PA Dem Fumo convicted on 137 counts: PA earthquake

A leading figure of the Philadelphia Democratic machine fell today.  Former State Senator Vince Fumo was convicted on 137 counts:

A federal jury in Philadelphia has convicted once-powerful former Pennsylvania state senator Vincent Fumo of every one of the 137 counts against him, including the serious charges of conspiring to defraud the Pennsylvania Senate, a nonprofit organization he founded, and the Independence Seaport Museum of millions of dollars. The Senate conspiracy count was the first of the counts being returned Monday against Fumo.

The 65-year-old Philadelphia Democrat was charged with defrauding the senate, the nonprofit, and the museum of more than $3.5 million, and destroying e-mail evidence.

Fumo ran the South Philadelphia Italian Democratic machine for years. There have been stories about menus of votes (give Fumo so much money and get so many votse) floating around Philly politics for a generation.

There are several real stories in this for Pennsylvania politics.

First, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party has been weakened. Its ability to turn out votes out of South Philly has been significantly reduced. This is both a body and a money operation. Both have been diminished. And a smaller Democratic margin out of Philadelphia means less of a need for a higher Republican margin in the small counties.

Second, this is a big coup for Pat Meehan, the former US Attorney who first convicted Fumo on two counts back in 2007. Putting a leading Democrat in jail will help solidify his base in Southeast Pennsylvania, which is a powerful floor to work from in a Pennsylvania primary.

Third, and especially if Meehan wins his primary, this will polarize the debate in a Pennsylvania general election. With Tom Corbett at AG and a recent high-profileDemocratic conviction, Republicans are bound to hit the differences hard.

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PA Dem Fumo convicted on 137 counts: PA earthquake

A leading figure of the Philadelphia Democratic machine fell today.  Former State Senator Vince Fumo was convicted on 137 counts:

A federal jury in Philadelphia has convicted once-powerful former Pennsylvania state senator Vincent Fumo of every one of the 137 counts against him, including the serious charges of conspiring to defraud the Pennsylvania Senate, a nonprofit organization he founded, and the Independence Seaport Museum of millions of dollars. The Senate conspiracy count was the first of the counts being returned Monday against Fumo.

The 65-year-old Philadelphia Democrat was charged with defrauding the senate, the nonprofit, and the museum of more than $3.5 million, and destroying e-mail evidence.

Fumo ran the South Philadelphia Italian Democratic machine for years. There have been stories about menus of votes (give Fumo so much money and get so many votse) floating around Philly politics for a generation.

There are several real stories in this for Pennsylvania politics.

First, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party has been weakened. Its ability to turn out votes out of South Philly has been significantly reduced. This is both a body and a money operation. Both have been diminished. And a smaller Democratic margin out of Philadelphia means less of a need for a higher Republican margin in the small counties.

Second, this is a big coup for Pat Meehan, the former US Attorney who first convicted Fumo on two counts back in 2007. Putting a leading Democrat in jail will help solidify his base in Southeast Pennsylvania, which is a powerful floor to work from in a Pennsylvania primary.

Third, and especially if Meehan wins his primary, this will polarize the debate in a Pennsylvania general election. With Tom Corbett at AG and a recent high-profileDemocratic conviction, Republicans are bound to hit the differences hard.

 

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Why doesn’t the right own entrpreneurialism? The left has moved

For much of the 20th century, the entrepreneur has been a core Republican constituency. Arguments based on small business have been central to our messaging. And interest groups like the NFIB have been among our most loyal activists, while the Chamber of Commerce has kissed up to anyone in charge.

However, The Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge notes that this is no longer the case in a special report on entreprenuerialism:

This special report will argue that the entrepreneurial idea has gone mainstream, supported by political leaders on the left as well as on the right, championed by powerful pressure groups, reinforced by a growing infrastructure of universities and venture capitalists and embodied by wildly popular business heroes such as Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and India’s software kings. The report will also contend that entrepreneurialism needs to be rethought: in almost all instances it involves not creative destruction but creative creation.

It is absolutely true that in many important ways, the left embraces the rhetoric of entrepreneurialism. And many significant figures of modern business are on the left. I think that it is fair to say that the left has reacted in many ways to the fall of the Soviet Union by reorienting thier ideology.

In Europe, they speak of "unreconstructed parties of the right" like the French Socialist party and reconstructed ones, like the British Labour Party under Tony Blair. (and to a certain extent Gordon Brown, although his manifest failures and those of timing will never give us a clear glimpse into his thinking)

It seems to me that only recently has there been a counter-manuever on the right that responds politically, rhetorically, and strategically to the adjustment on the left. We see these in the quite serious Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, somewhat less serious British ToryDavid Cameron, and, somewhat differently, the Swedish Moderat (New Modertna, as their campaign literature called them) Fredrik Reinfeldt.

In many ways, we have not made that adjustment on the right in the United States. In our seemingly never-ending attempt to return to Reagan, we have forgotten that the left has done something, and it requires a response on our part. This is not necessarily a move to the right or to the center, but a reframing of the debate. The left has done this by making, at least rhetorically, entrepreneurialism compatible with certain kinds of redistribution.

What do we need to do on the right that both stops this movement on the builds our next coalition?

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Obama’s Latin American policy on the rocks

No, I am not referring to the snubbing of the Brazilian President. That’s just amateur hour, something we have come to expect. This is truly a problem.

I am referring to Barack Obama’s bungling of Latin American countries expelling US diplomats and officials.

First, in Ecuador:

The Ecuadorian government today expelled Max Sullivan, first secretary of the U.S. embassy in Quito, for interfering in the country’s internal affairs, PL reported.

Second, in Bolivia:

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president, has ordered a senior US diplomat to leave the country, accusing him of siding with opposition groups in a ”conspiracy” against the government in La Paz.

Francisco Martinez, the second secretary of the US embassy in La Paz, is the second US diplomat to be expelled from the country in six months.

Note that earlier, a bunch of anti-drug officials were expelled.

What was Obama’s response? Well, sources tell me that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had signed off on the typical response, the State Department expelling diplomats from the US. But an Obama loyalist interfered, killing it.

This is no way to run a foreign policy. They can’t get either the carrot or the stick right.

Rush and Hannity listeners most informed about US politics

The guys at Open Left attack CNBC viewers for not being particularly well informed. I think that they missed the tastiest story about a Pew research poll about news habits.

The tastiest bit is that of all the categories, as measured in the poll, people who get their news from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most informed about US poltics. (at least if you accept Pew’s metric).

Let’s look at the numbers:

Outlet US House Control Name Sec State Name UK PM All Three
New Yorker/The Atlantic 71 71 59 48
NPR 73 72 57 44
Hardball 76 66 53 43
Hannity 84 73 49 42
Rush Limbaugh 83 71 41 36
CNBC 51 45 28 17
TV News Magazines 56 44 28 16
All Resp 53 42 28 18

On the question of naming the House majority party, 84% of Hannity viewers get it right. 83% of Limbaugh viewers get it right.  Hardball (MSNBC) is next at 76%. I can’t tell if that difference is statistically significant.

On the question of naming teh Secretary of State, Hannity’s viewers are again the highest at 73%, while NPR’s are next, and Limbaugh readers tie with readers of the New Yorker and the Atlantic. (presumably combined because the samples are so small) Here, Hardball viewers are down at 66%.

Now, to get an over-all number that doesn’t place Hannity and Rush at the top, there is a question about UK Prime Minister. And, admittedly, they perform worse. However, somewhat ironically, more Hannity viewers can identify the UK Prime Minister than BBC viewers. And Rush listeners are only 3% less.

Now what to make of all this? Rush and Hannity get bragging rights of a sort.

How does that work for the arrogant lefties who think that they are smarter than everyone? Like those guys at OpenLeft. Not so hot? Then maybe they shouldn’t have started the debate…

The coming public pension queen?

I have written a little about a potent political issues involving public pension funds. Bloomberg has a story about the Chicago Transportation Authority pension fund, which was facing a huge budget shortfall:

“We’ve identified the problem and a solution,” said CTA Chairman Carole Brown on April 16, 2007. The agency decided to raise money from a bond sale.

A year later, it asked Illinois Auditor General William Holland to research its plan. The state hired an actuary, did a study and, on July 17, concluded that the sale of bonds would most likely result in a loss of taxpayers’ money.

So what happened? They proceeded with the bond issue anyways, against the advice of the state auditor, who turned out to be right:

Thirteen days after that, the CTA ignored the warning and issued $1.9 billion in bonds. Before the year ended, the pension fund was paying out more to bondholders than it was earning on its new influx of money. Instead of closing its funding gap, the CTA was falling further behind.

But the thing is that when public employee pensions lose bets with their money, the taxpayers pay the bills:

In the CTA deal, the fund borrowed $1.9 billion by promising to pay bondholders a 6.8 percent return. The proceeds of the bond sale, held in a money market fund, earned 2 percent — 70 percent less than what the fund was paying for the loan.

The public gets nothing from pension bonds — other than a chance to at least temporarily avoid paying for higher pension fund contributions. Pension bonds portend the possibility of steep tax increases.

This is exactly the objection that so many, including public employee unions on the left, have to provisions of TARP and other bailout proposals.

Most Americans who are fortunate enough to even have a credible retirement plan are looking at their 401(k)s and seeing 40% losses. The public employee unions are looking at their losses and reminding the government that they are owed a guaranteed rate of return. In Oregon it is 8%, which is a fantasy-land number only reached during booms and never sustainable. But the public employee unions turn around and force tax increases on the rest of us.

This is an enemy who is easy to imagine and attack. This is someone who is taking away from your nest-egg to fatten their own because they didn’t win their bets. They live off your tax dollars at their jobs. Then they live off your tax dollars in their retirement.

Just watch. In 10 years, there will be a new phrase in American politics. The public pension queen.

The Fairness Doctrine fight is not over

Adam Theirer, a scholar at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, notes that the Fairness Doctrine was part of a regulatory paradigm being pushed by the left and, in particular, the group Free Press. This fight is not over. Adam’s piece is worth reading:

Of course, the radicals at the (Un)Free Press weren’t about to let one of the Left’s old favorite regulations go so away without asking for something in return.  One of the reasons that Silver and Ammori are suddenly willing to give their blessing to the Doctrine’s burial is because they want to get on with the more far-reaching agenda of micro-managing media markets using a variety of less visible regulations.

Indeed, in their paper, Silver and Ammori go to great pains to try to show that the Fairness Doctrine supposedly has nothing to do with all the other regulations that they want Congress and the FCC to continue to enforce, or even expand.  These goals include media ownership restrictions, diversity mandates, local programming regulation, and so on.  Recognizing that the Fairness Doctrine was not only ineffective but also a useful tool for many on the political Right to whip their base into action, the Free Press moved to preemptively divorce their other pet projects from the Fairness Doctrine.

It’s a brilliant tactical move by Free Press; lull Limbaugh and other conservatives into a deep sleep by throwing them the bone of a Fairness Doctrine win, and then push a far more radical regulatory agenda through the back-door once they’ve stopped paying attention.  Of course, these things cannot be as easily divorced as the Free Press radicals want us to believe.  The Fairness Doctrine was just one part of a much grander regulatory paradigm that so-called progressives have pushed for under the banner of “public interest regulation.”

 

 

The Fairness Doctrine fight is not over

Adam Theirer, a scholar at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, notes that the Fairness Doctrine was part of a regulatory paradigm being pushed by the left and, in particular, the group Free Press. This fight is not over. Adam’s piece is worth reading:

Of course, the radicals at the (Un)Free Press weren’t about to let one of the Left’s old favorite regulations go so away without asking for something in return.  One of the reasons that Silver and Ammori are suddenly willing to give their blessing to the Doctrine’s burial is because they want to get on with the more far-reaching agenda of micro-managing media markets using a variety of less visible regulations.

Indeed, in their paper, Silver and Ammori go to great pains to try to show that the Fairness Doctrine supposedly has nothing to do with all the other regulations that they want Congress and the FCC to continue to enforce, or even expand.  These goals include media ownership restrictions, diversity mandates, local programming regulation, and so on.  Recognizing that the Fairness Doctrine was not only ineffective but also a useful tool for many on the political Right to whip their base into action, the Free Press moved to preemptively divorce their other pet projects from the Fairness Doctrine.

It’s a brilliant tactical move by Free Press; lull Limbaugh and other conservatives into a deep sleep by throwing them the bone of a Fairness Doctrine win, and then push a far more radical regulatory agenda through the back-door once they’ve stopped paying attention.  Of course, these things cannot be as easily divorced as the Free Press radicals want us to believe.  The Fairness Doctrine was just one part of a much grander regulatory paradigm that so-called progressives have pushed for under the banner of “public interest regulation.”

Cross-posted from The Next Right.

Comparing Obama’s energy plan

Barack Obama’s budget proposal pays for a healthcare plan — we don’t know yet what the plan is — with a carbon tax. Really.

Obama’s budget proposes a health care reform fund that would cost $635b over 10 years. Obama also proposes a cap-and-trade system that would generate $640b in revenue over 10 years.

So Obama wants to fund universal healthcare with a tax on carbon, wtih some administrative stuff on the other side to make the tax more complicated and harder for business to negotiate.

It is worth putting this in comparative perspective. Al Gore and the Liberal Party of Canada both had proposals for a carbon tax.

Gore proposed replacing the payroll tax with a carbon tax. The Tax Foundation noted Gore’s striking language at the time:

Former Vice President Al Gore has a novel approach for dealing with global warming: tax carbon dioxide emissions instead of employees’ pay.

Penalizing pollution instead of penalizing employment will work to reduce that pollution,” Gore said Monday in a speech at New York University School of Law.

The carbon tax would replace all payroll taxes, including those for Social Security and unemployment compensation, Gore said. He said the overall level of taxation, would remain the same.

Obviously, this never came to a vote, but the idea has garnered some significant intellectual support. George W. Bush’s Chairman of Economic Advisors, Greg Mankiw, supports a stimulus that would replace the payroll tax with a gasoline tax.

In a meaningful sense, using the revenue to create universal healthcare is signficantly to the left of using it to lower the tax burden of all Americans.

Contrast it with the proposal of the Liberal Party of Canada, which proposed the "Green Shift", moving into the last election:

At the heart of the energy plan is an energy tax on carbon fuels, which will be based on consumption.

New taxes are expected to generate about $15.4 billion annually in revenue in four years. But the Liberals say their plan will be revenue neutral because it will cut income taxes and increase family support payments.

Dion said his plan is "as powerful as it is simple."

"The Liberal Green Shift will cut taxes on those things we all want more of — such as income, investment and innovation — and shift those taxes to what we all want less of: pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and waste."

However, the Conservative Party of Canada successfully branded this idea, the "permanent tax on everything", and this issue was part of the reasons that the LPC lost the most recent election there and Stephane Dion, its primary advocate, was forced to step down as party chair.

So let’s make this really clear. Obama’s plan is significantly to the left of something that failed miserably in Canada. How’s it going to play in the states?

As always, Newt Gingrich is leading the way on messaging:

"Let me get this straight," said Gingrich. "We’re not going to raise tax on anybody making under $250,000 a year unless you use electricity. And we are not going to raise taxes on anybody under $250,000 a year unless you buy gasoline. And we are not going to raise taxes on anybody who makes under $250,000 a year unless you buy heating oil. And we’re not going to raise taxes on anybody who earns less $250,000 a year unless you use natural gas."

"And I try to think to myself," he added, "even in the left wing of the Democratic Party, where there are some people who are fairly unusual, how many of them don’t use heating oil, natural gas, gasoline or electricity?"

If Obama is lying like this, and the left couldn’t win a fight significantly to the right of this one in Canada with a significantly healthier economy, I think that we can win this fight here.