Two Republics
America does not have a right to exist. America is simply a collection of ideals bound together by the belief that men have inalienable rights that can neither be taken nor given. However, the thing about inalienable rights is that one must buy into this belief that they can neither be taken nor given. When this belief set is no longer held, man will allow themselves to be bound to those that they are willing to allow to enslave them. Inalienable rights are a foundation. And on that foundation are built further principles into the system of governance defined by our founding fathers. A system of self-governance rather than tyrannical rule is the next precept that follows in American’s philosophy of inalienable rights. The methodology of self-governance builds upon the ideology of inalienable rights by way of allowing citizenry to vote or select representation that maintains that the passage of laws governing the tribes of the land will not inflict harm on what are believed to be ideals that man cannot give or take away. But when these rights are no longer found at the core of the citizenries ideology, or the model of self-governance turns toward tyranny and forces rule upon its citizens without choice, the Republic is not failing it has already fallen.
In what is now considered the latter days of the Roman Republic, the citizens of Italy and the government were in a state of turmoil. The growth of the Republic brought with it great wealth and acquisitions, but it brought a tremendous divide and began creating factions in the political system. The largest of the dividing factions consisted of “old money” families with great fortunes as well as various classes and land owners whose main desire was for the continuation of the Roman State known as the Optimates. The other largest faction consisted of families with political power that began to amass the poor or “the mob” as support. This second faction used social issues to manipulate the lower classes for their bidding. This group, known at the Populares had only political ambition at their disposal, and used the needs and desires of the common man to gain a foothold and political capital.
At the center of the Populares movement were two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, often referred to as The Gracchi. The Gracchi began social programs and influenced the passage of social regulation that slowly began eating out the heart of the Republic and created a snow ball effect of consequences to the economic and social system. The growth of the Republic required new recruits. But social policy said that the Legion could not take recruits that were landless. And land owners were not entering the military because the economic system was forcing small farms into failure. Rich land owners would then buy up these farms and continue to prosper. While those that did not own land were not allowed to be recruited by the Legion to have a chance to turn their life around and make something out of themselves. Furthermore, these landless individuals were no longer hired by landowners because the landowners could import slaves at a cheaper rate. The result was Romans across the middle and lower classes out of work. Because of the lack of small farms food supplies began to run short. The solution to these problems became more government involvement, more social programs, and attempts at greater government power.
The Gracchi are credited with the foundations of socialism and populism. Their time is considered the period of the fall of the Roman Republic and the institution of the Caesars and the Roman Empire. The only reason that history exists is that one learns from it. The situation in the Roman Republic is as different as it is similar to the Republic of the United States of America. But the time line is intriguing. America has not always been at the forefront as a world leader. In fact for the majority of her lineage she has been relatively shut off from most world events, or arguably at least events outside of her hemisphere. It was really not until we as a people came out of World War II victorious, our country unscathed and our factories and people ready to work and help rebuild Europe that we emerged as a first world power. And in the last 60 years we have slowly forgotten the lessons of history. We have built up our social programs, we have awarded the lazy, we have punished diligence and hard work, we punish prosperity, and we even punish our citizens for dying. We redistribute because life is not fair. We create programs to create work to provide citizens benefits and when those programs do not create jobs we simply enforce benefits through taxation without choice.
When the people allow their government to forget the social contract between them, the system is broken. When the citizens speak out against their government and the government ignores the will of the people and responds in tyranny that, “We’re going through the gate, if the gate is closed, we’ll go over it, if it’s too high, we’ll pole vault over it, and if it’s even higher, we’ll parachute in,” the system is not broken, the Republic has fallen. The next six months are potentially some of the most important in our nation’s history. It is time we learn from past, retake our country, and rebuild the Republic.
-nick
Originally published at The Daily Caller.
An Interview With Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA)
Dr. Tom Price (R-GA) is the current chairman of the Republican Study Committee, and has represented the 6th Congressional District of Georgia since 2005. We here at thelobbyist.net are honored he gave us a few minutes of his time to speak about a number of the important issues facing this country.
Siggins: I saw you speak the other day at The Heritage Foundation and I was really impressed with the stuff you and Senator DeMint had to say about the budget and about dependency. It was really good to see.
Price: Wasn’t that something? I found that to be a sobering but also an uplifting exchange just because there are wonderful paths to get out of this craziness if we just seize them.
Siggins: I write for thelobbyist.net, and the founder of the site is a Georgian and is a big, big fan of yours. And we started a new site called ConservativeCongress.com and it’s a sister site and our goal is to bring conservatives to Congress and we put our stamp of approval on those who want to balance the budget, deregulate the federal government and increase our energy independence and reform.
So I guess my first question would be: I know there were issues when the Republicans held all three branches regarding drilling. I know that ANWAR was held up by filibustering…all sorts of issues. With health care attention has been diverted away from energy. But assuming you take back the House which you said the other day “will,” not if.
Price: Right!
Siggins: How do you think Republicans will move forward on drilling, on wind farms, on nuclear power, and getting us away from sending our money to terrorists and the like?
Price: Well it’s kind of the Raison d’etre for your new organization. The secret is to have a conservative congress and that’s what we need. And it requires us to have a conservative Congress and leadership that will move us in the right direction. The remarkable thing to me is the solutions to the challenges that we face are really not that complex. It’s relatively simple.
In August of ’08 when we took to the House floor when the Speaker shut the House down and we stayed for that month because gas had at that point spiked to $4/gallon. We laid out an all of the above energy plan that I believe will still solve the challenges that we face in the area of energy. It’s a plan that would allow us to utilize our own resources in very robust and vibrant ways and environmentally sound and sensitive ways. Whether it is offshore exploration or onshore exploration or clean coal or oil shale. All of those things in addition to the use of nuclear power so that we get off our dependence on foreign oil which is huge and growing.
Secondly, conservation has to be a key component. And incentives for conservation of individuals. And championing conservation. The root word for conservation is conservative! We ought to at least champion that!
And then thirdly it is to not game the system, not have the federal government be the ones who pick the winners and losers- but to incentivize a robust investigation in research and development for the new energy. That’s what we ought to be doing, not picking winners and losers. The last winner the federal government picked, and I use the term ‘winner’ loosely, was corn based ethanol and that’s not working out too well.
Siggins: That’s not working at all. Didn’t that cause starvation in Africa a couple years back?
Price: When you distort markets, markets betray you. So the secret is not to distort markets.
Siggins: Newt Gingrich spoke at the Heritage Bloggers Briefing two weeks ago. And he talked about this being one of his top three priorities. Do you think energy will be one of the top three priorities for Republicans?
Price: Well it has to be, because the bi-product of our current energy policy is to make us more dependent of foreign oil, and also to increase our debt and our deficit. We are just shooting ourselves in the head three times, not just once, so we have got to reign this in. This is common sense stuff, there are simple truths to our public policy and one of our simple truths is if spend more money outside of your nation than inside of your nation then you have a balance-deficit that is moving in the wrong direction.
Siggins: Speaking of the deficit- I was brought in to Heritage to work on The Debt Paying Generation, which is those between five and thirty, including myself, who would just be crushed by upcoming taxes, lack of benefits et cetera et cetera. Senator Demint mentioned some of what he considers to be relatively painless solutions the other day, to help with the deficit and balancing the budget. What do you think are some of the major solutions, or I would say the top three solutions, but also, would you include cutting the Pentagon Budget, or at least streamlining it, as part of one of those solutions.
Price: Well I was so pleased to see so many individuals under the age of forty as I mentioned in our briefing the other day, because you’re right, this is exactly where this is going to hit and it’s going to decrease the ability of you and your peers to have the kind of opportunity that my generation has had. That is why it is morally incumbent upon us to solve this before we pass the baton completely.
There are relatively simple things to do to turn this whole thing around. The first to do is to end the uncertainty here in Washington. When businesses, the job creation engine of this nation, especially small businesses don’t know whether the government is going to come in and punish them or reward them or reward their competition or change the rules of the game completely, then they just hunker down and that’s what’s happening right now. So you can’t get an economy moving, and you’ve got to get an economy moving to end this remarkable death spiral the President and his cronies have us on.
Siggins: Sure.
Price: It’s imperative to decrease the tax burden on individuals and businesses. As you know, we have the second-highest business corporate tax in the entire industrialized world; that makes us competitive with nobody, from the nature of setting up businesses and the job creation- creators. We ought to…I would put a moratorium on business tax at least for two years, and ideally, I would do away with it all together. The lack of incentives that we put on individuals to invest, to utilize their money in ways that puts it at their own decision at various levels of risk so that they can enjoy various levels of reward, but the taxation we put on that, either through capital gains or dividends- the president wants to increase all of these things, [it] is just foolishness if you want to actually get the economy going. So there are simple things you can do just by changing the rules of the game and making it more certain to revitalize and make our economy robust again.
Siggins: Sure, sure- and I agree with everything you’re saying. I guess my last question would be…getting the economy growing is great, and I don’t usually like to cite Paul Krugman, but he even said that even if the economy grows at a 5% rate a year, or 3.5% rate a year, it’s going to take many, many years to get back to 5% unemployment, or 4.5% unemployment like we had five or six years ago.
Price: Sure.
Siggins: So…jobs are going to- jobs, jobs, jobs is going to be the fall election, obviously, and you just described some great ideas to increase jobs, but we can have all the jobs we want to, but the entitlements, upcoming inflation, are just going to crush everybody. So how do you think Medicare, Social Security and- I’ll be the only conservative ever to say this- military spending can be reformed, if you think military spending needs to be reformed. How would you go about that, and I know I only have a couple more minutes with you. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Price: You absolutely need fundamental reform. I’ve got kind of a ten-point plan that I alluded to the other day, and one of them is fundamental reform of our entitlement system. And by that I mean not just decreasing the monies in but increasing the freedom and the liberty of those within the systems themselves, which is, I believe, a very positive tradeoff. And so in Medicare and Medicaid you got to, we’ve got to have a system that allows the people in those programs the opportunity and the privilege to voluntarily move to a system that’s more responsive to them, and you can do that in very predictable ways. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” outlines the way in which one can do that relatively easily. And does it take time? Sure it takes time, because you don’t want to- I’m opposed to forcing individuals off of those programs because people…we are forty years into this dependency society, at least, if not more. But there are ways you can do it that make a whole lot of sense from a financial standpoint and increases [an] individual’s liberty and freedom.
From a defense spending standpoint, we spend less now in defense than we did when we were probably not as challenged as we are right now. I think we can spend more wisely, and I think we can do so in ways that get bigger bangs for the buck, if you will, no pun intended, but I think it’s imperative that we do that.
The statistic that I used the other day that I think is important to remember is that we have spent $16 trillion in this nation in the war on poverty. $16 trillion since the mid-sixties. We’ve increased poverty and we’ve destroyed sectors of our society’s culture, and that’s a reckless and irresponsible, and I believe to be, immoral- in that same…in our entire nation’s history, in our entire nation’s history, we’ve spent a little over $6 trillion, in 2008 dollars, on all of the wars we’ve ever fought. So it’s important to keep things in perspective. We no longer survive as a nation if we don’t have appropriate defenses and national security. So the number one priority of Congress has to be that- we just need to spend smarter.
Siggins: Okay. Well, sir, thank you very much for your time- I really appreciate it.
Price: My pleasure. I look forward to seeing you again.
Siggins: All right. Take care.
The interview can be heard in its entirety here. I would like to thank our founder Nick Brown, as well as one of our contributing editors, RJ Caster, for their help with transcribing the interview.
It’s Offical: Democrats Are Toast In November
Unfortunately, Erick Erickson stole the title I was going to use for this post- he must have read my mind and knew it was a great headline- so I had to modify mine above. However, the point is still the same. Namely, when The New York Times has a front-page story saying Democrats are toast in November, Democrats might as well throw in the towel.
Morning Joe had the author of the article, one Jeff Zeleny, on this morning, and he highlighted three powerful Democrats in particular who were in trouble, including House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey (D-WI) . More importantly, though, is what he describes in the article:
The fight for the midterm elections is not confined to traditional battlegrounds, where Republicans and Democrats often swap seats every few cycles. In the Senate, Democrats are struggling to hold on to, among others, seats once held by President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Democrats are preparing to lose as many as 30 House seats — including a wave of first-term members — and Republicans have expanded their sights to places where political challenges seldom develop.
And later:
Mr. Obey, who leads the powerful Appropriations Committee, is one of three House Democratic chairmen who have drawn serious opposition. Representatives John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, who oversees the Budget Committee, and Ike Skelton of Missouri, who runs the Armed Services Committee, have been warned by party leaders to step up the intensity of their campaigns to help preserve the Democratic majority.
The article is pretty good- I recommend reading it in its entirety. Republican difficulties against Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and for the Florida seat should Florida Governor Crist run as an independent are highlighted, as they ought to be, but the main focus is on the sweep Republicans are likely to make come November.
The beginning of the article- and my first quoted section above- include the fact this November is not just another trade of moderate seats that happen all the time in Congress. Liberal Republicans and Conservative Democrats are constantly grabbing up valuable and vulnerable seats, and so gains in some of those districts and states are to be expected on a regular bases. My biggest fear, however, is that Zeleny is wrong, and that this November will just be another part of the regular shift in D.C., and no real conservative swing will take place. As Mark Steyn noted on March 5 (emphasis mine),
So there was President Obama, giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that “now is the hour when we must seize the moment,” the same moment he’s been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.
Why is he doing this? Why let “health” “care” “reform” stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?
Because it’s worth it. Big time. I’ve been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect (Let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative”).
The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.
The admittedly liberal Center for American Progress noted two weeks ago that in poll after poll Americans like Social Security and Medicare, the two biggest impacts on the federal deficit and debt. Further, even President Obama couldn’t cut defense spending in his “freeze” proposal without a massive backlash. Without cutting Social Security, Medicare and military spending, how do we ever expect to balance the budget, never mind eliminate the debt? I hope Americans realize the tough decisions that must be made, and I hope they vote in politicians who will actually do what’s best for the country, not their re-election hopes. However, I must admit that I am not entirely optimistic.
Democratic Leadership & Liberal Groups Missing The Long View
The Hill had this article yesterday, showing some substantial financial rewards reaped by vulnerable Democrats after voting for health care reform:
Vulnerable House Democrats who supported the healthcare bill last month reaped big financial rewards.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports show the crucial yes votes cashed in between March 21 and the end of the first quarter on March 31. They received big money from Democratic-leaning political action committees (PACs) and fellow Democratic members of Congress.
Several of these members were last-minute yes votes, which helped push the legislation to passage.
Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) raised more than $140,000 from PACs and fellow members in the final 10 days of the quarter — which was more than one-third of the $400,000 total he raised for the entire quarter.
Rep. Scott Murphy (D-N.Y.) raised more than $100,000 from political committees after deciding to vote yes on the bill, and he raised about $475,000 overall.
Reps. Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) and Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) weren’t far behind, each raising more than $90,000 from PACs and fellow members of
Congress in the final week-plus of the quarter. Halvorson raised $410,000 total, while Giffords raised nearly $500,000.
Frequent givers included labor unions and left-leaning groups like the Human Rights Campaign PAC. Several liberal members of Congress who championed the bill, including Reps. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), also rewarded those who voted yes with contributions.
While members flooded each other’s coffers in the final days of the first-quarter fundraising period, House leaders gave little to those who voted no on healthcare reform. In the final week-plus of the quarter, neither Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) nor Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) gave money to any member who voted no.
This, of course, is standard politics- reward those who help you, ditch those who don’t. Heck, it’s standard in life. Still, it’s clear that leading Democrats and liberal groups are a) as big on ideological purity as the Republican Party is accused of, and b) unwilling to look at the longer picture, namely that it’s the Democrats who voted against the law that are the ones Democrats NEED if they want to win consecutive elections, and have a long run at ruining America’s financial future.
Of course, these so-called “conservadems” and “DINOs” will be replaced by relatively moderate Republicans and conservatives in many districts, as the political pendulum swings, and in a year I’ll probably be criticizing RINOs and moderate conservatives as they vote for bad bills. However, given the lack of support from their leadership, and the strength of the conservative movement heading into the midterms…maybe we’ll actually have a conservative House, not just a Republican majority House. At that point, we can start putting good legislation on the table, not just opposing bad legislation.
A Bad Idea for Financial Reform
[Editor's Note: The following piece is contributed by David Weinberger. David is a prominent blogger and works for a leading think tank in Washington, D.C.]
In 1933, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act to separate investment and commercial banking, the combination of which was one of the culprits behind the 1929 stock market crash. However, included in the act was a provision to forbid banks from certain financial activities, which increased, rather than decreased, financial risk. Finally repealed in 1999, its reincarnation is creeping back through Senator Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) Financial Reform Bill: the Volcker rule.
The Volcker rule, named after former Reagan Administration Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, has damaging unintended consequences. If passed, it will leave many of the problems from the most recent financial crisis unaddressed.
The Volcker rule would effectively forbid any bank or other institution with FDIC-insured deposits from undertaking any proprietary trading. In other words, it would prohibit banks from trading strictly for their self interest; instead it would attempt to allow only trading that directly involves customers.
The question is how does a regulatory commission determine whether banks are trading specifically for their own self-interest or trading on behalf of a customer? To do so would require exceedingly stringent regulation that would hamper economic growth. For example, banks invest to provide supplemental liquidity, which enables them to provide more loans to customers. In order to determine whether or not a bank is directly involving a customer when investing this liquidity would require regulation on virtually every transaction. Regulating every transaction not only slows the number of loans given to customers – impeding overall investment and spending in the economy – but it also diminishes banks’ ability to grow. If it becomes harder for a bank to grow it becomes harder for a consumer to obtain a loan.
Further, banks fund large investments, both for themselves and for consumers, which grow the economy. If the Volcker rule were to become law, it would constrict their ability to do so, and would make it harder for them to compete with major foreign banks that have no such restrictions.
Consequently, over-enforcement will cause banks to earn less, depressing the amount of money available for consumers to borrow. Likewise, under-enforcement will prove meaningless, resulting in more bureaucratic waste at taxpayers’ expense. So given the difficulty of appropriate enforcement, why is the Volcker rule being considered?
The answer is because Congress has misdiagnosed the problem. Congress, in an attempt to implement the Volcker rule, has misconstrued the financial crisis by blaming “greedy banks.” However, just as in 1933, legislation that misdiagnoses the problem will not help prevent another crisis.
The Volcker rule ignores one critically important fact: The 2008 financial crisis did not have to do with banks engaging in risky proprietary trading. Instead, it had to do in large part with non-bank financial institutions that bought mortgages and re-packaged them as securities. These mortgages were then sold off to investors, while rating agencies were paid to rate them AAA even though they weren’t.
As David John of The Heritage Foundation notes, “Both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the failures of which signaled the 2008 crisis, were significantly smaller than many other financial institutions, and neither they nor AIG was a bank”
Rather, the mortgage-backed securities those institutions dealt were so interconnected in the financial sector that they threatened the entire system, including commercial banks. Default by financial institutions would have caused other institutions to collapse, whose losses would have severely jeopardized the banking industry. Even if the Volcker rule were already in place it would not have prevented the collapse of these institutions nor would it have prevented the crisis altogether. It fails to address the interconnectedness of our financial industry and doesn’t adequately address liquidity standards.
Congress should be addressing new rules in bankruptcy law as well as increasing capital and liquidity standards to help prevent this crisis from happening again. The proposed legislation addresses neither. At the expense of economic prosperity it encourages future taxpayer bailouts. Smart regulation is a good idea, but the wrong regulation will lead to unintended results.
-david
Can Americans Make the Tough Choices?
The Center for American Progress, which bills itself as the liberal Heritage Foundation, has a really good pie chart of how the federal budget is split among the various areas it funds. I recommend taking a look, so you can see exactly where this massively oversized budget is going.
CAP also has a quick take- they call it an analysis, though it is far short of that- on where the money goes. In actuality, it discusses where Americans would cut the budget. Their findings, as correlated by the numerous sources the “analysis” cites, show Americans are mostly abstract about cutting the budget. According to CAP:
But, the American public’s disdain for “government spending” only holds up in the abstract. The public is much less willing to pull out the hatchet when asked about specific parts of the federal budget. That same Economist poll gave respondents a list of budget areas and asked them which ones should be cut. Only one area garnered majority support for reductions— foreign aid. And foreign aid makes up less than 2 percent of the federal budget even using the most expansive definition. Even eliminating it completely would have little discernible impact on the federal bottom line.
There was not even one other area aside from foreign aid where support for cuts cracked 30 percent, let alone 50, including everything from science and technology to aid to the poor. Support for cuts to two of the biggest budget items—Social Security and Medicare—didn’t even make it out of the single digits. And lest one think this one poll was an anomaly, recent polls from Quinnipiac and Democracy Corps confirm the overall message: people support the abstract idea of spending reductions, but don’t like actually cutting specific programs.
Americans need to make tough choices over the next several years to begin the long process of balancing the federal budget and eliminating our national public debt. CAP’s piece does a credible job of showing that, unfortunately, this may very well not happen. In particular, two segments of Americans deserve blame. First, young-and-middle-aged people don’t want higher taxes for entitlements they won’t receive. Secondly, old people don’t want to lose entitlement benefits for which they have been taxed; and middle-class America. Unfortunately, unless the sacrifices are made, our national debt will swallow this country whole. Hopefully, Americans will realize this and prepare themselves for the tough but necessary path to prosperity.
(For the record, I am one of the young people who doesn’t want to be taxed. I am all for cutting entitlements over time, slowly phasing people out of certain, among other ideas to balance the budget and lessen the debt. This is not fair to older people, but I think it’s the only viable option to kick-start the process. Otherwise, we’ll have to raise taxes, and that will devastate the economy. I have many other ideas, including ones I will address at a later time, but for the sake of this post I will stop with what I have above.)
Eric Holder vs Liz Cheney (Part Deux)
Originally Posted on Draft Liz Cheney:
Attorney General Eric Holder took his turn in front of the Senatorial talking-points firing squad (also known as a “Senate Committee Hearing,” where Senators don’t bother with what could be regarded as inquiry and instead try to fit as many one-liner rhetorical pot-shots they can during their allotted time) Wednesday. Interestingly enough, the New York Times reported the event in a considerably concise manner: touching upon the concerns Republicans (and Democratic New Yorkers) had with the idea of the Justice Department holding terrorist trials in New York, or in the United States period. The Times is also sure to point out the small spat between Senator Jeff Sessions (R – AL) and Mr. Holder, while de-emphasizing Mr. Holder’s respectable ability to quibble his way around Senator Session’s questions and points. In the end, even Senator Schumer (D – NY) pointedly registered his view that New Yorkers’ had developed a fairly strong consensus against any terrorist trial being held in the state.
Of course, I write for this website that encourages Liz Cheney in a direction that would land her in some sort of public office. With that in mind, I had to journey into forbidden waters to find what truly interested followers of Draft Liz Cheney, which was the part of the testimony where the Attorney General goes out of his way to address his contempt for Keep America Safe’s campaign to elucidate the nine lawyers working on terrorism cases that had defended ‘suspected’ terrorists in the past. Fortunately, the HuffingtonPost does a fair and balanced article on the Attorney general’s scornful remarks:
“There has been an attempt to take the names of the people who represent Guantanamo detainees and to drag their reputations through the mud,” he said, when pressed to disclose more information about these lawyers by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “There were reprehensible ads in essence to question their patriotism. I’m not going to allow these kids… I’m not going to be a part of this effort.”
Holder continued: “Their names are out there now. I’m simply not going to be a part of that effort. I would not allow good, decent lawyers who have followed the best traditions of American jurisprudence… I will not allow their reputations to be besmirched. I will not be a part of that.”
Had Mr. Holder answered the questions raised regarding the Justice Department’s employment of attorneys that had been involved in terrorist defense cases, no one’s reputation would have been “dragged through the mud.” Furthermore, it was not for the purpose of dragging through the mud that Senators (before Keep America Safe even became involved) asked the Attorney General for those names in November to begin with, it was in the interest of full disclosure and transparency: these two nefarious notions that the Obama Administration promised would be at the forefront of their Administration. When the Justice Department ducked and dived, Keep America Safe stepped up to the plate and Liz Cheney called Attorney General Holder out on it.
I find it interesting that Holder’s lawyers are “good” and “decent,” while the Bush Administration’s lawyers faced possible indictments the entire year following Bush 43’s ride into the sunset. What is killing the Obama Administration is the knowledge that they might be able to kick around Sarah Palin and a few others by calling them stupid or letting SNL do their dirty work for them; but they cannot do the same with Liz Cheney. This is what makes her such a force inside the beltway, and why we need to push her in that direction.
-rj
Remembering the Chain of Command
As a supporter of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I find myself agreeing far more with older military leaders than younger ones regarding the ban. This is why I was on National Public Radio last year, and why I find the thousand or so retired military leaders who signed a letter supporting DADT as convincing a case for support as I find the 104 who signed a letter to the opposite effect. I look forward to being shown that DADT should be lifted, but as a private citizen I have not seen convincing evidence to that effect. Either way, however, as a member of the Army National Guard, it is my duty to follow the lawful rules and regulations laid down by my superiors. After all, some things don’t change in the military. One of those is the Chain of Command.Without the Chain of Command, mission efficiency and respect for authority are diminished.
Unfortunately, Lt. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, the Commanding Officer of U.S. Army Pacific, ignored this basic rule of military service. In an unusual measure, General Mixon broke the Chain when he wrote a public letter stating his opposition to lifting DADT. The letter says:
The recent commentaries on the adverse effects of repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy were insightful.
It is often stated that most servicemembers are in favor of repealing the policy. I do not believe that is accurate. I suspect many servicemembers, their families, veterans and citizens are wondering what to do to stop this ill-advised repeal of a policy that has achieved a balance between a citizen’s desire to serve and acceptable conduct.
Now is the time to write your elected officials and chain of command and express your views. If those of us who are in favor of retaining the current policy do not speak up, there is no chance to retain the current policy.
As a member of the military, and especially as a senior member of the military, the general not only knows better but deserves the criticism leveled at him by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen.
Mullen said that as a three star general, Mixon “has a great influence,” and added that clear directives had been given by Army Chief of Staff General George Casey about “how this was going to be approached…and there’s an expectation, obviously, that you would comply with that, or anybody would comply with that.”
Mullen also made clear that such disagreements with DoD policy should also be expressed within the chain of command.
“In the end, if there is either policy direction that someone in uniform disagrees with — and I’ve said this before — the answer — and you feel so strongly about it — you know, the answer is not advocacy; it is in fact to vote with your feet. And that’s what all of us in a position of leadership, I think, have to conform to,” said Mullen
Then when asked if Mixon needed to leave the Army, Mullen replied, “That’s a decision that would certainly be up to him.”
Whatever one thinks of DADT, senior-level officials should voice their opinions on such matters in the appropriate forums and fashions, as Marine Corps Commandant General James Conway has done. (See the latter two links for how Conway has expressed his opinions on the matter.) General Mixon failed to do this, and in doing so has undermined his Chain of Command and his personal military bearing. I am pleased that Gates and Mullen knocked him off his perch in such a direct and professional manner.
300000000000000%!!!!!!!!!!!!
The president a few days ago met with a huge crowd of 200 people! 200 people went to see the messiah. Seems like more would have attended… Anyhow, Obama promised that if your job provides you health insurance that after Obamacare passed your boss would save 3000% on his premiums and then of course you would get a raise. You wouldn’t get the raise by earning it of course. You would get the raise because your boss had more money and you somehow have a right to it. But that’s a whole other issue.
Did anyone in the audience happen to consider what a 3000% decrease in premiums would be? I’m guessing that if this had of been said by a certain Republican president with a W in his middle name we’d have talking heads and late night shows and comedians tearing this down. It’s just that bad.
The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that the average premium for an individual in 2009 was $4,824. So I’m just going to do a little math here. Bear with me.
$4,824 x 3000% = $144,720
$144,720 – initial investment cost ($4,824) = $139,896 in total saving on one single policy for the employer.
Health care reform is a gold mine! Based on these figures, if we let the president pass this bill, Health insurance companies will actually be forced to pay business roughly $140k just for the business accepting their policy.
In addition to this, Obama was quoted as saying,
And she upped her deductible last year to the minimum, the highest possible deductible.
Obama speaks, clouds part, flowers blossom, rainbows light the heavens and we all become dumber for having listened to him.
Coburn Gets A Good Start
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is one of the most intelligent congressional Republicans on health care. During the crock “summit” a few weeks ago, he hammered the fact that one-third of America’s health care costs are wasted, and that anti-fraud (10% of Medicare’s costs) and tort reform ($54 billion dollars over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office) efforts are good places to start reforming the system. Today Yahoo! News has published a column by Coburn, where he lays out some specific failures of the Senate bill.
This is not Coburn’s best work- he did better in his two Huffington Post pieces, and as I said above was a great conservative representative in the summit. He does, however, name the number one issue with American health care and health insurance: cost. Since cost is directly related to access, lowering cost would increases access. Unfortunately, as Coburn points out, the Senate/House/garbage bill increases coverage (access) to health insurance without lowering cost, and in fact increases cost. Thus, we will have a failure on multiple levels if the Senate bill passes the House.
I think Coburn missed a couple of key points in his column, though this is not entirely his fault- he covered a great deal, and it’s not as if he could tackle everything in a 600 or 800-word opinion piece. The key things he did not address were: why he as a conservative opposes cutting Medicare, when Medicare is a single-payer health care system; why he thinks tort reform is such a big deal, when the CBO director said it would save only .5% in our health care costs (he addresses this in my first link above, though I think he overstates the case); and how lowering health care costs would lower the cost of insurance, something liberals seem not to understand.
When it comes down to it, major health care reform is simple and- surprisingly- probably bipartisan. We have to lower costs, increase patient choice and awareness of costs, lessen government control and incentivize consumer wisdom. I believe the following would do this:
1. Tort reform. It would lower health care costs, which in turn lowers health insurance rates and helps improve the quality of care in America. It would not lower costs as much as Coburn says it would (with respect, of course, to his experience as a doctor), but it would help more than the CBO says it would, since less defensive medicine lowers costs of tests/procedures; allows doctors to worry less about being sued and more about doing their work well; and allows better health because fewer invasive tests will be done unnecessarily.
2. Modify the employer exclusion tax. This would treat individual insurance the same as employer insurance is treated, thus incentivizing insurance policy holders to have their own insurance. Since there would be more direct control and knowledge of insurance, people would watch what they spend more, and when jobs are lost insurance would not necessarily be. It also would give consumers more money, since their individual insurance would now have the same tax treatment as employer-based insurance. Lastly, it would lower the costs on businesses, allowing them to grow.
3. Change our Medicare payment reform system in the style of the Dartmouth Atlas Program. It would lower costs, increase the quality of care and put something of a brake on the overutilization of resources America currently has.
4. Get rid of the insurance monopoly exemption. This will kick in market competition for both the numbers of insurance providers and the prices they charge.
5. Allow the purchase of insurance across state lines, for the same reasons as number four above.
6. Put government efforts towards going after waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and private health care insurers and providers. Even if we only cut out half of the waste/fraud/abuse in Medicare, that is $30 billion saved every year. That’s $300 in ten years.
7. By doing the above, we would put effort towards a culture that does not insure for every little paper cut, but instead treats insurance as it should be looked upon- as a backup in case of catastrophic illness or unfortunate circumstances.
I know Coburn didn’t have the room to attack all of these angles, especially since he had to go after the House/Senate/garbage bill in-depth. I do think, however, that Democrats, all of whom allegedly hate insurance companies; want to increase competition; insist on lowering costs and increasing coverage; and want a better Medicare system, could easily support the above ideas, with the exception of tort reform. This is mostly because trial lawyers are absurdly influential in Democratic circles, but also because there is a legitimate argument against the lawsuit limitations referenced by the CBO- after all, in some cases, half a million dollars won’t be enough to pay for a doctor’s mistake.
Oh, and this answers one of my concerns with Coburn’s piece- if we institute tort reform, payment reform and combat Medicare fraud/waste/abuse, we will save many tens of billions of dollars a year in Medicare costs. THIS is where cuts should be made, not arbitrarily, as Democrats want. Though I dislike Medicare, government has forced two generations of Americans to pay into the system, and the older ones deserve to get something out of it.
