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Archive for March, 2010

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Why voters are rejecting ObamaCare

Posted by Richard on March 10, 2010

In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Scott Rasmussen (president of Rasmussen Reports) and Doug Schoen (pollster for President Clinton) examined the polling numbers on ObamaCare. They noted that the numbers have been remarkably stable. For the past four months, the percentage opposed has ranged from 52% to 58%. More significantly, the percentage strongly opposed has been about double the percentage strongly in favor (41% to 20% in the most recent survey).

A deeper analysis suggests some reasons why, despite their best efforts, the President and his lackeys minions allies haven't been able to budge the numbers (emphasis added): 

… Polling conducted earlier this week shows that 57% of voters believe that passage of the legislation would hurt the economy, while only 25% believe it would help. That makes sense in a nation where most voters believe that increases in government spending are bad for the economy.

When the president responds that the plan is deficit neutral, he runs into a pair of basic problems. The first is that voters think reducing spending is more important than reducing the deficit. So a plan that is deficit neutral with a big spending hike is not going to be well received.

But the bigger problem is that people simply don't trust the official projections. People in Washington may live and die by the pronouncements of the Congressional Budget Office, but 81% of voters say it's likely the plan will end up costing more than projected. Only 10% say the official numbers are likely to be on target.

As a result, 66% of voters believe passage of the president's plan will lead to higher deficits and 78% say it's at least somewhat likely to mean higher middle-class taxes. Even within the president's own political party there are concerns on these fronts.

None of this matters to the socialist ideologues determined to "transform" America, as I noted on Sunday. They're going to try to defy the American people no matter what the political cost.

Tea Party Patriots announced today that National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin has been told by two "reliable sources" in Washington that the Blue Dog Democrats are starting to cave and that House Speaker Pelosi may soon have the votes to pass the Senate bill. If you want to help stop this "Obamination" from destroying our country, take action now! Follow that link to see TPP's recommendations for what you can do now, along with lists of congresscritters to contact and how to do so. Check their calendar for scheduled events in your area. A personal visit to a representative's local office is the best thing you can do, as TPP noted: 

The absolute most effective thing that you can do is to go to the office of the Congressmen who are on the fence and still undecided on this government takeover of health care bill. Let the Undecided Congressmen see the live faces of the people who do not want this health care bill shoved down our throats. Make them look in your eyes.

But if you can't do that (or you know it's pointless with your particular congresscritter), phone calls are good. So are emails. Even blast emails and blast faxes sent through one of the many organizations that make that easy for you (here's one) are better than sitting back and doing nothing.

As Mark Steyn explained in the column I quoted from on Sunday, the stakes are immense.

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Less respected?

Posted by Richard on March 9, 2010

It's not just the President's attempted government takeover of the health care industry that the American public rejects by ever-increasing margins. According to a new poll (sponsored by leftist organizations who no doubt hoped for an opposite result), Americans also reject Obama's foreign policy and national security competence:

A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than it was two years ago and think President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security, a new poll finds.

The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama's presidency.

"This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office," said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations.

On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats.

"The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin," the pollsters said in their findings.

Mind you, I realize that just because Americans believe we're less respected in the world doesn't make it true (although there's been ample evidence in the past year that in fact it is; weakness, as usual, has led to contempt). But what ought to matter to Democrats is that those Americans who believe we're less respected are eligible to vote in American elections — the Euroweenies who may feel differently aren't. 

If independents lean 56-20 Republican on national security, this administration is in serious trouble, and every attempted attack on this country, whether successful or thwarted, will only reinforce their problem. Because with that much doubt about their competence on this issue, even the thwarting of an attack will be dismissed by many as just dumb luck (like the Christmas underwear bomber), not competence.

(HT: Instapundit)

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Congratulations, Iraqis!

Posted by Richard on March 8, 2010

Hearty congratulations to the brave people of Iraq! Once again, they risked life and limb to flock to the polling stations. Al Qaeda promised to disrupt the election, and there were indeed a number of violent attacks. But the people of Iraq were determined to choose their own government and could not be deterred even by threat of death:

It takes a cynical mind not to share in the achievement of Iraq's national elections. Bombs and missiles, al Qaeda threats and war fatigue failed to deter millions of Iraqis of all sects and regions from exercising a right that is rare in the Arab world. Even the U.N.'s man in Baghdad called the vote "a triumph."

On Sunday, 61% of eligible voters came out in Anbar Province, a former extremist stronghold that includes the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi. In the last national elections five years ago, 3,375 people—or 2%—voted in Anbar. The other Sunni-dominated provinces that boycotted in 2005 saw similar numbers: over 70% turnout in Diyala and Salaheddin and 67% in Nineveh, all higher than the national average of 62%. American Presidential elections rarely have such turnout.

Al Qaeda as well as Sunni and Shiiite extremist groups were defeated militarily by the surge, and this election continues the trend toward settling disputes through politics, not bombs. The remaining terrorists, far weaker and organized in smaller cells, tried hard to deter voting. Thirty-eight people died in various mortar, rocket and bomb attacks on election day. But the attackers had trouble getting near voting stations, and security in Baghdad and elsewhere was good and Iraqis brushed off these threats.

The election result itself is up for grabs and won't be known for several days. Incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki needs to build a new coalition with skeptical Shiite and Kurd parties. Though Shiite himself, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi attracted Sunni votes to his nationalist secular block. The Kurdish coalition may split.

But the very uncertainty about the results is a sign of democracy's advance, and the drama won't go unnoticed in a Middle East where the victories are always landslides for the ruling party. The contrast with Iran's stolen 2009 vote couldn't be more dramatic, and even Al-Jazeera ran special coverage around the clock.

With the help and protection of coalition forces led by the U.S., Iraqis first voted in free elections a little over five years ago. On December 15, 2005, Iraq became the first constitutional republic in the Arab world, a truly momentous event that will hopefully lead to profound changes in that region in the future.

Yesterday, they reaffirmed their commitment to a democratic form of government. My hat's off to the people of Iraq for the courage and commitment they've shown and to the United States Armed Forces for making this possible. 

And to George W. Bush for believing that democracy and freedom are transformative. 

Iraqi woman with purple finger and tear in her eye

(Photo is from 2005. See this post.)

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How to live like a millionaire

Posted by Richard on March 8, 2010

So you want to live like a millionaire? OK, but if you're living the typical upper-middle-class lifestyle, you'll have to give up some things. Like that big house and fancy car.

Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D., is a former business professor who's been researching the wealthy for 30 years and has written numerous articles and best-selling books on the subject. He's conducted studies, surveys, and focus groups of millionaires. His latest book, Stop Acting Rich: And Start Living like a Real Millionaire, contains some interesting findings about millionaires (which he defines as people with investments worth at least $1 million, not including their home, personal property, etc.):

  • Three times as many millionaires live in a home worth less than $300,000 than one worth $1 million or more.
  • The most popular car brand among millionaires is Toyota. Almost 9 out of 10 owners of luxury cars aren't millionaires.
  • Almost two-thirds of millionaires have never owned a second (vacation) home. Even more have never owned a boat. Among those who at some point bought a boat, most sold it and never bought another one.
  • Millionaires are much more likely to wear a Seiko watch than a Rolex. If they're wearing a Rolex, they probably got it as a gift.
  • A millionaire's clothes typically come from J.C. Penney and the like. If it's from Saks or Brooks Brothers, it was probably purchased at 60% off. One exception: millionaires buy good-quality shoes (Cole Hahn, Allen Edmonds, etc.) and then have them resoled when needed.
  • The median price that millionaires pay for a bottle of wine is $13.

None of this should be shocking or surprising. The way to accumulate wealth is to accumulate — that means spend much less than you earn. But the people who think that the rich are the "winners of life's lottery" don't get it. They spend all they can. And then they buy a bunch of lottery tickets and hope for the best. 

It's not just a problem of the poor (although it's especially a problem of the poor, in particular the lottery tickets). That's why the country's full of people with $80,000 incomes facing foreclosure on their $500,000 homes.

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Dems want fundamental change at any price

Posted by Richard on March 8, 2010

A few days ago, I saw Bob Beckel argue that if the Republicans really believed that passing ObamaCare will be a disaster for the Democratic Party, they'd lay off a bit and let it pass to assure themselves of success in November. Beckel is a political hack, not a man of ideas. His argument is based on the assumption (itself no doubt based on projection) that people like John Kyl, Steve Shadegg, and Paul Ryan would put their party's success ahead of the nation's future.

The people in power in the Democratic Party aren't like Beckel. They're hard-core ideologues, and they're willing to sacrifice their strong majorities in Congress and even a second Obama term in order to fundamentally transform America. The inimitable Mark Steyn understands what's at stake: 

… 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.

Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic. … The Democrats understand that politics is not just about Tuesday evenings every other November, but about everything else, too.

…

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily "compassionate" statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect "conservatives," as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the Left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who, for tuppence-ha'penny or some such, would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place.

Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A bigtime GOP consultant [ed.: the Republican equivalent of Bob Beckel] was on TV, crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it's so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November.

OK, then what? You'll roll it back – like you've rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you've undone the federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel'n'dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus:

"Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?"

A commenter at Big Journalism put it well: 

A lot of conservatives seem to grasp the idea of Islamic extremists who proclaim "we love death more than you love life", but don't allow for the possibilty that extreme leftists may cherish "the fundamental transformation of America" more than a reelection.

Don't sit back and say, "Just wait until November." And don't tolerate anyone who does. Our values, our liberty, our way of life — all the things that make the United States better than the sclerotic Eurosocialist states are at stake in this battle. ObamaCare must be stopped!

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Market entrepreneurs vs. political entrepreneurs

Posted by Richard on March 5, 2010

Daniel Henninger thinks we need to bring back the "robber barons." Well, some of them. Drawing on the insights of Hillsdale College historian Burton W. Folsom in his book, The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America, Henninger pointed out the difference between market entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs. It's the former that we need, and the latter that we're getting more and more of:

Market entrepreneurs like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Hill built businesses on product and price. Hill was the railroad magnate who finished his transcontinental line without a public land grant. Rockefeller took on and beat the world's dominant oil power at the time, Russia. Rockefeller innovated his way to energy primacy for the U.S.

Political entrepreneurs, by contrast, made money back then by gaming the political system. Steamship builder Robert Fulton acquired a 30-year monopoly on Hudson River steamship traffic from, no surprise, the New York legislature. Cornelius Vanderbilt, with the slogan "New Jersey must be free," broke Fulton's government-granted monopoly.

If the Obama model takes hold, we will enter the Golden Age of the Political Entrepreneur. The green jobs industry that sits at the center of the Obama master plan for the American future depends on public subsidies for wind and solar technologies plus taxes on carbon to suppress it as a competitor. Politically connected entrepreneurs will spend their energies running a mad labyrinth of bureaucracies, congressional committees and Beltway door openers. Our best market entrepreneurs, instead of exhausting themselves on their new ideas, will run to ground gaming Barack Obama's ideas.

Read the whole thing. And then read Francisco D'Anconia's "Money Speech" from Atlas Shrugged. Read the whole thing, but here's a relevant excerpt: 

… Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

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Arizona Tea Party chooses none of the above

Posted by Richard on March 3, 2010

The four largest Tea Party organizations in Arizona agreed not to endorse a candidate in the Republican Senate primary, which pits incumbent Sen. John McCain against challengers J.D. Hayworth and Jim Deakin. Their reasons speak well of the Tea Party movement and put the lie to the “astroturf” nonsense (emphasis added):

“The Tea Party is a non-partisan, grassroots movement that stands for limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility. Both McCain and Hayworth’s records during their many years in Washington leave much to be desired on these issues,” said Robert Mayer, co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party. “It is their job to hold themselves up to these values and fight for our votes.”

Other tea party organizers across the state agreed that the local organizations should not endorse so early if at all.

“It is not appropriate to make an endorsement in this race at the drop of a hat, as some other groups are doing,” said Kelly Townsend, organizer of the Greater Phoenix Tea Party. “The movement must stand for ideas, and do everything possible to provide information to people so that they can make the best personal decisions.”

…

“We stand for principles and ideas, not for politicians or parties,” said Patrick Beck, organizer of the Mohave County Tea Party. “Our mission is to promote constitutional government and fiscal responsibility, and to inform people so that they can make their own decisions.”

McCain is anything but a champion of limited government and individual liberty. Although Hayworth, a former congressman, is described as “more conservative” than McCain, he’s not more pro-liberty. His primary focus has always been the authoritarian social-conservatism issues and a hard-core anti-immigrant agenda. I don’t know anything about Deakin, and no one seems terribly interested in or concerned with him, so I assume he’s not really a factor.

The Arizona Tea Party people seem to be principled, consistent advocates of liberty, and I think they’ve done the right thing by declaring essentially that “none of the above represent our values.” My hat’s off to them.

 

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Good news and bad news on McDonald

Posted by Richard on March 2, 2010

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in McDonald v. Chicago. The good news is it looks like incorporation of the Second Amendment, extending its reach to the states, is just about a done deal. The bad news is that it's likely to be done by means of the nebulous and endlessly-interpretable-by-judges "substantive due process" concept instead of via the "privileges or immunities" clause of the 14th Amendment.

In the Wall Street Journal, Randy Barnett has an excellent column in which he explains why the latter would be far preferable to the former, points out that the 14th Amendment's "privileges and immunities" clause was clearly intended to address (among other things) specifically the right to bear arms, and argues that the 1873 Slaughter-House ruling trashing that clause (right up there with Dred Scott as one of the worst Supreme Court rulings ever) ought to be reversed. 

The "wandering discussion" Barnett cited illustrates the vast gulf that separates Scalia, Alito, and Roberts from Clarence Thomas, even though they're often lumped together as "conservative" or "originalist" justices and often vote together.

I wish this time Thomas had abandoned his habit of listening without questions or comments. I wish Janice Rogers Brown were sitting on that bench instead of Roberts or Alito (or better yet, instead of Breyer, Stevens, Ginsburg, or Sotomayor).

And I wish we had five justices with the courage, principles, and good sense to overturn Slaughter-House.

Sigh. But getting the Second Amendment incorporated is progress. And not insignificant, even though doing it through substantive due process will certainly temper the victory and leave lots of wiggle room for "sensible" regulations.

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Tawfik Hamid appearing in Denver

Posted by Richard on March 2, 2010

The Act! for America 5280 Coalition is sponsoring multiple appearances in the Denver area this week by Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a physician, former terrorist, and author of The Roots of Jihad and Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam. Public appearances include lectures Tuesday evening at Regis University, Thursday evening at the University of Colorado, and Friday evening at University Park United Methodist Church. On Tuesday, Dr. Hamid will be a guest on KHOW radio's Peter Boyles show from 7-8 AM and the Caplis/Silverman show from 4-4:30 PM.

Check the 5280 Coalition's calendar for the complete schedule and more about the events, including maps to the locations.

More about Dr. Hamid:

… Born in Egypt to a secular Muslim family, Tawfik Hamid joined the extremist Islamic group Jamma’a Islameia in Cairo when he was a student in medical school. In his studies he was learning to heal, but in his thoughts, as he says, “I dreamed to die for Allah and to share in terrorist acts.”   One of Dr. Hamid's colleague in these formative days of the terror movement was Dr. Al Zawaherri, then an acquaintance with whom Tawfik used to pray, and now the number two person of Al Qaeda.

Just before heading for further training in Afghanistan, Dr. Hamid began to question the hatred and impulses to violence that participation in extremist Islam was fomenting within him.  He decided to leave the terror movement, became a physician, and also became a scholar of Islamic texts.  As he began to preach in Mosques to promote a message of peace instead of violence and hatred however, he himself became a target of the Islamic extremists who had been his friends. They threatened his life, forcing him and his family to flee Egypt, and then Saudi Arabia.  As Dr. Hamid says "The powers of darkness were overwhelming and I was forced to emigrate with my family to the West seeking freedom."

Because of his insider understanding of terrorist mentality, Dr. Hamid predicted the Twin Towers (9-11) attacks several years before they occurred. Now his mission has become to educate the West against Islamic Fundamentalism, which he regards as a cancer that is spreading with frightening rapidity across the globe today. 

Dr. Hamid also seeks within Islam to build new thinking to overcome the hatred and violent extremism that have metastasized within his religious tradition.

UPDATE: Fox 31 KDVR aired a short interview with Dr. Hamid tonight. Reporter Leland Vitter was quite impressed, telling the anchors he spoke with Dr. Hamid for 15 minutes and wished it could have been an hour. No video on the website yet, but there's a brief story. 

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