February « 2010 « The Conservative Papers

February 28, 2010

California is a greater risk than Greece, warns JP Morgan chief

Filed under: Financial — Tags: California, Economy, Greece, Recession — alpineski @ 10:07 am

Jamie Dimon, chairman of JP Morgan Chase, has warned American investors should be more worried about the risk of default of the state of California than of Greece’s current debt woes.

Mr Dimon told investors at the Wall Street bank’s annual meeting that “there could be contagion” if a state the size of California, the biggest of the United States, had problems making debt repayments. “Greece itself would not be an issue for this company, nor would any other country,” said Mr Dimon. “We don’t really foresee the European Union coming apart.” The senior banker said that JP Morgan Chase and other US rivals are largely immune from the European debt crisis, as the risks have largely been hedged.

California however poses more of a risk, given the state’s $20bn (£13.1bn) budget deficit, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is desperately trying to reduce.

Earlier this week, the state’s legislature passed bills that will cut the deficit by $2.8bn through budget cuts and other measures. However the former Hollywood film star turned politician is looking for $8.9bn of cuts over the next 16 months, and is also hoping for as much as $7bn of handouts from the federal government.

Earlier this week, John Chiang, the state’s controller, said that if a workable plan to reduce the deficit and increase cash levels is not reached soon, he will have to return to issuing IOU’s, forcing state workers to take additional unpaid leave and potentially freezing spending.

Last summer, California issued $3bn of IOU’s to creditors including residents owed tax refunds as a way of staving off a cash crisis.

“I can’t write checks without money; that’s against the law. My main goal is to keep the state afloat, but I won’t be able to do it without the help of new legislation,” said Mr Chiang.

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City of Angels on brink of abyss

Filed under: Financial — Tags: Economy, Los Angeles, Recession — alpineski @ 9:50 am

Los Angeles, the second-largest US city, is facing a crisis of funding not seen since the darkest days of the Great Depression

Two and a half years after the official start of the worst economic downturn and fiscal crisis in nearly 80 years, America’s economy is supposedly growing again, the stock market is halfway recovered from the lows of 2008 and early 2009, and the unemployment plunge seems to have been halted.

Yet, built-in time lags in how revenues are raised and budgets calculated mean that many states and cities around the country are only now starting to feel the worst of the pain. This year has been, quite simply, abysmal for local and state governments, and next year promises to be even worse. With easy cuts long-ago made, these days basic services are increasingly seen as luxuries, and public sector employees are increasingly vulnerable to wage cuts, benefits rollbacks, and unemployment.

While the federal government has considerable wiggle room to borrow or simply increase the supply of money to help fight its way out of financial collapse, smaller government units in America don’t have those options; increasingly cities, counties and states are facing the sorts of austerity measures we’ve come to associate with third world countries in crisis, or, in recent years, with vulnerable European nations such as Greece or Latvia.

In Arizona, a cash-pinched legislature put the Capitol building up for sale, proposing to lease it back for state use. In the small Colorado town of Colorado Springs, officials shut off half the street lamps and one-third of the traffic lights, told residents who wanted short grass in public parks to bring their own lawnmowers, and auctioned off a police helicopter on eBay. Around the country, libraries have been shuttered, after-school programmes have been curtailed, mental health services have been decimated.

In Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest metropolis, the Democratic mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, addressed a full session of the city council on 9 February to detail just how grim the city’s finances had become. Miguel Santana, the city administrative officer (the CAO is the mayor and council’s chief financial adviser) had recently informed the mayor’s office that LA was facing a $200m shortfall through the end of this financial year and another half billion dollar-plus shortfall in the years to come if it didn’t radically, and rapidly, restructure its budget. Santana didn’t mince words. His nearly 300-page report (pdf) opened with this stark warning:

“The city is facing a budget crisis unlike any it has ever experienced … The enormity of our current fiscal crisis forces the City to take swift action now and lay out a financial plan for the future.”

Wall Street was growing increasingly worried by the city’s financial fragility, and the city’s ability to raise revenues through bond sales was at risk.

Why the crunch? According to city council president Eric Garcetti’s office, for the past four quarters, the city has seen double-digit revenue declines, a scenario not experienced since the darkest days of the Great Depression. Quite simply, the downturn was so steep it had made government-as-normal impossible to maintain in the City of Angels. As a result, says Garcetti, the city will face a crisis of funding for the next several years as well as an increasingly bitter battle of ideas as to the role of government in modern-day America; for conservatives, he warns it will likely be seen as an opportunity to starve the public sector, to “downsize government so much it can never come back.”

Los Angeles’ budget, currently around $7bn per year, will, all parties agree, shrink for years to come. And, since much of that $7bn is committed to untouchable items – making sure pensions are paid, keeping the LAPD afloat – the hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts will fall overwhelmingly on employees and on discretionary services. And these are services that disproportionately are used by lower income residents – the very people who have already been hit the hardest by the broader economic meltdown.

The city has already negotiated with public sector unions to ease 2,400 employees (out of a city workforce of about 40,000) into early retirement, is working to immediately reduce the city’s payrolls by another one thousand, and is exploring how to make more cuts down the road that could lead to a couple of thousand additional job losses – or, if the mayor and Garcetti’s vision of “shared sacrifice” is implemented, to fewer job cuts but across-the-board pay reductions instead. “For me, government matters,” says Garcetti. “Workers matter. Services matter.” Inevitably, however, the crisis will in some ways shrink the role of city government.

At the same time as the city is negotiating concessions from unions, it is also exploring “private-public partnerships” that would hand the city’s zoo, convention centre, parking garages and even parking meters to private operators. And it has already eliminated two city departments – environmental affairs and human services – with more likely to follow, hoping to seamlessly amalgamate their functions into other departments.

Yet in reality, there is very little that is seamless about these budget readjustments. The job losses are adding to LA’s already great economic pain – the city has a more than 11% unemployment rate; even with progressives occupying key positions in the city’s political leadership, the evisceration of core public services will, over the years to come, impact the quality of life of most Angelenos; and the privatisation of venues such as the zoo and the convention centre will harm the city’s long-term ability to raise sufficient revenue to meet its growing needs.

The broader economy may be starting to show some signs of healing, but for those at the bottom of the economy, for those most reliant on government services in Los Angeles and the countless other cities teetering over financial abysses, 2010 looks more like a bona fide Depression year than one made beautiful by the myriad green shoots of recovery.

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February 27, 2010

America the Ungovernable?

Filed under: Barack Obama — Tags: Carter, Clinton, Obama, Ronald Reagan — alpineski @ 8:40 pm

In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term. The president’s own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control. America had become ungovernable.

Then came Ronald Reagan, and all that chatter disappeared.

The tyranny of entitlements? Reagan collaborated with Tip O’Neill, the legendary Democratic House speaker, to establish the Alan Greenspan commission that kept Social Security solvent for a quarter-century.

A corrupted system of taxation? Reagan worked with liberal Democrat Bill Bradley to craft a legislative miracle: tax reform that eliminated dozens of loopholes and slashed rates across the board — and fueled two decades of economic growth.

Later, a highly skilled Democratic president, Bill Clinton, successfully tackled another supposedly intractable problem: the culture of intergenerational dependency. He collaborated with another House speaker, Newt Gingrich, to produce the single most successful social reform of our time, the abolition of welfare as an entitlement.

It turned out that the country’s problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn’t. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills and an ideological compass in tune with the public, the country was indeed governable.

It’s 2010, and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama’s two signature initiatives — cap-and-trade and health-care reform — lie in ruins.

Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: “America the Ungovernable.” So declared Newsweek. “Is America Ungovernable?” coyly asked the New Republic. Guess the answer.

The rage at the machine has produced the usual litany of systemic explanations. Special interests are too powerful. The Senate filibuster stymies social progress. A burdensome constitutional order prevents innovation. If only we could be more like China, pines Tom Friedman, waxing poetic about the efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model, while America flails about under its “two parties . . . with their duel-to-the-death paralysis.” The better thinkers, bewildered and furious that their president has not gotten his way, have developed a sudden disdain for our inherently incremental constitutional system.

Yet, what’s new about any of these supposedly ruinous structural impediments? Special interests blocking policy changes? They have been around since the beginning of the republic — and since the beginning of the republic, strong presidents, like the two Roosevelts, have rallied the citizenry and overcome them.

And then, of course, there’s the filibuster, the newest liberal bete noire. “Don’t blame Mr. Obama,” writes Paul Krugman of the president’s failures. “Blame our political culture instead. . . . And blame the filibuster, under which 41 senators can make the country ungovernable.”

Ungovernable, once again. Of course, just yesterday the same Paul Krugman was warning about “extremists” trying “to eliminate the filibuster” when Democrats used it systematically to block one Bush (43) judicial nomination after another. Back then, Democrats touted it as an indispensable check on overweening majority power. Well, it still is. Indeed, the Senate with its ponderous procedures and decentralized structure is serving precisely the function the Founders intended: as a brake on the passions of the House and a caution about precipitous transformative change.

Leave it to Mickey Kaus, a principled liberal who supports health-care reform, to debunk these structural excuses: “Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama’s (possible/likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. . . . But in this case there’s a simpler explanation: Barack Obama’s job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed.”

He failed because the utter implausibility of its central promise — expanded coverage at lower cost — led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt. More broadly, the Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them the political mandate and legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country. The people said no, expressing themselves first in spontaneous demonstrations, then in public opinion polls, then in elections — Virginia, New Jersey and, most emphatically, Massachusetts.

That’s not a structural defect. That’s a textbook demonstration of popular will expressing itself — despite the special interests — through the existing structures. In other words, the system worked.

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Muslims burn down churches, shops

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: Islam, Terrorism — alpineski @ 8:33 pm

Melee reportedly broke out with no provocation from Christians

An angry Muslim mob attacked Christian-owned shops and houses, burned down eight churches and injured several people in the northern Nigerian town of Kazaure. But the melee was prompted by a Muslim police officer who had a dispute with a Muslim citizen, according to a group that monitors persecution of Christians.

The Muslim police officer pulled over a Muslim for a traffic violation Feb. 21, but the driver became angry and refused to stop, explained International Christian Concern’s Jonathan Racho. The police officer then pursued the driver, caught up with him and assaulted the driver after forcefully removing him from the car.

The driver was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Tension in the region has been high since last month’s Muslim rioting in Jos where 300 people reportedly were killed, human rights activists report.

“The driver died from his wounds received from the police officer. But it’s important to note that this has nothing to do with any of the area’s Christian residents,” Racho explained. “It was a traffic incident, and neither the police officer nor the driver were Christians.”

Racho said the Muslim mob “came together and tried to attack the police station.”

“When they couldn’t do that, they turned their attention to the Christians in the city. They burned down several Christian shops and a church.”

Racho said Muslim mobs frequently have attacked Christians in mostly Muslim northern Nigeria.

“Any provocation from Christians is enough. But this time there was no Christian involvement. This time it’s clear that there was absolutely no connection between this incident and the anti-Christian violence,” he said.

Racho believes the attacks will continue in northern Nigeria because of the political climate.

“In northern Nigeria, all of the government officials are Muslims. The law is Shariah law and particularly designed to stop the spread of Christianity,” he said.

“So there is already a hostile environment for Christians in northern Nigeria. So, any excuse they can find to mobilize will be used to attack and persecute Christians,” said Racho

The Nigerian government has not responded to requests for comment on this story.

Last year, for the first time, a U.S. secretary of state designated Nigeria a “country of particular concern,” guilty of particularly severe violations of religious freedom under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

“Years of inaction by Nigeria’s federal, state and local governments has created a climate of impunity, resulting in thousands of deaths,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the USCIRF, said in its current annual report.

The USCIRF, an independent body established by Congress to help fulfill the 1998 legislation, sent a team to Nigeria last year to “assess religious freedom conditions” in the country.

“Concerns include an ongoing series of violent communal and sectarian conflicts along religious lines; the expansion of sharia (Islamic law) into the criminal codes of several northern Nigerian states; and discrimination against minority communities of Christians and Muslims,” the commission’s report said.

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February 25, 2010

Obama Administration Did Not Consult Its Own Homeland Security Secretary Before Deciding to Try KSM in NYC

Filed under: Barack Obama, Terrorism — Tags: Islam, Jihad, Joe Lieberman, Napolitano, New York, Obama, Terrorism — kalel @ 3:10 pm

By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate Homeland Security committee hearing on Wednesday that she has not been consulted and has not met with Obama administration officials about trying terror suspects on U.S. soil. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

(CNSNews.com) – At a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she was not consulted before the decision was made to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terror suspects in U.S. federal court in New York City.

She also said she has not taken part in discussions since that decision was made, including any that may have taken place to discuss whether the trials should be moved to another location.

“Were you consulted about homeland security risks or costs of providing security for the 9/11 terrorist in New York City before the attorney general made that decision?” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the committee, asked Napolitano.

“Mr. Chairman, we were not consulted before but we have been part of a process to give cost estimates of what the security costs would be after the decision,” said Napolitano, who heads the department that was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to protect the United States from future harm.

“In recent weeks – at least the last couple of weeks – there have been some statements and some rumors that the administration is reconsidering the question of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 conspirators in New York City,” Lieberman said. He then asked if she had been involved in discussions about homeland security issues as they relate to trying terrorists on U.S. soil.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the committee, asked Napolitano about her involvement in the decision to try 9/11 suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

“I have not personally participated in any discussions,” Napolitano said.

Napolitano made the remarks at a hearing to discuss the proposed $56.3 billion budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for fiscal year 2011. The budget includes $200 million for security for trying Sheikh Mohammed in New York City.

When asked by ranking minority leader Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) why the DHS budget spends money on securing the trials of terrorists in the U.S. while cutting funding for U.S. Coast Guard, Napolitano defended the Obama administration’s stance on the matter.

“Decommissioning part of the Coast Guard’s 13^th elite maritime security safety teams that protect waterfront cities makes absolutely no sense given the threats to our ports,” said Collins, adding that she believed the Senate would not fund security for terror trials in the U.S.

“We are going to have terrorist trials in the United States,” Napolitano said. “There will be security costs that accompany those trials.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), ranking member on the committee, said she was shocked that the Obama administration’s budget for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2011 cuts funding for the U.S. Coast Guard while asking for $200 million for security for the Sheikh Mohammed trial. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

Napolitano failed to show up at a Jan. 27 House Homeland Security hearing focusing on the Christmas Day bombing attempt of a U.S. airliner over Detroit by an Nigerian native trained by al Qaeda. Napolitano met privately on Feb. 4 with Democratic members of the committee and later with ranking Republican member Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.)

After she met with King, CNSNews.com twice asked Napolitano if she had spoken with President Barack Obama on Christmas Day about the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 that day. She initially answered that she would not discuss her conversations with the presient. The second time she was asked the quesion, she answered that ”we” were in contact with “the president’s office.”

“Yes, we were in contact with the president’s office,” Napolitano said.

A Feb. 3 report by CNSNews.com pointed out that FBI Director Robert Mueller, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Napolitano all told congressional committees following the Dec. 25 attack that they were not consulted about the decision to Mirandize bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

In her prepared remarks on the DHS budget, Napolitano said DHS has five main missions – to prevent terrorism and enhance security, secure and manage U.S. borders, “enforcing and administrating” immigration laws, “safeguarding and securing cyberspace,” and disaster preparedness and response.

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February 23, 2010

Socialized Mortgage Lending has Landed in the USA

Filed under: Barack Obama, Financial — Tags: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Mortgages, Obama, Socialism — alpineski @ 6:26 pm

If you watched with alarm as the government took over General Motors and Chrysler, and as Democrats tried to increase government’s role in the health care industry, you should be scared to death by the discussion of the mortgage markets.

The unspoken, bottom line: The federal government has already nationalized the housing industry. We’re not just talking about Uncle Sam providing a few subsidies, or even taking over a few of the big players, as they have in the auto industry. This is a complete takeover. Almost every new mortgage today is a government mortgage.

Over the last two years, government mortgage and mortgage-backed holdings have grown on net by nearly $1 trillion. Private investors and institutions have shed more than $1.5 trillion — through foreclosure losses, pay downs, and by selling to government.

The effective result is a government-run housing market. Barofsky reports that right now, the government is responsible for about 99.9% percent of all new mortgage activity. You read that correctly. To put it in his own words:

“According to Federal Reserve net borrowings data, the federal government and the organizations it backs now guarantee or issue almost all net new borrowings for mortgages and MBS.”

The accompanying graph, from page 109 of Barofsky’s report, shows that this is uncharted territory. Not even the savings and loan scandal of the early 1990s put all current and potential homeowners at Uncle Sam’s mercy as today’s situation has.

If not for government underwriters (such as Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs) and bundlers of mortgage-backed securities (such as Fannie, Freddie, and Ginnie Mae), there might not have been a single house sold in this country last year. Or at least, none would have sold at anything like the allegedly depressed prices that homeowners were getting.

These numbers reflect the situation of the 2009 mortgage market: Unless you could afford 20 percent up front, the government was the only show in town. Even if you have a private mortgage, the price at which you can sell your home is being kept artificially high by the government’s trillion-dollar commitment.

Barofsky’s report warns homeowners that government is actively reinflating the housing bubble: “Supporting home prices is an explicit policy goal of the government,” he accurately notes.

He does not draw the obvious conclusion: The government’s assistance in the housing market now is less about giving us a soft landing than it is about having us furiously flap our arms to stay aloft.

As a result, we’re all on welfare now — not just helped out by a few homeowner tax breaks, as in the past, but completely, utterly dependent on a trillion-dollar government commitment lasting forever. And we’re all in peril if for any reason we lose a handout that most of us never asked for.

Right now, there is no industry more on the brink of being totally Socialized than is the industry of mortgages.

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Islamists Play Shell Games with Security

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: Airport, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Daniel Pipes, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism — kalel @ 4:54 pm

by David J. Rusin • Feb 23, 2010 at 9:16 am

Despite the countless terror attacks perpetrated by their co-religionists, some Muslims still have the chutzpah to demand that security protocols conform to supposed Islamic sensitivities. But like a typical shell game, every time we think we know which procedures they grudgingly will tolerate, we discover that we have been hoodwinked yet again.

Responding to security measures implemented after the attempt to bomb a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day, CAIR characteristically charged that “the new guidelines, under which anyone traveling from or through 13 Muslim-majority nations will be required to go through enhanced screening techniques before boarding flights, … amount to religious and ethnic profiling.” CAIR’s proposed alternative: “First look at behavior, not at faith or skin color. Then spend what it takes to obtain more bomb-sniffing dogs, to install more sophisticated bomb-detection equipment, and to train security personnel in identifying the behavior of real terror suspects.”

All are fine ideas. But in reality, Islamists oppose each of them:

Scrutinizing behavior. Consider the “flying imams” imbroglio, where six Muslims who seemed to exhibit “the behavior of real terror suspects” were removed from a plane before takeoff in 2006. Passengers and crew members became alarmed when the men spoke loudly in Arabic, refused to sit in assigned seats, and requested unneeded seatbelt extenders. How did CAIR respond? By alleging religious discrimination and suing everyone in sight — with some success. True, the imams were fingered originally by alert citizens rather than dedicated security officers. But should we believe that CAIR’s reaction would have been different otherwise?

Bomb-sniffing dogs. Given that some Muslims see dogs as unclean, using them for security purposes often provokes Islamist criticism. Britain has experienced a litany of canine controversies, while a prominent Canadian Muslim recently voiced concerns about dogs patrolling Vancouver. The issue of police dogs also arose when a Detroit-based radical imam was killed in an October FBI raid. According to the Detroit News, the attorney representing his widow “said it was needlessly confrontational to send a dog after Abdullah because Muslims view dogs as unclean and anyone attacked by a dog could react violently”; an FBI canine was shot dead by the imam. How long until bomb-sniffing dogs in U.S. airports face objections?

Bomb-detection equipment. Body scanners are about as sophisticated as it gets, but now we know that these, too, run afoul of Islamist sensibilities. “The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) emphasizes that a general and public use of such scanners is against the teachings of Islam, natural law, and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty,” the group explains in a fatwa issued on February 9. CAIR, which had championed “sophisticated bomb-detection equipment” just a month earlier, backed the ruling.

The shell game continues, with the Fiqh Council offering yet another idea: “FCNA appreciates the alternate provision of pat-down search” and advises Muslims to avail themselves of this option over the body scanners. After all, no Muslims balk at being touched, right?

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The Leader

Filed under: Freedoms — Tags: Conservatism, CPAC, Freedom, Republicans, Senator Jim DeMint — kalel @ 11:20 am

Posted by Erick Erickson

Image description Many, many reporters have asked me who the leader of the conservative movement is right now or who the leader of the tea party movement is.

They rarely report the answer, though they should be paying attention to it. In the CPAC straw poll, one name dominated the pack. With the highest favorable ratings (73%) and lowest unfavorable ratings (8%), Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina led the field — scoring higher popularity than Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mike Pence, John Beohner, Mitch McConnell, or Michael Steel.

It’d be easy to dismiss the polling except that, unlike the Ron Paul vote for winner, DeMint’s popular scores across the field from young to old, conservative to libertarian oriented.

Why is that?

Largely, I think it is because Jim DeMint is actually doing what other Republicans talk about — staying true to conservative values and recruiting conservatives. From Chuck DeVore to Michael Williams to Pat Toomey to Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint is picking, funding, and supporting conservatives across the nation in stark contrast to other Republican leaders.

DeMint is not afraid to involve himself in a primary. And in Congress he is not afraid to pick tough fights and challenge his own party to do what is right. DeMint does not just talk the talk, but he unapologetically walks the walk.

Few people leave Washington having really changed America. Jim DeMint will one day be able to proudly say he did not just change his party, but his country too.

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Why the jobs aren’t coming back

Filed under: Barack Obama, Financial — Tags: Cap And Trade, Carbon, Congress, Economy, Financial, Global Warming, Green, Obama, Recession, Socialism, White House — kalel @ 11:15 am

Posted by Erick Erickson

The Politico has an interesting story about Toyota up. It seems the company does not much care for this administration.

Internal Toyota documents derided the Obama administration and Democratic Congress as “activist” and “not industry friendly,” a revelation that comes days before the giant automaker’s top executives testify on Capitol Hill amid a giant recall.

It is not, however, just Toyota. Lots of businesses and industries are feeling the same way. In large part, this is why the jobs are not coming back. Businesses are deeply, deeply worried about the activist bent of the Obama administration and the anti-free market stance it has repeatedly taken on issues. The uncertainty and antagonism are causing businesses to keep money on the sidelines.

Last night I talked to a friend of mine. He said a business in his state has put a major new business development on hold because of the Obama Administration’s stance on carbon emissions. The company could move everything to another country and be perfectly happy with less environmental restraints, or it could keep everything in the U.S., comply with existing environmental laws, and create American jobs. But because Obama and the EPA are headed in the direction of even more regulation and expense, the jobs might go overseas.

Right now the Obama administration is excelling at two types of job creation programs: government jobs and jobs overseas away from the American regulatory regime.

Until the White House and its minion signal a willingness to work with businesses and not hurt businesses, the jobs will not come back. Toyota is not alone.

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The Good, The Bad, The Discordant, and the Uncomfortable

Filed under: Freedoms — Tags: Conservatism, CPAC, Freedom, Republicans — kalel @ 11:06 am

Posted by Erick Erickson

“Conservatism is on the ascendency. But it will ascend within the GOP, not via a third party.”

Now that I’ve had twelve hours of sleep after four days of three hour nights, I can settle in and focus on the CPAC that was and was not. There was no dominant theme at CPAC this year, which was surprising. The Ron Paul kids were out in force leading him to the straw poll, there was not a great deal of buzz on Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney was more the establishment guy than last time, etc. About the only significant buzz was at the beginning and the end — Rubio and Beck.

This morning I was greeted to close to 100 emails of mixed reviews on Glenn Beck’s speech. There seem to be a lot of people who did not like Glenn Beck equating the Republicans to the Democrats. For an example, let me refer you to Bill Bennett. Secretary Bennett and I had an encounter on CNN the other night sounding out similar themes. He did not like me batting down the establishment GOP as something less than he thought they were.

Glenn Beck’s speech gave resonance to what a lot of the tea party activists and conservatives at CPAC feel — the GOP is as bad as the Democrats. But we have to have a very careful caveat here: the GOP has not been good on spending and portions of economic policy. We cannot make it, however, a blanket statement. As Glenn Beck said last night, “One party says it will tax and spend. The other party says it won’t tax and will spend.” We have to be careful in our zeal to clean up Washington not to take that for more than what it is.

Therein lies much of the concern. There is real angst that some people are agitating for a third party because of what they see as an unrepentant GOP. And the fear is that Glenn Beck is feeding this. I hope he is not. I would have to part ways if that were the case. History shows that neither the most popular third party candidate, Teddy Roosevelt, nor the richest, Ross Perot, were ever able to get elected. All they did was get the Democrat elected.

And for those of you who think that is no big deal, let me ask you again: how many Americans are going to die because of Barack Obama’s handling of our national security? If you think the GOP would be as bad on this issue, you need a reality check.

It is the GOP that wants to cut the costs of health care through expanding the free market. It is the GOP that wants to fight the enemy instead of compromising with them. It is the GOP that wants to upend our failing public schools and make them actually teach instead of function as a retirement home for teachers union employees. It is the GOP that stands in defense of freedom against tyranny. It was, for example, the GOP that stood with Honduras against Hugo Chavez while Barack Obama gave a full throated embrace of the communist dictator and the thugs of South America.

But the GOP still does have problems. My position and that of this site is to go conservative in primaries and Republican in generals. That will not change. There are a few points worth mentioning in this regard.

In his post on Glenn Beck’s speech, Bill Bennett wrote, “From Jim DeMint to Tom Coburn to Mike Pence to Paul Ryan, any number of Republicans have admitted the excesses of the party and done constructive and serious work to correct them.” The problem is that Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn are not in leadership. Certainly the House guys are in a better position come 2010. But DeMint and Coburn are regularly marginalized by a Senate GOP not run on Republican principles, but run on appropriator principles.

Consider that the Republican leadership is still backing Charlie Crist against Marco Rubio in Florida. Consider that the Senate GOP, save for Jim DeMint, lovingly embraced Arlen Specter to the bitter end and then desperately tried to find someone other than Toomey to take him on. Consider Orrin Hatch praising the tea party activists back in August for the health care town hall protests, then turning on them this week and saying they risk electing liberals if they take on moderate Republicans.

No they don’t. But therein lies the problem and I think Glenn Beck did not address it. Maybe he thought it was not relevant to his points last night.

But it is not the Republican Party that is the problem. It is the Republican leadership that, when it compromises with the Democrats, compromises in favor of expanded government. You never see the Democrats compromise in favor of the free market.

But these people are not the party at large. When Bill Bennett and others criticize Beck for saying the GOP has not had its “Tiger Woods moment,” they inevitably list a great many Republicans who have had those moments. But you rarely hear this list John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Jerry Lewis, Thad Cochran — the leaders calling the daily shots.

There is a very real and very substantive difference between the parties. From social to fiscal issues, the differences are real. I am a Republican before I am a Democrat. But at the end of the day, I am a conservative before I am a Republican.

The Republican Party is where I make my home for advancing my conservative agenda. And when I think the party needs to be changed, I get involved in primaries recognizing I will win some and lose some in the give and take of American politics.

If you are troubled, if you agree with Glenn Beck, if you are tempted to go with a third party, don’t. Instead, get involved in the Republican Party. Change it. Support people like Mike Lee in Utah, Danny Tarkanian in Nevada, Marlin Stutzman in Indiana, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Ken Buck in Colorado, MIchael Williams in Texas, and of course Marco Rubio in Florida.

Support women like Karen Handel in Georgia and Nikki Haley in South Carolina, both running for Governor.

Support guys like Jeff Duncan, Tim Huelskamp, and Sean Duffy in the House.

All of these candidates are good. And there are others. They are out there. As I said the other day, 2010 is not like 2008. The dynamics are different. This year conservatives must take risks instead of staying with the status quo just because it is easier. Conservatism is on the ascendency. But it will ascend within the GOP, not via a third party.

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