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1. No disclosure on utility bills, but new labels for potato chips?
Common sense, Democrat style
2. Meet The New Brownshirts
Willie Sutton Meets Ernst Rohm
3. Charlie Crist Raises Taxes & Now Says He’d Vote for Stimulus — Just Like Specter
Why even have a Republican Party if the Republican Establishment is Just Going to Fund Candidates Whose Positions Are the Same as the Democrats
4. John Cornyn’s manure is so thick he could build dung huts in Texas
It pains me to have to go after John Cornyn, a good and decent man, but he very clearly does not get it.
5. VIDEO: FBI Director Rebukes Obama Administration, Congressional Democrats
A must see brought to you by Congressman Tom Price
6. Rebuilding the Party: The Outsiders
The GOP has decided its only principle is the accumulation of power. To actually get back to power, it must stand for something else — freedom.
1. No disclosure on utility bills, but new labels for potato chips?
Common sense, Democrat style
For the past two days, the Energy and Commerce Committee has been marking up the Waxman-Markey “Cap-and-Trade” bill. It will impose a huge, new cost on all energy (estimated at $4,300 per family each year) and destroy millions of American jobs.
While the price of everything will go up, the effect on electricity prices will be particularly dramatic. Last night, Republicans put forward a straightforward amendment to require that utility bills indicate the increased cost of electricity that will result from this legislation. The Democrat majority on the Committee rejected this commonsense measure. That’s right: they actually voted against disclosing these costs to consumers on their utility bills!
Today, in another partisan vote, the Democrats have added an amendment to essentially require every new and existing home sold in America to be inspected and labeled as to its energy efficiency. If you thought the emissions tests required by the DMV were a pain, just wait to have your home inspected and “labeled.” In addition, on a party-line vote, the Majority has included a mandated study on requiring all products sold in the United States, down to potato chips, to be labeled as to their CO2 “content,” showing how much CO2 is emitted in the manufacturing of each product. If you think government is big now, get ready for it to be stunningly bigger and more invasive!
2. Meet The New Brownshirts
Willie Sutton Meets Ernst Rohm
Intimidation, home invasion and the not-too-subtle threat of physical violence - by community organizers closely allied with governmental power and receiving taxpayer money. It’s not a pretty combination:
Bruce Marks doesn’t bother being diplomatic. A campaigner on behalf of homeowners facing foreclosure, he was on the phone one day in March to a loan executive at Bank of America Corp.
“I’m tired of borrowers being screwed!” Mr. Marks yelled into the phone. “You’re incompetent!” Before hanging up, he threatened to call bank CEO Kenneth Lewis at home to complain about the loan executive.
Mr. Marks’s nonprofit organization, Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, has emerged as one of the loudest scourges of the banking industry in the post-bubble economy. It salts its Web site with photos of executives it accuses of standing in the way of helping homeowners — emblazoning “Predator” across their photos, picturing their homes and sometimes including home phone numbers. In February, NACA, as it’s called, protested at the home of a mortgage investor by scattering furniture on his lawn, to give him a taste of what it feels like to be evicted.
In the 1990s, Mr. Marks leaked details of a banker’s divorce to the press and organized a protest at the school of another banker’s child. He says he would use such tactics again. “We have to terrorize these bankers,” Mr. Marks says.
Though some bankers privately deplore his tactics, Mr. Marks is a growing influence in the lending industry and the effort to curb foreclosures. NACA has signed agreements with the four largest U.S. mortgage lenders …in which they agree to work with his counselors on a regular basis to try to arrange lower payments for struggling borrowers. NACA has made powerful political friends, such as House majority whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, and it receives federal money to counsel homeowners.
The goal of this sort of thing, of course, is to thoroughly politicize business decisions from top to bottom of the economy, squeezing out as far as possible the role of independent business judgment and for the benefit of favored constituencies and politicians (see here for one of the more egregious examples by one of the nation’s most notorious practitioners of political extortion, and here for a similar example of the use of strong-arm street tactics). And the results will be predictable: together with the move to limit credit card fees, the Democrats and their activist allies will put businesses to the choice of (1) extending bad credit in exchange for insufficient returns to cover the risks, for the purpose of currying political favor and keeping the brownshirts away from their homes and families, or (2) getting out of the business altogether. (Allahpundit notes the third choice of shifting costs onto good credit risks, but there’s only so much blood to squeeze from that stone directly, except insofar as it’s done indirectly by using taxpayer money to bribe the banks).
It’s not a good thing for liberty, not a good thing for the economy, and ultimately not a good thing for the integrity of a government that gets too comfortable pulling the strings.
3. Charlie Crist Raises Taxes & Now Says He’d Vote for Stimulus — Just Like Specter
Why even have a Republican Party if the Republican Establishment is Just Going to Fund Candidates Whose Positions Are the Same as the Democrats
Charlie Crist, Florida’s Governor and the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s chosen candidate for the Senate, has decided to endorse last week signed the Americans for Tax Reform’s “no tax” pledge. This week, Crist will approve the Florida legislature’s new budget, balanced by raising taxes.
If that weren’t bad enough, speaking in South Florida, Charlie Crist said he would have joined Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins to vote in favor of Barack Obama’s stimulus plan.
Crist calls that being practical. He accuses Rubio, of all things, of being too governed by principle. Of course, many people could accuse Crist of having no principles whatsoever.
It is typically assumed that one of the most significant causes for the Republican wipe outs of 2006 and 2008 was because the GOP lost its way. The party of small government and sound fiscal stewardship went hog wild on a spending spree while descending into corruption.
At the same time, there is a competing view that some places just won’t elect conservatives any more. To be honest, both arguments have merit. The problem with the second argument, however, is that if the Republican Party cannot distinguish itself from the Democrats, why have a Republican Party.
4. John Cornyn’s manure is so thick he could build dung huts in Texas
It pains me to have to go after John Cornyn, a good and decent man, but he very clearly does not get it.
John Cornyn knows better than you conservative boobs and he wants you to know it.
In commenting about the NRSC’s endorsement of Charlie Crist, Cornyn said
“I need to constantly remind some of my very conservative friends who want to sort of purify the party – and, in so doing, cast us in a permanent minority status – that Ronald Reagan said the person who votes with me 80 percent of the time is my friend and ally, not a 20 percent traitor,” Cornyn says.
But contrast that with this statement from Cornyn in the same article:
n 2010, cting “public anxiety about spending and borrowing” by the Obama administration and the fact that the popular president won’t be on the ballot, “there will be some genuine opportunities for Republicans, assuming we get good candidates, assuming we do our job to raise the money.”
Yet, in Florida, John Cornyn has endorsed a man who supports Obama’s spending and borrowing. How the hell does he expect to make the case to voters who have “anxiety about spending and borrowing” that they can trust Charlie Crist on that issue?
Senator, you should flush the endorsement and your manure filled statements along with it.
5. VIDEO: FBI Director Rebukes Obama Administration, Congressional Democrats
A must see brought to you by Congressman Tom Price
In response to a question from Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), FBI Director Robert Mueller gave the House Judiciary Committee a rundown of the Bureau’s concerns about transferring Guantanamo terror suspects to the United States.
President Obama and his Democrat friends in Congress would be wise to take note of Mr. Mueller’s warnings.
6. Rebuilding the Party: The Outsiders
The GOP has decided its only principle is the accumulation of power. To actually get back to power, it must stand for something else — freedom.
Having written a number of posts on the topic of rebuilding the party, let me add one more to the mix. And I will get right to the point:
To rebuild the Repubilcan Party, the party must run against both Washington and itself.
It is almost a schizophrenic dichotomy to suggest Republicans must run against the Republican Party, but it is, in fact, a critical necessity. In so doing, the GOP must run against the Washington Establishment, both in general and against Republicans in particular.
This is why, despite polling suggesting Charlie Crist will crush Marco Rubio in just over 370 days from now, I think Rubio has the advantage. The same goes for someone like Rick Perry in Texas, Karen Handel in Georgia, Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Sarah Steelman in Missouri, and others around the country.
Frankly, it could also help some Democrats.
The country, both Democrats and Republicans, have decided the country is broken politically and financially. More importantly, polling suggests independents are growing disenchanted with Barack Obama’s failure to rise above politics. By the elections of 2010, I suspect there will be a full on rebellion of independents and we will be at one of those “throw the bums out” elections. This will be different from 2010 or even 1994 to the extent that it will not be about throwing the [insert party here] out, but about throwing out the bums in general.
Despite significant advantages for incumbents, that does not always hold up. Likewise, change need only happen in some races, not all — see e.g. Tom Foley.
If we want to rebuild the party, we must stand up for and support candidates who want to reform the party — not away from its conservative roots, but away from the politics of power. The politics of power is the fundamental flaw within the GOP right now and is reflected in everything from Michael Steele’s exorbitant staff salaries in his quest to make the RNC all about him and in John Cornyn’s endorsement of Charlie Crist.
The Republican establishment wants its power back to have its power back. It does not want its power back to actually do anything. And until we elect candidates who stand for something other than the acquisition of power, we, like them, will stand for nothing.
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