I have tended to be a big fan of Open Secrets, a website by a lefty group that shows how money is spent in politics. The nice thing is that they provide data. And the nice thing about data is that it gives you good apples-to-apples comparisons. Based on data, you can argue things like “the largest donors and lobbyists in Wisconsin are the teachers | Read More »
Forgive me for being a broken record on this, but the right has won yet another election in Europe, this time in Estonia. Last June, I wrote that Keynesianism is dead in Europe as a political force. This weekend, the Estonian right has won another election fought over government spending. The coalition of the right went from 44% of the vote in the last parliamentary | Read More »
One of the things that has been missed in the debate over public employee unions in Wisconsin is the impact on city and county budgets. Governor Scott Walker’s proposal doesn’t just impact the state’s fiscal situation, but it attempts to help the cities and counties. And, as the former Counter Executive of 2-1 Democratic Milwaukee County, Walker has a real familiarity with how the fiscal | Read More »
A lot of people focus on the federal level when they think about politics. On the day after the 2010 election, I urged people to continue the fights at the state level. The unions — and especially the public employee unions — know that. Recall that in October of last year, the Wall Street Journal broke a very important story that found that AFSCME, the | Read More »
The 2009 primary election in Troy, NY attracted much attention for election shenanigans from Democratic officials who are associated with the Working Families Party. Well, yesterday, a grand jury issued indictments on 116 charges against a Democratic City Councilmember Michael LaPorto and Democratic Election Commissioner Edward McDonough. The Albany Times-Union and the Troy Record have been all over this. Basically, those two Democratic officials have | Read More »
The Washington Post has a great story about the meltdown of the green movement. It is about the need of the movement to refocus because, at a critical point, voters — you — rejected their ideas and the people who carried their water in Washington and in the state capitals. What really struck me was that the Sierra Club is shifting focus from raising the | Read More »
Last night was an epic victory for conservatives and Republicans. We pushed back against the arrogant, over-spending Congressional Democrats and, by proxy, President Barack Obama. Much of the commentary has talked about the coming gridlock in Washington. For example, The Economist has described “two years of nothing.” But that’s not true. Even if there is little agreement on jobs and other policies, Congress and state governments will | Read More »
Chicago, where I grew up and lived for 26 years, has been the butt of jokes about corruption and election fraud. This behavior has seeped across the border at times into Indiana. For example 31 people were convicted for voter fraud in the 2003 East Chicago (Indiana) Democratic mayoral primary. At the very least, this year the Illinois Democratic Party and election apparatus has become | Read More »
You might recall that in Illinois, it is illegal to “electioneer” inside a polling place. You might recall that this issue came up recently when Michelle Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate and the daughter of a Chicago Democratic Machine precinct captain, discussed with voters inside a polling place why it was important to support Democrats this cycle. Naturally, the Robert Gibbs and the White | Read More »
Big Government and Election Journal have a great new resource for fighting voter fraud: a free iPhone app. From them: Brought to you by ElectionJournal.org, the website that broke the Black Panther intimidation story in 2008. iReport is the first iPhone application dedicated to reporting voter fraud, intimidation and other election irregularities. The app is available for free and allows you to join EJ’s nationwide network of citizens | Read More »
Barack Obama and the Democrats have a story about this election. It goes like this. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations have free speech rights in the Supreme Court decision Citizens United. Since then, all this corporate money has flowed into campaigns, blah blah blah. And the press has completely accepted this line of thinking. It is complete nonsense. They probably want to concoct a | Read More »
The “Young Guns” have a book. They also have a promotion tour and a video. Now, the Democrats could engage in a battle of ideas. But that’s not what they do. (are you surprised?) Instead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee files a complaint with the Federal Election Commission that promoting the book violates election law. Really. By their interpretation, a book publisher cannot promote a | Read More »
The G-8 and G-20 meetings in Canada were remarkable in historic terms. European governments criticized the United States for being spendthrift. Brazil provided political cover to the US on behalf of the developing countries. This has been a consequence of something truly remarkable happening in Europe. Keynsianism has lost in Europe. There is no political support for it. And Barack Obama got hit in the | Read More »
In the last couple of years, many of us have been laid off, worked at places where people have been laid off, had friends who were laid off, or had to lay people off. It is tough, but often it has to be done by management for them to be responsible stewards of the organization. Last week, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles (and former | Read More »
Over the past 72 hours, the online left has collectively ripped into Carly Fiorina for an ad that shines a spotlight on Barbara Boxer’s assertion that “One of the very important national security issues we face, frankly, is climate change.” Naturally, the media has been carrying Boxer’s water in wildly distorting Fiorina’s point. Ultimately, this election is going to be fought over questions about who can address the problem | Read More »
Today the New York Times had a shocking story: this year the Social Security Trust Fund will pay more out in benefits than it takes in in revenue. There are several reasons this is an important story. First, it is important because it reminds us that our country is on the edge of a fiscal precipice. The baby boomers will begin retiring next year. Indeed, | Read More »
Allyson Schwartz (D-PA-13) represents a district that John Kerry won 54-43. In 2008, she won 63-34. But she’s scared this year. How scared? Scared enough to put the screws into the leaders of the national and state firefighters union to get a firefighter and bar owner named Brian Haughton to not run: Haughton described himself as aggressive and passionate and told the crowd that Schwartz | Read More »
All politics is local, or so said former Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-MA). One wonders if Democrats lost the thread of what was happening in Massachusetts when they tried to nationalize the Massachusetts Senate special election around Barack Obama’s universal health care plan. You see, Obama’s plan borrowed much conceptually from Massachusetts plan that Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney worked on. The key concepts: a mandate | Read More »
The Senate has been called the world’s greatest deliberative body. Not today. You see, Harry Reid cut a deal with the Democrats. Then he introduced that deal as a substitute to the bill. And then he “filled the tree”. That’s a short-hand to describe a parliamentary manuever by which no amendments are allowed to the action currently on the floor. The Majority Leader can always | Read More »
Yesterday, the Washington Post broke a blockbuster. A memo was leaked detailing all the current House Ethics Committee investigations. And guess what, most of them are Democrats. In fact, the only Republican mentioned in it was Sam Graves, who has been cleared by the Committee. So what did we learn? The Post says, regarding the inquiry of lawmakers tied to PMA, a now defunct lobbying | Read More »
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