Honestly, Is the Issuance of Brownshirts Far Behind?

I re-produce in its entirety and without any edits a column that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last weekend:

Pastors For ObamaCare?
If the White House office of faith-based initiatives is going to be used as propaganda unit, it might as well be shut down.
By Jim Towey
Saturday/Sunday, September 25 - 26, 2010

I was George W. Bush's director of faith-based initiatives. Imagine what would have happened had I proposed that he use that office to urge thousands of religious leaders to become "validators" of the Iraq War?

I can tell you two things that would have happened immediately. First, President Bush would have fired me—and rightly so—for trying to politicize his faith-based office. Second, the American media would have chased me into the foxhole Saddam Hussein had vacated.

Yet on Tuesday President Obama and his director of faith-based initiatives convened exactly such a meeting to try to control political damage from the unpopular health-care law. "Get out there and spread the word," Politico.com reported the president as saying on a conference call with leaders of faith-based and community groups. "I think all of you can be really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors, to help explain what's now available to them."

Since then, there's been nary a peep from the press.

According to the White House website, the faith-based office exists "to more effectively serve Americans in need." I guess that now means Americans in need of Democratic talking points on health care. Do we really want taxpayer-funded bureaucrats mobilizing ministers to go out to all the neighborhoods and spread the good news of universal coverage?

Tuesday's call is no small disappointment to those of us who thought Mr. Obama deserved credit for keeping the faith-based initiatives office at the White House at a time when many fellow Democrats wanted him to put it in the Smithsonian. I for one gave him the benefit of the doubt when he appointed as the office's leader a Pentecostal minister who had served as a director of outreach during his 2008 campaign, as well as when he punted to the Justice Department the thorny question of whether a charity could take religious beliefs into account when hiring.

Nearly 20 months later, however, the faith-based office has failed to be a voice within the administration for compassion. Poverty rates are at record highs, and the economy is producing new waves of homeless families. Meanwhile the faith-based office in the White House and those in 11 federal agencies have no record, no results, and no relevance.

This operation stands in stark contrast to the priority Mr. Bush placed on this office. Every year, he used the grand stage of the State of the Union address to launch new compassion programs. In his first six months in office, he pushed for a vote in Congress to end discrimination against religious charities. New programs to mentor the children of prisoners, expand choices for addicts seeking treatment, and combat the spread of AIDS were launched. They have since transformed countless lives.

Some allege that Mr. Bush pioneered the art of politicizing faith. In fact, his faith-based initiatives were remarkably bipartisan. I am a Democrat, and I worked with more Democratic members of Congress than Republican ones.

Any member of Congress who invited me or my office to visit a faith-based program or attend a meeting in their district was welcomed. If you polled the attendees at the dozens of conferences our office held throughout the country, Mr. Bush likely would not have fared well. It didn't matter. To those who participated it wasn't about politics. It was about learning how to run more effective programs and help more people in need.

Mr. Obama is within his legal rights to engage our country's spiritual leaders in his effort to sell health-care reform. But he should not use the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships to do so.

If he cannot restore its focus to promoting successful programs that serve our country's poor, then he should do the decent thing and close the faith-based initiatives office.

Mr. Towey was director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives for President George W. Bush from 2002-2006. (End of column as it appeared in the Wall Street Journal.)

Obama Continues to Shred U.S. Constitution

You can't make this stuff up, here's the link to my "news"paper's account of President Obama seeking to expand the Federal government's spying capabilities on the American people:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/09/27/us_wants_stronger_wiretap_powers_over_web/

The story is just breaking, from what I read, so let's see how long it take the liberal extremists to become outraged as there is no expression of outrage reported in the attached.

"I'm Exhausted Defending You"


Earlier this week, President Obama held a town-hall meeting in Washington, DC.

Ms. Velma Hart (pictured) had this to say to the President as the first questioner, "I’m a mother. I’m a wife. I’m an American veteran and I’m one of your middle-class Americans. And quite frankly I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for. I’ve been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class and I’m waiting sir, I’m waiting.’’

Press reports also share that Ms. Hart is the Chief Financial Officer for AMVETS.

I have not read any reports of anyone calling Ms. Hart a racist.

Redefining Words Continues

It's been a long time since I sent my "news"paper a letter; here's what I sent last week.

Joshua Green is a liberal extremist who appears to be auditioning for a regular column on the editorial page.

The letter needs no introduction. For those who are unfamiliar with my "Bush's Third Term" and "Obama Is Wearing Bush's Clothes" letters, you may want to see those posts in the January 2009 - March 2009 time frame.

The letter:

Editor,

Mr. Joshua Green wrote, "No president’s legacy is more tarnished than that of George W. Bush . . . . (A project for Bush: Clean energy, September 9, A17)."

However, the facts convincingly say otherwise, for a widely popular President Obama, who won 53% of the popular vote in succeeding President Bush, has validate and vindicated Bush with just about every significant decision except ObamaCare and U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

Why, in the very same issue as Mr. Green's column we read that Obama reasserted Bush on state secrets and extraordinary renditions before the notoriously liberal US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and prevailed (US court tosses suit on secrecy grounds, A8)!

Other notable Obama vindications of Bush, spanning the full spectrum of matters, would include retaining Bush's entire military heirarchy (Gates, Mullen and Petraeus), military tribunals, the USA PATRIOT Act, the prisons at Guantanomo Bay and Bagram Air Base, TARP, the GM bailout, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, faith-based initiatives, No Child Left Behind, the grey wolf, the polar bear, and newly added just yesterday, Obama asking Congress to extend Bush's lower and middle class tax cuts.

Tarnished? Hardly. Matter of fact, a President's legacy might not have ever been validated more quickly when succeeded by a President of the opposing party than Bush's has.

Well, unless Mr. Green's next column is about the tarnished Presidency of Obama, of course. (End of letter to the editor.)

Barack, Can I have My Allowance Now?

In my July 31, 2010 post I noted how Alan Blinder thinks all our earned income is the Government's before the Government decides how much of our earned income it's going to return to us. Now this beauty from Robert Rubin as it appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week:

Bring Back the Estate Tax Now
Allowing it to lapse has cost us billions of dollars in revenue this year.
By Robert Rubin and Julian Robertson

With a host of other issues behind it, Congress is finally turning its attention to the expiring 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. But there is one tax issue that should have long since been addressed: the federal estate tax. That tax expired at the end of last year, and there have been no estate taxes levied this year. If a new estate tax is not enacted as soon as Congress returns from its August recess, this void will continue until the end of the year (Blogger's Note: Oh, my, not a void!).

We would recommend continuing 2009's regime, with a top rate of 45% and a $3.5 million individual exemption. Small businesses and family farms can be protected both through the exemption (which is $7 million for a couple) and through special deferred payment rules.

We both believe that the estate tax should be a component of any federal tax system. Our government is always going to collect and rely on tax revenues to pay for the activities that our citizens want and need government to perform. A key criterion in choosing taxes is to have the least negative impact on economic activity (Blogger's Note: Let's steal it because we can.). The estate tax, in our opinion, meets that test.

An estate tax can provide revenue—with little, if any, adverse supply-side economic impact (Blogger's Note: so, let's steal it because we can)—to fund deficit reduction, additional public investment or added assistance to those affected by the economic crisis. Used for public investment that has a rapid spend out, or applied to assistance for economically displaced citizens, the net effect will be to increase demand. That's because roughly 100% of the funds would be spent, while part of any large inheritance is highly likely to be used for savings or debt repayment (Blogger's Note: We're from the Government and we'll tell you how to spend your money, you fools.). And either deficit reduction or public investment will better position our country for future economic success.

We also share the view that the estate tax is grounded in powerful philosophical underpinnings. Our nation views itself as a meritocracy and a land of opportunity and we have a proud legacy of upward mobility. An estate tax helps us promote this legacy, by avoiding the accumulation of inherited economic—and political—power that is antithetical to this historical vision of our society and to the vitality and dynamism that has contributed so much to our success (Blogger's Note: In other words, succeed but don't succeed too much or the Government will punish you.).

Failure to restore a permanent and strong estate tax for this year has already cost billions of dollars in federal revenue (Blogger's Note: Because the wage earner's money is the Government's first, you see.). But there is still time for Congress to take action for the current year. By acting immediately, Congress can, at a minimum, solve the revenue problem the lapse has created for the remainder of the year. It could also consider going further by making the change apply from the beginning of this year.

Ordinarily in tax matters, the effective date would not precede the date of enactment, or at least the date that a measure was introduced, because Congress knows that taxpayers make their plans based on the existing code. But in the case of the estate tax, presumably nobody's demise was affected in timing by the structuring of our tax laws. And importantly there has been notice—through the president's budget and statements by public officials—that a tax would be enacted earlier this year that would apply to the whole of this year (Blogger's Note: Ah, the 'fair notice' argument for retroactive taxation.).

The question of how to address the income and other tax cuts that expire this year is already eliciting many conflicting views. But action on the estate tax should not wait. Our country is losing revenue that, with its stressed fiscal conditions, it can ill afford to forego.

Mr. Rubin is co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and former secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Mr. Robertson is chairman of Tiger Management LLC. (End of Wall Street Journal column.)

The Idiocy of Re-Defined Words Continues

I'm not kidding, this was the headline in my "news"paper, the Boston Globe, this morning, "Iraq firefight pulls in noncombat US troops".

If only President Obama had some combat troops he could have sent into combat.