One of the few upsides of the Democrats’ victories last fall is that, at least for a short period, they feel confident enough to tell us what they really think. Instead of posing as centrists, they’re confidently exposing themselves as big-government, anti-freedom leftists.
Here’s the latest example from John Kerry.
We dare not let you keep your own money because we can’t be sure you’ll spend it on the right things. That’s always been a tenet of liberal, leftist politics; it’s just rare that one of their own admits it.
Posted: February 10th, 2009 | Author:James Duncan | Comments Off
The federal government is helping troubled banks stay alive, so it has decided it’s appropriate to limit executive salaries. The just-passed stimulus plan has a execrable new provision that will let the government limit how much medical treatment you’re allowed. The language appears to have been crafted by Tom Daschle and reflects the proposals Obama wanted him to enact as HHS secretary. Betsy McCaughey compared the stimulus bill and Daschle’s book and found many similarities.
Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
In the Democrats’ eyes, babies are an unwelcome drag on the economy. Now, the elderly are too expensive to treat.
The “party of the people” to young babies: don’t live. To old people: hurry up and die.
Barack Obama’s thin skin was apparent again at his press conference last night as he complained about Republicans who criticized his one trillion dollar stimulus bill.
Shut up, he explained. You Republicans can’t criticize me because you were as fiscally irresponsible as I am trying to be:
Obama repeatedly reminded a national television audience that federal spending and deficits soared under George W. Bush’s presidency. He used the point to undermine GOP lawmakers opposing his plan and calling it too costly and wasteful.
“It’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they’ve presided over a doubling of the national debt,” Obama said. “I’m not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.”
Fair enough. At least he’s not being hypocritical, just a little too sensitive.
No, actually he was being hypocritical, and illogical.
“What I won’t do,” he said at another point, “is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place.”
What failed theories would that be, Mr President? You mean the bloated federal spending and the growing national debt.
This is Obama’s change. Same wrong direction, just much faster.
Debbie Stabenow, a Democratic senator from Michigan, is on record as advocated the revival of the Fairness Doctrine, but note how the perspective is remarkably undemocratic.
Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else – I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.
Who is accountable to whom in this picture? The people, who express themselves through radio and television, will be accountable to the government for what they believe and say. I’m not sure that’s what the founders had in mind when they demanded that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech and the press.
Obama and his chief tax collector, Tim Geithner, are planning to cap executive compensation at $500,000 at financial firms bailed out by the government. Some observations:
Owners set the rules. Essentially the government has become shareholders in these firms, and has as much right as any other shareholder to set the parameters of executive compensation. For everyone who cheers this cap, remember that this rule also applies when private citizens own the firms. If shareholders, through a board of directors, decides that it’s worth paying an executive $100,000,000, it’s no more objectionable in principle than the government flexing its shareholder muscle and deciding executives are worth no more than $500,000.
Salaries pay for talent. At some point, we may decide that we need to hire CEOs who can return these firms to profitability. In our current economy, such people are obviously rare and will be in high demand. Salaries will have to rise to match that demand. Think about it from a pro-sports franchise perspective. If the Oakland Raiders ever hope to get back to the Super Bowl, they can’t keep paying the league minimum to rookie quarterbacks and other key players. There are perhaps ten top-quality QBs in the league, and you’ll have to bid against all the other teams to land one yourself. The reason star players are paid the big bucks is because their talent is rare and effective.
Government will exert control wherever it can. Although some had hoped that the TARP would not mean the government would interfere with the running of the firms it helped, it was as inevitable as a Cabinet secretary not paying his taxes. Even if you’re not a CEO or employed in the financial sector, this example should be instructive. If the government pays, it will insist on making the rules. When the government pays for your medical bills, it will want to cap your calorie intake. When it pays for your children’s health insurance, it will want to limit the size of your family (thanks, Nancy, for your honesty there). I have a lot of respect for the Ford Motor Company who, despite being in a lot of financial stress, declined the offer of federal help. It knows that when you invite the government in, it never leaves.
George W. Bush has been mocked for years for continuing to read a book to school children in the moments after he had been told about the attack on the World Trade Center. Forget the kids; focus on the nation’s business, the conventional wisdom said.
The same rules don’t apply to the new president. Yesterday, Obama took time off to seek out some kids to read to. It’s not as if he had better things to do (cabinet appointment scandals, Iranian satellite launches, stimulus bill shenanigans, etc).
With little notice, the president and first lady Michelle Obama bolted the gated compound of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in their tank of a limousine on Tuesday. They ended up at a Washington public school, greeted by children who could not care less about the collapse of a Cabinet secretary nomination.
“We were just tired of being in the White House,” the president candidly told the gleeful second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School.
If he’s tired after just two weeks, might I helpfully suggest he not run for a second term?
If not through the fairness doctrine, it will come through hate speech, as defined by the hurt feelings of anyone who cares to feel hated. An Hispanic group wants the government to investigate cable network commentators who support restrictions on illegal immigration.
In a petition to the FCC this week, the National Hispanic Media Coalition claims that hate speech is “prevalent” on national cable news networks and wants the government to do something about it.
That was one of the assertions made by the group in a formal request that the commission open a notice of inquiry into “the extent, the effect, and possible remedies” to what it said was a pervasive problem, and not just on conservative talk radio.
[snip]
NHMC defined hate speech as speech whose cumulative effect is to create an atmosphere of hate and prejudice that “legitimizes” violence against its targets.
NHMC was looking for a sympathetic ear from an FCC under Democratic hands, citing candidate Barack Obama’s fall 2008 speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus about immigrants “counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling the airwaves.”
Americans who publicly advocate following the law and protecting our borders. Definitely hateful and worthy of censoring.
This story is not a great surprise. After spending the past year appropriating the name and image of Abraham Lincoln, Obama is trying to prevent anyone else using his.
White House lawyers want to control the use of the president’s image, recognizing the worldwide fascination about Obama’s election, First Amendment free-speech rights and easy access to videos and photos on the Web.
“Our lawyers are working on developing a policy that will protect the presidential image while being careful not to squelch the overwhelming enthusiasm that the public has for the president,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Obama’s calls for change and his “Yes We Can” campaign mantra are being evoked to sell assembly-required furniture in Ikea’s “Embrace Change” marketing campaign, bargain airfares during Southwest Airlines Inc.’s “Yes You Can” sale and “Yes Pecan” ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. shops.
The problem is that most courts recognize that the president gives up most right to control his image when he’s in office. One other problem is that if you’re using government lawyers to enforce this, will enforcement be content neutral? If they allow favorable depictions, they’ll have First Amendment problems if they try to shut down people who use his image in critical or crass ways.
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has reminded Democrats that their Fairness Doctrine gambit may backfire and see them lose all existing leverage over radio and television programming.
In a string of media cases stretching back over more than 20 years, various judges on the D.C. Circuit – both Democratic and Republican appointees – have suggested that it is time for the Supreme Court to rethink the concept of spectrum scarcity as a justification for limiting broadcasters’ First Amendment rights. A revived Doctrine would provide a big, bright bulls-eye for those who wish to make that happen. That development would have implications far beyond the Doctrine itself. Much of our content regulation of broadcasters – including most of the FCC’s existing localism rules and the regulations requiring three hours a week of children’s programming – rest on the spectrum scarcity rationale. If that rationale is invalidated, serious legal challenges to all those other content rules may follow.
Although that’s the most optimistic perspective I’ve heard on the Fairness Doctrine for a while, it is still probably foolish to count on the Supreme Court protecting free speech. Remember that George W. Bush’s squishy rationale for signing campaign finance reform was that he was counting on the court to bail him out and invalidate the whole thing on constitutional grounds. Said Bush at the time:
The bill does have flaws. Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns. In particular, H.R. 2356 goes farther than I originally proposed by preventing all individuals, not just unions and corporations, from making donations to political parties in connection with Federal elections. I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.
The court didn’t agree, and now we’re stuck with censored election speech.
McDowell also included this warning:
Certain legal commentators have suggested that a new corollary of the Doctrine should be fashioned for the Internet, on the theory that web surfers should be exposed to topics and views that they have not chosen for themselves.
As traditional media lose audience and relevance, politicians will need to exercise a lot of self control to keep their hands off the Internet. I don’t think they’ll be able to do it.
Democratic congressfolk have launched a petition against Rush Limbaugh for his statement that he hopes that Obama fails to get his policies implemented.
This is from politicians who somehow persist in calling themselves liberals. In free societies, if you don’t like what someone is saying, you can just stop listening. What business is it of government to approve or condemn what free citizens say, especially when those same politicians threaten to censor radio with a reimposition of the fairness doctrine?
Like they spent the last eight years rooting for W. to succeed.
This blog is mine alone and does not necessarily–or very often–represent the thinking or sentiments of anyone who disagrees with me, my wife, my employer, my friends, my family, my pastor, my brother, my church and, almost certainly, God. After I hit the Publish button, it doesn’t always even reflect my own thinking. It does seem to often reflect the thinking of Tommy F, Twit Conway and some guy in Minnesota, however.
