could begin construction within a year.

Radical Biblical Capitalism

An occasionally-flawed, yet ultimately consistent, rebuttal to “Christian” socialism: here.

Worst Year for Jobs in 6 Decades

The U.S. Labor Department released Employments statistics that show worse than expected job losses this year. The United States lost some half a million jobs in December alone bringing the total for 2008 to 2.6 million. This brings the unemployment rate to 7.2% up from 6.7% just two months ago. 2008 was the single worst year for job losses since World War II ended in 1945.

As disturbing as those statistics are, the worst news is in under-employment statistics. Under-employment is the phenomenon where Americans seek-out full-time jobs but can only find a part-time job. Under-employment has risen to a record 13.5% out of 14 years of tracking. The Department of Labor Statistics projects that the average weekly paycheck fell anywhere from $200 to $611. This is obviously an imperfect statistic. It counts all people including those who have maintained their jobs throughout this economic crisis when the vast majority of lost income comes from the 20.7% of the population that is either un-employed or under-employed. There is no statistic that accounds for just how much income each of those households would have lost however, the point is that it is a very large sum of money.

Re: Equality Has Heald Steady for Twenty Years

Actually, even the Cato Institute unconventional calculations show disproportionate growth in the bottom 40% and the top 20% while relatively modest growth in the middle-class. This growth is accompanied by a higher relative cost of living than existed in 1987.

What this data really shows is that the majority of Americans (around 70%) are coalescing while the top 20% have 1.25% of the expansion of middle-class income.

Cato Institute’s calculations are a disguise. While the bottom 40% and the top 20% have seen relatively similar (more or less 20% pre-tax increase) since 1987 this disguises three things. First, no one has access to pre-tax income. It’s just stupid to calculate on pre-tax. The real calculation of where people are is the post-tax calculations: what people get to keep. Those would show that with a dramatic drop in taxes for the upper-income brackets, the top 20% is doing better than advertised post-tax. Second, they do not stratify far enough. If the Cato Institute broke off a category for the top 1% then even Cato’s figures would see dramatic top 1% increases over the last decade. Third, 120% of $20,000 and 120% of $2,000,000 aren’t even close to being the same! A 20% increase in the income of the top 20% is a huge increase in their standard of living while a 20% increase in a working-class family’s salary is fine, but it might not even be enough to keep up with expanding costs. Certainly any real definition of equality has to account for those three factors!

Equality has held steady for twenty years…

…but income reporting on tax forms has not. See pages 20 and 21 for the fastest visual evidence that the top percent of richest Americans is doing no better today compared to everyone else than it was in 1987. Read the rest to see why it looks like they are in many publications.

Sen. Feinstein's Reasons for Anti-Panetta Stance

Senator Feinstein has made significant news in the past three days for her opposition to Leon Panetta, President-elect Obama’s choice to head-up the Central Intelligence Agency. She says that her real issue is experience, however Panetta is well experienced for this new leadership position.

He has experience working with political leaders from his time as a Representative starting in 1976 and served for 17 years. In his period in the House of Representatives he served as the Chairman of the US House Committee on the Budget where he became well versed in the full range of US interests and resource allocation. He was then Picked to be Clinton’s Director of Office of Management and Budget after a year of his 9th term as a Congressman. From there he was selected as White-House Chief of Staff where he served for three years. In those three years, he sat in on every intelligence briefing, had close contact with the National Security Council, was included in every meeting at the Presidential level or slightly below in the Situation Room, and advised President Clinton on those matters. If that isn’t National Security experience, then I don’t know what is.

To start with, Panetta is firmly against warrentless wiretapping, torture, and extrajudicial renditions. These stances are solidly against Senator Feinstein’s. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she has supported reductions in limits on the Executive Branch’s power to tap the phone calls and e-mail of American citizens through FISA. She voted for ex-post immunity for Telecom corporations that enabled the government to illegally wiretap American citizens. She was the original Democratic co-sponsor of the USA PATRIOT Act. Finally, she was one of only six Democrats to vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, a supporter of waterboarding and certain ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ which continue in use today. Her real opposition appears to be more ideological: she supports a much slimmer definition of civil-rights than Leon Panetta does.

Second, as ‘The New Republic’ has pointed out, they have had an antagonistic political relationship for several decades. As Chief-of-Staff to President Clinton, Panetta was responsible for opposing several of Senator Feinstein’s most important priorities. Notably, the Base Closing Commission considered in 1995, closing several military bases in California including Long Beach Naval Shipyard. The Senator lobbied Panetta to scrap the report and force the Commission to start over. Panetta refused and then traveled to California, where he was once a Congressman, and explained the President’s decision to community leaders. In addition to this and other clashes over policy, they were both candidates in the 1998 race for the Democratic Nomination for Governor of California. Although it is far from definitive, there is certainly a significant possibility that part of her opposition has its roots in personal disagreements between the two northern-California politicians.

Really Not So Much To Be Proud Of

Just a few rebuttals to Matt’s response that go point by point:
1)The overwhelming majority of tax-relief was for the top 1% of Americans. There was a lowering of taxes for the middle-class as political cover.
2) Your $1 trillion figure for the national debt is over a single year. The total end of fiscal year calculation is over $11 trillion with various exact calculations: http://www.marktaw.com/culture_and_media/TheNationalDebt.html

3) Do we really think that Africans with AIDS never considered abstinence? If they aren’t going to abstain then we should try to help rather than making moralizing statements from Washington DC

4) Drug companies make more money from curing Erectile Dysfunction and Restless Leg Syndrome than they would from curing diseases prevalent among poorer populations. Public funding is necessary to save lives because there will never be a profit motive to cure certain diseases.

5) I understand your position on stem-cells. But they will be destroyed either way. Health clinics won’t keep them frozen indefinitely, only until relatives no longer need them. If they’re going to be destroyed anyway, I can’t see why we shouldn’t attempt to improve people’s lives.

6) I don’t think that Matt hates poor kids. I also don’t think that Bush does. However, SCHIP is a wildly sucessful program. If any government health insurance merits continued funding then certainly it is a state program for poor children’s insurance.

7) Alito is terrible on civil rights and if any group should be charged with standing up for the rights of Americans then it should be the courts.
Banks have money, you’re right. But they aren’t loaning it. They can’t pull out of loans they’ve already guaranteed but they’re being very selective about new investments.

9) Many families lost as much as 1/4 of their net worth over the last year. It obviously depends on diversification and which sectors individuals were more heavily invested in. However, many senior citizens would have found themselves in a precarious financial situation.

NOTE: Matt’s list seemed a little like an explaination of how there were a few things Bush didn’t completely screw up. I still haven’t heard what he did right.

A little (a little) to be proud of

To refute just a few of Bowen’s points:

1) The middle-class got tax relief under Bush, too. The average family paid about 7% less in taxes in 2008 than in 2000 when Clinton left office: http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm

2) The US deficit just hit a record $1 trillion: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7816035.stm

Even factoring in Obama’s $800 billion surplus and various other spending proposals, the total deficit is still only about $2.8 billion under worst case scenarios. Both numbers are far short of Bowen’s claim of $11.3 trillion.

3) The only nation to shrink its AIDS-infected population since the epidemic began has been Uganda. The fall happened after a policy of abstinence as the first priority, followed by monogamy, was introduced. I’m not saying it’s a proven, but it certainly did not make things worse.

4) The National Institutes of Health budgets were cut, but more medical research is being done in America than ever before. Less federal subsidization means private companies have better competitive incentives to do their own research. The competition between companies working on cures also produces better results and more varied treatments.

5) The President was right on stem cells. If they can do all scientists think, the day might come when I could stand up for the first time in my life. But I cannot tolerate any research that kills the innocent to benefit others, especially when it is financed by my tax money.

6) If vetoing SCHIP means Bush hates poor kids, so do I. The best way to help poor kids is not more bureaucracy and public regulation. Its free market health care reform and a more robust economy prompted by lower taxes.

7) Samuel Alito is no “radical rightist.” No ruling he issues from the bench will impede on your right to vote for a state legislature and in some cases a federal Congress that will promote gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, liability clauses, and more education standardization. All he is going to do is prevent the Court from being used to advance agendas better left to the legislatures. I’d rather he was better on civil and legal rights, but even those can be protected by legislatures. The Court is not absolutely needed to do better there.
The credit crisis of 2008? Credit hasn’t contracted in decades. Credit hit a six-month plateau this year, always still higher than at the beginning of the year. The credit problems were a result of awful monetary and fiscal policies that put interest rates into the negatives after 9/11 (also Bush’s fault, by the way).

9) Social Security privatization was only a half-hearted effort by Bush. Too bad. In fifty years, at current rates of spending, entitlement programs will have a $520,000 per household liability. There is no reason that every working American, regardless of ability to provide for herself, should be forced to buy a government pension at a cost of 7.5% of her income every paycheck. In October 2008, in the midst of recession, the Dow was still 2,000 points (20%) higher than it was five years ago. Not a bad return on investment, especially for retirees.

Chief Vatican justice minister decries violence in Gaza

Among other things, Cardinal Renato Martino said, “Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp.”

People of conscience everywhere must remember that Palestine has been occupied for forty years. Regardless of the merits of this particular offensive or that one, the occupation has left 60% of Gazans without clean drinking water every day. It has disenfranchised 2.5 million people in their own homeland and violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by denying these people a homeland. It has led to the destruction of countless families, livelihoods, and ideals.

No matter what these coming weeks bring, ending the illegal and permanent military and political occupation of Palestine must be at the forefront of Middle Eastern peace efforts and humanitarian work today and for however long it takes until Palestine is free.

1967 is over. 42 years later, it is high time to acknowledge the sovereignty and self-determination of the people of Palestine and their right to govern, trade, and live as they choose as a member of the community of nations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7817019.stm

President Bush Will Not Be Well Regarded

Loyalists to the Administration and President Bush himself believe that history will vindicate his Presidency. He has gone as far as to compare his unpopularity with that of Harry Truman and Abe Lincoln. I think that it’s a little presumptuous for a man who can’t string a complete sentence together to compare himself to the deliverer of the Gettysburg address, but let’s look back at Bush’s Presidency and see if it’s something we’ll reconsider.

Like any great presidency, Bush’s started with a loss in the popular vote and a victory in the Electoral College. To achieve that victory, the US Supreme Court stepped in to prevent the counting of ballots in Florida because they would cause “irreparable harm” to Governor Bush. “Irreparable Harm” is the standard set out for the granting of a stay as was done in his case. In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court handed Bush the Presidency in process that was blatantly partisan. With a start like that, I don’t see how it could have gone wrong.

President Bush began with a massive tax-cut for the top 1% of Americans rather than for the middle-class who really needed it. By cutting taxes while conducting an unnecessary war, President Bush expanded the Federal Deficit from $5.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion in the space of just 7 years. Those figures do not account for the loss due to the financial crisis.

Abroad, the President alienated us from traditional allies with his with-us-or-against-us foreign policy. He pushed hard for an invasion of Iraq in 2002 without allowing for weapons inspections to be completed. In this unnecessary war, 4,000 US Soldiers have lost their lives and between 400,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians have died. The Iraqi government has still not arrived at necessary political compromises and the US has no credibility to act as a broker.

Under the Administration’s watch, North Korea gained Nuclear Weapons Capabilities. The A.Q. Khan Network has remained largely operational. Despite 7 years of ’searching’, Bush has not managed to capture Osama bin Laden. In one of his more charming foreign policy decisions, Bush politicized the prevention of AIDS in Africa by insisting that organizations receiving US funding from USAID counsel abstinence until marriage and not hand out condoms except to prostitutes. Some do not even distribute condoms to prostitutes for fear of losing funding. The US is allowing AIDS to spread because evangelical Christians don’t appreciate their values systems: great.

President Bush signed an Executive Order granting the NSA the unconstitutional power to wiretap American citizens without a court warrant. Five years later, he passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which circumvents the independent judicial process mandated by our constitution for ‘unlawful enemy combatants’. The bill further strips those ‘combatants’ of the constitutional right of Habeus Corpus. The Bush Administration vetoed HR 2082 which would have banned the use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. Finally, his administration remained oblivious for months to the atrocities being carried out at Abu Ghraib that shocked the world. Even worse, they condone the outright torture carried out on ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ in other countries from Extrajudicial Renditions and the harsh conditions met by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2001, the Administration backed out of the Kyoto Protocols and rolled-over a group of Interior Department scientists in order to divert more water in the Western United States to ranchers, decimating local fish populations.  They continue to question whether Global Warming is caused by humans or natural factors despite a scientific consensus on the issue. He argued for the Clear Skies Act of 2003 which would reduce environmental regulations for corporations. Recently, he lifted a long-standing presidential ban on Offshore drilling.

George Bush cut funding for the National Institutes of Health for the first time in 36 years. In 2006, Bush vetoed a bill to allow HHS and NIH to conduct life-saving stem-cell research, preferring that the frozen embryos from in-vitro fertilization simply be destroyed. He then vetoed the States Children’s Health-Insurance Program, a wildly successful federally funded program to provide health-insurance to poor children. He justified this because the bill would have expanded funding to allow 10 million poor children to receive coverage rather than just 6 million. Denying poor children access to health coverage? Who does that?

His administration de-funded under-performing inner-city schools with No Child Left Behind. He denied civil rights for gay Americans by saying that Gay Marriage would be granting ’special rights’ to gay couples. And who can forget Bush’s nomination of the singularly unqualified Harriet Miers to become a Justice of the United States? Of course, when the Democrats took over congress in 2006, she was no longer qualified to be the President’s top lawyer. He then nominated radical rightist Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor’s wise voice of moderation.

Then there are the screw-ups that don’t even require an explanation: Hurricane Katrina, Walter Reid, the Credit Crisis of 2008, invocation of Executive Privilege against staff subpoenas, the leaked identity of Valarie Plame, and the Scooter Libby pardon. There were the times that he displayed his love for democracy with statements like “I frankly don’t give a damn about the polls” and “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” And then there was his attempt to privatize Social Security…

I’m sorry, what exactly are they proud of?

President-Elect Obama has Made Excellet Cabinet Picks

Although it is certainly funny to claim that Dr. Sanjay Gupta is no more ready to be Surgeon General then Ben Goodman is to Chair the Council on Foreign Relations, it is simply not true. Dr. Gupta has broad administrative experience from serving for several years as a White-House Fellow and Special Adviser. He also has extraordinary medical talents, serving as a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Emory University (one of our country’s top 25 schools). To say that he only performs surgery on a couple of Iraq War vets is also untrue. He regularly performs brain surgery at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta Georgia where he works. So, he has experience in government administration, experience as a surgeon dealing with the problems routinely experienced by other doctors, and he has communication skills that would be helpful to a Surgeon General. He is an excellent pick.

Timothy Geithner is a similarly accomplished nominee. He served in the international division of the Department of the Treasury throughout the Clinton Administration, finally becoming the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in 1998 and serving there until the Bush administration took over two years later. He continued his experience in US inter-connectivity with Foreign Economies as a Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Affairs. In 2003, he was named the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. With the turbulence in the US economy, the rise of China, and the large amount of debt owned by foreign creditors, could there possibly be a better time to nominate someone as well versed in US relationships with Foreign economies as he is? Quite simply, no. He is similarly a fantastic pick.

Leon Panetta, President-elect Obama’s pick to head up the CIA is, once again, a good choice. He has experience working with political leaders from his time as a Representative starting in 1976 and served for 17 years. In his period in the House of Representatives he served as the Chairman of the US House Committe on the Budget where he became well versed in the full range of US interests and resource allocation. He was then Picked to be Clinton’s Director of Office of Management and Budget after a year of his 9th term as a Congressman. From there he was selected as White-House Chief of Staff where he served for three years. In those three years, he sat in on everyintelligence briefing, had close contact with the National Security Council, was included in every meeting at the Presidential level or slightly below in the Situation Room, and advised President Clinton on those matters. If that isn’t National Security experience, then I don’t know what is.

That is not to mention the outstanding nominees who’s credentials have not come under fire from Conservatives: Robert Gates for Defense, Hillary Clinton for State, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Eric Holder for Justice, Susan Rice for UN, Tom Daschle for HHS, and other extremely qualified and competent candidates.

Believe me, I get that Conservatives don’t like the ideology of Obama’s nominees. I’ve lived with that feeling through 8 years of Bush’s Cabinet. Conservatives should criticize the results of the Cabinet, just as Liberals should be skeptical of results. That’s our job as citizens of our great democracy. However, each of these candidates is qualified and we should give them their due.

Rise of the Unqualified

Sanjay Gupta, 39, has been offered the position of Surgeon General by President-Elect Obama. You likely remember him from CNN, where he serves as top medical adviser. Performing emergency surgery on a few Iraq War vets is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but it qualifies you to be head up the American government’s public health care bureaucracy about as much as Ben Goodman is qualified to sit on the War Powers Committee because he (presumably) attended Model UN one year.

Leon Panetta has been nominated to serve as the director of the CIA. He is best known for being a Washington insider who can pull strings for presidents and make politics happen. During his terms in Congress, he never sat on the Intelligence Committee. Since then, much of his work has focused on protecting the world’s oceans. If confirmed, he will be in charge of rooting out corruption and abuse, hunting for Osama bin Laden, and discovering the truth about nukes in North Korea and Iran, and at the sprightly age of 70, leading the entirety of America’s covert intelligence operations.

Timothy Geithner has been nominated to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. In his 47 years of life, he has enjoyed fly fishing, tennis, skateboarding, and cussing. His qualifications include advising the government to buy out AIG and Bear Sterns (but not Lehman Brothers) and helping spend US dollars to bail out Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Thailand in the past two decades.

President-Elect Obama, 47, served part of a term in the Senate. He is best known for a riveting convention speech in 2004, immediately after which he began running for president. He introduced two pieces of legislation in his Senate years: one to prevent nuclear proliferation and one to set up a website to track government spending, which he pledges to increase. He becomes leader of the free world in 14 days.

Michael Novak, a lifelong Democrat and Catholic intellectual, wrote in the latest edition of First Things about some of the lack of foresight that got our economy into a mess. Perhaps it is worth reflecting on what happens when good intentions result in awful things when executed by people who simply don’t know what they’re doing:

“The core of the crisis lay in the field of mortgages…. Beginning with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the political system helped create this mess. The aim was a noble one: to put as many poor people in homes as possible. And it had its early successes, with more than a million poor people coming to own their own homes for the first time. Indeed, in the 1990s (under the leadership of Franklin Raines and Leland Brendsel) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—mortgage lenders secured by government commitments—were given this as their leading purpose.

This was a goal I had shared since at least my 1971 book The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, and I applauded Fannie Mae for this achievement—despite the foresight of my colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute who warned of the eventual costs to the nation. Many in Congress cheered as well, but gradually they did more than cheer. They began to violate age-old banking cautions and practices: forbidding mortgage lenders to demand down payments or to do strict scrutiny of the ability of new borrowers to make regular mortgage payments. They also made mortgage lenders subject to lawsuits—by special-interest groups and pressure groups—if they insisted on what for generations had been thought to be due diligence.

These decisions attracted swarms of speculators to new homes to take advantage of these wholly new and unheard-of incentives. A great many mortgages were granted to well-off people who made use of the incredibly lenient terms to buy or build extra homes for resale. Many economic conservatives warned against this Ponzi scheme. Several attempts by Republican members of the Congress to introduce serious reforms were rebuffed by the friends of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in Congress, who insisted that the financing of these two enterprises were [sic] sound and safe: Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Christopher Dodd, prominently, with many others joining in.

Independent investigators at last inspected the Fannie Mae accounting books, and massive irregularities were discovered. Top leadership was obliged to resign. But fundamental regulatory changes were blocked. The loose, unregulated practices, defended in the name of noble intentions, were allowed to stand. In a crucial way, the mortgage crisis of 2008 was initiated by specific acts passed by Congress and fiercely defended against detailed warnings about the dreadful consequences to come. All those warnings were dismissed as politically motivated, but they turned out to be accurate.”

Senate Should Seat Roland Burris

Governor Blagojevich is still the Governor, and under Illinois law the Governor still retains the power to appoint a senate replacement to an outgoing senator. There is no stipulation for indictments or impeachments, the law says what it says. The Illinois State Legislature had weeks to revoke the Governor’s ability to make pardons and they chose not to. Therefore, it is the express will of the representatives of the people of Illinois that Governors maintain the right to make Senate appointments.

With the very well supported accusations of corruption on a massive scale from attempting to sell the senate seat to blackmailing money from a children’s hospital, he is undoubtedly not in the best position to make an appointment. I believe that it was unethical of him to appoint a Senator given the accusations of illegitimacy that surround him. However, that is an entirely different question. The question here is whether the US Senate should follow the laws that they wrote governing the selection of members of the senate as well as the decisions that they deferred to the respective states. Such deferred decisions include how a selection of a replacement senator is to be made. Senator Reid’s (D-NV) argument rests on the fact that the Secretary of State of Illinois has not yet certified the selection. The Illinois law does stipulate that the appointment must bear the Seal of the State, which only the Secretary of State can give. None the less, the Secretary of State’s role in the proceedings is to affirm that the Governor made the appointment, just as he would affirm that the people made the decision in a standard election. No part of his role is to countermand the decision of the Governor just as it would not be his role to reverse the decision of the people in an election. This is a question of the rule of law, and the law is clear. The Secretary of State and the United States Senate are obligated to uphold it and to do so immediately. If the people of Illinois lack confidence that Burris was the appropriate selection, they will have the opportunity to reverse the decision in the 2010 election.

The Credit Crunch that didn't happen

Looks like a massive contraction of credit isn’t what started this mess:

How about record inflation that gave us negative interest rates and worthless government bonds, meaning the housing market suddenly looked like the sexiest investment on the planet? Especially when you factor in laws like the Community Reinvestment Act, which actually mandates that banks give loans to high-risk mortgage seekers, and government charters for two cutely-named companies to control 70% of American mortgages without getting the same scrutiny as private banks, it is even more clear that “unrestrained free market capitalism” isn’t to blame for this. Neither is the more Robin Hood-esque “corporate greed.”

American House of Commons or House of Lords?

Does America’s government resemble a House of Commons or a House of Lords. At the surface, there are the oft cited examples of Senator Hillary Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, who was elected without prior experience and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, son of Joseph Kennedy and brother of John and Bobby Kennedy. But even in the Senate, the issue runs far deeper. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Udall of Colorado were both elected to the Senate in 2008 from the famed Udall family. The Udalls were leaders in the move westward and are sometimes even termed the ‘Kennedys of the West’. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon was just unseated by Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley. Senator Smith is also an Udall. Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire is the son of a former Governor of New Hampshire.

Lisa Murkowski, a Senator from Alaska, is the daughter of former Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski who appointed her to the senate. Elizabeth Dole, the recently unseated Senator from North Carolina is the wife of Bob Dole, former senator from Kansas. Mark Pryor of Arkansas was elected to the Senate as the son of Arkansas Governor and former Senator David Prior.

The House of Representatives does not fare much better. Rep. John Salazar is the brother of Senator Ken Salazar (now nominee for Interior). Jessie Jackson Jr. of Illinois is the son of Jessie Jackson and was recently heavily considered as a possible senate apointee. Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island is the son of Senator Ted Kennedy. Speaker Pelosi is the daughter of a former Baltimore mayor and 5 term Congressman. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard’s father was a congressman from the same district. Rep. Sander Levin is the brother of Senator Carl Levin. The list goes on and on.

As if this pehnomenon wouldn’t be ugly enough as a case of nepotism in elected office, it extends far beyond that. Minority Whip Roy Blunt found a lobying job for his son Andrew and wife at Altria. Colin Powell’s son Michael Powell was appointed Chairman of the FCC. Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Her husband was made  Chief Counsel for OMB. Eugene Scalia, son of Justice Scalia, was made chief counsel to the Department of Labor. Strom Thurmond Jr., Son of famed racist Senator Thurmond, is the US Attorney for South Carolina. It’s possible to go on an on. With no-bid contracts, shady employments, and questionable appointments.

NOTE: I don’t mean to say that none of the above people are qualified to hold the jobs that they do. Many of them are. But I think that we should recognize that Politics is very much a family business for many politicians and that isn’t a good thing. For every person who gets a job from nepotism and is qualified, there are probably several who are not.

Back To Basics

With the new Congress being sworn in today, Eve Fairbanks over at The New Republican previews why the GOP caucus is likely to swing even farther to the right:

You would not expect House conservatives, dwindled in numbers and without even the consoling possibility of filibusters, to be relishing the prospect of 2009. But purist right-wingers in the House are oddly happy these days. That’s because they, like many outcast peoples, have discovered in their folklore their own Little Bighorn, a tale of resistance that gives them pride and hope.

If House Republicans push back on the proposed stimulus plan – not objecting to it completely, but acting as the party that says “you can’t have everything, here’s what’s wasteful” – they can score a great deal politically. This is, afterall, what we’ve been constantly hearing: the GOP has to go back to its roots.

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We discussed the violence in the Gaza strip, the ongoing Senate dramas, Bill Richardson, Tim Kaine, and counted down the top 20 political moments of 2008!

Lock-Step On Israel

Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com:

Is there any other significant issue in American political life, besides Israel, where (a) citizens split almost evenly in their views, yet (b) the leaders of both parties adopt identical lockstep positions which leave half of the citizenry with no real voice?  More notably still, is there any other position, besides Israel, where (a) a party’s voters overwhelmingly embrace one position (Israel should not have attacked Gaza) but (b) that party’s leadership unanimously embraces the exact opposite position (Israel was absolutely right to attack Gaza and the U.S. must support Israel unequivocally)? Does that happen with any other issue?

Do Independents Swing Republican?

Here’s a popular piece of political conventional wisdom: Independents swing Republican. But is it actually true? Let’s go through the reasons.

Reason 1: Democratic voter identification has remained significantly higher than Republican identification over the last 50 years and yet Republican candidates have won six of the last ten Presidential elections. In order for that to be true, voters without a fixed political affiliation must have voted with the Republicans in at least six of the last ten elections.

This argument is false at the most basic levels. A lot of the explaination for high Democratic ID comes from the south. Older Southerners who are historically Democrats (as were their parents) but feel that the party has abandoned their conservative views often claim to identify with Democrats and vote for Republicans. For example, Louisiana is 40% Democratic and 32% Republican, Oklahoma is 37% Republican and 39% Democratic, and North Carolina is 35% Republican and 37% Democratic.  So, it would seem logical that Democrats would have the electoral edge in all 3 of those states. Well, that’s not quite true because the Democrats lost 2 of them and narrowly won the 3rd. 

Exit polls showed that only 75% of Louisiana Democrats voted for Obama while 96% of Louisiana Republicans voted for McCain. They’re holdover Democrats, and they vote like it. But one state isn’t enough to prove the point. In Oklahoma which has a 2% Democratic edge in Voter ID only 67% of Democrats voted for Obama while 95% of Republicans voted for McCain. Even in North Carolina where Obama won he carried 90% of the Democratic vote to McCain’s 95% of Republicans. And that is a vast improvement for North Carolina Democrats over that number in the 2004 election. It gets complicated after this point, but if we were to measure nationally the number of people who say they are Democrats and then vote that way against the number of people who say they are Republican and then vote that way (let’s call that Actual-Party ID), it seems likely that Republican Actual-Party ID would be higher than Democratic Actual-Party ID.

Reason 2: This is a much more academic explanation for why some Political Scientists believe this to be an actual phenomenon. Because it involves the actual use of statistics and facts, it is a less common argument so I tackled it second rather than first. These political scientist point out that Democrats have lost the independent vote in 8 of the last 13 Presidential elections. This explanation merely pretends to be more sound. Including the last 13 elections takes us all the way back to 1960! If you are trying to figure out how 1960’s voters would have decided on a group of candidates in a hypothetical and purely academic pursuit then this information might be useful. However, the political landscape has changed dramatically since then. To pretend that American politics is at all similar to politics before the Reagan Revolution that brought economic libertarianism to prominence in the Republican Party is absurd. So, if we look at how Independents have decided after the Reagan revolution we get a more accurate picture of how independents might vote in future elections. In the last 20 years of Presidential Elections, Independents have voted Democratic four of six times. Starkly opposed to a deficit, it’s a whopping 67% of the time!

Trust fund mom for Senate?!

Boy, if Caroline Kennedy is qualified to be vice president because of her name, her ability to part-time fundraise for public schools, and her ability to see the Russian Tea Room from her house, I have got quite the vice presidential candidate for you…

Kennedy for U.S. Senate?!

With HRC moving to serve as SOS in the Obama Administration, Gov. Paterson will have the opportunity to appoint a person to represent New York until the next federal election in 2010. Any choice he makes should surely be a shoe in for the special election – in the heavily democratic New York, republican opposition is generally weak. Much speculation has been swirling in recent weeks about the possibility of Caroline Kennedy replacing Hilary as the U.S. Senator from New York.

For the Obama Administration, this would be a gift from above: a liberal senator who endorsed Obama in the election. I think Caroline could be a great pick. She has largely been outside of the political scene down in Washington since this year, she has lead and been a player in the non-profit sector, and is also an author and a lawyer. Granted, she needs to clarify some of her views, and granted I do have reservations about some of the ones she has voiced (such as her support for the auto bailout), but I think she would be a fine Senator.

Caroline has received support from many prominent New Yorkers, and she has been gaining traction on the national stage. Now we just wait for Gov. Paterson….

If you support Caroline’s bid for U.S. Senate, you can sign a petition to Gov. Paterson here.

Comments – Jump In!

Everyday, great discussions happen here at the Weekly Filibuster blog. Right now, for example, some of the topics include:

• Whether Blago senate apointee Ronald Burris should/will ever make it to the Senate.
• The conflict in the Gaza strip.
• Whether we do great things as a nation, or individually.

We’re going to continue these, and other great conversations throughout the year. Make sure to get in on the discussion by posting a comment on any blog post. It’s easy, allows you to voice your opinion, and will make reading this blog all the more fun!

USA: Forged in Freedom

We put a man on the moon; I’ll chalk that one up for the Feds. Saving Europe? Please. We didn’t enter the war until we were directly hit, at which point doing anything less would have been cowardly. The Marshall Plan helped make inefficient bureaucratic welfare states throughout Europe possible by breaking prosperity away from economic sanity. We ended racism in our legal systems, sure, but never forget that it was legal systems that made institutional racism possible. We used Social Security to force every American, no matter how well-off or far-sighted, to buy into socialized pensions that will either bankrupt themselves in a few decades or face privatization (not to mention that our seniors were NOT living in abject poverty before Social Security and the market has grown by a third in the past forty years! Show me any Social Security account with that kind of growth, even after factoring in recession!). We faced down Stalin? Where? We faced down Khrushchev by taking American missiles out of Turkey quietly – hoorah humility. We proved to the world democracy and free markets could work by being rich and free without central control of our lives and money.

America is doing more research than any other nation on the planet to research cures for everything from cancer to HIV/AIDS to genetic diseases to heart disease. Our private system of health research and insurance means that people can choose to pay for more experimental treatments than they are elsewhere. In the UK, every treatment must be certified by a central government body. One of the criteria they use for certification is cost effectiveness. If a treatment does not extend average life expectancies by a certain amount per pound spent, it is not approved. A recent kidney treatment extended average life spans by six months in patients; unfortunately, the government cost ratios mandated at least a year of improvement before the drug could be used. In America, you are free to make your own choices about the kind of treatment you need with your doctor. Unfortunately, new HHS Secretary Daschle’s plan could change that.

Universal health insurance will not come without dramatic new government control of the health care system. 130,000 pages of Medicare regulations already set the standards for what is cost-appropriate. Believe me, I’ve purchased more than one wheelchair and other pieces of medically necessary equipment through private insurance and still had to have my needs meet state standards. As long as the government is footing the bill for health care, it and not competition, my freedom to pick insurers, and my doctors will have the power to ultimately say what I can consider. If we want to truly help the poor, let’s limit tort and liability so that doctors can take patients as Good Samaritans and make house visits without fearing the lawyer. Let’s give more tax deductions for research of new drugs and cut back on restrictions that prevent people from freely choosing alternative and experimental treatments. Let’s shrink down Medicare and Medicaid so that more private insurers can be innovative with their coverage plans.

Finally, as for railroads, the labor standards sucked and were abusive, fine. In the end, though, it is perhaps more of a testament to the dedication of Chinese immigrants that the system came out as well as it did, just as Southern agriculture is a credit to the slaves who built it from nothing. In so much as the overlords and task masters get credit, you are right, it is wrong because so many were forced to work without contracts they freely entered. Perhaps, though, the end result is a source of pride for the people whose ancestors still worked through it all and made something impressive. But then, I’m just another white guy from the middle class who cannot really speak of such things.

NYT Annual Quiz

If you’re feeling up to it, Ben Schott provides “one hundred and eighteen questions, and a fiendish election table, on the incidents, accidents, hints and allegations that defined 2008.”

Netanyahu makes the case

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Israeli Likud Party, has released this video on his English campaign website explaining the conflict.  His campaign website, seemingly directly modeled after President-Elect Obama’s campaign website, is using social networking websites Obama-style to organize supporters ahead of the February 10 Elections, where Likud holds a small lead in the polls.  Israel needs Netanyahu back at the helm.

Despite the fact that Netanyahu does not belong to Prime Minister Olmert’s Kadima party (founded by former PM Sharon a few years ago), Olmert has sent Netanyahu and Kadima Leader Tzipi Livni out to do joint statements, and asked Netanyahu to do foreign interviews–probably because he is such a well known figure.

 

Watch Netanyahu explain what’s going on, and why Israel is doing what it is doing.

Conflict on YouTube

Bloomberg has a story this morning about how Israel is using Bloomberg to make their case (in proving how justified they are) for their strikes against Hamas in Gaza.  Here’s one of the videos (the text from the YouTube page explaining the video follows):

 

 

Video of Israel admitting a Gazan child for treatment at an Israeli hospital via the Erez crossing. Hamas has used the people of Gaza as human shields—Israel, in contrast, values human life and is willing to open its borders to provide for medical treatment.

Despite the ongoing rocket fire, 12 Palestinians from Gaza were allowed in Israel from Gaza on 31 Dec. 2008. This child, who was not hurt as part of operation “Cast Lead,” will join hundreds of other Gazans hospitalized in Israel.

Happy New Year

Wishing you a Happy New Year from the Filibuster crew.  Thank you for sticking by us throughout the year.

Be sure to tune in to our first show of 2009 this Sunday at 10 to catch the top 20 moments of 2008!

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

Continuing war. Economic collapse. Global threats. Dilution of values. Natural disasters leading to poverty and suffering.

It can all get pretty heavy. Earlier this year, Bill Maher remorsed about the country’s seeming lack of ability to do “great things”. I agreed wholeheartedly. Then we elected Barack Obama.

It’s a new year – a new possibility. The first one hundred days of a presidency are usually the most productive, and I’m excited to see what is going to get accomplished. It’s just going to be nice to finally have a President that asks us to sacrifice something – to be better as a collective whole. Because, if we learned anything in 2008, it was that we’re all in this together.

Obama Protesters in Hawaii

(photo from AP/Politico)

They might want to consider going to D.C. to lobby people who actually have power over the current situation.

From Politico:

Shortly after 9:30 this morning as Obama headed to his high school alma mater to play basketball, the small group of demonstrators near his vacation home waved signs that said, “No U.S. support for Israel” and “Gazans need food, medicine, not war.”

But Obama was sitting in the rear on the passenger side of his black sport utility vehicle, and was not visible to the protesters, according to a pool report, which said the president-elect sipped from a bottle of water and looked straight ahead as his vehicle passed the demonstrators.

History of the Conflict

Look, I’m not gonna lie.  I can’t stand Glenn Beck–he’s seriously misguided.  But Mr. Beck is right when it comes to Israel.  

Here’s “The History of The Middle East”

Greatest Political Press Conference Ever

Feel free to castigate the appointor but don’t lynch the appointor.

- Gov. Rod Blagojevich, At Press Conference On His Senate Appointment of Roland Burris

This guy is shameless.

Blago Makes Senate Pick

Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will announce at 3pm today that he’s chosen former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris as his choice to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-Elect Barack Obama. There have already been reports that Harry Reid and top Senate Democrats are going to block the appointment, wanting to avoid anything that even looks tainted (anybody that has been appointed by Gov. Blagojevich). A couple of thoughts:

• Burris is certainly qualified for the position. Formerly the State Comptroller and Attorney General. The guy started running for the seat when Ronald Reagan was President.
• If Senate Democrats block Burris, it could create some serious problems with African-American voters in Illinois, a huge number of Democrats in the state, who were looking for an African-American to fill Obama’s seat.
• Why is Burris tainted as well? So what if he’s Blagojevich’s appointee. He’s highly qualified and would be the fourth African-American senator. Doesn’t blocking him create an unnecessary headache for Illinois and Senate Democrats? You’re down one more vote in the Senate (most likely during the entirety of Obama’s first 100 days), you further throw the Illinois Democratic Party into further chaos, and you reject an otherwise fine appointee.

Either way, corks are being popped at the Illinois GOP headquarters.

GOP's Success In Minority Outreach Continues

The Chip Saltsman debacle continues. Too bad Jesse Helms isn’t with us anymore, he might have done a less offensive job conducting minority outreach for the GOP.

Today on MSNBC, anchorwoman Tamron Hall talked with Kate Obenshain, vice president of Young America’s Foundation. Obenshain defended the song, calling it “a parody.”

HALL: Well let me tell you this — if someone referred to me as “Tamron Hall the Magic Negro Anchor Lady,” I would never see it as anything funny or amusing.

HALL: You’re not going to win a lot of people over calling them ‘Magic Negros.’”

House Dems in Trouble? Already?

According to the Politico, the Democrats will be facing a tough election coming in 2010.

“We have a daunting challenge ahead in the 2010 midterm elections,” Democratic House campaign chief Chris Van Hollen says in a year-end Web video thanking supporters. “Many of our new members are from conservative areas with long histories of Republican representation. We are looking at potentially 70 — 70 — threatened Democrats who will need our support.”

70 seats is nothing to sneeze at. Democrats picked up about four dozen seats in the last two elections giving them a healthy majority in the House. History is not on their side. Usually the party in power loses seats during a midterm election – as 2010 will be – so the Democrats will have to be careful how they govern in the next two years if they want to hold on to their mega-majority. I hope we will not have a repeat of 1994 come 2010.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan handicapping guide, places 48 Democrats in prospectively competitive races. And Democrats are expected to have targets of their own in 2010, with Cook placing 34 Republicans on its watch list.

Even given this preliminary report, the Democrats are looking at a 14 seat deficit.

Georgia v. South Carolina

Matt Cavedon has, in my view fairly, criticized my previous post Massachusetts v. South Carolina for not taking history properly into account. Although I controlled for a range of factors, history was not one of them and perhaps my argument would be more compelling if I attempted to come to a more well controlled comparison. I would then like to take up Matt’s suggestion that Georgia and South Carolina would be a more apt comparison. Although not nearly as liberal as Massachusetts by any streach of the imagination, Georgia has had some state-wide liberal economic policies over recent decades.

I’ll use the same criteria as I did in my post on Massachusetts and South Carolina.

Georgia’s high school graduation rate of 56.3% seems terrible (and indeed, it is) but not in comparison to South Carolina’s 46.2% graduation rate. Georgia’s #18 Emory University, #35 Georgia Institute of Technology, and #58 University of Georgia are more highly ranked by US News & World Report than South Carolina’s #61 Clemson and #108 University of South Carolina. Not as drastic as the difference between Massachusetts and South Carolina but still significant.

15 Fortune 500 companies reside in Georgia including Home Depot, UPS, Coke, Delta Airlines, Sun Trust Bank, AFLAC, and others while South Carolina has #500 Scana. The State of Georgia performs significantly better in median household income at $49,745 compared to South Carolina which stands at $47,680. Georgia’s unemployment rate of 7.5% compares favorably with South Carolina’s 8.4%. 14.8% of Georgians live below the poverty line compared with 15.7% of South Carolinians. 

South Carolina has the highest number per capita of violent crimes and aggravated assault and a murder rate of 70.5 per 1 million citizens compared with Georgia’s 68.7 per 1 million.

Certainly the differences are far less dramatic than in the comparison between Massachusetts and South Carolina. However, the differences in economic policy between Massachusetts and South Carolina were similarly more dramatic. The fact remains that I did not change any of the categories and I used every statistic generally used to analyze the effectiveness of a government and yet South Carolina failed to out-perform Georgia in even a single category.

Let the debate over alternate causality begin.

Ethics Committee Seat A Hot Potato

Kagro X, over at the under-visited Congress Matters, details the mad dash among House Members to either: remove themselves from the House Ethics Committee, or not be tasked with filling a seat on the House Ethics committee.

It’s not exactly breaking news that Members hate to be asked to serve on the committee … Go too hard on a colleague’s conduct and you risk their anger and thus your effectiveness. Go too easy, and you risk the public’s trust and thus your job.

Add to that the fact that the committee will continue its investigation of House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Charlie Rangel when the 111th congress convenes. The (likely) new chair will be Massachusettes Rep. William Delahunt, the only Democrat on the 110th Congress’ Ethics Committee who can’t cite term limits as a reason for leaving.

If Delahunt is named chair, Pelosi must find other Democrats she can strong-arm into serving on the panel, which will continue to review any new allegations against Rangel, or the existing charges if the current committee does not finish its work and issue an initial report on its findings. Any choice Pelosi makes will be analyzed for any Rangel implications. If the member is African-American, that could be viewed as an attempt to help Rangel, even if Pelosi tries to sell it as a way to fill Tubbs Jones’ old post with another African American.

Russian Professor Predicts US Demise

Russian professor Igor Panarin predicts this is what the US will look like after falling apart in 2010. His prediction has been pushed forward by the Kremlin, and they’ve got him giving a couple interviews daily.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces — with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

Massachusetts vs. Delaware

Comparing the demographics of states only tells a small part of the story when it comes to whether economic conservatism or economic liberalism is a more effective philosophy. After all, the federal government controls the vast majority of economics in America, making performance levels between states only somewhat dependent on their own economic policies.

History is also a major factor when it comes to success rates. Up until 40 years ago, that’s one generation, the 29% of South Carolinians who are black had virtually no economic opportunity whatsoever. Add that to an economy inclined towards agriculture due to natural resources and it is no great surprise that Massachusetts, a major seaport with a wealth of industry built at the same time that South Carolina was being burnt to the ground by the Feds, outperforms Dixie.

Delaware, a state with a similar historical background and resource pool (albeit smaller) as Massachusetts provides a far better comparison. Delaware has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the country, there is no sales tax, and the personal income tax ranges from 2.2% to 5.95%. There is no statewide property tax.

Massachusetts, by comparison, has a 5.3% personal income tax, a 5% sales tax, and a 12% tax on the sale of capital.

Delaware has a $119 million surplus in its budget. Massachusetts has a $1.2 billion deficit. The average Delawarean makes $34,199 every year compared to $42,102 every year for the average resident of Massachusetts. It costs between $800 and $12,000 more to live in Massachusetts every year for the average person. An astonishing 50% of publicly traded companies and 60% of Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Delaware. Delaware spends over 10% less per public school pupil than Massachusetts, but has only a 2% lower graduation rate from high school. Massachusetts has more high-powered colleges, mine included, but the University of Delaware, servicing far fewer in-state students, has been rated 71st best school in America by US News and 20th best public college value by Kiplinger’s.

Massachusetts does appear to do better in crime rates, but the entire state of Delaware is essentially a metropolitan area. No surprise there.

Comparing Massachusetts to South Carolina is one thing, but comparing conservative and liberal economic policy yields dramatically different results.

Massachusetts v. South Carolina

Which style of governance is more effective? Economic liberalism or economic conservatism? The only way to objectively say is to compare cases studies in each form over a period of not just decades but over a century. Massachusetts is one of the most consistently liberal (not necessarily Democratic) states in the Union. After all, even the Republicans there are liberal: a Republican Governor instituted statewide universal health-care. Similarly there are few states more consistently conservative (not necessarily Republican) than South Carolina. It is a fair comparison because both states have been members of the Union for within months of the same amount of time and they have been of similar population for much of their history.

One of the key measurements of the effectiveness of government in a state is the quality of its education system because that determines whether or not that state will be a leader two or three decades down the road. The high-school drop-out rate in South Carolina is 53.8% compared to Massachusetts’ 11.7%. Massachusetts is home to #1 Harvard University, #4 MIT, #28 Tufts, #31 Brandeis, and #34 Boston College, all higher than South Carolina’s #61 Clemson and #108 University of South Carolina (all according to US News & World Report). So, Massachusetts is a mecca of education and South Carolina, well… isn’t. But there are other things that matter.

Like economic opportunity. 14 of the Fortune 500 call Massachusetts their home compared with exactly 1 headquartered in South Carolina (Scana…yeah, I’ve heard of them btw. they’re #500). The Median household income in Massachusetts is $62,365 to South Carolina’s $43,329. Their low economic production is similarly reflected by their 8.4% unemployment which is considerably higher than Massachusetts’ 5.9%. A stunning 15.7% of South Carolinians live below the poverty line while 9.2% live below it in Massachusetts which is comparably low. Massachusetts’ poor are also protected by a much larger social safety net. Which clearly, by the way, has not slowed down the Massachusetts economy. 

But conservatives will keep us safe! Not really. South Carolina is #1 in the nation in violent crimes and aggravated assaults per capita and #7 in Murders per capita at .705 per 1 million citizens. Massachusetts is #45 in the nation with a murder rate so low that it was declared statistically insignificant. 

QED.

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Congress should remove liability-shield

In 1998 Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, now the Governor of Pennsylvania, attempted to sue the firearms industry. By 2005, 20 cities had filed suit. The Republican congress then stepped in to end the lawsuits, passing an unprecedented liability-shield to protect gun-makers from lawsuits by individuals or cities for either repayment of actual damages or punitive damages. 

There are several reasons why suing gun-makers makes sense. Every company is responsible for how their products are used when the intent of the product is to cause damage. Yet, when it comes to gun manufacturers, the standard is different. I’m not talking about hunting rifles. The clear purpose of a hunting rifle or shotgun sold to the general public is for hunting. No one is disputing that and clearly a gun manufacturer should not be held to account for any misdeeds carried out with such weapons. However, when gun companies produce assault rifles with flash suppressors and silencers, the purpose of the weapon is clear. You would not go hunting with a military rifle. Uzzies aren’t good for killing squirrel and AR-15s aren’t good for bird-hunting. The only reason to fire one of these guns is to kill another person. When a company callously produces and profits from a product whose only possible application is to kill another person, cities and individuals should have the right to hold them legally accountable. In this scenario, they are enabling murderers; they are accomplices.

Families have a legal right to demand punitive damages and cities have the right to demand repayment for the excess medical bills and costs of law enforcement foisted on the taxpayer by gun-makers’ irresponsible proliferation of military-grade weapons.

How Iceland Collapsed

A fascinating post-mortem look at Iceland’s economy.

Khalid Aziz, chairman of the hospice trust, says he didn’t think twice back in 2005 when Icelanders bought the local bank. “With the globalization of markets,” he says, “everybody owns everything these days, don’t they?”

I'll Admit, Conservatives Love America More

Joel Stein, Los Angeles Times:

I don’t love America. That’s what conservatives are always telling liberals like me. Their love, they insist, is truer, deeper and more complete. Then liberals, like all people who are accused of not loving something, stammer, get defensive and try to have sex with America even though America will then accuse us of wanting it for its body and not its soul. When America gets like that, there’s no winning.

But I’ve come to believe conservatives are right. They do love America more. Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn’t love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I’m more in “like” with my country.

I still think conservatives love America for the same tribalistic reasons people love whatever groups they belong to. These are the people who are sure Christianity is the only right religion, that America is the best country, that the Republicans have the only good candidates, that gays have cooties.

I wish I felt such certainty. Sure, it makes life less interesting and nuanced, and absolute conviction can lead to dangerous extremism, but I suspect it makes people happier. I’ll never experience the joy of Hannity-level patriotism. I’m the type who always wonders if some other idea or place or system is better and I’m missing out. And, as I figured out shortly after meeting my wife, that is no way to love.

Chip Saltsman's RNC Chair Campaign Gets Off To A Great Start

Chip Saltsman kicks off his campaign for RNC chair smoothly:

RNC candidate Chip Saltsman’s Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” first played on Rush Limbaugh’s popular radio show.

Liberals everywhere should be praying that this idiot gets the RNC chairmanship. Chip has clearly shown he can’t deftly handle being chairman of the party opposite Barack Obama. American’s like Barack Obama – a lot – and being a bigot won’t help Chip’s party win votes they don’t already have. Chip has loads of political experience too – you know, working for the third place Republican candidate who thinks the world is six thousand years old. That’s the kind of innovative thinking that’s going to bring the Republican Party back from the political graveyard.

But to be fair, let’s post Chip’s defense:

Saltsman said he meant nothing untoward by forwarding what amounts to a joke more at Ehrenstein’s expense than at Obama’s.

“Paul Shanklin is a long-time friend, and I think that RNC members have the good humor and good sense to recognize that his songs for the Rush Limbaugh show are light-hearted political parodies,” Saltsman said.

Because “Barack the Magic Negro” sounds rather “lighthearted”? Let’s continue to ponder why the GOP’s share of the black vote is almost non-existent.

Chip does deserve some credit. At least he’s managed not to insult Hispanic voters, who are only going to continue to grow as a critical swing voting block – a block the Republican Party still has a chance in hell at winning over.

The CD, called “We Hate the USA,” lampoons liberals with such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”

Oh, shit.

The War On Terror's Little Blue Pill

The Washington Post:

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.

Seems like the surge is working.

RE: Generous Christians are Poor (EXCELLENT) Christians

When the government started providing everything from housing to pensions to health care to higher education and “Christians” stopped going to church is when charity started to die. When Washington says it will take care of everything and signs checks for $700 billion and taxes a third of your income is when people fail to step up. Start asking people to take responsibility for themselves, their families, and one another and perhaps things will start moving closer to home.

Generous Christians Are Poor Christians

As the Pope warns in his annual Christmas message that the world is headed toward ruin if selfishness prevails over solidarity during hard economic times…

Christianity Today Reports:

But this may actually be the best time for an emerging study that delivers the bad news. Over the next few months or years, as our economy travels down a long road of recovery, our neighbors may need much more assistance than we’ve grown accustomed to providing. And like skyrocketing home prices, the lack of generosity among American Christians is a trend that cannot continue without doing serious harm.

The median annual giving for an American Christian is actually $200, just over half a percent of after-tax income. About 5 percent of American Christians provide 60 percent of the money churches and religious groups use to operate. (It’s these people who skew the average.) “A small group of truly generous Christian givers,” say Passing the Plate’s authors, “are essentially ‘covering’ for the vast majority of Christians who give nothing or quite little.” In addition, America’s biggest givers—as a percentage of their income—are its lowest income earners.

In fact, in absolute terms, the poorest Christians give away more dollars than all but the wealthiest Christians. We see the pattern in recent history as well: When Americans earned less money following the Great Depression, they gave more. When income went up, they began to give less of it away.

Re: Equality through Capitalist Mobility

This country is not as socially mobile as we like to believe. In a study released by the Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics in 2003, the argument of social mobility was delt a serious blow.

If your parents are in the top quartile of earnings but your scores on standardized tests are in the bottom quartile you have a 30% chance of finishing a 4 year college which is higher than if your score was in the top quartile buy your parents’ earnings were in the bottom quartile (29%).

The logical conclusion from that is that, when considering who will graduate from college, you parents’ wealth is more important than your intelligence. This is disturbing. There are a lot of problems wrapped up in this but one of the largest ones is the method through which schools are financed. Schools are financed by local government and thus poor areas will deliver under-performing schools and rich areas will develop good schools. If all local tax revenue allocated for education spending was routed through the State who could determine which schools needed which amount of money, our inner-city and rural children would begin to receve an even shot.

However, the study was done based upon test performance. These are kids who, despite being sent to under-performing schools, rose above and achieved in the top quartile of all American students! These are extraordinary students. And yet, they have trouble affording college. In response to this we need to consider two actions. First, we should make attendance at state universities tax deductable (no tax deductions for $40,000 a year + schools). And second, we need to work to move the base cost of state universities down through subsidies because they have moved away from the idea of post-secondary education that was affordable to all Americans, no matter who their parents are.

My Person Of The Month

Tim DeChristopher, 27, University of Utah Economics Student

Salt Lake Tribune:

He didn’t pour sugar into a bulldozer’s gas tank. He didn’t spike a tree or set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder’s paddle, a University of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah national parks won’t be opened to drilling anytime soon.

DeChristopher On Democracy Now!:

I started off, actually, at a final exam at the university and went straight from there down to the BLM office. And I saw some protesters walking back and forth outside, and I knew that I wanted to do more than that and that this kind of injustice demanded a higher level of disruption. And so, I just decided that I wanted to go inside and cause a bigger disruption.

And from there, I found it really easy to get inside and become a bidder, and went inside and was in the auction room. And once I was in there, I realized that any kind of speech or disruption or something like that wasn’t going to be very effective, but I saw pretty quickly that I could have a pretty major impact on the way this worked. And it just took me a little bit of time to build up the courage to do that, knowing what the consequences would be. And so, I started bidding and started driving up the prices for some of the oil companies. And throughout that time, I knew that I could be doing more and could really set aside some acres to really be protected. And so, then I started winning bids and disrupting it as clearly as I could.

The back-story on the land sale:

Well, basically, the Bush administration was trying to rush through this auction as quickly as possible to get it done before Obama took office, because they knew that it wouldn’t be acceptable under any other administration other than Bush and Cheney. And so, they just circled vast swaths of southern Utah. Their initial announcement, they included pieces of property that had houses on them in Moab and included property that they didn’t even have rights to drill in or they didn’t have rights to sell off and included a lot of areas around national parks. And so, they rushed through the process and didn’t have time to do adequate environmental impact statements, didn’t have time to take an adequate amount of public comment or even input from other federal agencies. And there was a big battle with the National Park Service, because they were upset over a lot of areas that were included in there. But luckily, they also didn’t have time to make sure that all the bidders were bonded, which is how I got in so easily.

An act of civil disobedience that is to be applauded.

The Bush Administration however, hasn’t stopped with selling off national park land to oil compaines. The head of the EPA, Stephen Johnson, recently wrote a memo declaring “that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant to be regulated when approving power plants.” Sen. Boxer (D-CA) has (correctly) called the memo “blatantly illegal” in a letter to AG Mukasey.

Is anything sacred?

Merry Christmas

From all of the Filibuster crew, we wish each of you a Merry Christmas!

Regular blogging continues Friday, and we’re [as always] live this Sunday.

Politics & Poetry: Caroline Edition

Hell,

I’d be fine with Caroline

Fillin’ Hillary’s

Soon to be

Secretary of State seat

But whatever Obama wills

He’d better do it toot sweet

- Klytus, Salon.Com

Obama Holiday Address

Forgiving George

Because, really, it’s time we start to move on.

U.S. Is Outlier in Gini Index

The Gini index is one of the most common measurements of income inequality. It measures income inequality on a scale of 0 (everyone has the exact same amount of money) to 1 (one person has all of the nation’s wealth) using the Lorenz curve. There is an interesting trend that has been shown for decades in the Gini index. Industrialized nations (France: .327, Denmark: .247, United Kingdom: .36) have low values while non-Industrialized states (Bolivia: .601, Mexico: .461, Turkey: .436) have very high amounts of inequality. The theory being that with increases in GDP, the wealth makes its way around to the general population.

This seems fairly consistent across every nation with one, obvious exception. The United States (.408) is comparable to China (.469) in income inequality.

Some of the difference is in income tax levels. However, much of the difference is accounted for by two factors. First, many European countries tax capital gains at the same rate as normal income. The United States does not. The US tax rate for regular income (in the top bracket) is 35% while capital gains are taxed at only 15%. The wealthiest 1% make large portions of their income in stock options and other investments taxed under the considerably lower rate. 

Second, other countries have a much higher rates of unionization than the United States. For example, in 1960, when the US had much lower income inequality, 30% of American workers were union members compared with 32% of Canadians. Today, American union membership is down to 13% while Canada’s has remained constant. 

All statistics are from the CIA or US Census Bureau.

RE: Pardon Me, Mr. President

We need to keep the power of the pardon as it is currently prescribed in the U.S. Constitution. With President Bush approaching the 200 person mark, the issue of pardoning has been raised once again. Yes, the power for the President to pardon can be abused. Yes, there has been some skeptisim regarding the use of this power. Of course there would be, too. When one man overrules the federal sentence of a convicted criminal, it raises some eyebrows (Scooter Libby, anyone?). The fact is that the pardon should stay as reads. Burack’s proposal to limit this power is simply preposterous and completely undermines the intention of the pardon in the first place.

The power to pardon is most powerful as a healing tool. It was used to heal a divided nation after the civil war -  confederates were pardoned by then President Johnson as a means to move forward. Ford’s pardon of Nixon to move the country beyond Watergate and George Washington’s pardon of those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion were all times where the pardon was utilized strategically and proved to be neccessary. At critical points in history, the pardon helped to rebuild and heal a nation. Sometimes, the President must exert his authority to lead the country in a new direction and if that means commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence, so be it.

The pardon also serves as a check to the judicial system. Sometimes there are significant individuals who the President believes have made radical changes in their behavior (for the better) and are worthy of acknowledging and highlighting this success; sometimes the President may utilize his power to pardon if there are injustices within the federal judicial system. In reality, the power to pardon is one that it utilized with utmost responsibility – very few people actually make it to the point where they are pardoned, and usually those who are are worthy of it. Pardons can often be against the will of the general public – did anyone really think Richard Nixon should have been pardoned coming off the heels of Watergate? Most people didn’t, and some argue that Ford’s move cost him the following election. That is exactly why most pardons are traditionally at the end of a President’s term – because they can often be unpopular. But then again, what’s popular isn’t always right. We must also keep in mind that if a President makes a controversial or pardon that was of dubious merit they risk their legacy and their integrity, which in it of itself is a deterrent for corrupt decisions.

We need to preserve the power to pardon and embrace a tool that has recieved undue critisim.

Evolution In The Muslim World

Salman Hameed in Science via Sullivan:

…although the last couple of decades have seen an increasing confrontation over the teaching of evolution in the United States, the next major battle over evolution is likely to take place in the Muslim world (i.e., predominantly Islamic countries, as well as in countries where there are large Muslim populations). Relatively poor education standards, in combination with frequent misinformation about evolutionary ideas, make the Muslim world a fertile ground for rejection of the theory. In addition, there already exists a growing and highly influential Islamic creationist movement (1). Biological evolution is still a relatively new concept for a majority of Muslims, and a serious debate over its religious compatibility has not yet taken place. It is likely that public opinion on this issue will be shaped in the next decade or so because of rising education levels in the Muslim world and the increasing importance of biological sciences.

That makes the momentary front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2012, if you’re to believe the CNN poll, right in line with the Muslim world. That’d be Huckabee, by the way. Palin, another evolution-denier, is the runner up.

Pardon Me, Mr. President

Earlier today, President Bush pardoned nineteen individuals and commuted one sentence. Reed Raymond Prior was convicted for the possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute – Charles Winter for violating the Neutrality Act by helping the Jewish resistance in the Middle East in the 1940’s. The individuals with sentences either pardoned or commuted have committed a wide range acts. Since in office, George W. Bush has pardoned 191 people, and has commuted nine sentences (Scooter Libby’s among them). This may sound like an awful lot, but it’s really not – at least compared to our two prior presidents. Reagan granted clemency 409 times,  Clinton 459.

Shouldn’t we trust the judgment of each President to only pardon in deserving cases?

You might think so – but not even expected public outrage stopped President Clinton from pardoning Mark Rich – the corrupt financier whose ex-wife had donated to President Clinton’s library. Clinton didn’t have to worry about either public or political pressure, because the pardon was signed on his last day in office. Presidents have the power to pardon anyone they want  – which can include siblings (Rodger, anyone?) and political allies. While the Justice Department reviews all pardon applications, their recommendations are non-binding.

All of this leads us to the larger question: should a President be able to pardon anyone – for any reason?

Should Ford have showed mercy on Nixon – should he have ’spared’ the country?

Should Clinton have been able to pardon his brother and a laundry list of individuals on his last day of office?

My answer is conflicted – maybe yours isn’t. However, I propose the following:

1. A President loose the ability to pardon/commute exactly two months before his/her presidency ends. This would ensure there would be some pressure against pardoning undeserving individuals, but would not conflict with the election of the next President.

2. A President only have the ability to pardon/commute individuals who are approved by the Justice Department.

3. A President not have the ability to pardon/commute family members.

4. A President will hand out “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards to those pardoned/commuted. Just for kicks.

Pies & Rick Davis

This Monday we’ll be talking with former McCain campaign manager Rick Davis for our December 18th show, and we want you to get involved by submitting a question for Rick.
Send your questions to: askrick@weeklyfilibuster.com
Ask about anything you’d like.
Just be sure to include your first name and home state.

Also,

Gene Amondson has extended an offer for christian Weekly Filibuster listeners. Christians should write to him here for a free copy of his excellent pie book, “Gene Amondson’s Mt. Rainier Pies Cookbook”.

Also, be sure to check out Gene’s website.

Miss Sunday's Show?

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!

We talked about the notorious Illinois Governor, talked with the RNC’s eCampaign Director, and caught up with the Prohibition Party’s 2008 Presidential Candidate.

The Brick Testament

Behold! The entire Bible … in legos.

On Our Watch

“Today there are more slaves than at any time in human history.” – E. Benjamin Skinner, Foreign Policy Magazine

Skinner’s piece in Foreign Policy was more shocking than it should be. It makes sense. There are more people alive than ever before, more globalization, more inequality than ever before.

But how? Is it that these things aren’t brought to our attention more often (the media devotes the time to frivolous stories), or is it that we just don’t care? Out of sight, out of mind.

“Slavery exists today on an unprecedented scale. In Africa, tens of thousands are chattel slaves, seized in war or tucked away for generations. Across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, traffickers have forced as many as 2 million into prostitution or labor. In South Asia, which has the highest concentration of slaves on the planet, nearly 10 million languish in bondage, unable to leave their captors until they pay off “debts,” legal fictions that in many cases are generations old.”

“For four years, I saw dozens of people enslaved, several of whom traffickers like Benavil actually offered to sell to me. I did not pay for a human life anywhere. And, with one exception, I always withheld action to save any one person, in the hope that my research would later help to save many more. At times, that still feels like an excuse for cowardice. But the hard work of real emancipation can’t be the burden of a select few. For thousands of slaves, grassroots groups … can help bring freedom. But, until governments define slavery in appropriately concise terms, prosecute the crime aggressively in all its forms, and encourage groups that empower slaves to free themselves, millions more will remain in bondage. And our collective promise of abolition will continue to mean nothing at all.”

New York Should Hold-off on New Sales Taxes

New York Governor Paterson has called for 137 new Sales Taxes on items from digital music downloads, to new cigarette and cigar taxes, to cab fees, alcoholic beverages, and satellite TV. At a time when consumer confidence is approaching new lows, now would be a terrible time to raise taxes on consumption. The government needs to be encouraging shopping because decreased sales revenues are forcing companies to cut jobs which forces consumption down further in a cyclical nature.

For example, low sales figures have forced Chrysler to announce a 1 month long halt in production in all of its plants. Similarly, Verizon has announce layoffs and benefit cuts in response to suffering sales figure. These new taxes will put additional pressure on Working and Middle Class Americans whose budgets are already crunched. New York currently has an exemption on sales taxes for clothing under $110 in value. The problem with these Sales Tax proposals is that they target items that are necessities as well as basic leisures. If these Sales Tax proposals go through, families on the edge will have a harder time maintaining their standard of living.

Paterson further plans to close 10 government facilities including 6 family and child care facilities, cut school aid by half a billion, and slice health-care by $3.5 billion. These programs are necessary for Working Class families across the state. When the state cuts child care facilities, it makes it more difficult for both parents to work.

However, New York law forces the Governor to propose a balenced budget which currently has a $15.4 billion dollar gap. Much of this is caused by Unfunded Mandates from the Federal Government. One of the first things to go as the Federal Budget gets tightened is funding for cooperative programs between the Federal and State Governments. New York income and business taxes have also brought in substantially lower yields this year than years past. The problem is difficult but the answer is not to squeeze those with the least to give.

A Right to a Militia?

The 2nd Amendment doesn’t say what we think it says. This might sound crazy but take a look at what the 2nd Amendment says:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

That’s the whole 2nd Amendment. That one sentence. Which is why it’s perplexing to me that a majority of the US Supreme Court has decided to completely ignore half of it. It’s not that complicated. The whole preface to the statement is that well regulated militias are necessary. The 2nd Amendment gives States the right to form Well-Regulated Militias and members of such Militias have the right to bear arms. The states had such militias through the Civil War at which point there was a transition to National Guard and Reserve Units which replaced the need for State Militias.

The Filibuster Fray

Hey Filibuster Fanatics,

We meant to let you all know–no new show last night.  We’re all overwhelmed by the end of the semester, but we have a pretty spectacular set of guests coming up in the next few weeks.

See you next Sunday at 10PM EST!

Off-shore Drilling

The issue of off-shore drilling was propelled to the national stage when U.S. Presidential Candidate John McCain issued his bold statement “drill here, drill now” at rallies across the country. We find ourselves in a situation in which we are addicted to oil. China’s rapid industrialization and reckless speculation on the Commodities Futures Exchange have pushed up demand for oil to a recent peak. Although alleviated by the collapse in the stock market, higher demand will likely soon return. In this situation, increasing supply relative to demand is roughly the equivalent of attempting to wean an alcoholic off alcohol by making it cheaper.

Offshore drilling poses a massive threat to our environment and biological diversity. For starters, off-shore oil rigs have significant risk of oil spills. One spill in Campeche, Mexico poured 140 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil decimated populations of fish, corral, and other marine life. Proponents claim that the scenario of an oil spill is a worst-case scenario meant to scare people away from an idea that is essentially good. However, in 2001, the worlds biggest oil rig sunk off the coast of Brazil. Yes, it collapsed, and sunk. The practice is also virtually impossible to regulate effectively. For instance, in 1992 alone, Chevron pleaded guilty to 65 violations of the Clean Water Act and paid the Federal Government $8 million dollars in fines. Not that that undid the damage. Their lack of internal safety standards is also disturbing. For example, in 1997, federal inspectors found that Chevron had failed to fix a broken anti-blowout valve in their rig off the coast of Ventura. But, no big deal, the valve only ensures that pressure does not exceed the valve’s maximum capacity and cause an uncontrollable oil spill.

Even without an oil spill, over its lifetime an oil rig can dump as much as 90,000 tons of drilling fluid and metal cuttings into the water surrounding it. It will also drill as many as 100 wells each of which pours nearly 25,000 pounds of toxic metals like lead and mercury as well as carcinogens like benzene into the water. Their contribution to air pollution exceeds that of 7,000 cars driving 50 miles a day. In Louisiana, where some offshore drilling already occurs, on average, 62 square miles of costal wetlands are lost each year. This is a major problem because costal wetlands reduce the effect of storm surges like the ones that breeched the levees of New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.

But what are the benefits? While our nation consumes 25% of the world’s produced oil, America has only 3% of the world’s proven oil reserves. That three percent includes all of the on-land sites. If we were to allow offshore drilling, most industry experts have concluded that it would take a decade for oil companies to get the proper permits, produce the equipment, and conduct the planning necessary for new oil rigs. The necessary equipment is not mass produced leading to long construction periods, installation is complex and the sediment under which oil is located often requires more advanced engineering. In short, we can’t drill our way to energy independence.

However, let us assume for a moment that the Republicans are correct in saying that off-shore drilling will be effective. That result would be far worse because in addition to a slew of ecological problems, free-market forces would prevent the development of alternative energy. The lowered price of crude oil would make would make alternative energy, even with current federal subsidies, unattractively expensive. Investors would understand this and be hesitant to invest in green technology as it would be unlikely to make any money. Thus, research and development of alternative energy would be severely impaired.

Off-shore drilling is a politician’s pander to Americans crying out for relief from high gas prices. Most people don’t know the difference and it helps some people get elected, but it’s a bad policy.

Last Night's Show

The recording from BlogTalk seems to be unavailable. We’ll update you when the problem is solved.

Our chat with Pete du Pont

Pete du Pont

Sunday we spoke with former Delaware Governor and 1988 Republican candidate for President, Pete du Pont.  du Pont, the man who made Delaware the credit card capital that it is today, spoke about the economy, fellow Delaware servant Joe Biden, and the future of the Republican party.

LISTEN

 

 

Our Conversation with Jane Swift

 

Former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift (2001-2003) joined us Sunday to talk Bay State Politics, “Lipstick Republicans,” and address her political future.  You can listen to the interview in its entirety here:

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!

Miss tonight's show?

Did you hear tonight’s show?  We talked about the latest news including President-Elect Barack Obama’s cabinet, and, amidst many calling a potential Detroit bailout “socialism,” we spoke to the 2008 Socialist Party nominee for President, Brian Moore, to get his party’s perspective on the economic crisis.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

EXCLUSIVE: KERRY HEALEY

Former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Kerry Healey joined us Sunday night and addressed, for the first time, speculation that she might run in a special election for US Senate, should John Kerry accept a position in the incoming Obama-Biden administration.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

LISTEN LIVE TONIGHT at 10

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE

The Politics Of Sex

Via the New Yorker:

…evangelical Protestant teen-agers are significantly less likely than other groups to use contraception. This could be because evangelicals are also among the most likely to believe that using contraception will send the message that they are looking for sex. It could also be because many evangelicals are steeped in the abstinence movement’s warnings that condoms won’t actually protect them from pregnancy or venereal disease. More provocatively, Regnerus found that only half of sexually active teen-agers who say that they seek guidance from God or the Scriptures when making a tough decision report using contraception every time. By contrast, sixty-nine per cent of sexually active youth who say that they most often follow the counsel of a parent or another trusted adult consistently use protection.

Can we please start teaching comprehensive sex education?

Here’s a sensible middle ground:

Shelby Knox, who spoke at a congressional hearing on sex education earlier this year, occupies a middle ground. She testified that it’s possible to “believe in abstinence in a religious sense,” but still understand that abstinence-only education is dangerous “for students who simply are not abstaining.” As Knox’s approach makes clear, you don’t need to break out the sex toys to teach sex ed—you can encourage teen-agers to postpone sex for all kinds of practical, emotional, and moral reasons. A new “abstinence-plus” curriculum, now growing in popularity, urges abstinence while providing accurate information about contraception and reproduction for those who have sex anyway. “Abstinence works,” Knox said at the hearing. “Abstinence-only-until-marriage does not.”

And “red” state values?

In 2004, the states with the highest divorce rates were Nevada, Arkansas, Wyoming, Idaho, and West Virginia (all red states in the 2004 election); those with the lowest were Illinois, Massachusetts, Iowa, Minnesota, and New Jersey. The highest teen-pregnancy rates were in Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas (all red); the lowest were in North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Maine (blue except for North Dakota). “The ‘blue states’ of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have lower teen birthrates, higher use of abortion, and lower percentages of teen births within marriage,” Cahn and Carbone observe. They also note that people start families earlier in red states—in part because they are more inclined to deal with an unplanned pregnancy by marrying rather than by seeking an abortion.

Losing Logic: Obama and Socialism

When a television reporter in Central Florida asked Senator Biden whether Obama’s tax policies make him a Marxist, Biden responded by saying “Is that a joke?”

Senator Biden’s much criticized response is completely right.

The accusation is sensationalistic, intellectually dishonest, stupid, and beneath the level of public debate in this country. Those who are saying it are hacks, idiots, or both. To say that Obama is a Marxist for supporting the same Progressive Income Tax system that has been supported by almost every candidate for President since Teddy Roosevelt is absurd. Marxism is an ideology that preaches the overthrow of capitalist society, a dictatorship of the proletariat, state or worker ownership of the means of production, and equal results rather than equal opportunity. Senator Obama’s policies support none of those key facets of Marxism.

As for the wealth redistribution argument, every government policy is wealth redistribution. When the government chooses to not regulate the environment strictly and allows industry to pollute, they force taxpayers to pay for the clean-up. In the process, industrial companies shave off a portion of the cost of production and pass it on to everyone. The owners or stockholders benefit while the vast majority of middle and working class Americans have had their wealth redistributed to the top 3% that disproportionately invests their money in the market.

The reality is that politicians only get criticized for wealth redistribution when they try to give the 95% a break.

Miss Sunday's Show?

Click here to listen as the panel talks Senate races, Palin’s wardrobe, and all the latest from the campaign trail.

Bouncy 'bama?

Politico.com does a great job here of breaking down the number game in the wake of the conventions and running mate announcements. Whether or not they are correct will have to be measured after the first new national polls come out tomorrow.

Democratic Convention Coverage

Share your live reactions with the Weekly Filibuster, immediately following each night’s speeches. We’ll be broadcasting LIVE from the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver! Our team will provide immediate analysis on all of the night’s events, as well as TAKE YOUR CALLS LIVE.

Be sure to tune in, as we’ll likely be chatting with special guests from the convention floor….

Weekly Filibuster 2008 Democratic National Convention Coverage
Wednesday Night 11pm – Midnight Eastern
Thursday Night 11pm – Midnight Eastern
Friday Night 10pm-11pm Eastern

Bad Dinner Conversations

I have started a new blog here. Check it out and let me know what you think!

The WF Team Goes to DENVER!

Yes, the rumors are true. Three of our regular contributors to the show will be traveling to Denver for the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Ben Goodman, our courageous Moderator, as a delegate representing Sen. Obama. Tom Dec as a volunteer for the convention and an attendee to the College Democrats National Convention. And Robert Burack, one of the few lucky supporters from the State of Michigan to achieve a community credential [to INVESCO].

In addition to the show, you can read blog posts of our experiences at BenjaminGoodman.com, for Ben, and ThomasDec.com, for Tom.

See you in Denver!

The BBC on Why I Sympathize More With Russia

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7562611.stm

Russians losing propaganda war

By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili in Tbilisi on 13 August 2008
Most of the Western media is based in Georgia

The Bush administration appears to be trying to turn a failed military operation by Georgia into a successful diplomatic operation against Russia.

It is doing so by presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on 7 August, which triggered the Russian operation.

Yet the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it was extensive and damaging.

Blame game

The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford has reported: “Many Ossetians I met both in Tskhinvali and in the main refugee camp in Russia are furious about what has happened to their city.

“They are very clear who they blame: Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway region.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on 13 August 2008
Has Moscow learned yet how to play the media game?

Human Rights Watch concluded after an on-the-ground inspection: “Witness accounts and the timing of the damage would point to Georgian fire accounting for much of the damage described [in Tskhinvali].”

One problem for the Russians is that they have not yet learned how to play the media game. Their authoritarian government might never do so.

Most of the Western media is based in Georgia. The Russians were slow to give access from their side and this has helped them lose the propaganda war.

Georgia, meanwhile, was comparing this to Prague in 1968 and Budapest in 1956. Even the massacre at Srebrenica was recalled.

Mud sticks

The comparisons did not fit the facts, but some of the mud has stuck and Russia has been on the international defensive.

The visit by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Georgia is a signal of support for Mr Saakashvili.

Significantly, she is not paying a matching visit to Moscow but will return directly to the United States where she will brief President George W Bush in Texas.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on 13 August 2008
Washington has accused Russia of widening the conflict

She has refused to condemn Georgia and barely acknowledged Russia’s point that it had to protect its peacekeeping forces (a battalion-sized unit allowed in South Ossetia along with Georgian and North Ossetian and South Ossetian forces under a 1992 agreement).

Instead she blamed Russia for widening the conflict by bombing beyond what the 1992 deal called the “zone of conflict” in South Ossetia.

She said: “This is something that, had it been about South Ossetia, could have been resolved within certain limits.

“Russian peacekeepers were in the area; that is true. And Russia initially said it needed to act to protect its peacekeepers and its people.

“But what Russia has done is well beyond anything that anyone could say is for the protection of those people and for those peacekeepers.”

HAVE YOUR SAY

Russia’s relations with the US may recover. Its relations with the “near abroad” are shattered forever

Stephen Thake, Valletta, Malta
Send us your comments

The Americans have sent in planes full of humanitarian aid, again a symbol of support.

But they have sent no military supplies. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said: “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation. Is that clear enough?”

US diplomacy is also concentrating on the issue of sovereignty and territorial integrity – which means that South Ossetia and the other restless region, Abkhazia, must remain within Georgian borders. Russian has questioned this.

Moscow’s anger

This widens the whole question into one of Russian behaviour generally, which is much surer ground for the Bush administration. The US will continue to press for eventual Georgian and Ukrainian membership of Nato.

The Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain also sees in this conflict an opportunity to put Russia in the dock, declaring: “We are all Georgians now.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) and Dmitry Medvedev at G8 in Japan on 9 July 2008
Germany, at least, has been notably reluctant to find fault with Russia

All this is likely to anger Moscow, which will feel that it has a case and that it is being ignored. Right from the start it said that the operation was not an invasion.

The adverse effect on US-Russia relations, about which Mr Gates warned, is going to be a two-way process.

There are signs, though, that there is some sympathy for Russia within the European Union – although not among the Eastern European states who still fear Russia and not in the British government, which has matched the US line about Russian “aggression”.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeing Russian leaders and while she too will urge them not to challenge borders, the German government has been notably reluctant to blame Russia.

Capitalist Freedom, If You Can Keep It

At its heart, capitalism is all about freedom. It is not the kind of freedom enshrined in the Bill of Rights; it is not an intellectual set of sanctioned activities. It is unlikely to be discussed in complicated court cases and academic settings for hours on end, and it is unlikely to be hailed as a great moral accomplishment any time soon. Indeed, many people truly believe that capitalism is tyranny and that it ought to be destroyed from the Earth. Often, these people are South American revolutionaries who don military uniforms and give themselves titles that do not exist in real armies. Some of them have recently become quite powerful in places like Venezuela and Bolivia. These men talk a lot about liberation and liberty against profit. I have but one question for them:

What could possibly make me freer in my day to day life than to be able to spend the rewards of my work on virtually whatever pleases me, given by whoever I want it from, as often as I like without answering to anyone? I do not tend to exercise my freedom to criticize my government quite as often as I purchase food from cafeterias, nor do I attend church (quite) as often as I surf the internet provided by Comcast. I do not bear arms as often as I pay term bills to Harvard. Thanks to money and free markets, I have every right in the world to study where I place, browse whenever I want, and eat when I feel like it. How can I possibly be freer than that?

There are many voices out there, fortunately not many in America, that believe that collective choice and social control of capital somehow makes us freer. They believe that the state should provide health care for all, educate everyone, tax as much as is needed to meet everyone’s needs, give guaranteed wages to everyone, and build houses for every person. This, they say, makes people freer. After all, they protest, why should $40,000 be spent on a luxury car for a rich executive when it could provide textbooks for needy schools?

Every now and then, something comes up that makes me think another two seconds about how we distribute wealth in a capitalist society. This article was one of those things:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26182276/

Girls as young as eight getting bikini waxes. What an absolutely barbaric practice and a completely immoral waste of money. If people really are this stupid and materialistic, perhaps the socialists really are onto something. The people who came in to eat at the soup kitchen today could certainly have used the $115 or more it costs to strip off hair down there on a PRETEEN to keep from going hungry for the next week. One guy really, really could have used that money: he has been living out of the back of his VW Golf for quite a while now. He does not mind, though. After all, at least he has his own place for his stuff. If people really are superficial enough to make their tweens into bikini beauties, maybe we do need the state to come in, tax away, and redistribute money towards better causes.

Three things keep me a capitalist: people are not this stupid, the state is not any smarter, and the law is a pretty awful way to get people to care about each other.

I say again: people are not this stupid. Our airwaves are filled up with this crap because it still has the capacity to shock us. That is a really good sign that society may not be as bad off as the naysayers maintain. I will go out on a limb here and suggest that this article did not exactly inspire more mothers to decide to morph their kids into the next pinup girls. The overwhelming majority of people are still entirely disgusted by these kinds of priorities and still believe that no child should be made into a plastic princess before she even hits high school. Indeed, thanks to those feminists I am not generally a fan of, there are even hot-blooded secular opponents to the exploitative, falsely aesthetic culture out there. Most people are still content to spend their money on house payments, utility bills, food, medicine, schooling, and education. As for those who are not, well, they are nothing new. Their philosophical ancestors were sitting around ancient Rome making love to statues of Venus and caking on lead makeup in Victorian England. Evidently natural selection does not work mentally as well as it does physically nowadays. Pity.

If I am wrong and the people have fallen into true disgrace, though, the government is the last place I would look to right the wrongs. As a student of government who may well run for office some day, I feel quite comfortable saying that getting political power means diving to the absolute lows of society. Washington is chock full of adulterers, liars, egoists, pansies, and all-around moral wusses. If you are smart enough not to trust John Edwards with your girlfriend, Brownie with your disaster relief, Ted Kennedy with your keys, and Larry Craig with your boyfriend, why the hell would you be stupid enough to give these people your money? These are the guys who subsidized Viagra, mohair production, and research centers that may not even exist: http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2007/10/the_10_dumbest_votes_in_the_us.php

The government’s guilt and people’s general intelligence might skewer the socialists in a pretty big way, but they cannot exonerate the bopper bikini waxers. Nothing does. Nothing can justify the gross materialism and addiction to money that lets markets for fourth houses, fully-functioning replica Batmobiles, and botulism toxin (where do you think the name BoTox comes from?) face injections flourish.

Instead of restricting the right of people to the money they have worked for and letting bureaucrats organize economic activity, how about teaching people to blush again? Where is the social pressure against disgraceful spending? We have learned through many years of experience that it is okay to hate Nazi rallies while still defending free speech and that we can call Scientology a whacked-out cult without offending freedom of religion. It is high time that we start calling for respectful self-restraint when it comes to money.

Every freedom is able to exist and flourish because it is used respectfully and to make a point. We do not cringe when we see violent or even suggestive art with biting social commentary, but we do and should slam artists who love the avant-garde for its own sake. Pushing the envelope must serve a greater means and not trespass the basic notions of decency held by society. Yale art student Aliza Shvarts learned that after a deluge of criticism came in when she told reporters that she had filmed herself aborting for the sake of challenging expectations. Our freedoms are alive and well only when we do not abuse them for our own warped pleasures and ideas of novelty. We need to realize that the same truth applies to the free use of money. Spending simply for the point of spending, pampering, and proving that you can is worthy of serious rebuke.

Noblesse oblige, asceticism, humility, and plenty of other fine moral ideals offer a different way to live. Rather than restricting personal wealth and forcefully redistributing capital, morality is the mechanism by which we call on the wealthy to remember the duties that come with their freedoms. It is not that we ask for duties as a consolation prize in exchange for giving the rich total freedom; it is that we all share duties in society in order to preserve our freedom. When each of us believes in life without intoxicating materialism and acts accordingly, our freedoms flourish and give us the prosperity that we hope for in them. When we ditch our own duties and leave morality for the philosophers, preteen girls lose their pubic hair.

And that, fellow Americans, is something we should never let the commies hold over our heads.

Give Peace a Chance

This summer, it seems like the victims of the culture wars just keep racking up. It used to be that the only battlefields for the culture wars were intellectual. Ann Coulter would publish a book about godless liberals and the New York Times would run a foreign culture piece about abstinent Americans. Occasionally Christmas would get caught in the crossfire between baby killers and capitalist pig-dogs. Otherwise, though, it was plain and obvious to most Americans that liberals are not actually Maoists in disguise and Republicans do not honestly want to sell the Supreme Court to the highest bidder.

The inflamed rhetoric and often comical excess of the culture wars all became shockingly and traumatically real this summer when, just a few weeks ago, a gunman entered a Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee during the production of a children’s show and opened fire with a shotgun, killing two adults and wounding seven others.

His declared motive for the attacks? “All liberals should be killed.” He truly believed that liberals are defeating America in the War on Terror and that homosexuality cannot be tolerated in society. Although he is hardly the stereotypical right-winger (he slammed a neighbor’s Christian beliefs earlier and said that everything in the Bible is false), he was a fervent believer in the necessity of fighting a culture war, inspired by books written by talk radio and television commentators from the fighting right.

Today, it appears that the madness is continuing. A man entered the headquarters of the Arkansas Democratic Party and shot the chairman. No one was killed in the attack, and no motives have yet been released, but in light of the last attack, it seems only too possible that this was the next flashpoint in the culture wars. I honestly hope that the next few days will prove me completely wrong and show the church shooting in Tennessee to be an isolated event, but as a conservative in outlook I am not naturally optimistic about such things.

It is tragic that the rise of participatory citizenship in the internet age has meant that such extremism has had outlets to grow. We are living in a day and age in which any person can get access to ideas and become an advocate for issues. This newfound sense of connectedness and awareness is absolutely fantastic for freedom and can help our country thrive in the next generation.

Unfortunately, the explosion in passion has not been matched by an upswing in principle. People still cling to labels and marketed identities, refusing to take the time to let reason inform their beliefs. This means that we have people who truly believe that political ideology is the starting point of morality, rather than an offshoot of it. Thus, when one attacks conservatism, they are godless scum who need to be cleansed from the Earth. Of course this belief cannot possibly fit within the label “conservatism,” which is all about traditional values, community rights, national sovereignty, and free markets.

Nothing in these ideas embraces the butchering of human beings.

The right-wing has gotten caught up in this mess more than the left because, for one reason or another, it has sold out its intellectual heritage. In past generations, the right believed in men of intellectual integrity and tested reason, like William Buckley, George Santayana, Russell Kirk, and Milton Friedman. These men were passionate and even temperamental at times, but always smart enough and grounded in principle enough to truly believe in the human scale and social harmony, at least to the point of refusing to allow terrorism to become a means of change.

Now, we are somehow left with Rush Limbaugh, who praises Red China’s socialist fuel subsidies; Michael Savage, who does not believe in autism; and Ann Coulter, who believes that the 2004 GOP convention was “heaven.”

Is it any wonder that such brutal stupidity and antithetical thinking leads to very real death?

It is time to call off these culture wars, fueled by blatant idiocy, brazen propaganda, and the embrace of the very same anti-intellectualism that conservatives once prided themselves in standing against.

And it is time for all of us to set aside our philosophical arguments and conjecturing for a little while and devote our thoughts and prayers to the victims and perpetrators of these awful crimes against humanity.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/13/arkansas.shooting/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/27/church.shooting/index.html?iref=newssearch

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/07/call_for_culture_war_truce.html

Edwards Admits To Affair

Just imagine this coming out if he was the nominee.

Think the pundits really can predict a VEEP?

Some historical context…

Never Surrender

Via Entertainment Weekly:

EW: Who controls the remote at home, you or Cindy?

McCain: Sometimes I win the arm wrestling contest, but foolishly she continues to try to assert her control over the remote. This is a battle that will continue for a long time. But there are shows we agree on. We like the reruns of “Seinfeld.” I really like “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I kind of like “Dexter,” too, although it certainly has a macabre side to it. I’ll tell you that Cindy likes “Big Love” — I haven’t watched it much, but she enjoys that. And I like The Wire” a lot, too. That’s a great show.

These little things are a glimpse into a candidate’s psyche? 100 years, anyone?

Something to Consider…

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Obama Goes Negative?

Republicans Back in the Fight

Ever since 2006, it has looked like the Democrats are running the show in Washington. From Congress to the campaign trail, the blues are flexing their considerable polling majorities and setting the agenda for the country. With hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending, countless new regulations for businesses, and debates over the adoption of new social programs, Democrats have plenty to talk about. Republicans, on the other hand, have spent most of their time trying desperately to hold the line, using President Bush’s veto while trying desperately to distance themselves from his policies. It seems like the beleaguered Republicans have been reduced to defining what they are not and why they should not be kicked out of office.

At long last, it looks like Congressional Republicans are taking up the war banner again. The GOP men and women in Congress have finally found their voice and are using it to slam Democrats on one of the biggest issues in the coming election: energy policy. With new polls suggesting that clear majorities of Americans support offshore drilling, additional exploration for oil, and anything that promises to expand fuel supplies in the coming years, a cohort of Republicans is preaching to a chamber of ordinary Americans. Since Congress is not in session, Republican members have invited tourists to fill the chamber’s seats and are frantically sending out audio clips, vlog posts, and Twitter updates in an effort to get the word out: Republicans have a solution to one of America’s problems and are ready to bring change.

This kind of stunt bodes well for John McCain’s presidential campaign, if he can get the point. By using cutting-edge technology and appealing to the same desire for change that Barack Obama has used to propel himself in the polls, McCain may yet have a dog in this fight. After all, McCain promises a world of change in Washington, too. He supports a cap-and-trade carbon emissions program. He opposes advantages in getting citizenship for illegal immigrants. He wants to break the monopoly that employers have on providing health insurance. He wants to hack and slash the bloated budgets that draw special interests to Washington. McCain also wants to revolutionize the way we educate America’s youth, offering up far more of a departure from tradition than Obama. And he was dead right in Iraq in calling for a surge, back when that was a massive change in policy.

If McCain can cast himself as a man with solutions and real change in the way America works, learns, earns, and heals, he might be able to tap into that American urge to use markets and freedom to solve our problems.

That is, if he is willing to become the maverick fighter against the establishment that is at the core of his career and join his Congressional comrades in fighting the Democratic-set agenda of the past two years.

St. Paul Protests

From truckers to conspiracy theorists, it looks like every cause is going to attempt to grab the national spotlight when the Republican Convention comes to St. Paul in early September. We’re likely to not see the kind of widespread protests we saw at the 2004 convention, given that: the convention that year was held in New York City, it was at the height of the Iraq War, and this year’s election seems certain to be a gain for Democrats.

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Matthew Yglesias joins us Sunday

Join us this Sunday at 10PM EST as we talk to Atlantic Monthly blogger Matthew Yglesias about his book Heads in the Sand, the US political climate, foreign policy, and the ‘08 presidential race.

"Weekly Filibuster' featured on MSNBC, Politico.com

Our recent interview with David Shuster was featured on Wednesday’s edition of KoteckiTV, and then played on MSNBC-TV!

Click here to see us featured on KoteckiTV
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Our show last night garnered media attention (Politico / PolitickerKY) yet again.  
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Kotecki, Shuster to battle on Weekly Filibuster this Wednesday

Join us Wednesday at 10PM EST as MSNBC’s David Shuster and Politico.com’s James Kotecki bring their feud to our airwaves and duke it out on The Weekly Filibuster!  We’ll also talk to Mr. Kotecki about the current political landscape.  Live @ 10PM EST at www.WeeklyFilibuster.com.

Tonight's Link for the Conclusion of the Sonny Landham Controversy!

To listen live starting at 10 PM, click here.

Sonny Landham and Sean Haugh, political director of the national Libertarian Party, will be with us live. We will be taking your calls at (347) 205-9993.

Tonight's Link for the Conclusion of the Sonny Landham Controversy!

To listen live starting at 10 PM, click here.

Sonny Landham and Sean Haugh, political director of the national Libertarian Party, will be with us live. We will be taking your calls at (347) 205-9993.

TONIGHT: Sonny Landham / LP Political Director Sean Haugh

Tonight at 10pm EST, we’ll have a special Monday edition of “The Weekly Filibuster”. Sonny Landham himself will join us to give his first reaction to the Kentucky LP’s decision. Also, to comment on the Sonny Landham controversy and his party’s slow response will be Libertarian Party Political Director Sean Haugh. Check back here at 10pm to listen to the show live.

PolitickerKY’s political cartoon for the day:

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Rick Noriega Joins Us Tonight

Rep. Rick Noriega, Texas Democratic Nominee for US Senate

Join us tonight at 10:00PM EST as we talk to Rick Noriega, the Lone Star State nominee for United States Senate.  Log on to WeeklyFilibuster.com at 10:00PM EST to listen live.

Media Call with Ken Molleman, KYLP

The Kentucky Libertarian Party’s executive committee had a conference call this afternoon regarding national media attention over appearances by their nominee for US Senate, Sonny Landham.

Ken Molleman, Chair for the KYLP participated in a media call hosted by The Weekly Filibuster. Select members of the media were invited to participate in the call.

You can download the .mp3 file here. Media stations are free to use clips or the interview in its entirety and should quote The Weekly Filibuster (Radio Show) – WeeklyFilibuster.com.

We’ll play the interview tomorrow night during a special extended edition of The Weekly Filibuster.

Sonny Landham Returns

Our interview Wednesday with Sonny Landham made headlines on Kentucky television and in print across the United States.

Sonny returned Friday night for a FULL 90 MINUTES to take on critics, the media, and the Arab-American community. Listen here!

Sonny Landham Returns

Our interview Wednesday with Sonny Landham made headlines on Kentucky television and in print across the United States.

Sonny returned Friday night for a FULL 90 MINUTES to take on critics, the media, and the Arab-American community. Listen here!

Our Talk With Dennis Shulman & Sonny Landham

Our talk with Kentucky Libertarian Senate Candidate Sonny Landham has been making some news today, so make sure to hear the entire interview here (it starts about forty-one minutes in). We also spoke with New Jersey Democratic Congressional Candidate Dennis Shulman.

We’ve got the entire rushed transcript of our exclusive radio interview with Sonny Landham, in the rest of this post.

Green Party Roundup

The Green Party nominated two smart, principaled, and dynamic women of color for its presidential ticket this weekend: Cynthia McKinney and Rose Clemente. Take a look at Brenda Konkel’s “Faces Of The Green Party“, and find your state.

Another interesting caveot: McKinney was a congresswoman from Georgia. Between her candidacy and Barr’s, it will be interesting to watch which way the state of Georgia goes in November.

Ask A Conservative Panelist

Matt: Why do the majority of poor counties in America vote Republican, and against their own economic interests? (Liberal Bias Italicized)

His response:

Either a) poor people, especially poor whites in the rural South, are stupid or b) poor people believe that economic growth is the best way to fight poverty and do not want government handouts.

Isn’t it amazing that the party of lawyers and academics who propose fanciful, government-run solutions to health care, education, welfare, job creation, low-income assistance, farm aid, and everything else under the sun cannot beat a party of preachers, doctors, and businessmen in America’s poorest counties?

A lot of people who have been on Medicare and lived in subsidized housing realize how awful of a state it tends to be in, and would hardly wish that federal programs become the primary means of welfare in this country. Many others may indeed have started working as a result of welfare reform in the 1990’s and may truly appreciate the dignity that comes from self-sustenance. Many of the working poor could also use a tax break, to be honest. Some might even want a business-friendly atmosphere so that they can become entrepreneurs of their own and rise up out of poverty.

Others are drawn by the GOP’s social and foreign policy stances, as many are quite deeply religious and do not believe that illegal immigration can keep up at the pace it’s been going without even less opportunities for people to get by.

The next time a Democrat whips out classism and accuses a Republican of serving the rich, ask yourself this: do Republicans support taxing one third of the average American’s income? Do Republicans support sending billions of dollars in tax money abroad when Americans are starving? Do Republicans support regulating job creators out of business? Do Republicans support more expensive and ineffective social programs?

Or do Republicans stand for a pro-business, small-government, pro-charity America where jobs exist and services are good?

Your thoughts?

Maureen Dowd's Bumper

Looks like the infamous New York Time’s columnist will have to remove the “Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Hand Basket?” bumper sticker from her Prius, as per a newly released Times memo:

They may not wear campaign buttons or themselves display any other insignia of partisan politics. They should recognize that a bumper sticker on the family car or a campaign sign on the lawn may be misread as theirs, no matter who in their household actually placed the sticker or the sign.

But seriously, what do you think Maureen Dowd drives? Does she take the Metro?

The Detroit Free Press On The Youth Vote

Editorial Page editor Ron Dzwonkowski:

“It’s an odd thing, really, how so many in the generation that fights the wars take a pass on picking the people who start them. The generation that will be paying taxes for the most years abdicates on selecting the authors of tax policy. The kids who will be stuck with the bills don’t seem to care who runs them up … They may say the candidates never “connected with them.” Well, of course not. Candidates prefer connecting with people who vote. That’s why they work the senior centers instead of the gaming arcades and night clubs.”

As one of the young people Ron Dzwonkowski suggests doesn’t vote, it’s always disheartening to see the same tired meme of youth apathy constantly recycled. The problem hasn’t been that young people aren’t engaged in presidential elections, it’s that the choices previously offered were consistently disappointing. Another old white guy? And for many young people, myself included, George Bush has been our introduction to the presidency. The young are about idealism, which can be easily deflated by a politician winning on the crest of a strategy meant to bring out fear. Young people have finally found a candidate that inspires, excites, and engages them: Barack Obama. Everywhere I go, young voters are enthusiastic. This year will be one in which we see a massive increase in youth voting, and those who take our votes seriously. If there ever was a year for things to change, it’s 2008.

On The "New Yorker" Cover

At first glance, I would have confused this for a cover of “National Review”. Take a look at the image that’s bound to get some considerable cable buzz today:

Shouldn’t the McCain campaign be most worried about this? If they let a vote against Obama become a vote for bigotry, they’ve lost. This cover advances that meme. It’s also suprising to see most of the more vile comments this cycle coming from the left: Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson.

Vetting The Veeps: Mike Huckabee

DC is buzzing with speculation over who Barack Obama and John McCain will choose to be their prospective Vice President. Each day the panel gives their thoughts on potential candidates, and rates them on a scale of 1-100 (100 being if Jesus or MLK joined the ticket). Based on the scores, we’ll have the Weekly Filibuster’s choices for VP in the coming weeks.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee:

Ben Goodman:

Pro – Religious conservatives are not the “hot demographic” in 2008, but John McCain will need to try and keep them from voting for someone like Bob Barr or Gene Amondson. He’s a seemingly straight talker that could do well in a debate against Hillary Clinton.

Con – It’s the economy, stupid.

The Veep Value: 45

Joshua Lambert:

Pro – McCain is just moderate enough so that he won’t have to worry about losing the center votes to Obama so he needs someone that’s fairly far to the right to bring back the conservatives that hate him. Huckabee would do just that and ensure that the Libertarian party isn’t a spoiler for the Republicans in 2008. He’ll unite the party a little bit more.

Con – He is uber conservative which might alienate the moderate votes that McCain is hoping to carry. And plus, he made himself look like a bit of a fool with this ad:

The Veep Value: 45

Miss Sunday's Show?

Click here to listen to our interview with Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria about their new book Political Odyssey, and our talk with Gregory Levey about his book Shut Up, I’m Talking.

Miss Sunday's Show?

Click here to listen to our interview with Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria about their new book Political Odyssey, and our talk with Gregory Levey about his book Shut Up, I’m Talking.

Tonight

Join us tonight at 10PM EST for a 90-minute edition of The Weekly Filibuster. Salon’s Gregory Levey will join us to talk about his new book, Shut Up, I’m Talking.  Mike Gravel returns for a full hour to talk, alongside his co-author Joe Lauria of The Huffington Post, about the the latest news and his new book, A Political Odyssey.

Happy Fourth Of July

Everyone on the Weekly Filibuster crew hopes your 4th of July was filled with as much family, fireworks, and love of country as ours was. Here’s to America.

Memo to Arianna: You're wrong.

Memo to Arianna: You’re wrong

On Monday, Arianna Huffington suggested (Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers) that Barack Obama’s apparent move to the center could cost him dearly come November.

The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and “change we can believe in.” I like that brand. More importantly, voters — especially unlikely voters — like that brand.

 Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America’s vacillating swing voters — the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun — would be a fatal blunder.

I beg to differ. I disagree with the notion that Senator Obama’s alleged policy shift on issues like Iraq and FISA is enough to alienate liberal base, who has stood with Senator Obama through the longest presidential primary season to date. After all, it’s been fifteen months after all, since Obama declared, and nineteen since the first major candidate to jump in (and drop out), Tom Vilsack announced his candidacy.

Frankly, I don’t see this tremendous shift. Today, Obama said that his upcoming trip to Iraq could cause him to “refine” his policy. Obama’s been pretty consistent all along. Take this March 2 Washington Post Q&A with Obama:

Q. In implementing your plan to immediately begin withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq and to complete the process within 16 months, what weight will you give to the counsel of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command] commander, the combatant commander on the ground in Iraq and current intelligence chiefs on the ground in Iraq regarding an immediate phased withdrawal?_

A. I will give their counsel great weight. But, as commander in chief, it is my responsibility to make my own assessment of the situation. We must send a clear signal to the Iraqi political leadership that we are leaving Iraq on a timeline. Doing so will put pressure on those leaders to begin to resolve the political impasse at the heart of this civil war.

But I also want to be clear about another thing. I am worried our Army is overstretched and that we have asked an awful lot from our military families. Many in our senior military leadership are worried about a plan that will keep 130,000 troops on the ground in Iraq for the foreseeable future. So, as commander in chief, I will also have to take into consideration the counsel of other senior military leaders who may be concerned that Iraq is undercutting our ability to confront other security challenges.

I’m not suggesting that Senator Obama should abandon his ideals and run in the center, as Ms. Huffington suggests he is. I’m simply suggesting that he hasn’t.

Before Senator Obama can cruise to victory in November with an exciting coalition of Democratic, Republican, and Independent voters, he must bring a united party. That includes the 20% of Hillary Clinton voters who say they will vote for McCain.

Cross-posted at BenjaminGoodman.com

New Show Tonight At 10pm

Don’t forget we’ll be live tonight at 10pm eastern. You can listen to the show by just bookmarking this website and returning here. We’ll be discussing all of the week’s top political news and taking your calls at 347-205-9993.

Just a note: we’re posting less than normal due to several factors. Much of the staff is very busy with other projects this particular week, we’re busy working to give the site a facelift, and we’re busy working on getting some very special guests on the program. We should be back to normal starting Monday.

Why I'll Take Biden for VP

As of tonight, he is my favorite for the VP position on the Democratic ticket.

Here are a couple preliminary reasons:

He will win back Hillary-Country for Obama. He is a devout Catholic (born in Scranton, PA even)/Irish Immigrant and stands for the working class. I think he can help Obama lock down Pennsylvania and Michigan, and significantly improve his chances of winning states like Ohio and Virginia.

He is a seasoned legislator. Having been in the Senate since 1972, and now heading the Foreign Relations Committee, there is no better person to have as your right hand man. Keep in mind, Obama can use someone who knows the in and outs of Washington and Congress, and Biden’s experience can aid in that.

He is the king of Foreign Policy and National Security. This is a man who knows his stuff, and I think can be a huge asset when running against a decorated POW and Vietnam Veteran.

He has a sense of genuineness and gives McCain’s strait talk express a run for its money. Although gaffe prone at times, I think Biden can add a lot of value of really getting to the heart of the issues and presenting it in an open and frank way.

He is a nice guy. He has the campaigning skills and the charisma that provides a nice compliment to Obama’s. And he can handle himself in a debate.

________________________________________________________________________

Here is a speech he gave recently on Iraq and the Bush Administration:

Check it out HERE

90 Seconds With Tom Dec

Race for the Naval Observatory

New weekly Veepstakes Vlog on WeeklyFilibuster.com:

Race + Delegate Predictions

I wrote this last night on my personal blog.  Clearly the percentage numbers are off, but Howard Fineman just confirmed my speculation about May 20.

—

 Friday I posted that if Barack Obama could garner four point victories in Indiana and North Carolina, he could put himself just 31 delegates away from claiming a majority of pledged delegates, and essentially shutting down the Clinton Machine.

Let me try to be Chuck Todd for a moment and try to preview tomorrow night’s contests.

A Suffolk University poll of likely Indiana voters released today shows Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama 49-43, with 6% undecided.

If I’ve learned anything this primary season, it’s that the polls are pretty darn accurate. Even the New Hampshire polls, which predicted Barack Obama with a double-digit lead were relatively correct; reporters simply overlooked the undecided voters. RCP’s average from the remaining days before New Hampshire had Obama at 38.3%, and Clinton at 30%. In the end, Clinton won with 39% of the vote to Obama’s 36%. The polls had Obama’s turnout relatively correct–

they did not take undecided voters into account!

Undecided voters tend to lean Clinton.

I’m going to make a guess that Hillary Clinton will take Indiana 53%-47%. This would net Hillary Clinton 38 delegates, and Obama 34 delegates.

Zogby this weekend has Obama winning North Carolina 48%-40%, with 8% not sure (5% support “someone else.”)

That’s a pretty large group of undecided voters. I think Hillary will do a little better than the initial polls show, and take a good chunk of the undecided voters. Obama will win North Carolina by 6%, 52%-46%. Obama walks away with 62 delegates, Clinton with 53.

Net Gains:

Indiana
Clinton +3

North Carolina
Obama +8

It’s going to be awfully hard to spin an Indiana win for Clinton as the “tie-breaker” if Barack Obama walks away with more pledged delegates.

*After Tuesday Night*
Obama: 1,836
Clinton: 1,696

Obama will be 34 delegates away from taking a true pledged delegate majority, and will be able to say he has a claim to the nomination on May 20th.

Why the Indiana Primary Shouldn't Matter

Senator Clinton and her surrogates have spent the last several weeks convincing America that Indiana is a “tiebreaker” for the Democratic nomination. That argument overlooks a couple important facts.

First, to have a “tiebreaker”, there has to be a tie. Obama is ahead by about 100 pledged delegates and Senator Clinton lost her firm lead in Superdelegates a few weeks ago. This is merely another chance for Clinton to put a nick (not a dent) in Obama’s considerable lead.

Second, on the very same day as the Indiana primary is the North Carolina primary. North Carolina is a state with two and a half million more citizens than Indiana. Yet, Senator Clinton has made the argument that North Carolina is irrelevant and the media has paid North Carolina significantly less attention than Indiana. So, why is the bigger state not the “tiebreaker”? Senator Clinton has managed to shift attention away from North Carolina because she realizes that she won’t win there.

- Bob

Some States Recieve Little Funding

The Consolidated Federal Funds Report released by the US Department of Commerce shows a vast inequity in the Federal Government’s distribution of funds between the states. The following map shows that while 6 states recieve under $6,500 per capita from the federal government, some states recieve well over $9,000 per capita a year. While 30 states recieve more in federal funds than they give, taxpayers from Mississippi, West Virginia, and New Mexico all recieve an average of $3 for every dollar they send to Wasington D.C.. Delaware, on the other hand, recieves a mere 42 cents on the dollar. Read the full report (120-page PDF)

North Korea Accused of Spreading WMD Technology

The White House claimed that Syrian nuclear facilities bombed by Israel in 2007 were capable of producing weapons grade plutonium which is more highly enriched than nuclear material used for energy production would be. Citing similarities between Syrian and North Korean technology, the Bush Administration believes that North Korea supplied the technology and information necessary to advance a nuclear weapons program. The picture below was released as an example of similarities.

The White House made these statements after CIA officials had briefed members of congress on the theory of North Korean involvement. The Administration further cites the secrecy that has shrouded the site, the effort by the Syrian government to hide the remains of the destroyed site, and meetings between the heads of the North Korean and Syrian nuclear programs as further evidence that the site was not intended for the production of energy grade plutonium. The Syrian Ambassador to the UN has denied the charges.

The 6 Party Talks have been very productive thus far, having produced an agreement between North Korea, its neighbors, and the US. Kim Jung Ill has also tried to give the west a more positive view of North Korea by inviting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to play in Pyongyang and giving western journalists limited tours. However, the North Korean government has failed to declare all of its nuclear material by the deadline. This new development will undoubtedly hamper the progress of that agreement.

Violence in Somalia

In recent months, Ethiopia has stationed it’s troops across neighboring Somalia in an attempt to curb the power of the country’s strong radical Islamist movement. International Observers have claimed that Ethiopian troops have perpetrated violent acts against Somali citizens. The army has recently been acused of storming a mosque, killing 20 Somalis, and capturing 40 Somali children. The Ethiopian government denies that the incident happened and the Somalian government has not asked Ethiopian soldiers to leave.

General Petraeus

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recommended General Petraeus to head US Central Command (CentCom), citing his work as commander of US Forces in Iraq over the last year. CentCom is a military region that contains everywhere from the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, etc.) to Central Asia. Responsibilities include oversight of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

 

Clinton Wins Pennsylvania Primary

CNN and MSNBC have both projected a Clinton win. With half of precincts reporting, Clinton leads Obama 54% to 46%. However, her victory will likely put only a small dent in Senator Obama’s delegate lead. CNN projects that when all is said and done, Obama will lead Clinton 1,648 to 1,504 delegates out of the 2025 delegates to nominate. Senator Clinton’s best chance for clinching the nomination remains in convincing the Democratic Super-Delegates that she can win traditionally Democratic voters and states as well as large swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Primary

The Pennsylvania polls opened today at 7 A.M. Eastern Time. The latest Zogby poll, published by the Huffington Post, has Clinton at 51%, Obama at 41% and 6% undecided. Look for Penn State to give a significant boost to Obama. At campus, about 1,500 people attended the Clinton rally while it was reported that nearly 22,000 attended the Obama rally. Clinton’s stunningly small turnout shows just how difficult certain counties could be for her. A big turnout in Philly will also be crucial for Obama to close the gap.

-Bob

 

American Solutions' Princella Smith joins us Sunday

Princella Smith, the Chief Advocate of Newt Gingrich’s organization, American Solutions, will be joins Ben, Tom, and the panel this Sunday.

For the second half of the show, a PA Preview, a review of the debate, the Pope, McCain’s tax returns and more!

For More info about Princella Smith or American Solutions go to:

http://www.americansolutions.com/

http://www.americansolutions.com/Blog/Read.aspx?guid=a78f62ba-35fd-4422-a803-fe94a447489a

Gravel Interview Recap

Thank you to everyone who tuned in yesterday. We had a great interview with Former Senator Mike Gravel, who is running for the libertarian nomination.

If you would like to listen to the entire broadcast, click here.

The topics covered (in order of discussion on the interview):

Libertarianism, endorsements, economy, fair tax, boycotting the Olympics, universal healthcare (caller), national initiative, fair tax rebates (caller), President Carter meeting with Hamas, Israel/Palestine, Supreme Court nominees, term limits, civil disobedience and Iraq War, transparency in politics, Israel/Palestine (caller), LGBT rights and gay marriage, genocide in Darfur, global warming.

Gravel links:

www.gravel2008.us (campaign website)

www.ni4d.us (national initiative)

www.citizen-power.us (Sen. Gravel’s book: Citizen Power)

The Kingmakers (out June 2008)- Senator Gravel’s new book about the Media in this election cycle

A Political Odyssey (out May, 2008) – A book about Sen. Gravel’s journey in attempt to dismantle the military-industrial complex

We hope you tune in next week at 10pm EST for another exciting edition of The Weekly Filibuster

New Site

Hey Everyone -

The team of The Weekly Filibuster is re-vamping our site. For now, this site will serve as a portal to our weekly show at 10pm on Sunday nights.

Check out our archives for our previous broadcasts!
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