Is This Dangerous Precedent Intentional?

For more than 200 years we have enjoyed the presumption of innocence, double jeopardy protections, miranda rights, and American civil liberties.  It’s what separates us from foreign non-uniformed enemy combatants who violate the rules of war.  We are entitled to a trial with a jury of our peers.  We are entitled to protection against self incrimination.  There are laws and procedures that must be followed, warrants must be procured, and so on in order for the most obvious and damning evidence to be allowable.  Criminals go free sometimes, but because of that we have a legal system designed to protect the innocent above all.

In a move that can only be described as rash and perhaps emotionally driven, President Barack Obama decided to move Khalid Sheikh Mohamed’s trial to New York City and to make it a civilian trial.  In that one move, Obama granted constitutional rights to one of the most terrible terrorist masterminds of our time.  The only reason Khalid Sheikh Mohamed does not share the same infamy as Osama Bin Laden is that Bush caught Mohamed, but not Bin Laden.  In most cases, including 9/11, they stand accused of the same crimes.

What President Obama may or may not have realized is that the rights that we enjoy as American citizens under our constitution have been put all in for a game of chance played by twelve jurors and a judge.  Can a judge, under our constitution, allow evidence collected contrary to our laws?  Can a judge allow a non-mirandized, tortured convict to stand trial?  Can twelve impartial jurors be found in New York City where Mohamed murdered nearly three thousand Americans?

The answer is that Obama already knows the score.  In different statements made by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, KSM has already been declared guilty and given the death penalty.  Both have announced that he will be found guilty and executed, or he will be returned to a military prison and given a military trial.  For the first time, the presumption of innocence that Americans have enjoyed under our constitution has been made null and void by a sitting President who is charged with protecting and implementing our constitution.

You might be asking yourself, if the trial against KSM fails and he is sent back to a military prison to face a military trial, why didn’t we just do that in the first place?  Here is where my worse suspicions may be confirmed.

Rahm Emanuel once said that we shouldn’t waste a crisis.  It is an opportunity to fundamentally change our system, to do things we normally wouldn’t and destroy laws and traditions we have held dear for years.  Apparently the feeling in Washington is that we shouldn’t waste a tragedy either.  By putting this trial in a civilian court, we have the perfect bad guy that every American hates.  No American would cry if Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was denied certain rights such as the presumption of innocence.  No American in New York City is going to organize a “Free KSM” rally at the court house because he wasn’t read his rights or the evidence was collected as if it was some sort of military operation, not civilian police raid.

By making KSM public enemy number one and then giving him a constitutional civilian trial, Obama has created the perfect precedent to supersede the precedent of all of the constitutional rights previously mentioned.

We can only pray that this was nothing more than a bumbling act of complete incompetence.  But I would expect more from the former head of Harvard Law Review and constitutional scholar.

Our Shared Struggle

In the past few months, my wife and I have finally begun our God-given quest to adopt our first child.  We have both seen this as God’s will for our lives since before we were even married.  We came to this decision through different ways. As a child, my wife knew a “rainbow family” who had adopted children from many countries and backgrounds.  I was struck by a short story of a man walking along the beach throwing starfish back into the ocean where they would survive.  Someone came up to him and asked him about the futility of this action, noting that there were so many and he couldn’t possibly make a difference.  As he threw another into the safety of the ocean, he responds, “I made a difference to that one.” That is what we want to do.  Even if we can only make a difference to a few children, we have made a difference. There is nothing that any child could ever do to not deserve a loving father and mother. 

We are adopting from Ethiopia, a country with poverty many Americans wouldn’t even understand.  Some children in Ethiopia do not have parents, and others have parents that cannot even put enough food in their mouths to keep them alive.  We can’t save them all, but we can surely give one or two of them a family.

In preparation, we have been taking adoption classes, including classes on mixed race families, which is what ours will be.  In these classes we are learning about how people are going to question us.  We are learning how people will ask us why we decided to adopt transracially.  They will ask us if that is our real child, and some will be downright racist.  It is something we are preparing ourselves for as a white couple preparing to adopt a black baby.

Apparently we are not alone.  Recently, black football player DeMarcus Ware and his wife adopted a light-skinned Hispanic baby after several miscarriages.  While this has been a great blessing for them, there are now people criticizing their adoption.  They aren’t criticizing them for adopting, but for adopting a child of a different race.  Many of the critics argue that there are so many black children in the foster and social systems that black parents should adopt their own race to help even things out.

I don’t think orphans care all that much about the numbers game.  I don’t think an orphan wakes up in the morning and says, “Wow, I hope the black kid in the next room gets adopted first so that we can even out the national racial adoption statistics.”

I also don’t think that the color of one’s skin should qualify or disqualify someone from having a good family with good, loving parents.  Now, I know that a lot of parents think that way.  I know that mixed race children are considered special needs children because people are less likely to adopt them due to that. That is a failing of our society that each family needs to evaluate and correct on a personal level. But when someone adopts a child regardless of race or racial differences, that is when we should celebrate, not nitpick their decision based on the racial preferences of their community.  Those who are criticizing Ware for adopting a Hispanic child are no less racist than the white and black people who will talk behind our backs when we adopt a black child.

The worst kind of racism is the kind that tells a child they don’t deserve parents because that wrecks some sort of statistic, disturbs some racially preferred community balance, or stirs up prejudices among ignorant people.

Every child deserves a good home, and I pray that every child gets one.  Until they do, the only qualification a child should have for deserving loving parents is that they don’t already have them.

Congressional Districts Saved or Created

If you’ve been wondering where the 650,000 jobs Obama has saved or created are, we finally have an answer.  According to Recovery.gov, they are in the 15th congressional district in Arizona, the 42nd district in Connecticut, the 1st and 99th in the Virgin Islands, the 69th and 99th in the Northern Marian Islands, and the 99th district in Puerto Rico.  Here’s the only problem: like the 650,000 jobs, these congressional districts don’t exist.

So where is the money going?  Or better yet, what happens when the government passes universal healthcare but can’t pay for your care because they are paying for health insurance in the 42nd congressional district of Connecticut?  Speaking of government incompetence, have you had your H1N1 shot yet?

150 million doses are needed to cover all of America.  The government promised that by now we would have 40 million.  They have actually provided 11 million.  The H1N1 virus has reportedly caused more than 1,000 deaths and more than 20,000 hospitalizations.  It’s been nine months since the first case of H1N1 was reported.  Obama’s CDC makes Bush’s FEMA look good.

With a health insurance plan that will increase costs, cause another 5.5 million jobs to be lost, increase the deficit another $250 billion, raise taxes on all Americans and take away our healthcare choice, you would think we wouldn’t need glaring examples of government stupidity to let us know that government is not the answer.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about the Democrat health bill is that when the Stupak-Pitts amendment is removed, and Americans are required to buy government approved health insurance and pay taxes, you will be forced to pay for abortion.  If you don’t you will go to jail.  Imagine that, the party that always argues that we can’t make aboriton illegal because then you would be sending expecting mothers to jail, now supporting sending us to jail if we don’t pay for abortion.

Oh, and don’t forget the real winner of the week, bringing non-uniformed enemy terrorists to New York City to be tried as civilian criminals.  But of course, Holder made this decision only after consulting the best legal experts…his wife and brother.  Who knew when Obama hired him, he was hiring the whole family.

Kind of makes you wonder, when the government can’t afford your life support anymore, which member of Kathleen Sebelius’ family will be deciding to pull the plug?

Hope and Change in the War on Terror

In 1942, eight Germans arrived in New York with the mission of destroying civilian targets including aluminum plants and bridges.  The Germans were sure to wear their Nazi uniforms after landing and departing from their submarine until they were able to hide.  They wore their uniforms in case they were caught.

Two of the eight decided to defect from the mission and turn themselves in.  In fact, one of them went to Washington DC to turn himself over to the FBI.  He had to pour out the $84,000 he had as a budget for his mission onto the FBI agent’s desk for him to believe that their mission was for real.  It was certainly a pre-9/11 world.

Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt charged the saboteurs with violating the laws of war, correspondence with or giving intelligence to the enemy, espionage, and conspiracy to commit these crimes.  Roosevelt ordered that they be tried by Military Commission and the Supreme Court backed him up in Ex Parte Quinn. This is despite their lawyers arguing for a civilian trial.

All eight were sentenced to death.  Roosevelt granted clemency for the two defectors, giving one life in prison and the other (who had turned them all in) thirty years.  Six years later, after the end of the war, Truman used his Presidential pardon to set the two defectors free and deport them back to Germany.  The others were put in the electric chair.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not a US citizen.  In 1993 he masterminded a plot to blow up the World Trade Center.  Six Americans were killed and more than 1,000 were injured.  He conspired to commit other acts of terrorism and planned acts of terrorism.  Then on September 11, 2001, Mohammed’s most terrible plan came to fruition as he directed hijackers to fly airplanes into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and planned for another plane to strike which was brought down by the passangers into an empty field in Pennsylvania.  2,995 people died on September 11, 2001.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did not have a rank or uniform.  He was not a US citizen subject to US civilian laws.  As a non-uniformed enemy combatant of a country or group that has not been invaded, he is not subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.  There is absolutely no legal reason that Mohammed should receive a civilian trial.

Unfortunately, our current President and Attorney General disagree.  Barack Obama, who is not a shell of the man Franklin Roosevelt was, has decided to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York City, where he killed more than 2,000 people, to face a civilian trial.  Mohammed will be granted all the same rights and constitutional protections as any American citizen who has committed criminal acts against the people of the United States.

President Obama fails to realize that we are in a war.  Even if Bush failed to secure a properly worded declaration of war from our congress, foreign radical islamic terrorists have failed to recognize the technicality and continue to claim American civilian and military victims at home and abroad.  Now, Holder must find an impartial jury in New York who have not already made up their minds about Mohammed and 9/11.  By the time he finds an impartial jury, Mohammed will have died of old age.  Either that or Holder could pick a jury out of Obama’s advisors who seem to have already forgotten 9/11, or have no opinion on whether it was right or wrong.

Perhaps the bigger issue is Mohammed’s treatment.  He was brought to a prison outside of US territory and they held him down and poured water on his face.  A US citizen who is treated such a way would rightfully receive concessions in their civilian trial, or even have the trial thrown out.  War criminals also should not be treated such a way.  We have the Geneva Conventions to regulate war and to ensure that troops are treated with respect, especially when they are captured.  However, the Geneva Conventions do not apply to non-uniformed enemy combatants.  The other reason we would normally avoid making prisoners stand in an uncomfortable position for 8 hours (like you do at work every day) or having water poured on their face is because we wouldn’t want our troops treated that way.  For Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who said that he beheaded “that jew” Daniel Pearl himself, I don’t think pouring water on his face would change how he would treat our troops.

What Obama has done, by ordering a civilian trial in New York City, is and should be recognized as an incompetent blunder by this President.  By making it a civilian trial, Obama has done nothing short of declaring the war on terror to be over.  The only problem is that it wasn’t our war to declare over.  Will allowing Mohammed to gloat in a New York City courtroom while Obama blames the mis-trial on the last 8 years prevent the next Ft. Hood?  Will putting the Bush administration on a de facto trial for pouring water on terrorists’ faces make terrorists stop being terrorists?  Or will this victory for Mohammed and his terrorist companions please the radical terrorists as much as it will Europe and the radical left?

With Obama’s early withdrawal from Iraqi cities, months of waffling on Afghanistan, and now shear incompetence with these trials, even New York liberals may be starting to question if Obama is really the man they want answering the phone at 2am.

The True Waterloo: Abortion

Late Saturday night, House Democrats and one Republican passed HR 3962.  This more than 2,000 page bill included payoffs to many of the more conservative Democrats who were sitting on the fence, but still it only squeaked by.  Despite the bill’s passage, there was one major victory for conservatism in the bi-partisan Stupak-Pitts amendment that bans federal funding for abortion.  The amendment reflected a shift in social values in the US, highlighted by a Gallup poll earlier this year showing that the majority of Americans oppose abortion.  The amendment enjoyed the support of 69 Democrats.

Democrats may not have realized this, but the Stupak-Pitts amendment goes much further than HR 3962.  In fact, that one amendment is a knife in heart of the Democrat universal healthcare agenda.  Unwittingly, Democrats have helped make HR 3962 non-implementable.

Under HR 3962, health costs and health insurance premiums will go through the roof.  Democrats pay for universal healthcare by taxing healthcare universally.  They tax insurance companies, tax doctors, tax health product manufacturers, tax pharmaceuticals, and of course, tax you.  What do they do with all that tax money?  They give it back to us disproportionately so that we can all buy insurance.  Through this wealth redistribution, healthcare costs far more but the government subsidizes it.   Without the government subsidy, most Americans will not be able to afford these higher rates.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment makes it so that not only can the government not offer abortion in it’s cheaper public option (which do not be mistaken, will put every other insurance company out of business), but government cannot subsidize abortion in other insurance plans.  At the much higher health costs under HR 3962, this will make abortion a luxury that only the rich will be able to afford.

Already Democrats are in full revolt against one another.  One side realizes that their radical attempts to use federal funds to pay for abortion will destroy their party’s power.  For some Democrats it is even a violation of conscience.  On the other hand, the more liberal wing of the party realizes that without catering to the radical factions in the party they will lose their base.

One thing is for sure, a final bill cannot have the Stupak-Pitts amendment in it.  When the government is paying for or subsidizing every approved health insurance plan, and the government is not allowed to pay for or subsidize abortion, then abortion has been effectively killed in the United States.  On the other hand, a Democrat style health takeover bill will not pass the Senate without an abortion amendment and barely passed the House with one.  Either the abortion amendment or the healthcare takeover has to go.

 

Two Paths: Yes, The Republicans Have A Bill

The Republican Party has put together an alternative to Pelosi/Obamacare, and it has been scored by the CBO.  You can get all the details here. As Democrats argue that Republicans are the “do nothing” party who is only out to oppose any and all reforms, I thought it might be nice to look at the Republican plan and dispel such a myth.

This bill that the Republicans put together doesn’t have a shot at passing.  The “do nothing” Democrats already have their bill.  They don’t have enough votes in their own party to pass it yet, but they are working overtime to put together enough bribe money from your tax dollars to get those votes.  If you are wondering what I mean by that, see any of my earlier posts about pork and earmarks.  See especially, Obama’s Stimulus plan.

However, even though it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, here is a quick breakdown of what might have been, and what possibly could be after 2010:

Cost:

Pelosi/Obamacare is set to run us about $1.3 trillion according to the CBO.  The Republican plan?  $61 billion.

Length:

Pelosi/Obamacare is 2,032 pages sofar.  The only reason anyone knows this is because someone looked at the page number on the last page, not because someone has actually read the bill all the way through and counted.  The Republican bill?  219 pages.

Lower Health Insurance Costs:

According to the CBO, not in the Democrat plan.  Through higher taxes on insurers and health providers, the Dem plan will actually increase the cost of insurance premiums.  Then the government will take your own money and give it back to you in the form of controlling subsidies to make you buy insurance.

On the other hand, the Republican bill, according to the CBO, should cut family premiums by up to $5,000 per family and small business premiums by up to 10%.

How about fiscal responsibility?:

Yeah, remember?  That thing everyone wants but no party can seem to achieve?  Pelosi and Obama keep talking about how their plan will cut the deficit.  But that is only because they took $210 billion out of the bill and made it a separate unfunded bill.  By the way, that is about three times the total cost of the Republican bill.  The Democrat bill also increases taxes on Americans, in a recession, by about $750 billion dollars.

According to the CBO, the Republican bill reduces the deficit by $68 billion, cuts government healthcare costs over the long term, and cuts costs immediately without raising taxes.

Will Obamacare make unemployment worse?:

Since 2007 when Democrats took over, unemployment has increased by 5.3% to the current rate of 10.2%.  Will Pelosi/Obamacare help?  Not according to the CBO.  According to the CBO, the Democrat health plan by itself will cause 5.5 million jobs to be lost over the next ten years.  They do this by forcing businesses to buy health insurance or face a new 8% tax based on payroll.  How do you, as a business owner who can’t afford a company policy, avoid this tax?  Simple, cut payrolls.

Republicans on the other hand have no employer mandate and instead allow businesses to pool resources and negotiate lower cost plans from health insurance companies.

Rationing and Death Panels:

Ok, so “death panels” is a drastic and perhaps overly dramatic term.  How about government mandated waiting lists if there are insufficient funds to pay for healthcare costs?  How about a Health Advisory Board to determine what treatments and benefits the government will cover?  How about a Comparison Effectiveness Research Commission that determines which treatments your doctor can use based on what the government thinks is effective and what the government is willing to pay for?  How about a Health Choices Commissioner who gets to decide which doctors and hospitals can participate in government or private plans?  That along with end of life counseling is certainly enough to make the case that the Democrat bill contains rationing.

States’ Rights:

Constitutionally speaking, the Democrat bill is a monster.  While still not allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, the Democrat plan forces states to pay an extra $34 billion, according to the CBO, in unfunded Medicaid costs.  Once again, the entire Republican bill is $61 billion.

Abortion Funding:

Last and most important, the Democrat bill mandates that I pay for abortion with my tax dollars.  The government-run public option will be mandated to cover elective abortions.  The Democrat plan requires that at least one insurance plan in every market cover abortions.  And people who enroll in the government-run plan will be paying for abortions directly through their premiums.

The Republican plan prohibits federal funding for elective abortion and does not mandate abortion coverage.

I don’t suppose it will take Democrats a whole year to finally pass their health insurance bill.  But if it does, maybe we can change the game in 2010 and give the Republican option a shot.

Let the Democrats Have the Moderates

Democrats continue every election cycle to try to tell Republicans how to win elections. When your arch enemy starts giving you tips on how to defeat him, you should be suspicious. Yet Democrats keep offering friendly advice. No, thanks.

Democrats keep telling Republicans that we need to make our tent bigger. We need more liberals in our party. We need to get away from issues that kill our party like smaller government, the right to live, and, of course, family values. Americans don’t want that. As long as we stay the party of small government, focused on that 200 year old constitution and this crazy idea that men are born equal, not that they need to be made equal by the government, we will remain the minority party.

But who are the moderates anyway? One thing is for sure: they are not reliable. For example, take Dede Scozzafava. After spending months telling everyone she is a conservative and a die-hard Republican despite her liberal record, she finally drops out of the race and endorses the liberal Democrat over the Conservative party candidate. Or how about Colin Powell and a number of other moderate Republicans who begged the Republicans to put forth a moderate/liberal candidate for President and then proceeded to endorse the liberal Democrat when they did.

Moderates are people who think the government should provide every social service imaginable, while still thinking the government should spend less and tax less. They think abortion on demand is terrible and tragic, but should be safe and legal. They think partial birth abortion should be illegal because it is the murder of a living baby, except in the case of rape, danger to the mother’s life, poverty, or a real good sob story. They vote for the incumbents if their life is going good and they are generally happy. They vote against the incumbent if they’ve had a bad day, or if the opponent has a strong chin and more rugged facial features.

They vote based on color, gender, negative advertising, popular fads, and shiny lights. They support short wars, aid for Africa (even if it’s borrowed from China) and environmental reform, whether it actually helps the environment or not. They love federal grants and then complain about how the government wastes so much money. Generally, they are incompetent and uninformed.

But they still vote. Why don’t I want them? Think about it. When Republicans stuck to their conservative principles and presented them eloquently, they won. When conservatives won, Democrats ran blue-dog conservatives to compete with Republican conservatives. When Democrats started winning again was when Republicans started going after liberal moderates and Democrats ran conservative blue dogs. Then in 2008, Democrats ran socialists and ultra-liberals while Republicans ran liberals and wishy washy, unreliable moderates. Republicans were killed in a landslide.

Democrats weren’t trying to broaden their tent in 2008. They ran on a genius graphic design team, color, good looks, discontent and fluff. It had nothing to do with them being pro-big government, pro partial birth abortion, pro overseas abortion funding, pro debt, and anti-military. It had everything to do with advertising, discontent, and the fact that we were involved in two wars that had lasted longer than a year each. Now, because Democrats have stuck to their principles, the entire Washington Republican movement is stuck on this stupid idea that they need to broaden their base and become more liberal if they are going to win elections.

What Newt Gingrich and other Washington Republicans don’t understand is that when you pick up your tent and move it to the other side of the field, you leave your base out in the cold and they stop voting for you. And when you get to the other side of the field, they don’t vote for you either because they already have a tent. As for all the people in the middle, whether they go right or left has absolutely nothing to do with values or issues.

Think about it. If you truly believed that the thing growing in a pregnant woman has the intrinsic value of a wart, then how could you ever vote for anyone who would suggest that a woman’s right to remove that wart should be limited? Yet, Democrats won the majority on the backs of pro-life blue dogs. If you truly believed that the constitution should be the basis of our government and that politicians should uphold their vow to uphold and implement the constitution, then you would never vote for a big government candidate who borrows $1.5 trillion from China to buy local infrastructure projects and subsidize or buy private industries.

Moderates are going to continue to look for the next shiny thing that looks good and talks sweetly. Run and vote on principle. If both sides ran on principle, Conservatives would get 40% and Liberals would get 20%. I would rather have them coming over to our side to get votes while losing their 20% base than the other way around.

Debt Does Not Equal Wealth

Yesterday the recession was over.  Now, as we head into the holiday season no one is optimistic.  I always prefer saying “told ya so” when something good happens.  But even when my negative predictions come true, I think I deserve a little recognition.

I love the headlines.  Unexpectedly.  Surprise drop.  Short of expectations.  These are all terms we have seen in the headlines this past week.  If we see a headline stating “car sales drop unexpectedly in October” I don’t know if I will laugh or cry.

Consumer confidence dips unexpectedly.  Some rogue economists think it could be tied to 10% unemployment.  Is it possible that people are not buying as much because they either don’t have jobs now or don’t know if they will have a job tomorrow?  Or are they still getting over the pain and embarrassment of the last 8 years and are just not able to show their faces in the shopping malls yet?  Unfortunately, Obama is losing jobs six times faster than he is creating or saving them, so don’t expect a huge reversal in this trend yet.

Difference between debt spending and real growth

So after breaking our recession in the third quarter, why is consumer confidence still dropping and retail expecting a terrible Christmas season?  It’s because partisan economists and left leaning news media are mistaking debt spending for growth.

Think about it, if you have a million dollars you can buy a pretty nice house and car whether you earned that money or borrowed it.  In fact, someone might see your nice house and car and think you were actually doing pretty well.  That is what has happened here.  We have thrown $1.5 trillion at our economy.  We have basically borrowed growth.  Now we are realizing that we are far over-extended and we must pay it back.  Expect a great fourth quarter as well as business try to recognize as much income as possible while taxes are still low.

Difference between leverage and spending for the sake of spending

So why did Bush tax cuts succeed where Obama’s pork spending and cash for clunkers fail?  The difference is in what you are buying.  By cutting taxes across the board, Bush put money back into the hands of employers and employees so that they could invest in growth.  When a business owner died, they no longer had to sell the business to pay the estate taxes.  Employers received enough back in tax relief that they could afford to hire a new employee just from the tax dollars saved.  And that’s what they did.

In a free market capitalist system, when people have confidence they will invest in things that will bring them returns.  As they do, the people they are investing in will receive a paycheck and begin to build their own capital so that they can eventually do the same.  It’s one of the beauties of capitalism.

What Obama has done instead is spend our money for us.  Instead of giving business owners their money back so that they can invest in growth, Obama took the money and invested in community projects, infrastructure, and everything that is the sole constitutional responsibility of states and localities.  The result is that a duck pond and a turtle bridge only produce jobs while they are being built.  And the jobs that they produce are not reproducing jobs.  In other words, a construction worker is rarely going to take his minimum wage from pouring concrete and go out and start a new capital enterprise with hundreds of employees of his own.  Obama created revolving door jobs that are disappearing as quickly as they are being created, and by his own over-positive math it has cost him $1.2 million per job.  In the private sector you could create 20 good jobs for every one job Obama bought, and they would last more than a couple months.

With cash for clunkers and the $8,000 free money for buying a house, Obama has created very short term growth.  You want to know why the economy grew in the third quarter?  It might have something to do with the $3 billion we paid middle and upper class people to buy Japanese cars while destroying their old car making used cars unaffordable for the poor.  Now, cash for clunkers is over.  There is no longer a need for the employees who were making the cash for clunkers cars, the salesmen who were selling them, or the accountants brought on to fill out all the paperwork to try to get the dealers money back.  At least the CEOs and upper level managers earned a nice bonus from the sales.

Obama borrowed $1.5 trillion and spent every penny on short term projects.  That is not investment in our economy,  and when the Obama bubble bursts we will be even worse off than we were before because we will be that much more in debt.  When you have a jobless recovery, you know the money went to the wrong place.

Is Eric Holder Above the Law?

It’s one thing when a politician walks into town and declares that a defendant should go free because the law he is accused of breaking is wrong and should be repealed.  It’s completely different when the prosecutor shows up to the trial and makes that argument.

If I were Alberto Gonzalez, I would be pretty upset right now at what current Attorney General Eric Holder has been allowed to get away with.  Gonzalez was the one who was forced to resign after firing members of his staff, which is apparently only kosher if you are a Democrat.

Holder began by setting the bar low enough that he would never be fired for a minor offense such as letting go under-performing staff.  He also has already shown he knows how to play the race card, making him one of the new untouchables.

But isn’t it beyond the pale for the top attorney in our nation charged with prosecuting our laws to come out like a political candidate against our laws?  Isn’t it the job of an attorney to represent his clients according to the laws on the books?  In Holder’s case, he represents the people by prosecuting the laws of the United States that have been passed constitutionally by the houses of Congress and signed by the President of the United States.

What would you think if you were on the jury of a trial where the prosecutor began his case by denouncing the law that had been broken by the defendant as wrong and in need of being repealed?  Do you think the judge would even allow the trial to continue?  Certainly that prosecutor would be looking for work very soon.

That is essentially what Eric Holder did Friday night in a speech before  the University of Maine.  Maine is a state that is considering whether or not to make gay marriage a legal reality.  The law that Holder must uphold and prosecute until it is repealed by an act of Congress or the court system is the Defense of Marriage Act, signed by Democrat President Bill Clinton.  As of right now, it is still the law of the land.

But Holder decided to tell the students there that it was a bad law and should be repealed.  Isn’t that congress’ job?  If Holder wants to make political speeches, maybe he should run as a politician.  Making public what laws he likes and dislikes, as the Attorney General, based on his own personal opinion is a serious ethical violation.  If Gonzalez could be forced to resign for firing his underperforming staff, then shouldn’t Holder face consequences for betraying the public trust and voicing his personal feelings about the law he is responsible to uphold?

Euthanizing Jobs

Democrats have received plenty of negative press when it comes to certain provisions in their healthcare system that will create rationing.  In fact, we are already seeing rationing of the new H1N1 flu vaccine.  We have plenty of Tamiflu (stockpiled by the Bush administration), but to get an H1N1 shot you must fall into specific categories of government priority.  This is not a different concept from what Sara Palin called “death panels” because Washington bureaucrats will decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t.

Most Democrats have fled from or mocked the idea of death panels.  But one Democrat Congressman is embracing the phrase whole-heartedly.  Rep. Barney Frank, who is one of the major players responsible for the failure of our housing industry in 2007 and our banking industry in 2008, is endorsing the idea of Government euthanasia.  But he isn’t talking about death panels for individuals who the government thinks are too old for free healthcare; Frank is talking about putting down large, bloated and un-popular Wall Street giants who the government deems to be no longer financially sustainable.

It’s the big government alternative to un-popular bailouts.  With bailouts, the government took hundreds of billions of our dollars and used them to prop up companies who would probably have failed without them.  It was an unconstitutional usurpation of public funds to keep private industry afloat.  Frank’s alternative is a panel that would identify struggling companies and then take the guess work out of whether they might fail or not by simply mandating a government shut down.   Rep. Frank has said himself, “There will be death panels enacted by this Congress, but they will be for nonbank financial institutions.”

Barney Frank realizes that announcing death panels to euthanize citizens for being too old or too sick is not a popular idea.  However, government killing off bloated Wall Street corporations who are a drag on the system gives liberals chills up and down their leg and makes most ignorant consumers feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

What Frank and Democrats don’t realize is that the CEO of AIG is not the only employee of AIG.  AIG had 116,000 employees in 2008.  Now, I understand that is only a third of the jobs Obama’s economy has lost every month on average since he took office, but that is 116,000 lives affected.  In addition, AIG has thousands of stockholders.  Warren Buffet is not representative of the majority of stockholders in the US.  The majority of stockholders in the US are middleclass working families who have savings accounts such as 401k plans, IRAs, college savings plans and so on.

When a company fails, it is bought by a stronger company or it declares bankruptcy and re-organizes or shuts down.  But that is the natural course of the free market.  It is not a decision made by a bureaucrat in Washington DC, probably based on political contributions received, to liquidate 116,000 jobs and turn people’s retirement into toilet paper.  When exactly would the government decide that a company is no longer viable?  When it starts to look bad?  When it is in bankruptcy?  Tell that to Delta Airlines, Winn Dixie, United Airlines, Texaco, and other US companies who have survived bankruptcy.

I am not a proponent of bailouts.  I don’t believe in too big to fail.  But I also don’t believe in capital punishment for private industry.  When it comes down to it, euthanizing America’s employers to ease the shock of major corporate failures is just as unconstitutional as taking up a collection from the tax paying public to keep those corporations on life support.    When you have a party in control that deals in earmarks, lobbyists, corporate contributions, and big government involvement in private industry, corporate death panels are fundamentally dangerous to our free society.

Now, I know the argument that will be pushed here.  Non-bank financial institutions affect the very foundation of our monetary system.  An unexpected collapse could destroy our economy, send society back to the stone age, and leave a billion Americans unemployed and roaming the streets like zombies.  America’s economy is not resilient because the federal government rescues it.  America’s economy is resilient when those unemployed Americans wandering the streets have the freedom and opportunity to market, make and sell goods and services that people want and need.  America’s economy is resilient when Americans can take risks and expect to be rewarded exponentially for those risks.  Corporate death panels belong in a Fascist country, not America.

If AIG’s failure would destroy America’s monetary system, then that sound more like a failure of the semi-constitutional Federal Reserve system than of free market capitalism.