Libertarian Leanings

America In The Balance

William Ward, writing in American Thinker, believes we have reached a decisive point in American politics.  Libertarians and conservatives have reached death ground, that point in the battle from which there is no retreat.

In the face of such aggressive liberal grasps for American liberties, the majority conservative base is now starting to wake up and jump off the fence.  People who once rebuked the Minuteman protesters for going to the US/Mexican border to protest lax immigration enforcement in 2004 are now themselves going to town halls and organizing Tea Party protests of their own, and public opinion polls are now taking decided shifts into traditionally conservative directions.

In short, the American conservative base has been marshaled onto the political equivalent of Sun Tzu's death ground, and the ideological pawns are finding fewer paths of retreat from the advancing onslaught of the liberal agenda. 

Progressives know we're there.  Consider Bill Clinton's words to the Netroots in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago.

“We have entered a new era of progressive politics which, if we do it right, can last 30 or 40 years,” Clinton said.

Doing it right means getting full control now.  This is the crucial moment.  If the libertarian and conservative voices demanding the preservation of our liberties can be overwhelmed now, they'll never heard from again.  Read the entire essay.  It's a good one.

Update:  Per Drudge, Clinton knows what's at stake.

“We need to pass a bill this year. Doing nothing is not only the worst thing we can do for the economy, it’s the worst thing we can do for the country. It’s also the worst thing we can do for the Democrats,” Clinton said, because Americans expect Democrats to deliver when they elect them. (My emphasis).

He's wrong about one thing.  This mess of a health care reform bill is not what Americans ever wanted or expected Democrats to deliver once they got into office.  Passing this health care bill is unlikely to do anything good for the economy, and it will be the worst thing for a great many elderly Americans.  If there are any savings to be had from health care reform they will be brought about by limiting treatment for seniors.  If there are beneficiaries of passing this trillion dollar travesty, they are Democrats salivating at the opportunity to dole out money and benefits as they strive for a permanent grip on political power.

Reopening The Torture Case

The panel discussion on Fox News last night touched on Eric Holder's move to reopen of the case against CIA interrogators who may have become a bit overzealous when questioning the al Qaeda masterminds of the World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001.  Juan Williams made a very interesting point.  I don't remember his exact words.  The gist I took from it though, was that a Justice Department investigation would effectively shut down any congressional probes.  Can't have congress interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation and all that.

In that scenario one might envision the Justice Department holding open a whitewash style operation that would take the heat off of the CIA.  Over time Holder's investigation would fade into the background.  Congress would have to find another topic on which to engage its usual hypocritical moral grandstanding.  Do I think it's a likely scenario?  No.

It's as likely as Barack Obama actually becoming the centrist, bi-partisan, post-racial president he had promised to be when he seduced the voters.  A more likely scenario is described by Andrew McCarthy.  

The abuse allegations said to have stunned the attorney general into acting are outlined in a stale CIA inspector general’s report. Though only released this week — a disclosure timed to divert attention from reports that showed the CIA’s efforts yielded life-saving intelligence — the IG report is actually five years old. Its allegations not only have been long known to the leaders of both parties in Congress, they were thoroughly investigated by professional prosecutors — not political appointees. Those prosecutors decided not to file charges, except in one case that ended in an acquittal.

Why reopen a case that's been closed for five years?

Obama and Holder were principal advocates for a “reckoning” against Bush officials during the 2008 campaign. They realize, though, that their administration would be mortally wounded if Justice were actually to file formal charges — this week’s announcement of an investigation against the CIA provoked howls, but that’s nothing compared to the public reaction indictments would cause. Nevertheless, Obama and Holder are under intense pressure from the hard Left, to which they made reckless promises, and from the international community they embrace.

The way out of this dilemma is clear. Though it won’t file indictments against the CIA agents and Bush officials it is probing, the Justice Department will continue conducting investigations and releasing reports containing new disclosures of information. The churn of new disclosures will be used by lawyers for the detainees to continue pressing the U.N. and the Europeans to file charges. The European nations and/or international tribunals will make formal requests to the Obama administration to have the Justice Department assist them in securing evidence. Holder will piously announce that the “rule of law” requires him to cooperate with these “lawful requests” from “appropriately created courts.” Finally, the international and/or foreign courts will file criminal charges against American officials.

I faced a startling discovery that came about when I went back to college and finally got my degree after all these years.  In a business law course I learned that treaties take precedence over the constitution.  I was stunned to hear it, but there it is.  It makes McCarthy's scenario is the more believable.  The left has always been hell bent on getting the U.S. into Kyoto and the International Criminal Court.  Treaties are another way for lefties to get around those inconvenient constitutional guarantees of individual liberty.  You know, the ones that thwart them in their quest for a more just and equitable distribution of your money. 

Emergency Power

Obama wants control of the internet.

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

His apparent plans for redirecting the nations economic output into Democratic party coffers will be greatly facilitated by this ability to shut down the internet when it carries disagreeable opinion of him.

Team Player

Yesterday, Pajamas Media featured a story on Leon Panetta's brief but eventful tenure as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  The story's author, Nate Hale, is unimpressed.

When Leon Panetta took over the CIA earlier this year, he was described (in some circles) as the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time.

Seven months later, that assessment is proving eerily prescient. As the agency prepares for a politically-charged investigation of its interrogation practices, Mr. Panetta’s leadership is noticeably lacking.

Panetta held the position of White House Chief of Staff in the Clinton administration.  Folks may recall that if there's one thing about the Clintonistas, they are a loyal bunch, willing to take one for the team.  When the 9/11 commission conducted its inquiry into how our government failed to prevent the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, former National Security Adviser and devoted Clintonista Sandy Berger, cleansed the National Archives of any hint that the Clinton administration may have ignored credible warnings of impending attack. 

Berger's theft and destruction of secret documents was a purely political act, designed to protect the Clinton legacy, thus preserving Hillary's viability as a presidential contender in the 2008 election.  Though Berger was convicted his plea bargaining got him a sweet deal.  He was convicted of illegally removing highly classified documents from the National Archives and intentionally destroying some of them, but he got off with a fine, community service, and since he's such a trustworthy guy, he'll even get his top secret security clearance back.  In the end protecting the Clintons didn't cost him that much.

But the Clintons are out, the Obama's are in, and Panetta has joined that team.  It may be the one in the same team, the Democrats.  Panetta's first notable action was to throw his agency under the bus in order to cover for the Democrat from San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi.  Pelosi had put herself in awkward position.  After demanding investigations into the CIA's alleged torture of al Qaeda detainees, it came out she already knew and approved what the CIA was doing, having been briefed on exactly what interrogation techniques the CIA employed. 

How embarrassing.  So she accused the CIA of lying to her, but the CIA stood by their story.  Pelosi had been briefed, they said.  But then along comes Panetta to say, hold the phone!  The CIA withheld information from congress, after all.  Pelosi got her credibility back.  And what exactly was it that the CIA withhold?

We refer to the manufactured “scandal” surrounding the agency’s plans to enlist contractors in the hunt for high-value terror targets. That proposal — which involved the controversial security firm Blackwater — was discussed on several occasions, but never reached the operational stage. Three previous CIA directors declined to brief the proposal to Congress, largely because there was nothing to it.

But that didn’t stop Mr. Panetta from rushing to Capitol Hill when he learned of the project, offering an emergency briefing to members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Congressional Democrats immediately pounced on Panetta’s admission, saying it supported claims (by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) that the spy agency had repeatedly lied to lawmakers.

Sources now suggest that Mr. Panetta regrets his actions.  Columnist Joseph Finder, who writes for the Daily Beast, reported last week that the CIA director spoke with his predecessors after he reported the program’s existence to members of Congress.  George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden were all aware of the program, but they elected not to inform Congress because it never evolved past the “PowerPoint” stage.

The Clinton team was certainly political, but compared to the Obama crowd, they were slackers.  Obama's poll numbers continue to sink as his stimulus has so far stimulated nothing but government, his cap and trade legislation has been put on hold, and his version of health care reform has become so unpopular that people are screaming at their congressmen for supporting it.  What to do?  Attorney General Holder has the answer.

According to the Washington Post, Attorney General Eric Holder will appoint a special prosecutor to examine allegations that CIA officers and contractors violated anti-torture laws during interrogations of terror suspects.

Mr. Holder’s reported decision is anything but a surprise. Literally from the day they took office, members of the Obama administration have been weighing a probe into CIA practices under President George W. Bush. The recent leaks about the agency’s potential partnership with Blackwater — and claims of interrogation abuse — were little more than groundwork for Eric Holder’s pending announcement.

When all else fails, bash Bush.  An investigation in the CIA interrogation methods is red meat for the fever swamps of the left -- a slender hope that a trail will lead all the way back to George Bush or Dick Cheney.  For Obama it's a distraction from the abysmal job he's doing.  Bush is the go-to target when things go sour and Obama doesn't know what else to do.  In this case the CIA winds up as collateral damage.  The Commander-In-Chief is so sorry, and the CIA director is sadly unable to defend his agency.

Instead, Leon Panetta became obsessed with a non-scandal, losing valuable opportunities to defend his agency and its personnel. One retired CIA official I spoke with referred to him as “another Colby,” — a reference to William Colby, the DCI who cooperated with the Church and Pike Committees that probed agency abuses in the 1970s. To this day, many CIA employees feel that Colby went too far in his cooperation, opening the door for increased congressional oversight that gutted the agency’s covert operations directorate.

The bitter “Colby” reference is a sure sign that morale at Langley is plummeting. And with good reason. The looming special counsel inquiry will make a skittish organization even more risk averse. Talented personnel will continue to leave the agency, believing (correctly) that the CIA will leave them twisting in the wind when the going gets tough.

It’s a trend that is sadly familiar. Following previous scandals in the 70s and 80s, thousands of skilled analysts and operations specialists left Langley for greener pastures, leaving behind the hacks and politicians who presided over such intelligence debacles as 9-11.

Strong leadership could go a long way in taking on the agency’s critics and preventing another mass exodus from the agency.  But sadly, Mr. Panetta is not that type of leader.

I don't know what kind of leader Panetta is, but Panetta's team, the Democratic party, is all politics all the time.  There is nothing else that matters, not national defense, nothing.  Panetta proves again, he's a team player.  To paraphrase Churchill, Mr Hale is unimpressed with Panetta.  He has much to be unimpressed about.

Obama's Summer of Discontent

Fouad Ajami writes in today's Wall Street Journal:

So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. These "townhallers" who have come forth to challenge ObamaCare have been labeled "evil-mongers" (Harry Reid), "un-American" (Nancy Pelosi), agitators and rowdies and worse.

A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the "loudest voices" are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.

Why The Stimulus Didn't Stimulate

It's the uncertainty of it all.  Although he had to give up on his August deadline, Obama had planned to ram a health care bill through congress by telling everybody that this new trillion dollar entitlement would somehow control the cost of health care.  Nobody can see how that's going to work, and everybody wants to find out before making any serious investment decisions.  Mark Steyn sums up.

It didn't just fail to stimulate, it actively deterred stimulation, because it was the first explicit signal to America and the world that the Democrats' political priorities overrode everything else.

Of course, if you can't figure out how we are going to cut costs by adding 46 million more people to a government sponsored Medicare-like insurance system, while Medicare itself is going broke by the way, then you are nothing more than a racist retard.  Really.  According to Janeane Garofalo, anyway.

The Texas Model

Now, if only someone could do for the rest of the country what Governor Rick Perry did for Texas...

Six years ago, Mr. Perry's state underwent a critical tort reform that was codified in the state constitution. The payoff is that Texas is now outpacing California economically. According to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, between 1997 and 2006 Texas' economy grew an average of 4.3% while California's grew at a rate of 3.7%. But as of 2002 (to 2007), with tort reform in place, Texas' annual economic growth jumped to 5%, while California's remained essentially the same at 3.6%

With a tan baseball cap hanging off one knee, Mr. Perry is proud to report that "Texas created more jobs in 2008 than the rest of the states—combined." As of July, the state, which taxes neither capital gains nor income, had an unemployment rate of 7.5%, two points below the national average, while California's hovered at 11.5%, two points above.

No wonder over half a million people flooded into Texas between 2000 and 2007. Meanwhile, 1.2 million residents left California in the same seven-year period.

Governor Perry's plans do not include a move to Washington, DC anytime soon.  This is unfortunate, since President Obama is obviously intent on pushing the country down California's path, instead of the one Texas has taken.  Notice the White House position on tort reform.  It is widely agreed that medical malpractice liability and opportunistic litigation has added significantly to the cost of health care in the U.S..  Yet tort reform doesn't rate a mention in Obama's health care reform plans as one of the ways costs might be contained.  If you're wondering why, take a look at this useful graph which I pilfered from Maggie's Farm.

According to Governor Perry, the turnaround in Texas came about through a combination of tort reform, cuts in spending and taxes, and by working to get special interests out of government.  There's every reason to believe that what has worked in Texas would also work for California, and if implemented at the federal level, would work for the country as well.  Based on Obama's performance to date, though, I'd say the chances of seeing that kind of an approach from Washington are slim to none.

Cultivation of key special interests is signature to the Obama governing style.  Witness the pharmaceutical industries support for health care reform, a quid pro quo masterpiece.  The industry gets a promise of $80 billion in savings over the next ten years, and in return it will pony up $150 million now to help sell the scheme. 

The Obama style is to funnel huge piles of the taxpayers' money to special interests.  The United Auto Workers Union which spends millions on Democrats every election, has already been rewarded with a disproportionately large ownership stake in the post-bankruptcy General Motors.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. government took a 50% stake in return for $16.2 billion in bailout money, awarding the UAW another 40%.  Meanwhile while GM's bondholders, who held $27.2 billion in unsecured debt, had to settle for 10% of the equity, which could turn out to be as little as 5 cents on the dollar.

This kind of strategy offers a degree of insulation between Obama and the voters.  The $150 million that the pharmaceuticals have agreed to spend in support of health care reform won't go into a dispassionate recital of the pros and cons.  We can expect a message of emotion laden fearmongering, whose purpose will be to create a perception of heightened crisis.  Just as Obama has hoped a crisis mentality would drive health care reform through congress before anybody really had any idea of what was in it, special interest campaign money will seek to stampede voters into voting for their guy.  Just like any other kind of advertising, it works.

And Obama is not even a little bit bashful about political payoffs and payback.  Election time will be harvest time, as vast sums in campaign money flow from the favored special interests to Obama in return for the taxpayers' money he sends their way in the name of reform.  In Obama's governing style there is no room for tax cuts or spending cuts.  And tort reform?  Forget about it.  The Texas model isn't going to find its way to Washington anytime soon.

Venus

In 1959 "Venus" by Frankie Avalon spent five week at number one on the charts.  I was 12 and baseball was my passion.  But when I heard "Venus" on the radio I went out and blew my allowance on it.  It was one of my first 45rpm records, and it was a promise that the world offered passions beyond baseball. 

Baseball is still a passion, though.  Just to brag a bit, I batted .600 in the New Hampshire Over 50 Baseball League this year, although I have to admit, slow fielders were key to the achievement.  In a younger league my double to right field would have been a pop up to the second baseman.  We are none of us the players we once were, but we sure have a great time trying to be.  I love 'em all.

My Bet Is On "Lying"

Ed Morrissey makes the observation, "When people tell us that the health-care system in this country is broken, they’re either ignorant or lying."  He has the facts to back it up.

How badly is that system and how unhealthy are Americans?  According to the CDC, we keep extending our life expectancy to all-time highs and keep reducing disease in the US.

[...] 

The CDC data shows it’s no fluke:

– Record high life expectancy was recorded for both males and females (75.3 years and 80.4 years, respectively). While the gap between male and female life expectancy has narrowed since the peak gap of 7.8 years in 1979, the 5.1 year difference in 2007 is the same as in 2006.

– For the first time, life expectancy for black males reached 70 years.

– The U.S. mortality rate fell for the eighth straight year to an all-time low of 760.3 deaths per 100,000 population in 2007 — 2.1 percent lower than the 2006 rate of 776.5. The 2007 mortality rate is half of what it was 60 years ago (1532 per 100,000 in 1947.) …

– Between 2006 and 2007, mortality rates declined significantly for eight of the 15 leading causes of death. Declines were observed for influenza and pneumonia (8.4 percent), homicide (6.5 percent), accidents (5 percent), heart disease (4.7 percent), stroke (4.6 percent), diabetes (3.9 percent), hypertension (2.7 percent), and cancer (1.8 percent).

If there is one thing evident from this great health care debate, it is this.  Improving health care is not the objective.  This is about power.  The assault on the American health care system is intended to usher in a new era of progressive domination in American politics.

As it happens, the White House is running into more trouble on it.  Patterico points to this:

Administration officials insisted that they have not shied away from their support for a public option to compete with private insurance companies, an idea they said Obama still prefers to see in a final bill.

But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.

"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."

"It's a mystifying thing," he added. "We're forgetting why we are in this."

Nah.  It ain't mystifying.

Rationing

I've mention it before.  Rationing is incredibly dear to leftist hearts. 

Global warming is the latest rationale for folks on the left to propose some sort of rationing. Rationing is the answer to everything.  For poverty it's income redistribution, rationing everybody's combined income. When it's not income it's oil. Back in the 70's they were frantic with predictions that oil would run out.  Washington was actually printing ration stamps before somebody had the good sense to get rid of the oil price ceiling. Before oil, they went on about over population and the impending worldwide famine. Family planning's the ticket. We'll ration people.

When I wrote that in 2005 the topic was global warming.  Today we're talking about health care reform.  Oddly enough, progressives hope to sell it by insisting that reform will involve no rationing.  But when lefties say there won't be any rationing, can you really believe them?  Let's face it.  If there is one thing progressives are determined to do, it's ration something. 

It's as if lefties are driven to it.  They see a callousness in markets forces.  Markets are so damnably indifferent to things like skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, and a raft of other traits that progressives use to evaluate the worthiness of one group over another.  In the lefty view free markets are an abysmal failure because they neglect historic oppression.  Progressives will correct this and other failures of the market.  They will take from the haves who are inherently evil for having, and give to the have-nots who are deserving because they don't have. 

Having is sort of like original sin.  It's a stain on the soul, and evidence of poor character.  You can't have unless you take.  If you take, odds are you've take from somebody else, someone weaker.  So, haves are likely to be evil.  This is intuitive to the enlightened progressive. 

Not having, on the other hand, is a sign of good character.  Not having is evidence, not only that you haven't taken from others, but also that someone else may have even taken from you -- an evil have, no doubt.  Therefore, have nots can be assumed good on two counts. 

The thing progressives seem to love most about rationing, is devising ways of evaluating relative worth in various circumstances -- a truly impossible task.  Lefties tackle it with relish anyway, and nowhere with such relish as in health care reform.  When progressives take steps to hold down the cost of health care, they will determine what treatments are worthwhile and what treatments aren't.  Naturally it will vary from one patient to the next, based on things like age and state of health.  It's critical that progressives come up with an accurate measurement of worth.  

A Martin Feldstein article in Opinion Journal explains how the current reform plan will go about it.

Although administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama's health plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report in June explaining the Obama administration's goal of reducing projected health spending by 30% over the next two decades. That reduction would be achieved by eliminating "high cost, low-value treatments," by "implementing a set of performance measures that all providers would adopt," and by "directly targeting individual providers . . . (and other) high-end outliers."

The president has emphasized the importance of limiting services to "health care that works." To identify such care, he provided more than $1 billion in the fiscal stimulus package to jump-start Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and to finance a federal CER advisory council to implement that idea. That could morph over time into a cost-control mechanism of the sort proposed by former Sen. Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama's original choice for White House health czar. Comparative effectiveness could become the vehicle for deciding whether each method of treatment provides enough of an improvement in health care to justify its cost.

Imagine that.  "$1 billion in the fiscal stimulus package to jump-start Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and to finance a federal CER advisory council to implement that idea."  There's that "death panel" Sarah was talking about.

But not to worry.  Our progressive friends assure us that this won't mean rationing.  Instead, progressives will devise a "fair" way of limiting services to "health care that works."  It will undoubtedly take all the important factors into consideration, like current health status, gender, and age of the person receiving care.  And you know, there might just be one of those historic wrongs to correct, too.  But there won't be any rationing.  Sure.