Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
House panel finds Rangel guilty on 11 ethics charges
A congressional ethics panel found Rep. Charles Rangel guilty Tuesday on 11 counts of violating rules of the House of Representatives and is now weighing how to punish the New York Democrat.
A special eight-member bipartisan panel of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct announced its findings against Rangel after deliberating for hours behind closed doors following a rare trial.
"We have tried to act with fairness, led only by the fact of law," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the chairman of the full committee. "And I believe we have accomplished that mission."
Rangel, 80, was accused of failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and assets, improper use of several rent-controlled apartments in his district, questionable fundraising efforts for a college center in New York that bears his name, and failing to pay taxes on property he owns in the Dominican Republic.
Rangel, who was elected to a 21st term earlier this month, could face expulsion from the House, censure or a reprimand. Congressional experts say that he'll likely be reprimanded, the mildest form of punishment.
Rangel, the former chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax law, wasn't present when Lofgren read the ethics panel's findings. He refused to participate in the proceedings after it declined his request Monday for a postponement because he didn't have - and couldn't afford - legal representation after already spending $2 million on his defense.
GOP Senate leader McConnell backs down, agrees to earmark ban
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>> “There is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight,” McConnell said Monday in a speech on the Senate floor.
>> “And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government,” he said.
Monday, November 15, 2010
The ever-expanding Obamacare escapee list
The list of most recently approved refugees is here. Make no mistake: Team Obama isn’t granting the waivers out of bleeding-heart compassion for the affected workers, but out of a panicked urgency to avoid a public relations disaster.As I’ve boiled it down before:Old Democrat promise: Everyone gets to keep their health insurance.New Democrat promise: You can keep your health insurance…if you BEG hard enough for an Obamacare waiver.Yep: The only way for hundreds of thousands of workers to keep their health insurance is to exempt them from the government-imposed “fix.”
Saturday, November 13, 2010
A 'Separate But Equal' Whip for the Democrats
> A source close to Clyburn said one of his "primary concerns was maintaining a diversity in leadership that reflected" the makeup the Democratic Caucus. Clyburn gets the honorary diversity post without any official duties. He'll need a big office and a staff to develop new diversity programs for the Democrats who survived Pelosi's speakership. I didn't notice any Blue Dogs getting a diversity appointment but I'm sure the new minority leader will deal with them soon enough.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Government Salaries Soar Under Obama
In the last five years, the number of federal employees making $150,000 or more per year increased tenfold, according to an investigation by USA Today. Those high wages increased by twofold under the Obama administration. "The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years," the paper reports. "Since 2005, average salaries for this group climbed 25% compared with a 9% inflation rate."
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Deficit Commission proposal
Putting aside all the minutiae and detail, the crux of the proposal comes down to two points: capping federal government expenditures at 22% -- and eventually 21% -- of GDP, and capping revenues at 21% of GDP. And each of these represents a BIG problem. The first is on the spending side. Except for the anomalous stimulus/bailout/recession years of 2009-2011, federal government expenditures haven’t reached 21% of GDP since the collapse of the Soviet Union – and since World War II only exceeded 21% of GDP during the Reagan-Bush military buildup of the 1980s and early 90s. For virtually all of the Clinton and G.W. Bush years – and during all the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon years – federal expenditures ranged between 18 and 20% of GDP. So while the 21% figure represents something of a cut versus the out-year projections of the President’s most recent budget, it leaves plenty of headroom to establish and make permanent even more government than we had in the immediate pre-Obama years.
The more important problem is on the revenue side. According to Office of Management and Budget figures, federal revenues have NEVER reached 21% of GDP. In fact, only in Bill Clinton’s final year in office – and during WW II – did revenues even exceed 20% of GDP. During the whole time from 1960 through 2008, federal tax revenues almost always fell between 17 and 19% of GDP, only occasionally rising above 19% (chiefly in Clinton’s second term) or below 17% (G. W. Bush’s first term). Even President Obama’s FY 11 Budget has federal revenues rising only to around 19% of GDP by 2015. So the 21% “cap” represents two full percentage points of GDP above what we have experienced even during historically “high” tax environments.
By way of comparison, the last time we had a “balanced” federal budget – FY 2001 – revenues were 19% of GDP and expenditures 18%. The Commission’s draft, in effect, proposes solving our deficit problem by allowing the federal government to grow 15-20% larger than it was under Bill Clinton, then raising taxes as much as necessary to pay for it. It institutionalizes President Obama’s expansion of the role of government – maybe not quite as much as he and Nancy Pelosi would like – and lays the burden squarely on the shoulders of American taxpayers.
Earmark Myths and Realities - By Sen. Tom Coburn
As Senate Republicans prepare to vote on an earmark moratorium, I would encourage my colleagues to consider four myths and four realities of the debate.
Our founders anticipated earmark-style power grabs from Congress and spoke against such excess for the ages. James Madison, the father of the Constitution said, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, spoke directly against federally-funded local projects. “[I]t will be the source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get the most who are the meanest.” Jefferson understood that earmarks and coercion would go hand in hand.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
What Happens When a State Goes Bankrupt?
[T]here is no obvious mechanism for state bankruptcies, even if there are some procedures, I believe, for municipal bankruptcies. This is a ticklish issue because states are sovereigns and it is a frightening prospect to think that when mired in bankruptcy, they could not discharge their essential functions because they could not pay their pension obligations, among others. So the battle over the form of bankruptcy will be acute, and I have no idea how this would play out -- except badly.
[...] I don’t think that full-fledged bankruptcy is a realistic prospect as of now. I think that the much more sensible approach is to side-step the bankruptcy proceedings and find ways to attack the union pension obligations directly, given their enormous size. It is odd that these days the only sacred contracts are those which the state enters into with unions for the benefit of their members.
I doubt that any state could actually go bankrupt. Where would they file in the first place? They might default on bonds and debts, but the creditors will not be able to collect anything without the cooperation of the state. I can't imagine the Feds telling California to pay up ... or else? Maybe they might threaten to withhold highway funds. That's really going to scare Jerry Brown! It's much more likely that the Feds will decide that California is too big to fail, so the rest of us must pitch in with our federal tax dollars to bail them out. There will be harsh words and demands for reform, but the money will be air-dropped before chaos breaks out. Eventually everyone will forget how the state got into such trouble in the first place, and re-elect Jerry Brown, who did such a wonderful job of dealing with the federal government to save California.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Jim DeMint: Welcome, Senate Conservatives
Lastly, don't let your re-election become more important than your job. You've campaigned long and hard for the opportunity to go to Washington and restore freedom in America. People will try to convince you to moderate conservative positions and break campaign promises, all in the name of winning the next race. Resist the temptation to do so. There are worse things than losing an election—like breaking your word to voters.
At your swearing-in ceremony, you will, as all senators do, take an oath to "support and defend the Constitution." Most will fail to keep their oath. Doing these five things will help you maintain a focus on national priorities and be one who does.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Sowell: Spending Money Does Not Work
uess who said the following: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Was it Sarah Palin? Rush Limbaugh? Karl Rove?G
Not even close. It was Henry Morgenthau, secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of FDR’s closest advisers. He added, “after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!”
This is just one of the remarkable and eye-opening facts in New Deal or Raw Deal?, a must-read book by Prof. Burton W. Folsom Jr. of Hillsdale College.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
John Carmack on Government
Given the inefficiency, why is the federal government called upon to do so many things? A large part is naked self interest, which is never going to go away -- lots of people play the game to their best advantage, and even take pride in their ability to get more than they give.However, a lot is done in the name of misplaced idealism. It isn’t hard to look around the world and find something that you feel needs fixing. The world gets to be a better place by people taking action to improve things, but it is easy for the thought to occur that if the government can be made to address your issue, it could give results far greater than what you would be able to accomplish with direct action. Even if you knew that it wasn’t going to be managed especially well, it would make up for it in volume. This has an obvious appeal.Every idealistic cry for the government to “Do Something” means raising revenue, which means taking money from people to spend in the name of the new cause instead of letting it be used for whatever purpose the earner would have preferred.It is unfortunate that income taxes get deducted automatically from most people’s paychecks, before they ever see the money they earned. A large chunk of the population thinks that tax day is when you get a nice little refund check. Good trick, that. If everyone was required to pay taxes like they pay their utilities, attitudes would probably change. When you get an appallingly high utility bill, you start thinking about turning off some lights and changing the thermostat. When your taxes are higher than all your other bills put together, what do you do? You can make a bit of a difference by living in Texas instead of California, but you don’t have many options regarding the bulk of it.Also, it is horribly crass to say it, but taxes are extracted by the threat of force. I know a man (Walt Anderson), who has been in jail for a decade because the IRS disagreed with how his foundations were set up, so it isn’t an academic statement. What things do you care strongly enough about to feel morally justified in pointing a gun at me to get me to pay for them? A few layers of distance by proxy let most people avoid thinking about it, but that is really what it boils down to. Feeding starving children? The justice system? Chemotherapy for the elderly? Viagra for the indigent? Corn subsidies?Helping people directly can be a noble thing. Forcing other people to do it with great inefficiency? Not so much. There isn’t a single thing that I would petition the federal government to add to its task list, and I would ask that it stop doing the majority of the things that it is currently doing. My vote is going to the candidates that at least vector in that direction.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
The Job-Creation Canard - Thomas Sowell
Unemployment never hit double digits in any of the twelve months following the stock-market crash of 1929. But it hit double digits within six months after government intervention — and unemployment stayed in double digits for the entire remainder of the decade, as the government went in for one intervention after another.
The first federal intervention in June 1930 was the passage of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs by a Democratic Congress, a bill signed into law by Republican president Herbert Hoover. It was “bipartisan” — but bipartisan nonsense is still nonsense, and a bipartisan disaster is still a disaster.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Instapundit on the College Bubble
college is the only place where they demand a complete financial statement from you before they tell you what it’s going to cost
Monday, October 11, 2010
A McCarthyite Attack from the Stanford Daily
So I offer an open challenge to the Stanford Daily: either apologize for the baseless slur of racism and the cheap language (e.g., “trash,” “toxic,”"despicable”), or at least show how I was in error, and that, in fact, there are logical and consistent criteria that qualify some groups for racial preference in admissions and hiring in the university and not others. Second, if race is used as a criterion, what then qualifies one as belonging to a particular targeted race or group? Does one warrant special consideration if he is one-half, she one-fourth, they one-eight of a particular targeted lineage? Or is the distinction merely ad hoc and impressionistic? Does the university employ such percentages? If so, such usage has a nightmarish tradition dating back to the antebellum South. Simply invoking the generic idea of “diversity” does not mean, de facto, that racial profiling should not require some concrete, explicit rationale.
These are not racist inquiries, but genuine concerns, as I wrote, that universities themselves are race-obsessed in an increasingly multiracial society where intermarriage, immigration, and assimilation are making race an obsolete criterion for addressing past collective discrimination.
For the Daily to level charges as “despicable” and “cheap,” then surely it must provide proof that they are so. Note again, the anonymous authors of the editorial did not refute anything I wrote as untrue; they only stooped in McCarthyite fashion to invoke charges of racism and to challenge my institution to silence my views that they found unappealing. All that is beneath the daily newspaper of a great university.
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society
For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
Friday, October 08, 2010
Reps. Rangel, Waters' public ethics trials won't start until after midterm election
The House ethics committee announced Thursday that Rangel’s trial will begin Nov. 15 and Waters’s will start Nov. 29.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who chairs the panel, made the decision unilaterally after Republicans publicly balked last week about the delay in setting the schedule and argued the trials should be held before the November midterms.
There's no doubt that a lame-duck session of Congress will be the fairest way to "drain the swamp". There's no sense confusing the public with trials before the election, and it certainly would be wrong to wait until January when a Republican majority is expected to take over the House. The only question remaining is: which comedian will Lofgren appoint as judge for the ethics trials? I nominate John Stewart.
If You Want To Understand What Makes This Recession Continue
In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Our Amicus Brief in the Virginia Case Challenging the Constitutionality of the Obama Health Care Plan
The brief signers include VC co-conspirators Jonathan Adler, David Kopel, and Todd Zywicki, along with other well-known constitutional law scholars such as James Ely (Vanderbilt), Kurt Lash (University of Illinois), Gary Lawson (BU), Steven Presser (Northwestern), and others. Also among the signers is Professor Steven Willis of the University of Florida, coauthor of an important article explaining why, even if the mandate is a tax, it is not a tax authorized by the Constitution. Co-blogger Randy Barnett is filing his own amicus briefalong with the Cato Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute.
If nothing else, I hope the brief will help dispel the myth that there is an expert consensus to the effect that the mandate is constitutional (see also here). It should by now be obvious that many well-known and highly respected scholars believe otherwise.
