The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
The RNC adopts a litmus test of values for candidates it supports
In an unprecedented move, the Republican National Committee on Friday unanimously called on its chairman, Michael S. Steele, to "carefully screen" candidates for their adherence to conservative values before granting them RNC financial help.
The resolution specifically calls on the national chairman to take into account the voting records and statements of all GOP candidates for evidence that they support the "core principles and positions" of the party's national platform, widely regarded as a highly conservative document.
Jubilant conservatives on the 168-member RNC -- the party's national governing body -- called passage of the resolution a "historic" step designed to make it difficult for Mr. Steele and future party leaders to help finance the campaigns of liberal Republicans.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/30/gop-leaders-enact-values-litmus-test-backing/
Evidence of corruption and lack of fact potentially dooms Al Gore’s “global warming” scam.
The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.
The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.
As one additional reports notes:“Bereft of scientific or moral authority, the most expensive show the world has ever seen may soon be nearing its end.”
White House lists some proposed cuts in 2011 budget
Obama, presents his budget proposals for the fiscal year starting October 1 on Monday, has promised to tackle record deficits by initiating a spending freeze on some domestic programs and eliminating programs that are redundant.
The White House gave a preview of some of those cuts in a statement published on its blog on Saturday.
One of the proposals would eliminate the "Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit," which allows eligible taxpayers with children to get a portion of their tax credit paid out in their paychecks throughout the year.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60T21S20100130?type=politicsNews
Opinion:
Obama’s State of the Union Address, seems to have failed to give him a bounce
This morning’s presidential tracking of Obama’s popularity by Galllup is not encouraging for Democrats. In a recent slide in popularity, Democrats had hoped Obama would be able to use his greatest asset – delivering an effective address – might be the beginning of regaining momentum.
From all indications, Obama failed and perhaps failed big time.
Gallup’s 72 hour rolling figures show Obama has only 47% approving the job he is doing, with the same number of Americans saying he is not getting a passing grade. This is Obama’s first measurement below 50% by Gallup, although Rasmussen and others have had him below 50% for a couple of weeks.
Most notably, the Gallup measurement covers the amount of time normally required to accurately judge the impact of an event. This means the first indications suggest Obama didn’t make the grade.
A lot has been said about the Obama address – his attack on the Supreme Court, Justice Alito’s reaction, Harry Reid’s yawning, Biden’s bobble headed reaction, and Nancy Pelosi’s performance of a giddy junior high school cheer leader – jumping to her feet and clapping whether Obama’s rhetoric deserved it or not.
A handy list of things to hate about that address, are offered by Troy Senik.
Buddy
10 Things to Hate About the State of the Union
Troy Senik
With Representative Joe Wilson likely bound and gagged in a Capitol Hill janitorial closet during this year’s [State of the Union] remarks, no such luck. Herewith, then, are the 10 quotes from this year’s State of the Union that deserved a shout from the gallery...
If there is a more painful exercise in American political life than the State of the Union address, it’s a well-kept secret. Every year, millions of Americans tune in to the President’s annual remarks to a joint session of Congress either out of an obstinate sense of civic obligation or a perilous shortage of Ambien. And every year, regardless of party, the President delivers the executive branch’s wish list in dutiful, if listless, prose while his congressional partisans see how quickly they can render the standing ovation meaningless.
To break up the monotony, there are always moments of grandstanding – policy promises too utopian to be kept, schoolmarmish knuckle-rapping for the opposition party, the President’s attempt to transfer the totemic appeal of some working-class hero to himself by placing him or her in the House gallery. It is perhaps the most aristocratic callisthenic of the republic, achingly in need of the irreverence of the British Prime Minister’s question time. With Representative Joe Wilson likely bound and gagged in a Capitol Hill janitorial closet during this year’s remarks, no such luck. Herewith, then, are the 10 quotes from this year’s State of the Union that deserved a shout from the gallery:
1. “To recover the rest [of the TARP money], I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks. I know Wall Street isn't keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.” – Actually, with the exception of Citigroup, these banks have already paid back their emergency borrowing from the federal government with interest. The holes in the TARP fund that the “fee” is supposed to cover stem from the automobile and housing industries, which (get your inhaler ready), somehow managed to escape the President’s wrath in this new round of financial flagellation.
2. “… We need to export more of our goods. … So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support 2 million jobs in America.” – A classic case of damn the torpedoes and pick a number out of a hat speechwriting. The President may as well predict how many blades of grass will be on the South Lawn in 2015. Leaving aside the Russian grain quota statistical predictions, there’s also subtle rhetorical mercantilism at work here (notice Obama’s silence on import levels). Increasing exports isn’t necessarily an unalloyed good. After all, you could wipe out trade deficits rather quickly by weakening the dollar.
3. “ … In this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job. … [Let’s] give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants. And let's tell another 1 million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years -- and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service.” – Welcome to the education bubble. The government’s logic is as follows: College is good. Let’s subsidize college. The result? More people go to college and the college degree loses its value (thus is born the educational inflation that makes the high school diploma of lesser value every decade). Also, the increase in demand leads to an increase in price, which in turn leads to a further increase in subsidies. Now, to add insult to injury, we’re making the deal even sweeter for people who choose careers in the least productive sector of the economy: government.
4. “And by the way, I want to acknowledge our first lady, Michelle Obama, who this year is creating a national movement to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity and make our kids healthier.” – Has anyone ever made a better case for permanently cutting off public funding for the First Lady’s office?
5. “Now if we had taken office in ordinary times, I would have liked nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit. But we took office amid a crisis, and our efforts to prevent a second depression have added another $1 trillion to our national debt. I am absolutely convinced that was the right thing to do. But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same. So tonight, I'm proposing specific steps to pay for the $1 trillion that it took to rescue the economy last year.” – For those of you playing the home game, this means that government spending is a necessary response to an economic downturn, But now that we’ve thrown a trillion dollars at the problem and are still in the doldrums, we’re going to cut government spending. Got that? Dr. Keynes, call your office.
6. “But at a time of record deficits, we will not continue tax cuts for oil companies, investment fund managers and those making over $250,000 a year. We just can't afford it.” – a clear enough statement, to its credit. Only problem? It comes a few paragraphs after Obama boasted, “We haven't raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime.” Sounds like we better start rolling those ten-cent pieces for the year ahead.
7. In response to the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance ruling: “I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people …” – an artless sleight of hand. Notice the change in verbs between sentences from “bankrolled” to “decided”. Despite Obama’s anxieties, every American gets only one vote, regardless of how much cash they dump into a candidate’s coffers. Money only buys the opportunity to persuade, not the guarantee of doing so successfully.
8. “Even as we prosecute two wars, we are also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people -- the threat of nuclear weapons. I have embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons and seeks a world without them.” – Kennedy and Reagan, while both far superior to Obama as foreign policy presidents, were also both delusional on the nuclear issue. So is the 44th president. The only way to permanently eliminate nuclear weapons is to permanently eliminate the knowledge necessary to construct them – essentially to usher in a new Dark Age where humanity’s store of knowledge contracts. In the meantime, any disarmament by civilized powers will only increase the relative benefit to be gained by rogue states that develop nuclear weapons.
9. “… The international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran's leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences.” – Perhaps Iran would take America’s resolve more seriously if the “consequences” were something more than speeches occasionally reminding them that there will be consequences.
10. “Our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores. … That is why we stand with the girl who yearns to go to school in Afghanistan, we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran, and we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea.” – We stand with the girl in Afghanistan until July 2011, when U.S. forces in that country begin drawing down. We watched one of the above-referenced women in Iran be gunned down in the streets of Tehran, and the President did little more than tut-tut at the White House television that he had tuned to MSNBC. And the case of Guinea had its first and last exposure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the group of speechwriters looking for an obscure way to end this particular rolling triad.
America has a president who learned during the last campaign that he could bend the public to his will through rhetoric. Unfortunately, he hasn’t yet learned that reality isn’t nearly as pliable.
The days’ top blogs:
1.
Glenn Reynolds: More impact is what's next for the Tea Party movement
Glenn Reynolds
Sunday Reflections Contributor
A year ago, the Tea Party movement didn't exist. Today, it is arguably the most popular political entity in America. The movement is already more popular than the Republican or Democratic parties according to a recent NBC / WSJ poll .
Even in blue-state California, three in 10 voters identify with the Tea Party movement.
And, of course, Scott Brown's come-from-behind blowout in Massachusetts occurred in no small part because of money and volunteers from the Tea Party movement around the nation.
This is heady stuff -- and, for people in the political establishment, both Republicans and Democrats, it's worrying stuff. If political movements can bubble up from below, and self-organize via the Internet, what will happen to the political class?
It's one thing when record stores or video rental places get dis-intermediated. It's a whole different ball game when people who rely on politics not only for their livelihood, but for maintaining their considerable sense of self-importance discover that they may not be quite as necessary as it once seemed.
But that hard lesson is becoming apparent. In fact, the Tea Party movement seems to be showing better political judgment than either of the two major political parties.
Last week, Joe Scarborough wrote that the Tea Party movement might "tear itself apart." His evidence of this: Some squabbling over a Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tenn. Well, squabbling is normal in movement politics, particularly when people think they're being shortchanged on money and credit. But what's really striking about the Tea Party movement isn't that there's squabbling -- it's how little squabbling, overall, there has been.
Scarborough's column, remember, was occasioned by the Brown victory in Massachusetts. A few Tea Party purists didn't want to support Brown, seeing him as insufficiently pure. But the vast majority made the entirely pragmatic determination that Brown, whatever his flaws, was vastly better than his Democratic opponent Martha Coakley, and just the guy to stop Obamacare in its tracks if elected.
They poured in donations and volunteers (millions of dollars and thousands of people), and helped Brown win, and were immediately proven right as Brown's victory did, in fact, derail Obamacare and produce a general Democratic flight from the whole hope and change agenda.
The Republican and Democratic hacks who were supposed to be worrying about this sort of thing, meanwhile, were asleep at the switch. Republican Party support to Brown was late in coming, appearing only after the Tea Party support raised his profile.
Democrats were even slower to recognize the threat and react, and their reaction -- a last-minute visit by President Obama -- probably hurt more than it helped, demonstrating their tone-deafness regarding public attitudes.
So far the Tea Party's record is looking pretty good. But what happens next? Many people -- er, well, many pundits, anyway -- complain that the Tea Party movement is entirely oppositional: For a brief moment, the key buzzword was "nihilistic," though the connection between Turgenev and Tea Parties seems rather tenuous.
In fact, Tea Partiers seem quite clear on what they're for: A limited government, one that keeps its nose out of their business and focuses on things like protecting the country in preference to redistributing income.
As blogger Freeman Hunt wrote recently:"You want a big tent? It's fiscal conservatism. The people are overwhelmingly in favor of it.You offer that, you follow through on it, and you get the Republicans, the moderates, and a sizable chunk of disaffected Democrats."
Only to the likes of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is support for limited government a species of nihilism. But Tea Partiers are, in fact, working on a platform, which they've called the Contract From America . Though the name may remind some of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, this is something very different.
It's a set of ideas developed via an interactive Web site, where voting determines which elements are most important. And it's not a top-down contract consisting of promises made by leaders to the voters -- it's more in the nature of a contract of employment from the voters, which politicians may choose to accept, or look for alternative employment.
This is basically a crowd-sourced party platform, with the smoke-filled rooms and convention logrolling taken out of the picture. More dis-intermediation. I'm guessing that the political class won't like it much, either.
But whether the political class likes it or not, this sort of thing is probably here to stay. While 2009 was the year of denigrating and ignoring the tea parties, I suspect that in 2010, they'll be listened to quite closely. Those who fail to do so, are likely to find themselves out of a job.
Examiner Contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds hosts "InstaVision" on PJTV.com, and blogs at Instapundit.com. He is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/More-impact-is-what_s-next-for-the-Tea-Party-movement-83041312.html#ixzz0eBjjng2M
2.
The handling of the Christmas Day bombing suspect: the scandal grows
Charles Krauthammer
The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane -- that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration -- but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.
After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him.
We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the FBI, (4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or (5) the director of national intelligence (DNI).
The Justice Department acted not just unilaterally but unaccountably. Obama's own DNI said that Abdulmutallab should have been interrogated by the HIG, the administration's new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
Perhaps you hadn't heard the term. Well, in the very first week of his presidency, Obama abolished by executive order the Bush-Cheney interrogation procedures and pledged to study a substitute mechanism. In August, the administration announced the establishment of the HIG, housed in the FBI but overseen by the National Security Council.
Where was it during the Abdulmutallab case? Not available, admitted National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, because it had been conceived for use only abroad. Had not one person in this vast administration of highly nuanced sophisticates considered the possibility of a terror attack on American soil?
It gets worse. Blair later had to explain that the HIG was not deployed because it does not yet exist. After a year! I suppose this administration was so busy deploying scores of the country's best lawyerly minds on finding the most rapid way to release Gitmo miscreants that it could not be bothered to establish a single operational HIG team to interrogate at-large miscreants with actionable intelligence that might save American lives.
Travesties of this magnitude are not lost on the American people. One of the reasons Scott Brown won in Massachusetts was his focus on the Mirandizing of Abdulmutallab.
Of course, this case is just a reflection of a larger problem: an administration that insists on treating Islamist terrorism as a law-enforcement issue. Which is why the Justice Department's other egregious terror decision, granting Khalid Sheik Mohammed a civilian trial in New York, is now the subject of a letter from six senators -- three Republicans, two Democrats and Joe Lieberman -- asking Attorney General Eric Holder to reverse the decision.
Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins had written an earlier letter asking for Abdulmutallab to be turned over to the military for renewed interrogation. The problem is, it's hard to see how that decision gets reversed. Once you've read a man Miranda rights, what do you say? We are idiots? On second thought . . .
Hence the agitation over the KSM trial. This one can be reversed, and it's a good surrogate for this administration's insistence upon criminalizing -- and therefore trivializing -- a war on terror that has now struck three times in one year within the United States, twice with effect (the Arkansas killer and the Fort Hood shooter) and once with a shockingly near miss (Abdulmutallab).
On the KSM civilian trial, sentiment is widespread that it is quite insane to spend $200 million a year to give the killer of 3,000 innocents the largest propaganda platform on earth, while at the same time granting civilian rights of cross-examination and discovery that risk betraying U.S. intelligence sources and methods.
Accordingly, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Frank Wolf have gone beyond appeals to the administration and are planning to introduce a bill to block funding for the trial. It's an important measure. It makes flesh an otherwise abstract issue -- should terrorists be treated as enemy combatants or criminal defendants? The vote will force members of Congress to declare themselves. There will be no hiding from the question.
Congress may not be able to roll back the Abdulmutallab travesty. But there will be future Abdulmutallabs. By cutting off funding for the KSM trial, Congress can send Obama a clear message: The Constitution is neither a safety net for illegal enemy combatants nor a suicide pact for us.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
3.
A New Approach to Health Reform
Diana Furchtgott-Roth
WASHINGTON - For a study in contrasts, look no further than President Obama's State of the Union Address. The president, in a spasm of fiscal responsibility, asked Congress to freeze discretionary non-defense spending for three years, for $250 billion in savings over the next decade. Then, he proposed student loan write-offs, new middle-class entitlements, and reiterated support for expensive high-speed rail and $1 trillion health "reform."
Mr. Obama declared, "By the time I'm finished speaking tonight, more Americans will have lost their health insurance. Millions will lose it this year... I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the people in this chamber. As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we've proposed. "
The Democrats' health proposal featured overarching regulation on insurance companies governing what benefits their policies must offer and what range of prices they could charge; a requirement that individuals buy conforming policies; cuts in Medicare; a panel to determine allowed cost-effective treatments; and taxes on expensive plans, high-income individuals, and on employers who don't offer the right kind of health insurance.
There has to be a better way to combine fiscal responsibility with health care reform. For better ideas, look no further than the food stamps program, which costs about $56 billion a year, and gives low-income people a debit card to use at stores to buy whatever food they choose. This approach to subsidizing nutrition allows freedom of choice and gets few complaints.
But imagine if, instead of food stamps, the government delivered bags of groceries to people's front doors. Complaints would soon abound, because people probably would not like the contents. Some might say that they didn't want Corn Flakes, they wanted granola. Others might reject Velveeta in favor of Kraft Slices, or chicken in favor of beef.
The Democratic health insurance bills take a similar approach, specifying what coverage people must buy. But one size does not fit all well.
Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin has applied the food stamps idea to health reform. In his Road Map for America's Future, reintroduced this month, Americans would take refundable tax credits - $2,300 for singles and $5,700 for families - and choose private insurance. All insurance plans that are licensed in a particular state would be eligible, and each company would be free to set its own premiums. Low-income individuals would get extra tax credits so they could buy the same kind of health care as other Americans.
Medicare would remain the same for current beneficiaries and for those 55 and older when they reach 65. But when those born in 1955 or later become eligible for Medicare at age 65, their plan would change. They would receive $11,000, adjusted for inflation, to buy a Medicare certified plan. Those with lower incomes or with more serious health conditions would receive more funding.
Under Mr. Ryan's plan, health insurance companies could offer high-deductible plans carrying lower premiums combined with health savings accounts, or more traditional managed care or fee-for-service plans. Persons with high-cost chronic illnesses, such as hemophilia or diabetes, would be placed in special affordable state high risk pools, with subventions paid by the government.
On Wednesday, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote to Mr. Ryan to tell him that this plan reduced health care costs and the federal deficit. He said: "Under the proposal, national health expenditures would almost certainly be lower than they would under the alternative fiscal scenario. Federal spending for health care would be substantially lower, relative to the amount in that scenario, for working-age people and the Medicare population."
Another approach along the lines of food stamps is the Empowering Patients First Act, H.R. 3400, sponsored by Georgia Representative Tom Price, a physician and chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, which seeks to insure more people and cut costs. Like the Ryan bill, it would insure more people by letting individuals take tax deductions for health insurance premiums that they pay, just as employers do. Workers with employer-paid insurance could retain it.
Low-income individuals would be given refundable tax credits in advance to help them pay premiums. States would be required to set up subsidized risk pools for those with chronic conditions who might otherwise be uninsurable.
The most innovative aspect of the Price bill allows - but does not require - employers to offer a monetary sum to workers so that they can purchase whatever insurance plan they choose in the open market, similar to defined contribution pension plans. Employers would still enjoy the same tax benefit for providing coverage, tax-free to the employee, but workers would be able to choose from an entire range of options, policies that they could carry with them when they change jobs. Now employees are generally limited to one plan, sponsored by their employer, and lose that coverage when they change jobs.
The contrast with the Democrats' health care plan could not be starker. Rather than turn the insurance industry into a federally-controlled public utility, the Republican plans would allow all Americans, including recipients of Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, to shop around and purchase health insurance on the open market - just like food stamp recipients take their debit cards to grocery stores.
Last night Mr. Obama called for new ideas, saying "...if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know." Representatives Ryan and Price, it's time to call on the president.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a contributing editor of RealClearMarkets and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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