Election 2010: How bad is it for Democrats?

Brad Knickerbocker
A consensus is building that Democrats’ chances of holding on to both houses of Congress – certainly with anything like the majorities they have today – are fast fading.

News story and polling headlines this past week paint a grim picture for Democratic lawmakers and therefore for President Obama:

“Americans Most Likely to Favor GOP Newcomers for Congress” … “Dems in power could be in peril, poll says” … “Fewer Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats” … “Dangerous Numbers for House Democrats” … “Republicans Hold Wide Lead in Key Voter Turnout Measure” … “Generic Ballot Continues to Suggest Major Losses for Dems” … “Democrats Plan Political Triage to Retain House”

Undoubtedly, there will be twists and turns (and probably some surprises) between now and when voters go to the polls Nov. 2. Eight weeks can be a political lifetime.

Plus, the “tea party” movement – showing extraordinary muscle in some recent Republican primaries – could be as much of a problem for the establishment GOP as it is for Democrats. And as John Dickerson at Slate points out, “The advantage for Democrats is that they have the better organization.”

“Organizing for America, the Obama campaign operation, has been up and running for more than three years,” he writes. “Some of the volunteers have been knocking on the same doors since Obama was just a freshman senator from Illinois running for president.”

Postpartisan? Forget it.Obama himself has largely shucked his “postpartisan” ideal, and you can expect some sharp rhetorical elbows thrown at Republicans when he addresses a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee on Monday. That’s likely to escalate in coming weeks as Obama – and first lady Michelle Obama – go stumping for Democrats.

“They’ve forgotten I politick pretty good,” he told a crowd in Austin, Texas, last month.

Still, it’s an uphill battle for Obama and his party. Some of the evidence:

In a new survey released Friday, a USA Today/Gallup poll shows voters more likely to pick a generic Republican over a Democrat for Congress by 53-40 percent, particularly if that candidate is a newcomer. “It appears that the best type of candidate to be this fall is a Republican challenger,” writes Gallup analyst Jeffrey Jones.

In another sign of danger ahead for Democrats, Gallup reports that minorities and young voters – a solid part of Obama’s base in 2008 – are unlikely to turn out in large numbers come November.

“In contrast to 2008, when whites and blacks were about equally likely to say they were giving ‘quite a lot of’ or ‘some’ thought to the presidential election, whites are much more likely than blacks to be thinking about the 2010 elections: 42 percent vs. 25 percent, a gap exceeding those from recent midterm elections,” according to Gallup’s Lydia Saad. “As a result, and because of the extraordinarily keen interest in the elections that conservative Republicans currently display, Republicans overall currently enjoy a 54 percent to 30 percent lead over Democrats in ‘thought given to the election’.”

Professional political prognosticators are weighing in along the same lines.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, sees it this way:

“Conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer. The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low. The Democrats’ self-proclaimed ‘Recovery Summer’ has become a term of derision, and to most voters – fair or not – it seems that President Obama has over-promised and under-delivered.”

Could the GOP take over the House?At the moment, Sabato predicts, “Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net.” In the Senate, he writes on his web site, “Republicans have an outside shot at winning full control (+10), but are more likely to end up with +8 (or maybe +9, at which point it will be interesting to see how senators such as Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and others react).”

Charlie Cook doesn’t go quite that far. His latest outlook is for Republicans to gain 35 seats in the House (four fewer than they’d need to take control) with a net GOP gain in the Senate of 7-9 seats.

“The odds still favor Democrats holding their majority, but that is no longer given,” Cook wrote in the National Journal on Saturday. And with a campaign war chest that needs to be doled out most effectively, Democrats are going to have to make some tough choices – maybe abandoning some of their most vulnerable incumbents.

“With this many races in play, Democrats may have to perform triage and focus their resources on those that remain winnable,” Cook writes. “That means giving up on the rest.”

Dire straits for Democrats, in other words. For as David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report writes, “This is an environment in which any Democratic laxity or misstep can prove fatal and even underfunded or flawed Republicans can be highly competitive.”

Read the original article YahooNews

FOX:Top 10 Things the GOP Should Do In Congress After November

Judging from polls, it now seems probable that Republicans will win control of the House of Representatives this November. They may even take over the Senate. The greatest benefit of this would be ending uncertainty over how far President Obama will be able to go in turning America into a European-style welfare state.

America would be far from out of the woods with the economic destruction wrought by a massive government and an increasingly controlled economy that discourages hard work and innovation. But the foot would be off the accelerator on the road to serfdom.

But then what? Republicans in control of one or both houses of Congress will face three major challenges: demonstrating progress on a yet-to-be-defined agenda, convincing voters they have recovered from the period when they spent lavishly and governed like liberals, and paving the way for a conservative president in 2012—the first since Ronald Reagan.

This is different from the last period of GOP ascendancy in 1994, when the party took both houses of Congress. Then, Newt Gingrich helped usher in a massive class of reformist freshmen who had rallied around the Contract With America. The next step was obvious: pass the provisions of the Contract.

This year, there is no such guiding document.

The GOP should look to the successes of the Gingrich congressional period as an example of how to advance a positive agenda when they do not control the White House. They should also take a page from former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine), who helped to get a president elected from his party by forcing a string of unpopular vetoes from then-President George H.W. Bush.

Such an agenda could consist of these ten elements:

1. Repeal and Smother Obamacare. Shortly after former-Speaker Pelosi turns over the gavel to Speaker Boehner, the House’s first piece of legislation, HR-1, should be a single-sentence law repealing Obamacare. 

If the repeal act passed the Senate, it would surely be vetoed by President Obama. But the signal that the new Congress opposes government-run health care would help restore Republicans’ credibility and spur economic recovery. 

Later, Congress could refuse to appropriate money required for federal agencies to implement Obamacare, buying time to offer a Republican alternative that empowers individuals, not bureaucracies.

2. Seek Immediate Savings. The current Congress wasted $862 billion on liberal-Keynesian “stimulus” spending that proved good for little other than again disproving liberal-Keynesian economics. The new Congress should identify government programs costing at least the same amount and repeal them permanently.

3. Enact a Balanced and Limited Budget Amendment. Congress clearly cannot be trusted to spend only what it takes from the people. A constitutional amendment should remove its the authority to spend more, and limit spending increases to inflation and population growth.

4. Stop Pending Tax Hikes. Tax increases kill jobs. Counterintuitively, they can also fail to reduce deficits. The massive Obama tax hikes are set to kick in on December 31. Congress should restore the current tax levels when it convenes on January 4.

5. Enforce Immigration Laws. Arizona’s illegal immigrant law is a fair, common-sense approach to dealing with the consequences of Washington’s bipartisan failure to secure the border and enforce the law. 

Congress should follow Arizona’s lead and make it easy for local police across America to help detect and deport illegal immigrants caught committing other offenses. Securing the border once and for all can pave the way to a broader national discussion on immigration.

6. Defend Democracy Against Liberal Judges. Congress alone was given the sole authority to appropriate funds as a check against the other branches of government. It should once again use this to check the Judicial Branch. Congress should abolish or refuse to fund courts like the one that suspended the Arizona immigration law and any other court that similarly attempts to legislate from the bench. The leftwing 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco should be abolished or defunded.

7. Create a Citizen Congress. Congress should pass constitutional amendments enacting term limits, providing for the recall of senators by their constituents, and outlawing gerrymandering of congressional districts. Congress should look to the success of big states like Texas and Georgia and small states like Wyoming that have legislatures that meet for limited periods to do serious work. This makes for better government than legislatures like those in California and New York that meet almost continuously and legislate too much.

8. Seriously Consider the Flat Tax. Congress’s main method of intruding into the lives of Americans and controlling more and more of the economy is a complicated tax code. A flat income tax for all is an appealing alternative. An interim step could be offering Americans the choice to opt out of the current tax code if they wanted to pay a simple, flat tax. The new Congress should send this plan to President Obama for a highly unpopular veto.

9. Limit Union Power. Politicians of both parties love to talk about positioning America for the 21st century. They could actually do so by revising labor laws that are stuck in the 1930s and aid special interests while harming the middle class. Repealing the pro-union Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which inflates the cost of public works projects and is one reason Americans spend so much time in traffic jams, would be a good start. 

New federal laws should help bring the increasingly extravagant pensions and benefits of unionized public employees in line with those of the Americans they serve.

10. Defend America. It is perverse that in a world becoming more dangerous, the only cuts to government spending are occurring at the Pentagon. We need to rebuild the Navy and Air Force, field comprehensive missile defenses, and get serious about threats from Iran, Islamists and China. 

Foreign policy has mainly been a liability for Republicans since the Iraq insurgency. Despite this, fresh blood on Capitol Hill should get involved and resist the corrupt foreign policy establishment in Washington and a White House inclined to apologize for America.

President Obama will of course resist and veto most of these actions if they make it to his desk. But assuming he has not given up on the idea of being reelected, he might acquiesce to some reforms. In the same way, Newt Gingrich was able to get Bill Clinton to sign welfare reform, capital gains tax cuts, and a tax credit for children. But even a steady stream of vetoes denying Americans the type and size of government they want will help pave the way for conservative success in 2012, and the chance of sustained American renewal.

Read the original article FOXNews

Weekly Standard:Desperate Democrats

BY Fred Barnes
The Democratic strategy in the 2010 election is simple: Change the subject. And given the subject on everyone’s mind, who can blame them? That subject is the economy and related matters like spending, the deficit, debt, and President Obama. These are the last things Democrats want to talk about.
Instead they’d like to reduce each race for the House and Senate to the personal level. Their aim is to emphasize the individual flaws of Republican candidates. In the Democratic game plan, the economy and national issues are taboo.

This microstrategy is one of pure desperation. It’s all that’s left when macro-political trends are going against you. Indeed, Democrats start with two strikes against them. A midterm election is usually a referendum on the president’s performance, and this year’s is no exception. And the most important measure of the president’s success or failure is the condition of the economy.

Given this, the campaign is on a track that’s likely to produce a Republican landslide in November. So Democrats are eager to create a separate track, a parallel campaign aimed at minimizing their losses.

The strategy is clever in that it lures the media into playing along. Media types can’t help themselves. Those covering the campaign need new things to report on each day. And Democrats are prepared to supply or otherwise draw attention to just those things, the smaller and more marginal the better.

We saw numerous instances of this last week. When GQ magazine reported that Rand Paul, the Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky, had “kidnapped” a female student while he was in college, the story was widely disseminated by the media. Later, the “victim” came forward to explain there was no kidnapping, only a college prank that she went along with willingly. Despite its short life, the story distracted attention from bigger issues.
Then there was the Colorado primary, the results of which were interpreted by Politico as “good news for President Obama and Democrats.” This was a stretch, but it was a fresh angle on the campaign. The New York Times on its website said the president was “savoring one of the sweetest victories of the midterm election season.” The White House did everything it could to encourage this line of thinking.

Obama had supported appointed senator Michael Bennet, who handily defeated his primary foe, former state house speaker Andrew Romanoff. (Romanoff had the backing of former President Clinton.) White House political chief David Axelrod said the Bennet victory showed that “2008 Obama voters” would “participate in an off-year election.”

But that wasn’t all. The Colorado results undermined predictions of a “wave” election in 2010, a tide sweeping Republicans into office across the nation, Axelrod told the Hill. Elections “will be decided on a race-by-race basis, depending on the candidates and campaigns, and not some wave.” Get it? Axelrod was saying the small, personal stuff matters more than larger issues such as the economy.

For Democrats, Colorado brought another supposed benefit. “In an assessment that many independent analysts tend to agree with,” John Harris of Politico wrote, “[Democrats] said the most favorable news for them may have come from the results on the Republican side.” Harris was referring to the victory of local prosecutor Ken Buck over former lieutenant governor Jane Norton for the Republican Senate nomination.

Buck’s problem? He was supported by Tea Party activists and had committed a gaffe, a “caught-on-tape remark that he ought to be elected because he didn’t wear high heels.” Yet Bennet’s weaknesses appear to be greater than Buck’s, a fact the media overlooked.

The Republican primary attracted 68,573 more voters than the Democratic primary, and Bennet got fewer votes than Jane Norton, the Republican runner-up. The first postelection poll, conducted by Scott Rasmussen, gave Buck a 46 percent to 41 percent lead over Bennet. And Bennet is anxious about the possibility of an Obama campaign appearance. “We’ll have to see,” he told ABC. “We’ll obviously do what’s right for the campaign.” This is a signal to Obama to stay away. And it came from a candidate who’s not brimming with confidence.
The Buck victory touched off a whole series of stories about the “offbeat” Republican candidates, as Politico called them. The list includes Senate candidate Linda McMahon in Connecticut, Rand Paul, and Colorado gubernatorial nominee Dan Maes. Politico referred to them as “a former professional wrestling executive, a libertarian ophthalmologist, and a man who thinks bicycle use could empower the United Nations.”

For sure, these are candidates with peculiarities, and it’s the idiosyncrasies and quirks and tendency to say unusual things that Democrats and the press are concentrating on. But there’s no reason to believe the Republicans who lost to these alleged oddballs would fare better against Democrats in the fall.

While Democrats and the media are codependents here, a few journalists deserve credit for exposing the strategy. “Obama and his party are seizing on gaffe after GOP gaffe, intent on making the election anything but a referendum on the majority,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote. Democrats are “moving faster and more aggressively than in previous election years to dig up unflattering details about Republican challengers,” Philip Rucker reported in the Washington Post.

Will the strategy work? With a powerful anti-Obama, anti-Democrat, antiliberal storm brewing, it won’t help much. Democrats are pursuing it for lack of an alternative. In 2010, it’s a strategy for losers.

Glenn Beck: Pelosi hasn’t drained the swamp!

GLENN: Well, it’s like President Obama saying that Charlie Rangel should just step down. He’s very concerned now. He’s very concerned now about the ethics charges.

PAT: Well, it’s only been three years.

GLENN: It’s only been three years.

PAT: It’s taking a while for it to sink in.

GLENN: That’s all it’s been.

PAT: Yeah. And now he’s concerned.

GLENN: And now what he’s trying to do is give Mr. Rangel an opportunity to bow out gracefully instead of getting the slap on the wrist for things that you and I would be in jail for.

PAT: Oh, you know what they could do to this guy?

GLENN: Oh, no, what could they do?

PAT: They could actually censure you.

GLENN: Shut up.

PAT: No, they could.

GLENN: No.

PAT: They could do that.

GLENN: Now, you’d be in jail, right?

PAT: No, no, but you’d be ashamed.

GLENN: No, no. You’d be in jail.

PAT: I would be.

GLENN: You’d be in jail.

PAT: Of course I would be.

GLENN: Sure.

PAT: Of course, I would have been in jail three years ago.

GLENN: Right.

PAT: But Charlie won’t be in jail.

GLENN: Sure, no.

PAT: But he’ll feel naughty for a few minutes.

GLENN: Yeah. Well

PAT: He’ll feel naughty.

GLENN: Now Maxine Waters is also in trouble.

PAT: Yes.

GLENN: And I didn’t see this one coming.

PAT: No.

GLENN: Did you see this one coming?

PAT: Not at all.

GLENN: Now, what did she do?

PAT: Well, I don’t know.

GLENN: Ethics violations.

PAT: Ethics violations, of course.

GLENN: This is the deal on the bank in Boston. Remember her husband owned stock in this bank and she was I think on the board of this bank and do you remember, the people came this was, what, two years ago? This was right after TARP and people came in and they were like, “Hey, so maybe we should have a bailout, they didn’t qualify for it and they were like, yes, yes, Maxine says yes. So that might be something you should look into maybe a year and a half ago.

PAT: Well, this is all part of Nancy Pelosi’s promise to drain the swamp.

GLENN: Oh, really?

PELOSI: Drain the swamp means to turn this congress into the most honest and open congress in history. That is my pledge. That is what I intend to do.

GLENN: That is her pledge. No, it is.

PAT: That’s her pledge.

GLENN: She’s going to get some diamond encrusted ice picks and she’s going to go and take some of the ice down at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. I mean, which one is more believable?

PAT: I think the ice picks.

GLENN: I think the ice picks are.

PAT: The diamond encrusted ice picks.

GLENN: I think they are, believe it or not, more believable.

PAT: Because I didn’t believe Pelosi at all that she was totally going to drain the swamp. I totally believe that, you know, Stu’s diamond encrusted ice pick story.

Read the original article transcript GLENN BECK

BECK:SEC Says New FinReg Law Exempts It From Public Disclosure

Dunstan Prial
So much for transparency.

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities.” Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.

That argument comes despite the President saying that one of the cornerstones of the sweeping new legislation was more transparent financial markets. Indeed, in touting the new law, Obama specifically said it would “increase transparency in financial dealings.”

The SEC cited the new law Tuesday in a FOIA action brought by FOX Business Network. Steven Mintz, founding partner of law firm Mintz & Gold LLC in New York, lamented what he described as “the backroom deal that was cut between Congress and the SEC to keep the SEC’s failures secret. The only losers here are the American public.”
If the SEC’s interpretation stands, Mintz, who represents FOX Business Network, predicted “the next time there is a Bernie Madoff failure the American public will not be able to obtain the SEC documents that describe the failure,” referring to the shamed broker whose Ponzi scheme cost investors billions.

The SEC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Criticism of the provision has been swift. “It allows the SEC to block the public’s access to virtually all SEC records,” said Gary Aguirre, a former SEC staff attorney-turned-whistleblower who had accused the agency of thwarting an investigation into hedge fund Pequot Asset Management in 2005. “It permits the SEC to promulgate its own rules and regulations regarding the disclosure of records without getting the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, which typically applies to all federal agencies.”

Aguirre used FOIA requests in his own lawsuit against the SEC, which the SEC settled this year by paying him $755,000. Aguirre, who was fired in September 2005, argued that supervisors at the SEC stymied an investigation of Pequot – a charge that prompted an investigation by the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees.

The SEC closed the case in 2006, but would re-open it three years later. This year, Pequot and its founder, Arthur Samberg, were forced to pay $28 million to settle insider-trading charges related to shares of Microsoft (MSFT: 25.93 ,-0.23 ,-0.88%). The settlement with Aguirre came shortly later.

“From November 2008 through January 2009, I relied heavily on records obtained from the SEC through FOIA in communications to the FBI, Senate investigators, and the SEC in arguing the SEC had botched its initial investigation of Pequot’s trading in Microsoft securities and thus the SEC should reopen it, which it did,” Aguirre said. “The new legislation closes access to such records, even when the investigation is closed.

“It is hard to imagine how the bill could be more counterproductive,” Aguirre added.

FOX Business Network sued the SEC in March 2009 over its failure to produce documents related to its failed investigations into alleged investment frauds being perpetrated by Madoff and R. Allen Stanford. Following the Madoff and Stanford arrests it, was revealed that the SEC conducted investigations into both men prior to their arrests but failed to uncover their alleged frauds.

FOX Business made its initial request to the SEC in February 2009 seeking any information related to the agency’s response to complaints, tips and inquiries or any potential violations of the securities law or wrongdoing by Stanford.

FOX Business has also filed lawsuits against the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve over their failure to respond to FOIA requests regarding use of the bailout funds and the Fed’s extended loan facilities. In February, the Federal Court in New York sided with FOX Business and ordered the Treasury to comply with its requests.

Last year, the network won a legal victory to force the release of documents related to New York University’s lawsuit against Madoff feeder Ezra Merkin.

FOX Business’ FOIA requests have so far led the SEC to release several important and damaging documents:

•FOX Business used the FOIA to obtain a 2005 survey that the SEC in Fort Worth was sending to Stanford investors. The survey showed that the SEC had suspicions about Stanford several years prior to the collapse of his $7 billion empire.

•FOX Business used the FOIA to obtain copies of emails between Federal Reserve lawyers, AIG and staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in which it was revealed the Fed staffers knew that bailing out AIG would result in bonuses being paid.

Recently, TARP Congressional Oversight Panel chair Elizabeth Warren told FOX Business that the network’s Freedom of Information Act efforts played a “very important part” of the panel’s investigation into AIG.

Warren told the network the government “crossed a line” with the AIG bailout.

“FOX News and the congressional oversight panel has pushed, pushed, pushed, for transparency, give us the documents, let us look at everything. Your Freedom of Information Act suit, which ultimately produced 250,000 pages of documentation, was a very important part of our report. We were able to rely on the documents that you pried out for a significant part of our being able to put this report together,” Warren said.

The SEC first made its intention to block further FOIA requests known on Tuesday. FOX Business was preparing for another round of “skirmishes” with the SEC, according to Mintz, when the agency called and said it intended to use Section 929I of the 2000-page legislation to refuse FBN’s ongoing requests for information.

Mintz said the network will challenge the SEC’s interpretation of the law.

“I believe this is subject to challenge,” he said. “The contours will have to be figured out by a court.”

Red the original article Fox Buiness News

Obama and Supreme Court may be on collision course

David G. Savage,

The president’s agenda on healthcare and financial regulations sets the stage for a clash with the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term last week after landmark decisions protecting the right to have a gun and the right of corporations to spend freely on elections. But the year’s most important moment may have come on the January evening when the justices gathered at the Capitol for President Obama’s State of the Union address.

They had no warning about what was coming.

Obama and his advisors had weighed how to respond to the court’s ruling the week before, which gave corporations the same free-spending rights as ordinary Americans. They saw the ruling as a rash, radical move to tilt the political system toward big business as they coped with the fallout from the Wall Street collapse.
Some advisors counseled caution, but the president opted to criticize the conservative justices in the uncomfortable spotlight of national television as Senate Democrats roared their approval.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is still angered by what he saw as a highly partisan insult to the independent judiciary. The incident put a public spotlight on the deep divide between the Obama White House and the Roberts court, one that could have a profound effect in the years ahead.

The president and congressional Democrats have embarked on an ambitious drive to regulate corporations, banks, health insurers and the energy industry. But the high court, with Roberts increasingly in control, will have the final word on those regulatory laws.

Many legal experts foresee a clash between Obama’s progressive agenda and the conservative court.

“Presidents with active agendas for change almost always encounter resistance in the courts,” said Stanford University law professor Michael W. McConnell, a former federal appellate court judge. “It happened to [ Franklin D.] Roosevelt and it happened to Reagan. It will likely happen to Obama too.”

Already, the healthcare overhaul law, Obama’s signal achievement, is under attack in the courts. Republican attorneys general from 20 states have sued, insisting the law and its mandate to buy health insurance exceed Congress’ power and trample on states’ rights.

Two weeks ago, a federal judge in New Orleans ruled Obama had overstepped his authority by ordering a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

On another front, the administration says it will soon go to court in Phoenix seeking to block Arizona’s controversial immigration law, which is due to take effect July 29. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer said Arizona would go to the Supreme Court, if necessary, to preserve the law.

As chief justice, Roberts has steered the court on a conservative course, one that often has tilted toward business. For example, the justices have made it much harder for investors or pension funds to sue companies for stock fraud.

Two years ago, the court declared for the first time that the gun rights of individuals were protected by the Constitution. This year, the justices made clear this was a “fundamental” right that extended to cities and states as well as federal jurisdictions.

Since the arrival in 2006 of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Roberts has had a five-member majority skeptical of campaign funding restrictions. At first, he moved cautiously. Roberts spoke for the majority in 2007 in saying that a preelection broadcast ad sponsored by a nonprofit corporation was protected as free speech even though it criticized a candidate for office.

Last year, the court had before it another seemingly minor challenge to election laws by a group that wanted permission to sell a DVD that slammed Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was running for president in 2008. This time, however, Roberts decided on a much bolder move.

The 5-4 ruling in the Citizens United case struck down all limits on direct election spending — for giant, profit-making corporations as well as small nonprofit groups. For more than 60 years, Congress and many states had barred corporate and union spending to sway elections. The court’s opinion dismissed all such laws as unconstitutional censorship.

The decision came as a “real shock to the administration and to the Democrats in Congress,” said Simon Lazarus, counsel for the National Senior Citizens Law Center. “It’s also caused a sea change in their thinking about the court. Before, it was all about the ‘culture wars’ issues, like abortion, prayer and gay rights. Afterward, they saw this new activist thrust among the conservatives as a direct threat to their legislative agenda.”

The change was on full display in last week’s Senate hearing on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Democrats accused the high court of judicial activism in favor of corporations — “particularly by the five Republican appointees who have steered so hard to the right,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

Republicans in the hearing targeted Obama’s “tremendous expansion” of the government and argued for the court to aggressively restrain Congress and the White House. “The Supreme Court … ought to go for freedom, not more government,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).

Obama chose Kagan for the court believing she could bridge the gap with some of its conservatives. Her mission is to help uphold the laws that Obama and Democrats are pushing through Congress.

During her hearing, Kagan found herself in the odd spot of defending judicial restraint before senators who usually worry aloud about sending a “judicial activist” to the court.

“Can you name for me any economic activity that the federal government cannot regulate under the commerce clause?” asked Sen. John Cornyn (R- Texas).

“I wouldn’t try to,” Kagan replied, emphasizing that the court has long said lawmakers have broad powers to regulate economic activity.

The high court, however, will decide whether making Americans buy health insurance amounts to economic activity.

It may be another year or two before a true challenge to the Obama agenda reaches the Supreme Court.

McConnell, the law professor, said the administration’s broad set of regulatory moves made a clash almost inevitable. “It does not mean the courts are being ‘political,’ ” he said. “It is the way the institutions are designed, to create checks and balances.”

Read the original article LATimes

Watch the other hand:Bam’s budget is a monstrosity

Bam’s budget is a monstrosity: Deficits are huge. A value-added tax could be coming.

Betsy Mccaughey

I’m not interested in another debate over big government versus small government,” President Obama told a Buffalo crowd on May 13. What this means is that the President doesn’t care about how much freedom you have.

When government spends more, less is left for people to spend as they choose. And the events of the last four months indicate that Americans are being conned into giving up their freedom.

On Feb. 1, President Obama released his fiscal 2011 budget. It’s a whopper. It calls for federal spending of $3.8 trillion, soaring to $5.7 trillion in 2020.

A 5-foot-high stack of hundred-dollar bills totals $1 million. To get to $1 billion, you need 10 stacks as high as the Washington Monument. To get to $3.8 trillion, you need 38,000 Washington Monuments.

$3.8 trillion also equals 25% of everything produced in the U.S. (Gross Domestic Product). State and local government spending brings the total to 42% of GDP.

Government spending has crossed the 40% line just twice in American history: when the nation plunged into World War II and again last year, during the economic crisis. The Obama administration intends to make big government permanent, with spending at 40% even in 2020, when no crisis is expected. The White House rosily predicts full employment that year.

The President claims he pared the budget line by line – which is what he promised to do when he was a candidate in 2008. But the numbers prove otherwise. Foreign aid is increased 50% from 2011 to 2015. Most Americans would rather pay their mortgage.

The President’s budget was supposed to be voted on by April 15, but hearings drag on. Civil servants making budget requests seem numb to the layoffs and belt tightening in the private sector. Dr. James Billington, head of the Library of Congress, requested a “lean increase” of 4.6% “in recognition of the difficult budget environment.” Lean? Hasn’t it dawned on Washingtonians that people would rather have money to spend on books for their own kids instead of on the Library of Congress?

It’s a tradeoff: More money for government programs means less money for you to spend on your family.

When the President announced his budget, he said, “It is time to save what we can, spend what we must and live within our means once again.” But his budget includes such vast spending increases that even after hiking income taxes, capital gains taxes, dividend taxes and estate taxes, the nation faces a $1.3 trillion deficit in 2011, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Obama’s budget will result in a federal debt of $20.3 trillion by 2020, $5trillion more than it would be without Obama’s new policies.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said, “The proposed budget is woefully insufficient to achieve the President’s goal or the important fiscal goal of stabilizing the debt at a reasonable level in the medium and long term.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) explained on April 19 why Congress was stalling on the budget: “It is difficult to pass budgets in election years.” What he meant is that most members are much too addicted to spending to make cuts but afraid to raise taxes before the election. They’re planning a postelection ambush.

Congress is taking cover behind the President’s new Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, which is not scheduled to report until after the election. Commission members are already floating the idea of a VAT to pay for big government.

VATs, or value-added taxes, enable European governments to repeatedly raise taxes on an unsuspecting public. The tax is hidden in the price of goods and services, rather than visibly added at the register.

This type of tax started small in Europe, but in every country it has been raised to at least 15%. Great Britain announced last week that it will likely raise its VAT to 25% to solve its deficit. That means British consumers will need 25% more to buy a car, a kettle or a weekend vacation than if there were no VAT.

The President has said he will not rule out any commission recommendation, even a value-added tax. Don’t be snookered by this strategy of delaying “deficit reduction” until after the fall election and don’t be misled by the phrase “value-added.” A VAT would be nothing less than a Vanishing America Tax. Voters should interrogate candidates about their stand on it and stop government from growing beyond the consent of the governed.

Read the original article NY Daily News

BECK-Crime Inc.: What ‘Greening of America’ Means

BECK-

It’s a safe bet that most Americans’ first exposure to the concept of carbon trading or cap-and-trade legislation came during the most recent presidential campaign when both candidates advocated the need to make protecting the environment a government mandate instead of the moral obligation it’s always been. In the past few months President Barack Obama has repeatedly stated that a comprehensive energy/environmental law, including cap-and-trade, is an absolute priority of his administration.

Cap-and-Trade

Simply put, the idea behind the cap-and-trade plan is this: The federal government would set limits or cap the amount of pollutant a business could create. If the business chose to emit levels exceeding the cap they would have to find a business not using its full allotment and purchase the surplus from them. Needless-to-say, for the concept to work there would need to be a highly centralized infrastructure to facilitate the transactions, matching buyers to sellers.

The CCX: A Dream Come True?

For people like Richard Sandor and former Vice-President Al Gore the focus on “green politics” represented the culmination of years of planning and a giant step towards a massive payday.

With a big helping hand from then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, Sandor’s brainchild, The Chicago Climate Exchange, opened for business in 2003 billing itself as “North America’s only cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases…” In other words, the facilitator for a scheme not quite hatched. Sandor, a long-time economist turned environmentalist shared his vision during a 1990 interview with the Wall Street Journal, saying, “Air and water are no longer the free goods that economics once assumed. They must be redefined as property rights so that they can be efficiently allocated.” The statement didn’t get a lot of attention back then but today seems prophetic. Sandor claims his idea of efficient allocation, also known as carbon trading, will develop into a $10 trillion industry.

Assembling the Team

During 2000 and 2001, the Joyce Foundation, a progressive trust with assets near $1 billion, known for funding groups like Center for American Progress and Tides Foundation, provided grants to CCX totaling $1.1 million. State Senator Obama served on the foundation’s board of directors during that time and was instrumental in awarding the grants.

Shortly after the first grant was approved, the president of The Joyce Foundation, Paula DiPerna, left to join the executive team of CCX. Other notables with familiar names soon followed.

• Former Vice-President Al Gore became part-owner of CCX when his company, Generation Investment Management, made a sizeable investment. Gore brought with him his senior partner at GIM, David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, along with a company chalk full of former Goldman Sachs’ executives

• Goldman Sachs itself soon joined the team buying a ten percent interest in CCX

• Maurice Strong, once linked to Tongsun Park, the central figure in the United Nation’s oil-for-food scandal in 2005 and one of the architects of the Kyoto Protocol, joined the CCX board of directors

• Carlton Bartels was one of the first, and perhaps most important, additions to the CCX roster. As CEO of a company called CO2e, Bartels developed and delivered the actual guts of the exchange — a system for facilitating and managing the actual carbon trades

Strange Bedfellows

Just three weeks after filing for a patent for his carbon trade system, Bartels was killed during the attacks of 9/11. Bartels’ death opened the door for a new partner to join CCX, easily the oddest fit of them all: Fannie Mae. In a move still unexplained, the quasi-governmental mortgage agency, led by CEO Franklin Raines, purchased the rights to the system from Bartel’s widow. A patent on the invention was granted to Raines and Fannie Mae on November 7, 2006, ironically, the day after the Democrats regained control of Congress. According to Barbara Hollingsworth of the Washington Examiner, the patent covers both the “cap” and “trade” parts of Obama’s top domestic energy initiative and gives Fannie Mae proprietary control over the automated trading system used by Sandor’s CCX.

When asked about the patent recently Fannie Mae communications director Amy Bonitatibus told the Washington Examiner, “Fannie Mae earns no money on this patent. We can’t conjecture as to the cap-and-trade legislation.” A source close to Fannie Mae, however, says a plan is in place to funnel future earnings from the patent to a non-profit housing organization called Enterprise Community Partners. Ironically, Raines, who left Fannie Mae in 2004 amidst allegations that he inflated earnings reports in order to collect higher bonuses ($52 million in bonuses over 5-years; $90 million in total compensation), serves on the board of trustees at Enterprise. In a continuation of theme, Goldman Sachs also has a representative on the board in the person of Alicia Glen.

Off to See the Wizard

In December 2009 The Joyce Foundation awarded Raines and Enterprise a $200,000 grant to launch Emerald Cities Collaborative. According to its website, “The Emerald Cities Collaborative (ECC) is a start-up, national coalition of diverse groups that includes unions, labor groups, community organizations, social justice advocates, development intermediaries, research and technical assistance providers, socially responsible businesses, and elected officials.”

Emerald Cities’ goal is “the greening of our nation’s central cities and the creation of a “new vital economic sector.” The collaborative is headed up by Joel Rogers, widely recognized as the “man behind the curtain” of today’s progressive political movement. Rogers founded the powerful Apollo Alliance, the group recognized as having shaped much of the Obama administration’s stimulus bill. Former White House green jobs “czar,” Van Jones, described Rogers influence this way: “The best thinking that he represents… is now represented in the White House.”

Also represented on the Emerald Cities board of directors, Gerald Hudson, executive director of SEIU (also on the Apollo Alliance advisory board); Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of Green For All (created by Van Jones), and Doris Koo, CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, along with a collection of other union and community activist regulars.

The Bottom Line

The “environmental movement,” once the bastion of peace loving hippies and Earth mothers, is potentially the booming business of the 21st century. Billions of dollars currently change hands each year in the name of the environment and, by all accounts, the surface is only scratched.

To date the missing piece of the puzzle has been a government mandate, something cap-and-trade legislation will remedy. Those already in the game stand to reap a fortune on the backs of average Americans who will see their energy bills “necessarily skyrocket,” as President Obama explained, as businesses pass along the new cost of doing what they do in a “green America.”

It’s interesting to note that without the specter of a government mandate, the Chicago Climate Exchange would hold no value. Likewise Fannie Mae’s patented trading system and Emerald Cities’ prospects for “a new vital economic sector” would be nothing more than fool’s gold.

Equally troubling is the blatant acknowledgement by those involved in this high stakes green rush that power and profit are the only real benefits to be had. The words of Joel Rogers: “I hope you all realized that you could eliminate every power plant in America today and you can stop every car in America. Take out the entire power generation sector and you still would not be anywhere near 80 percent below 1990 levels. You would be closer to around 60 percent… it would be around 68 percent and this is with bringing the economy to a complete halt… basically.”

Crime Inc. – what do they know and when did they know it… and how much will it cost the American people?

Read the original article Glenn Beck.

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Oh my: McCain 47, Hayworth 42

HotAir

Oh my: McCain 47, Hayworth 42

McCain has been losing ground since January when he picked up 53% of the potential GOP Primary vote and Hayworth had only 31% support. Last month, the longtime senator and 2008 GOP presidential candidate earned 48% of the vote, while 41% of likely primary voters supported his challenger.

Eighty-six percent (86%) of GOP Primary voters in Arizona think the recently-passed national health care bill should be repealed, with 78% who strongly favor repeal. Fifty percent (50%) of those who strongly favor repeal support Hayworth; 41% of those voters support McCain.

Eighty percent (80%) of primary voters say their own views on the major issues of the day are closer to the views of the average Tea Party member than to those of President Obama. Forty-two percent (42%) of those voters back McCain, while 49% support Hayworth. Among the 10% of primary voters who say their views are closer to the president’s, McCain earns 68% of the vote, Hayworth 16%.

Interestingly, only nine percent of primary voters view McCain “very unfavorably” compared to 18 percent who feel that way about Hayworth; you’d think ol’ Mav would be at least equal in that category given how the base loathes him. I’m not sure how to reconcile these results with dKos’s poll from a few weeks ago showing McCain with a comfortable 15-point lead, though. Could be simple error on Kos’s part, or it could be that McCain caught a bounce from Palin’s appearances on the trail which Kos was able to measure but which dissipated by the time Rasmussen conducted this latest survey. (Both polls were of likely voters.) Either way, barring some catastrophic screw-up by Hayworth, looks like this’ll be a race to the bitter end, which means we can expect plenty more cynically delicious red meat like this from Maverick all the way up to the primary. Why, by the time August rolls around, I wouldn’t be surprised to find him voting to the right of Jim DeMint.

Exit question: None of us wants to contemplate it, but contemplate it we must. If McCain loses a squeaker to Hayworth, does he borrow a page from his pal Joe Liebs and run in the general election as an independent? Arizona’s a photo negative of Connecticut: The Democratic opposition will be largely token (both McCain and Hayworth lead Rodney Glassman by 20 points in hypothetical match-ups), so if Maverick runs as an indie, Democratic voters may have to make a hard choice and shift to supporting him in the interest of defeating Hayworth. The one big difference between that scenario and Lieberman’s run, of course, is that McCain was the other party’s presidential nominee. Can Arizona Dems put aside ill will from the 2008 election in order to stop J.D.? And will Sarahcuda hit the trail for an independent Maverick if he follows Joementum’s lead? Can’t wait to blog all this.

Read the original article on Hot Air

Payoffs to Big Labor continue

By Katie Packer