Jan 5, 2009 | 3:42 PM
Category:
Political
Burris press conference: I am the junior senator from Illinois
By Michelle Malkin
January 5, 2009 01:42 PM
Busy Monday afternoon! Blago buddy Roland Burris just spoke to the press, repeatedly declaring that he is the junior senator from Illinois and that he is the solution to the problem.
He hasn’t spoken yet to Obama. But his bags are packed and he’s on his way.
Unstated but written between the lines: And anyone who gets in my way is a RAAAAAAACIST.
It’s getting all Jerry Springer in Washington. Grabbing a bag of popcorn for the freak show.
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2009/01/01/re
publicans-shouldnt-help-dems-block-burris/
Jan 5, 2009 | 3:35 PM
Category:
Political
January 05, 2009, 7:00 a.m.
The Upside of Obama
Will he end white liberal guilt?
By Mark Goldblatt
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If the election of Barack Obama — a 47-year-old black man with a political resume as ephemeral as a Mets pennant drive and a governing philosophy as dubious as Paris Hilton’s choice of boyfriends — accomplishes nothing else, it should illustrate the peculiar distorting effect on American society of white liberal guilt.
The final nail in the coffin of John McCain’s presidential candidacy, it now seems clear, was the fact that the American economy tanked in the months before the election. Fairly nor not, voters blame such downturns on the incumbent party. Whatever caused the current fiscal crisis, therefore, must be considered a prime factor in McCain’s defeat. The seeds of the crisis date back the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 — which initiated a concerted, decades-long effort by the federal government to coerce banks into making loans to lower-income borrowers.
The sentiment was noble, albeit rooted in a desperate race consciousness: If more black families owned their homes, the theory went, they’d accumulate wealth as the properties increased in value. They would pass that wealth down to their children, and the financial inequalities stemming from America’s sordid racial past would gradually diminish.
The problem, of course, is that mathematical probabilities don’t bend to noble sentiments. The reason banks weren’t lending to black borrowers as frequently, or on as good of terms, as to white borrowers, had nothing to do with racism. It had to do with risk analysis. Writing loans to lower-income, lower-collateral borrowers means more defaults.
With the rise of subprime lending, lenders were able to make up for the increased risk by charging higher interest rates. To further mitigate the risk, lenders sought to reformulate and repackage the riskier loans, share their exposure, and tap into other sources of revenue. Congress paved the way with various forms of deregulation. The price of real estate soared because of new demand from those who’d otherwise have been unable to buy a house; speculators naturally moved in, because there seemed no way to lose; and then, well, here we are. In a mortgage meltdown, with grotesque foreclosure rates, on the precipice of a deep global recession and credit crunch, because sooner or later mathematical probabilities have their way.
Ironies abound. The most bitter is that a disproportionate number of foreclosures have affected black homeowners, because they were riskier buyers to begin with. But the most profound is that the fiscal crisis precipitated decades ago by the Community Reinvestment Act has contributed decisively to the election of the first black president, Barack Obama.
Many conservatives are licking their psychic wounds at the moment, but an Obama presidency may yet wind up as a healthy development — if it forces us to confront the ways in which white liberal guilt has warped our political landscape for the last four decades, especially since the primary victims have proven, time and again, to be blacks.
Take, for example, the calamitous decision in the 1960s to expand benefits under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. AFDC began during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, intended to assist impoverished widows and their children. But its scope broadened during Lyndon Johnson’s administration to include payments to unmarried mothers with children. Why? Because the out-of-wedlock birthrate among blacks in 1963 stood at a record high of 23.6 percent, and thus many black parents were ineligible for help. The government, in effect, began sponsoring illegitimacy.
By 2005, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among blacks had tripled to almost 70 percent. Is there any social pathology known to man not found disproportionately among children born out-of-wedlock? With only good intentions, the Johnson administration did more to undermine the structural integrity of the black family than did decades of Jim Crow laws, eventually spawning a degenerate urban culture in which the phrase “my baby’s daddy” eclipsed “my husband.”
LBJ’s Great Society fiasco inaug urated the era of white-liberal-guilt politics, whose distorting effects have reverberated ever since. The 1970s brought forced busing in an effort to integrate under-performing, predominantly black inner city schools. This ignited white flight to the suburbs, which actually further segregated schools, eroded local tax bases, and thus cut funds for the very school systems busing was intended to help.
Then there was affirmative action, a policy dating back to a Kennedy administration executive order barring federally funded projects from practicing racial discrimination in hiring or employment. Affirmative action soon evolved into the practice of discrimination in favor of blacks in order to redress past grievances. The consequence, when applied to college admission, was to channel black students into higher-tier schools than they were prepared for, thereby ensuring generation after generation of higher black dropout rates. A 2004 study published in the Stanford Law Review, for example, shows that affirmative action in law school admissions has resulted in significantly fewer black lawyers now practicing in the United States.
The fallacy behind the Community Reinvestment Act, AFDC expansion, forced busing, and affirmative action is that government intervention can accelerate the natural progress of blacks in American society. Experience has shown, time and again, that the government can only ensure equal opportunities. It cannot compel equal outcomes. That’s the work of generations — just as the subjugation and exploitation of blacks was the work of generations. The white-liberal-guilt-besotted desire for quick remedies to racial inequities has produced more far more misery than redress.
On election night, at the moment Barack Obama’s electoral vote count surpassed the necessary 270, I was walking down Ninth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, a bar-and-restaurant district. People streamed out onto the street, screaming and cheering; men and women, friends and strangers, black and white, young and old, began hugging. A number were weeping with joy. Amid the commotion, a 30-ish black man came running up the sidewalk and yelled, “There’s a new sheriff in town!” I didn’t realize he’d directed the remark to me until I saw him pass a young black couple with a knowing nod, then yell it again at a group of three white women.
Two days later, I received the following group e-mail from a white middle-aged woman, a colleague of mine: "Rosa sat, so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama ran, so we could FLY. Hope rose on our wings. November 4, 2008. HOPE has risen to new heights!"
No one has ever assumed the presidency with the unrealistic expectations Obama faces. Judging from an altogether unscientific sample of conversations I’ve overheard over the last two months — a sample weighted towards college faculty and students, Manhattan pedestrians and diners, and, of course, CSPAN callers — Obama’s white supporters seem to think he’ll single-handedly heal our partisan rifts and make America beloved abroad, bring peace to the Middle East and capture Osama bin Laden, balance the budget and save Social Security. Yet even those absurdly lofty expectations pale (pun intended) beside the hopes that black voters, who cast ballots for Obama at a rate of over 95 percent, have invested in him. Blacks seem to view him as an amalgam of Martin Luther King, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, Miles Davis, and Julius Erving — except with a better outside shot.
Obama, therefore, is certain to disappoint as soon as he passes from promiser to decider. But he’s also uniquely situated to effect a genuine change in America’s race consciousness. The fact that his march to the White House resembled less a traditional campaign than a cult of personality — a cult that included much of the media — has a potential upside. Obama will set up shop on Pennsylvania Avenue owing less to his party’s leadership and lobbyists than any president in a century. Think about it. How many Democratic bigwigs endorsed Hillary Clinton before drifting to Obama? How many labor unions initially favored John Edwards? President Obama could, if he were so inclined, tell anyone, anytime, to take a hike.
What good could come of that?
The best-case scenario, though the least likely, is that President Obama, in a Nixon-to-China moment, turns to the NAACP, the Congressional Black Congress, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the entire ethno-grievance chorus and says, “Enough.” There are, he explains in a primetime speech, no governmental quick fixes to the collective inequalities in American society. Indeed, every time the government intervenes, it sets back the cause of justice for generations. Over time, without government interference, through parental sacrifice and individual initiative, inequalities will even out — unless, of course, you believe that black people and white people are innately different in their potentials.
Again, that’s the least likely scenario. But even without anything so dramatic, Obama can still cause a sea change in racial attitudes. He can do this, first and foremost, by example. He’s a husband and a father. He dresses in suits and ties. He speaks the King’s English. And he’s president of the United States. In other words, he’s no victim. If he’s authentically black — and what black person in America will dare say he isn’t? — black authenticity cannot equate with victimhood.
Obama isn’t being kept down by the Man. He is the Man. How will that fact sit with the subset of blacks, especially black men, who attribute their personal failures to invisible racist conspiracies working against them? The thought has to cross each of their minds: If nothing stopped a black man from becoming president, then maybe the reason my life is screwed up is because I’ve screwed it up.
But even if that’s too much to expect, how about Obama as a thoughtful, articulate, well-mannered, tattoo-free alternate image of black manhood to foul-mouthed rappers and dirtbag athletes? How many young black men will stay in school because Obama did? How many will bury their noses in homework because Obama did? How many won’t be ashamed to be seen with a book under their arms because Obama wasn’t?
In the final analysis, if an Obama presidency accomplishes any of the above — if it brings an end to the politics of white liberal guilt, or provides a role model for struggling blacks — it could serve a cause that outweighs and outlasts whatever wrongheaded policies the president-elect might pursue.
Jan 5, 2009 | 3:29 PM
Category:
Political
Pelosi Erases Gingrich's Long-Standing Fairness Rules
by Connie Hair
Posted 01/05/2009 ET 
Pelosi is the one on the left (with the bad face lift) and Gingrich is on right
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.
Pelosi’s rule changes -- which may be voted on today -- will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”
In reaction, the House Republican leadership is sending a letter today to Pelosi to object to changes to House Rules this week that would bar Republicans from offering alternative bills, amendments to Democrat bills or even the guarantee of open debate accessible by motions to recommit for any piece of legislation during the entire 111th Congress. These procedural abuses, as outlined in the below letter obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, would also include the repeal of six-year limit for committee chairmen and other House Rules reform measures enacted in 1995 as part of the Contract with America.
After decades of Democrat control of the House of Representatives, gross abuses to the legislative process and several high-profile scandals contributed to an overwhelming Republican House Congressional landslide victory in 1994. Reforms to the House Rules as part of the Contract with America were designed to open up to public scrutiny what had become under this decades-long Democrat majority a dangerously secretive House legislative process. The Republican reform of the way the House did business included opening committee meetings to the public and media, making Congress actually subject to federal law, term limits for committee chairmen ending decades-long committee fiefdoms, truth in budgeting, elimination of the committee proxy vote, authorization of a House audit, specific requirements for blanket rules waivers, and guarantees to the then-Democrat minority party to offer amendments to pieces of legislation.
Pelosi’s proposed repeal of decades-long House accountability reforms exposes a tyrannical Democrat leadership poised to assemble legislation in secret, then goose-step it through Congress by the elimination of debate and amendment procedures as part of America’s governing legislative process.
Below is the text of the letter on which the House Republican leadership has signed off.
January 5, 2009
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
H-232, U.S. Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Madame Speaker,
We hope you and your family had a joyful holiday season, and as we begin a new year and a new Congress, we look forward to working with you, our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and President-elect Obama in tackling the many challenges facing our nation.
President Obama has pledged to lead a government that is open and transparent. With that in mind, we are deeply troubled by media reports indicating that the Democratic leadership is poised to repeal reforms put in place in 1995 that were intended to help restore Americans’ trust and confidence in the People’s House. Specifically, these reports note that the Majority, as part of its rules package governing the new Congress, will end six-year term limits for Committee chairs and further restrict the opportunity for all members to offer alternative legislation. This does not represent change; it is reverting back to the undemocratic one-party rule and backroom deals that the American people rejected more than a decade ago. And it has grave implications for the American people and their freedom, coming at a time when an unprecedented expansion of federal power and spending is being hastily planned by a single party behind closed doors. Republicans will vigorously oppose repealing these reforms if they are brought to a vote on the House floor.
As you know, after Republicans gained the majority in the House in 1995, our chamber adopted rules to limit the terms of all committee chairs to three terms in order to reward new ideas, innovation, and merit rather than the strict longevity that determined chairmanships in the past. This reform was intended to help restore the faith and trust of the American people in their government – a theme central to President-elect Obama’s campaign last year. He promoted a message of “change,” but Madame Speaker, abolishing term limit reform is the opposite of “change.” Instead, it will entrench a handful of Members of the House in positions of permanent power, with little regard for its impact on the American people.
The American people also stand to pay a price if the Majority further shuts down free and open debate on the House floor by refusing to allow all members the opportunity to offer substantive alternatives to important legislation -- the same opportunities that Republicans guaranteed to Democrats as motions to recommit during their 12 years in the Minority. The Majority’s record in the last Congress was the worst in history when it came to having a free and open debate on the issues.
This proposed change also would prevent Members from exposing and offering proposals to eliminate tax increases hidden by the Democratic Majority in larger pieces of legislation. This is not the kind of openness and transparency that President-elect Obama promised. This change would deprive tens of millions of Americans the opportunity to have a voice in the most important policy decisions facing our country.
Madame Speaker, we urge you to reconsider the decision to repeal these reforms, which could come up for a vote as early as tomorrow. Just as a new year brings fresh feelings of optimism and renewal for the American people, so too should a new Congress. Changing the House rules in the manner highlighted by recent media reports would have the opposite effect: further breaching the trust between our nation’s elected representatives and the men and women who send them to Washington to serve their interests and protect their freedom.
Sincerely,
(A copy of the letter with signatures will be available on HUMAN EVENTS later today.)
Jan 2, 2009 | 5:32 PM
Category:
Political
Jan 2, 2009 | 11:12 AM
Category:
Political
Al Gore: "Get your carbon credits here"
Jan 2, 2009 | 10:50 AM
Category:
Political
The UAW’s Money-Squandering Corruptocracy
Always putting the workers first!
By Michelle Malkin
Nero fiddled while Rome burned. The UAW golfed. While carmakers soak up $17 billion in taxpayer bailout funds and demand more for their ailing industry, United Auto Workers bosses have wasted tens of millions of their workers’ dues on gold-plated resorts and rotten investments. The labor organization’s money-losing golf compound is just the tip of the iceberg.
Last week on my blog, I noted that the UAW owns and operates Black Lake Golf Course — a “championship caliber” course opened in 2000 that’s part of a larger “family education center” and retreat nestled in 1,000 acres of property in Onaway, Mich. Spearheaded by former UAW president Steve Yokich, the resort also includes “a beautiful gym with two full-sized basketball courts, an Olympic-size indoor pool, exercise and weight room, table-tennis and pool tables, a sauna, beaches, walking and bike trails, softball and soccer fields and a boat launch ramp.” Like everything else we’re subsidizing these days, the UAW’s playground is a money pit. The Detroit Free Press reported earlier this year that the golf course (valued at $6 million) and education center (valued at $27 million) have together lost $23 million over the past five years. While membership in the union has plummeted, the UAW retains assets worth $1.2 billion.
Curious about how the UAW will be spending my money and yours, I sifted through the union’s most recent annual report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor (which you can find at unionreports.gov). Who knew hitting the links was so central to the business of making cars?
In May and November 2007, the UAW forked over nearly $53,000 for union staff meetings at the Thousand Hills Golf Resort in Branson, Mo. In September 2007, the UAW dropped another $5,000 at the Lakes of Taylor Golf Club in Taylor, Mich., and another $9,000 at the Thunderbird Hills Golf Club in Huron, Ohio. Another bill for $5,772 showed up for the Branson, Mo., golf resort. On Oct. 26, 2007, the union spent $5,000 on another “golf outing” in Detroit. In May and June 2007, UAW bosses spent nearly $11,000 on a golf tournament and related expenses at the Hawthorne Hill Country Club in Lima, Ohio. And in April 2007, the UAW spent $12,000 for a charity golf sponsorship in Dearborn, Mich. In August 2007, the UAW paid nearly $10,000 to its for-profit Black Lake golf course operator, UBG, for something itemized as “Golf 2007 Summer School.” UBG had nearly $4.4 million worth of outstanding loans from the union. Another for-profit entity that runs the education center, UBE, had nearly $20 million in outstanding loans from the union.
Perhaps, the union bosses might argue, they need all this fresh air and exercise to clear their heads in order to make wise financial decisions on behalf of their workers. If only. UAW management has proven to be a money-squandering corruptocracy with faux blue-collar trim. Former UAW head Yokich, who built the Black Lake black hole, is also responsible for bidding $9.75 million of workers’ funds in a botched bid to purchase the gated La Mancha Resort Village in Palm Springs. The 100-room walled resort with spas, poolside massages and a “croquet lawn lit for night use” was on the verge of bankruptcy with $5.2 million in debt. Despite outrage from rank-and-file union members who thought one gold-plated golf resort was quite enough, leaders defended the La Mancha bid because, as union spokesman Paul Krell put it, “‘You can never tell if you are going to become snowbound.” Always putting the workers first!
That deal didn’t go through, but the UAW’s quixotic dalliance with a failed airline did. In February 2000, the union poured $14.7 million into Pro Air, a Detroit start-up airline that, well, didn’t get off the ground. Plagued by safety problems, the feds shuttered the company less than a year later. The union didn’t fare much better in its venture with a liberal radio network. In 1996, union heavies got the bright idea to invest $5 million in United Broadcasting Network, a left-wing precursor to Air America that the UAW hoped to use to spread its corporate-bashing propaganda. They shelled out for a $2 million, state-of-the-art studio in Detroit and incurred years of losses of a reported $75,000 a month before closing the network down in 2003.
And while the UAW and carmakers cry poor, they’ve operated massive joint funds for years that have paid for lavish items such as multi-million-dollar NASCAR racer sponsorships and Las Vegas junkets. The dire economic downturn hasn’t changed the behavior of profligate union bigs at the front office or the shop floor. Local Detroit TV station WDIV recently caught local UAW bosses Ron Seroka and Jim Modzelewski — both of whom make six-figure salaries — on tape squandering thousands of hours of overtime on such important labor security matters as on-the-clock beer runs and bowling tournaments.
At least the groveling Big Three CEOs gave up their corporate jets. Where’s the public flogging for the greed-infested UAW fat cats reaching into our pockets to keep them afloat?
Jan 1, 2009 | 2:34 PM
Category:
Political
A special Happy New Year to my friends, Move, Jim, Gen_Public, Sharon, electrons, GalvestonSurge, Guns, mystere, JT and any other likeminded posters here on MyfoxPhilly.
I just became one of the living (I know it’s the afternoon) after a friend’s party last evening that was close to home (so no DUI for me). Normally I leave New Year’s Eve to the amateurs, but I had to have additional drinks because of the outcome of the election, the upcoming inauguration, the naiveté of many voters, and also to the last of a country that is heading down the road towards Socialism.
Maybe with the help of a lot of alcohol we can all make it through the next 4 years.
First round is on me!
Dec 30, 2008 | 11:47 AM
Category:
Political
Dec 30, 2008 | 11:46 AM
Category:
Political
Dec 30, 2008 | 11:14 AM
Category:
Political
"Ya know", I come from a long line of "ya know", of political trailblazers, "ya know", and I think I might like the Senate seat "ya know"
