Obamacare: Bitter Recriminations Edition

Like President Obama, I am getting mighty tired of reading articles like this: Trust Frayed Between Obama Dems

President Barack Obama’s credibility may have taken a big hit with voters, but he’s also in serious danger of permanently losing the trust of Democrats in Congress. The Obamacare debacle has been bad enough that it’s tough for Democrats to take on faith that the president can fix the problems. His one-time allies are no longer sure that it’s wise to follow him into battle, leaving Obama and his law not only vulnerable to existing critics, but open to new attacks from his own party. 

“I don’t know how he f—-ed this up so badly,” said one House Democrat who has been very supportive of Obama in the past.

Oh, come off it. the Obama Administration might have screwed up the website, but every other baleful effect of the full implementation of Obamacare is due entirely to what we lawyers like to refer to as the "operation of law." Health plans being canceled? Patients losing doctors? Premiums skyrocketing? Healthy middle class people subsidizing the health care of drug addicts? People being shunted into Medi-caid hell? That's not because of a freakin' website! It's by "operation of law!" (isn't it majestic?) Obamacare is working precisely as it was meant to work. No more, no less. 

Obamacare is a disaster because the law is disastrous. Obama might have sold the law and signed the law, but a Democrat Congress drafted it and passed it, no doubt with the eager vote of "one (of many!) House Democrat who has been very supportive of Obama in the past." This might be one of those rare times when the ship is sinking too fast for the rats to get off in time.

Money For Nothing: Corey Booker's "Start-Up"

I think this Times puff piece about Corey Booker was supposed to cause Jerseyites to admire his visionary tech-saavyiety (new word alert. Call the OED), but instead it reveals to how a handful of billionaires have used an internet start-up as a front to funnel money into Booker's bank account. 

Mr. Booker personally has obtained money for the start-up, called Waywire, from influential investors, including Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. A year after its debut, Waywire has already endured a round of layoffs and had just 2,207 visitors in June, according to Compete, a Web-tracking service. The company says it is still under development. 

Yet in a financial disclosure filed last month, Mr. Booker, 44, revealed that his stake in the company was worth $1 million to $5 million. Taken together, his other assets were worth no more than $730,000. 

That revelation, with just a week left in Mr. Booker’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, shows how a few tech moguls and entrepreneurs, many of them also campaign donors, not only made a financial bet on the mayor’s political future but also provided the brainpower and financing to help create a company that could make him very rich. 

Waywire has also provided jobs for associates of Mr. Booker: the son of a top campaign supporter and his social media consultant, who is now on his Senate campaign staff.

Waywire is a pathetic nonentity in the world of the internet. It's a video sharing platform. Wow! a video sharing platform? On the internet?! Althouse, who flagged some of the purple prose from the Times, brings us a dramatic report from the Waywire site:

Here's Waywire, by the way(wire), so check for yourself if it's haywire. You can't tell from one look how long these items have been at the top, but the timelessness of the subject matter makes me think: a long time. I mean: "7 Great Beatles Performances," "Top 15 Most Patriotic Songs," "30 Best Summer Songs"...? These seem to pre-date the Internet! But let's be fair and watch "Top News, August 8," which appears in the upper left-hand corner of the grid. It starts off (for me, now, anyway) with a grainy 38 seconds of a guy in a suit drawing all the pingpong balls for a set of Powerball numbers. (That fits with "betting on Booker.") It then proceeds to another video, a minute of Obama on Leno, then another (showing "Suffering in Syria"), then something about Egypt, something about Dustin Hoffman, something else about Egypt, and ending the run through the top news that you need to know today, August 8th, with "Toddler Beaten to Death by Foster Mother." We see her sad face in a thumbnail. 

Just to add to the appearance of impropriety, one of the board members is Andrew Zucker, a 15 year-old boy. Or, was. He has since resigned, no doubt because someone realized having Jeff Zucker's son on the board of Booker's nest egg would probably give rise to questions about the nexus between the MSM and the Democrat Party. 

Well.

As with John Edwards, who actively worked to separate the nonagenarian Bunnie Mellon from hundreds of thousands of dollars, all in the name of funding his political career, one has to ask how any of this is legal. Conservatives like Sarah Palin have to keep every receipt from Target, lest they be hounded for accepting a $50 "gift," while Dems can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars through cattle futures, bogus start-ups or simple "gifts." I'm starting to feel like there's a double standard at work here. 

Booker has been a real up-and-comer; a golden boy who waded into the corrupt world of Newark politics and seemed to be cleaning it up. Then again, there's apparently a lot of hometown griping that he hasn't done all that much to turn Newark around, except remove some of the more egregiously corrupt civil servants. Crime, poverty, unemployment are still sky-high, and indeed are unchanged from the beginning of his administration. Booker's run for the NJ Senate seat has been treated as a for-ordained glide path into national politics, but clearly there is much that is lurking under the surface for a determined foe or journalist to dig into.  

P.S. As much as we can be discomfited by Booker's arrangement with his donors, the fact is that people like him need to sustain themselves and raise a family. Human nature being what it is, you can't expect civil servants to live penuriously. No one likes to hear this, but most elective offices are severely underpaid. Senators and congressmen should be earning in the low seven figures, not the relatively small salaries they are actually paid. If Corey Booker was actually earning a salary commensurate with his skills and his job duties, he wouldn't have to enter into bogus "investments" funded by billionaires living 3,000 miles away from the Garden State. 

Charlie Rangel H8's The Tea Party: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Charlie Rangel wants you to know what he really thinks of Republicans and, especially, the Tea Party:

There is little question that Rangel is nearing the end. First elected 43 years ago, after having defeated the man whose name adorns the building where the congressman keeps his office, he is musing aloud now about what he once forbade anyone to discuss with him: his own retirement. 

But even at 83, dressed in a blue bow tie and crisp gray suit, Rangel is relentless toward those who he feels are slowing the forces of progress. 

House Republicans? Have done more damage to American competitiveness than al Qaeda ever could. “What is happening is sabotage. Terrorists couldn’t do a better job than the Republicans are doing.” 

The Tea Party? Defeat them the same way segregation was beaten. “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police.”

Uh, no they're not, jerk, and you know it. The Tea Party has nothing to do with segregationists, who were Democrats who voted for every New Deal and Fair Deal program under the sun, so long as the "Solid South" could remain a segregated backwater. The Tea Party is trying to reduce the size of the federal leviathan, starting with Obamacare, and moving on down the line. I know it's hard to understand, given how all us white people (aka "crackas") look alike, but that's life for you. 

The real problem with the Tea Party, if you are Charlie Rangel, is that it is dedicating to reducing the various hand-outs, transfer payments, subsidies and "free" stuff that he has spent a career acquiring for the "community." Rangel's power has come from ginning up outrage and then dispensing goodies to his constituents, many of whom think of Great Society programs as a sort of reparations for slavery. (something they never personally experienced, btw, but the "right" to reparations is something they inherited, I guess, like white people inherit stocks and bonds). Cut welfare? Why don't you just cut off Charlie Rangel's arms?! That would definitely be racist.

America has never had a shortage of roguish politicos, but Charlie Rangel really takes the cake. He's used the ideals of the civil rights movement and the righteous anger of African-Americans to build an empire of boodle where he stood at the head of the line dispensing Obama-phones and AFDC checks like a ward-heeler (hey, what's this "like" stuff?" That's what he is) passing out stringy turkeys at Thanksgiving. Along the way, he's amassed a fortune worth many times what he could have earned through his congressional salary, not that anyone's cared to inquire too closely about that. Even the IRS could be sent packing on Rangel's behalf. 

But, when the taxpayers who pay for Rangel's power revolt and demand some sign that the Rangels of the world at least to pretend to live within the limits of the Constitution, not to mention math, suddenly it's all firehoses and dogs and Bull Connor. It's absurd. If anything, Rangel is now part of the noxious power structure. If he needs to insult decent Americans to keep his place there, I guess that's what he's got to do. 

Happy Fourth of July From the Pennsylvania Memorial!

Actually, I'm not in Gettysburg, or in Pennsylvania. I haven't even left my apartment. But, I am at the Memorial in spirit.

I bring up the memorial because, while we celebrate the Independence Day today, the just-concluded 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg deserves some note. That's because, while moderately educated Americans can be conversant about the Civil War, it's sometimes hard to understand what motivated the men who fought on the Union side and preserved the union. After all, they could have just as easily said, screw it, let the Southern slave masters keep their plantations and peons. There were plenty in the North who counseled peace, and could not abide the thought of a civil war against their countrymen.

Well, if you want to understand you should visit the Pennsylvania Memorial.

The Gettysburg Battlefield is famously covered in monuments, memorials, statuary, markers, etc. Most of them are dedicated to the exploits of the Union troops, although there are some Southern markers, including one at the top and one at the bottom of Cemetery Ridge. Most of the Gettysburg memorials were placed there by private subscription, rather than by gov't money. Often a regiment or company would get together, raise some funds, and plop something down on whatever scrap of hallowed ground they had fought over. This contributes to the hodge-podge quality of the battlefield, but it also gives you a sense of what the people at the time considered important. The memorials really do follow the lines of battle. There's no way the Park Service, or some academic board, would have managed to do better.

The bigger ones were installed by states to commemorate the veterans among their citizenry. And the biggest one of all of these is the Pennsylvania memorial.

The memorial itself is not some grand aesthetic masterwork. It is, as they say, "busy," covered in friezes depicting battle scenes, statutes of Union generals from PA (and the PA governor who valiantly signed the bill appropriating funds to construct the memorial), and all sorts of other gimcrackery. It's never really achieved national iconic status, but it should. Because the most important part of the memorial can be found wrapped around it: the names of every Pennsylvanian who was on active duty in the Army of the Potomac at the time of the battle. To look at those names, and then turn around and look down Cemetery Ridge is a moving moment for any American. These men fought and died in America, for America, to preserve America. Immortality doesn't get much better than that.

Best of all is a prominent plaque installed by the men of Pennsylvania and dedicated to the ladies of Pennsylvania. We're all familiar with the stories of Confederate gallantry - that was one of the few things we can all agree they had going for them - but the Union side had plenty of gallantry and bravery too, as this charming plaque testifies.

And, with all apologies to my Southern brethren, those gallant men didn't just win a war. They were on the right side of history and humanity. The Confederate armies were as brave and tough as they come. Many of the generals were brilliant, making more out of much less than their Northern counter-parts. The southern gentry were dashing and gallant. Etc. But, for all of that, they were fighting for the absolutely worst cause imaginable.

Slavery - a barbaric system that didn't even rise to the level of feudalism in terms of economic sophistication - was bad enough. The methods that the South used to enforce slavery spread its oppression beyond the plantations and into the wider world. It was against the law to teach blacks to read or write. It was illegal to even disparage slavery as an institution. An ounce of African blood would render one's relatives as little more than chattel. Sally Hemings, for example had less African blood that George Zimmerman. Imagine a system where your cousins or half-siblings - products of a randy relatives sexual exploits with concubines - could be bought and sold, and then worked to death.

Apologists who claim that slavery was "contained" to the South ignore the very real ways in which slavery reached North. There were the hated fugitive slave laws, which eventually cast such a wide net that free blacks could be dragged South against their will.

It wasn't just about slavery. The Antebellum Democrat Party was dedicated to not just preserving, but also spreading the "peculiar institution" throughout the territories, the Northern states, and beyond. Southern Democrats were, of course, up front about this, while Northern Dems like Stephen Douglas, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan tried to accomplish this through stealth and silence. Many Republicans from Lincoln on down argued that the Democrat presidents of the 1850's had, through benign neglect, created the legal and political atmosphere in which the Missouri Compromise broke down and the Supreme Court rendered the notorious Dred Scott decision.

If you haven't read Dred Scott, you should. It's an amazing document from the authority with the supposed final word on interpreting the Constitution. For several years, in the United States, it was a matter of constitutional law that blacks were so inferior as to be literally inhuman, and not deserving of constitutional notice. Imagine being an 1850's-era Irish immigrant, freshly arrived from  a life as a serf on some English estate. Now, you're in the Land of the Free and the highest judicial authority in the land is making distinctions about who is or is not constitutionally inferior. That might make you more than a little nervous, maybe even send you off to fight in a war to resolve the question once and for all.

July 4th celebrates the birth of freedom in this country. Gettysburg and the Pennsylvania Memorial celebrate the new birth of freedom that came 87 years later. We would do well to remember both.

Spit Take: Local Pol Busted In Stamp Licking Scandal

Disgraced former Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr., who has already resigned his seat and plead guilty to misappropriating campaign funds, has been arrested again for his role in sending out an "illegal" campaign mailer on behalf of his former chief of staff. The evidence? A match between genetic material found in the spittle on the mailings and a DNA swab taken during the Supe's arrest earlier this year: 

In an extraordinary DNA match, saliva left on the stamp of a scandalous and illegal San Jose political campaign mailer three years ago led to the arrest of a disgraced former Santa Clara County supervisor, prosecutors said. 

George Shirakawa Jr. was arrested Wednesday on charges of impersonating City Council candidate Magdalena Carrasco in May 2010 by sending mailers that linked her to the communist government in Vietnam, said Jeff Rosen, the Santa Clara County district attorney. 

"What is offensive about the flyer," Rosen said, "is that this is a photo of Magdalena Carrasco right across from the flag of North Vietnam." 

The hit piece - whose origin has long been a mystery - was sent to residents of a district with a large population of Vietnamese Americans, and it may have affected the outcome of a tight council race. 

Carrasco finished second in the June 2010 primary by 20 votes, then lost a November runoff election against a former Shirakawa aide, Xavier Campos, by just 400 votes.
Neither Carrasco nor Campos returned calls seeking comment. Prosecutors would not say if Campos was cooperating with investigators.

Now, there's a lot of material to unpack from such a frankly absurd story, it's hard to know where to start:

1. Shirakawa is, needless to say, a Democrat. Not only that, he's the scion of a Democrat family with a long-standing history in South Bay politics. 

2. While it's amusing to think of the grossly obese Shirakawa hunched over his kitchen table licking stamps and stuffing envelopes with a bizarre graphic tying a Hispanic woman to the Commie North Viet Namese, we are also getting a not-so-funny glimpse into the world of, if not voter fraud, certainly voter misdirection. If it's hard to find the sort of shadowy figures who practice this sort of stuff, it might be because the politicos themselves, and maybe their immediate families, are the ones doing it. 

3. If I were Xavier Campos, the "beneficiary" of this dodge, I wouldn't be feeling very appreciative right now. 

4. Note that all of this "DNA-swab-taken-at-his-arrest" stuff is coming just two days after the Supreme Court ruled that such swabs do not violate the Fourth Amendment. It's almost as if the DA was patiently waiting to spring this charge on Shirakawa. 

5. The timing of this has drawn the ire of Shirakawa's attorneys, and rightly so. They negotiated an elaborate "resignation/guilty plea" resolution to his other crimes, and the DA pops up with this the day before the ex-Supe was to be sentenced. Defense counsel is crying foul saying they had agreed to a global settlement of all of Shirakawa's crimes. The DA was clearly holding this back for later. 

6. The mailer has been called every word in the book: "libelous," "scandalous," "scurrilious," etc. But what made it "illegal?" Apparently because Shirakawa included Carrasco's campaign ID number on it, thus making it look like an official Carrasco campaign document. But, read the DA's comments in the story; he seems to think the flyer itself was illegal for combining Carrasco's face with the Viet Namese flag. That's illegal???? 

7. It's hard to believe anyone's vote could be swayed by Shirakawa's flyer - it's incredibly primitive, not to mention stupid - but Carrasco lost by a whisker-thin margin. I am unable to resist that "surrounded by idiots" feeling, even if we're talking about Democrats here. 

8. Note that the offending mailer was targeted at an immigrant community, and was calculated in its ham-fisted way, to offend its political sensitivities. And it worked! This doesn't speak well for the assimilation and sophistication of our treasured immigrant brethren. In fact, it raises the question once again whether there are people voting in American elections who are citizens and actually have the franchise.  

9. Shirakawa is obviously a classic example of the gutter level corruption you can find in any municipality. One imagines a lot of cash-in-envelopes have passed through his hands over the years.

10. But at least he never led a "war on women!"

I Am Outraged: Don Young vs Beverly Hall

Another Republican is causing trouble with the Hispanic outreach program. Don Young, Alaska's lone House member, used the term "wetback" in a radio interview.

Rep. Don Young, who used the term “wetbacks” to describe Mexican immigrants in a radio interview Thursday night, issued a full-scale apology this afternoon for using the derogatory slur after a barrage of criticism from Republicans and Democrats. 

“I apologize for the insensitive term I used during an interview in Ketchikan, Alaska,” Young, R-Alaska, wrote in his second statement of the past 24 hours. “There was no malice in my heart or intent to offend; it was a poor choice of words.”

Young is, predictably, the face of the Republican Party this week despite the fact that (1) he is the sort of big-spending, non-evangelical moderate that we're supposed to elect more of and (2) most Republicans outside the Land of the Midnight Sun can't stand him. Sarah Palin even supported an effort to primary Young back in 2008! (and is there any doubt that Young would be the first House Republican to sign on to "comprehensive immigration reform?") None of this matters, of course. As long as Young is insulting Hispanics, he is Mr. Republican, Mr. Tea Party & Mr. Conservative.

But, who is being hurt by Young's slur? Nobody. Sticks and stones, and all that (plus, Ike had some kind of guest worker program back in the good old days called "Operation Wetback," so at some point the term was socially acceptable).

On the other hand, imagine all of the casualties from the latest scandal out of urban America: a conspiracy directed by the superintendent of the Atlanta School District to raise test scores by literally changing kids' answers on standardized tests:

In the two and a half years since, the state’s investigation reached from Ms. Parks’s third-grade classroom all the way to the district superintendent at the time, Beverly L. Hall, who was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted Friday by a Fulton County grand jury. 

Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison. 

During the decade she led the district of 52,000 children, many of them poor and African-American, Atlanta students often outperformed wealthier suburban districts on state tests. 

Those test scores brought her fame — in 2009, the American Association of School Administrators named her superintendent of the year and Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, hosted her at the White House. 

And fortune — she earned more than $500,000 in performance bonuses while superintendent. 

On Friday, prosecutors essentially said it really was too good to be true. Dr. Hall and the 34 teachers, principals and administrators “conspired to either cheat, conceal cheating or retaliate against whistle-blowers in an effort to bolster C.R.C.T. scores for the benefit of financial rewards associated with high test scores,” the indictment said, referring to the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. 

Reached late Friday, Richard Deane, Dr. Hall’s lawyer, said they were digesting the indictment and making arrangements for bond. “We’re pretty busy,” he said.

Am I stepping out of bounds in assuming that Dr. Hall and her confederates are liberal black women? Probably not, as Hall was feted at the White House in 2009.

(apropos of nothing, have you heard about the arrest of Elba Gordillo, presidente' for life of the Mexican teachers union? She's accused of stealing $200 million from the union with Neiman Marcus providing crucial evidence of multi-million dollar shopping sprees. For the Children, of course.)

That African-American kids are cruelly trapped in failing schools is beyond dispute. Also beyond dispute is that those failing schools are not educational institutions, but are little more than jobs programs and money pits. And the cheating is national, and systemic with similar scandals brewing in El Paso and Ohio.

Yet, somehow, Don Young is a Big Problem for Republicans, perpetually flat-footed in their effort to make in-roads into minority communities; while Dr. Hall is part of some crazy "local" scandal and everyone else involved in urban public education is great because they care so much for The Children (and vote Democrat).

Reality is that Don Young is a cheesy semi-corrupt octogenarian pol with virtually no voice in his party outside of Alaska. Reality is that Democrats, the Party of Education, have had one-party rule over urban school districts for decades and destroyed them, stunting the development of god-knows how many millions of minority kids. And, apparently, it's enough to hold up the obscure likes of Don Young as representing the tip of the spear of some sort of unspeakable GOP Jim Crow for Democrats to retain their death-grip on the votes of minorities. (those who show up at the polls at least. Urban precincts are notorious for the fraudulence of their electoral returns).

Instead of convening seminars and writing op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, Republicans eager to court black or Hispanic voters should show up at these sh*** schools and help lead a revolt by those parents who care enough about their kids to change this noxious reality.

A New Hope: Getting Ready For The 2014 Senate Race

If you want to distract yourself from your post-Romney gloom, here are the potentially vulnerable Senate seats that are coming up for re-election in 2014. These are the people who last ran in 2008, winning seats in the year of Hope & Change. Each and every one of them voted for Obamacare, which will be fully implemented as of 2014. Absent an Akin-esque GOP challenger, these seats should be eminently attainable (I'm not bothering to include entrenched Blue State Dems like Carl Levin and Dick Durbin):

DEMOCRATS

Mark Begich (ALASKA): Begich (barely) unseated Ted Stevens's following Ted's conviction for corruption, a conviction that was later overturned due to ... corruption by the prosecution. This guy never would have won, and Obamacare never passed, without the political prosecution of his rival. This really should be a GOP seat.

Mark Pryor (ARKANSAS): another liberal representing a Red State. Should go the way of Blanche Lincoln

Mark Udall (COLORADO) a one-termer swept into office by Obama's coattails.

Chris Coons (DELEWARE) remember Coons? He was the "bearded Marxist" who defeated Christine O'Donnell for his seat. Supposedly, a more "moderate" Republican would have won. Let's see if that's true.

Mary Landrieu (LOUISIANA) a scion of the corrupt Democrat establishment that led their state to Biblical ruin. Her Obamacare vote was literally bought in a backroom deal. Her elections have tended to be resolved by the classic "late returns from Orleans Parish."

Al Franken (MINNESOTA): a one-termer who won thanks to the classic "keep doing the re-count until the Democrat wins."

Jean Shaheen (NEW HAMPSHIRE): a one-termer with a near-empty war chest.

Frank Lautenberg (NEW JERSEY): come on, he's going to be 90 years old in 2014

Tom Udall (NEW MEXICO): anyone know of any Hispanic women politicians who might want this seat?

Kay Hagen (NORTH CAROLINA): a "talk right at home, vote left in DC" liberal representing a purple state. Defeated the dispirited Elizabeth Dole in the fluke 2008 election. Should go the way of Beverly Purdue.

Jeff Merkley (OREGON): early polling shows him losing to Congressman Greg Walden.

Tim Johnson (SOUTH DAKOTA): a liberal representing a red state who has had serious health issues, including a near-debiltating stroke.

Mark Warner (VIRGINIA): a one-termer from a purple state whose potential rivals include heavy-weights Ken Cuccinelli and Bob McDonnell.

Jay Rockefeller (WEST VIRGINIA): a state that has been getting redder, represented by a querelous liberal who has been actively undercutting the state's coal industry. I am going to make the bold prediction that this could be the potential upset election of 2014.

REPUBLICANS

And then there's (cue ominous music) Republican Senators deserving of a primary challenge:

Pat Roberts (KANSAS): could be 2014's Richard Lugar - a Farm State "moderate" representing an increasingly red state whose main pre-occupations are service on the Foreign Affairs Committee and standing behind Chuck Schumer during press comferences announcing the latest bi-partisan compromise.
 
Susan Collins (MAINE): the last Senate Republican remaining in office who voted for the 2009 Stimulus.

Lindsay Graham (SOUTH CAROLINA): has been undercutting conservatives and Republicans at the worst possible times. This seat really should be placed in steadier hands

Lamar Alexander (TENNESSEE): Is Lamar! really the most conservative person who could win this seat?

Confident Men: Bucking Up the Troops Before The Election

It's the weekend before the election, and the 'net is filled with aggressively optimistic pronouncements from lefty analysts:

Sam Stein says the Obama campaign has personally contacted 125M voters. And I'm sure all of those people politely nodded and said, yes, of course I will vote for the president.

Eleanor Clift says the Obama campaign is working hard to make sure young single mothers get to the polls. Funny how the spohisticates on the Left are so reliant on naive, poorly educated people who have made bad life choices...and who don't tend to vote in large numbers.

Charles Blow says Romney is "unraveling" and his time is running out. Blow is right. Romney's been wasting his time going to all these huge rallies in Democrat precincts.

Bob Shrum has a long list of mistakes that have doomed Romney. If there's a guy who understands mistakes made in presidential campaigns...

Greg Sargeant says Obama's in good shape with three days left. He even says the polls would have to be systematically and catastrophically wrong for Romney to win. Of course, if there's one thing we've had a lot of in the last 10 years it's the phenomenon of once-unimpeachable institutions being systematically and catastrophically wrong

Jesse Jackson says (in the UK Guardian) America and the world "need" Obama because that mess he inherited was so deep, a standard no Democrat ever afforded "mess" inheritors Reagan and Bush 43.

Sean Sullivan, quoting David Plouffe, says Mitt Romney's play for Pennsylvania is a desperate ploy. Look, I get it that PA is a stretch, but didn't conservative stalwart Pat Toomey just win a Senate seat two years ago? (and didn't Rick Santorum represent PA for two terms when the state was even more Blue?)

Roger Simon says the "swift boating" of Obama (via Beghazi-gate) has failed, which is why everyone in the Obama Administration is pointing the finger at everyone else.

And, of course, Paul Krugman says you would have to be stupid to think the election will be close. I agree that a lot of people will look stupid come Wednesday. Hopefully, we won't be among them.

A Nation Of Immigrants: LA County Assessor Arrested For Accepting Bribes

LA County's Assessor has been arrested for systematically reducing appraisals (and the concominant property tax bill) in exchange for bribes. Wow, sounds like a real culture of corruption, if you are looking for that sort of thing.

Los Angeles County Assessor John Noguez and the tax consultant accused of bribing him, Ramin Salari, pleaded not guilty to a long list of corruption charges Thursday. 

The men, who were arrested Wednesday, are being held on more than $1-million bail each. They are scheduled to be in court again Monday to argue for lower bail and to prove that any money they use to pay it was not acquired through criminal means. 

Prosecutors allege that Noguez took $185,000 in bribes to illegally reduce the values of properties represented by Salari so their owners would pay lower taxes. Salari charges his clients a percentage of their tax savings, typically 50%. 

Salari is also charged with paying $100,000 in bribes to a lower-level assessor's office employee, Scott Schenter, to illegally reduce property values. Schenter pleaded not guilty to fraud charges in May. 

In total, the alleged scam deprived the county of at least $1.16 million in tax revenue, prosecutors say. 

On Thursday, Salari's attorney, Mark Werksman, asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shelly Torrealba to reduce Salari's bail from $1.36 million to $575,000. 

Although Salari lives for much of the year in Phoenix, he has deep family and business connections to Los Angeles and is not a flight risk, Werksman said. 

Further, Werksman said, the alleged crime had "no victims, so to speak, except for the tax collection efforts of the county." 

"No, just every taxpayer in the county of Los Angeles," Torrealba shot back. She called the alleged crimes "an extreme abuse of public trust."

Noguez is, of course, a Democrat. He is also the former mayor of Huntington Park, a burgh conveniently located next to the notorious town of Bell; and, like Bell, a "heavily Latino city," as the media likes to phrase it. Noguez was also an anchor baby, born in LA, but raised in Mexico for the first six years of his life. In other words, we have a guy who has brought third-world approach to elected office to an American city. (Check out this long article from the LA Weekly, which details the brazenness of the scandal, and the big bucks his donors were willing to pay to get Noguez elected to these relatively low-level political jobs). The only thing we're missing are the names of the property owners who paid the bribes.

America never needed Mexican immigrants to come here to corrupt our institutions, of course. We've done just fine on our own, thank you very much. But, it sure seems like our progressive betters are aiding and abetting a spectacular level of corruption everywhere they take over.

Sotto Voce: The Democrat Convention

I didn't watch more than 5 minutes of the Democrats' convention, plus I'm probably two days late writing about it, but that doesn't mean I can't mutter things under my breath.

There's always been more people at Democrat conventions, at least as long as I can remember. Not that "more delegates = more votes" is a political equation I would count on.

Plus, there's the media in attendance too. All told, there are probably three times more Democrats at a Democrat convention than there are Republicans at the GOP's. Really helps make our side look like the beleagered last stand at the Alamo.

Michelle Obama got rave reviews for her speech "humanizing" Obama. Someone must have given an earlier speech humanizing her.

I mean, she can talk all she wants about "public service" and "helping the less fortunate," but do you ever get the idea she spent much time at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter before she became famous?

Plus, she's always demeaning her husband saying stuff like how, at dinner, he's the last person who gets to talk about his day, and his story is often the least important. Haw Haw. Honestly, if it turns out he has a little honey on the side, most of us wouldn't blame him.

Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but I don't think she's ever spent much time publicly trashing her husband. Privately, I'm sure it's a different story.

In a normally functioning politcal system, Jennifer Granholm's name would be mud. She presided over a real economic depression in her state, including the near-death of its signature industry and the actual death of its largest city. But, there she was in prime time, bellowing like a pinkie-ringed precinct captain about saving "1 million jobs."

That number about how the auto bailouts "saved 1 million jobs" was so ludicrous (it included every conceivable downstream job, including Sander Levin's) only a party secure in its never being fact-checked could put it forth. As even Michael Moore noted, Obama fired plenty of people, not just Rick Waggoner.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan has to deal with "fact checkers" getting out the green eyeshades over the fate of the Janesville GM plant and its idled workers. No downstream job numbers allowed there, of course.

And, don't you just want to bet that the "1 million jobs saved" metric included the Janesville folks?

Sandra Fluke's make-over came out pretty well. She may need those free birth control pills after all.

The right-wing equivalent to Sandra Fluke is probably Carrie Prejean. Another instructive example of how Republican heroes are denigrated while Democrats are elevated.

Media bias isn't just about tearing down Republicans. It also protects Democrats, and don't think they don't know this and revel in it. Bill Clinton can make these rambling hour-plus long speeches filled with half-truths and inaccuracies, secure in the knowledge that the pundit class will react as if he's the Hillbilly Demothenes.

Still, if there's one thing the convention made clear, it's that Bill Clinton is a much more able politician, not to mention president, than Barack Obama.

Lots of talk about Voter-ID and not wanting to "go back to the old ways," as if John Lewis got his head bashed over not having a freaking drivers license.

Is there ever going to come a time when conservative media folks start asking civil rights figures like Lewis why it is they joined the Democrat Party when it was Democrats who were defending segregation? (and before that the "peculiar institution?") Maybe Lewis got beat upside the head, but our side has people who got shot upside the head freeing Lewis's grandparents.

They had Obama's speech on all the TV's at the gym, of course. I looked up at one at the moment the close-captioning said "we have doubled the number of jobs in the renewable energy sector." (Yayyyyy!) I know he's a partisan and all, but how can he say that with a straight face?

Same with a crap about Romney's tax returns and how he "only" pays 13-15%. Obama and every other liberal knows that Romney probably pays more, in sheer dollars, than the average joe, even at the reduced Evil Rich Guy Rate. They also know that, at some point in the past, Romney paid the much higher corporate rate on the $$ he earned and then invested and is now living off of. Of course, they're not trying to appeal to peoples' rational side, but to their irrational (read: dumb) side.

The GOP may be the stupid party, but what should a party be called when its rhetoric is designed by Ivy Leaguers to appeal to stupid people?

I keep waiting for all those average Joes bellyaching about Romney's low rate to finally start to wonder, hey, why should we be taxed on our incomes in the first place? Been waiting a long time for that one.

And, did the people complaining about Mitt Romney's jet-ski (stop flaunting your wealth, sinner!) ever raise a peep over Ted Kennedy's yacht? I know which of the two the average American is likely to have in his garage.

If I were a real libertarian, I would have watched the Dems and been overcome with despair at the prospect of ever seeing my ideal society in my lifetime. As the Dems are happy to make clear, there are untold millions of people out there who are happy to look to the gov't as the solution for every problem you can imagine.

"If someone can't do the job, we gotta let 'im go"

Privileged: Pete Starks Kids Draw Social Security Benefits

I've really been neglecting to follow the faltering re-election campaign of 40-year Congressman, Pete Stark, who has been facing the first stiff opposition he has seen since the dawn of the Ford Administration. The latest trouble? A controversy over his minor children, whose dad is a multi-millionaire and Congressman, receiving Social Security benefits:

The campaign of Rep. Pete Stark, the East Bay Democrat in a contested re-election race against fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell of Dublin, confirmed to the Chronicle that Stark’s children do receive Social Security benefits as allowed under the law, and that he has stopped paying his dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

Stark campaign consultant Michael Terris wrote in an email that Stark “fought his entire career to protect Social Security from those who would dismantle it. Congressman Stark has been paying into the system for many years. And yes, like all Americans, he and his family intend to collect the benefits to which they are eligible. 

Stark, 80, earned his M.B.A. at UC Berkeley in 1960 and went on to make a fortune early in his career starting a successful bank in Walnut Creek. Stark’s net worth is estimated as high as $27 million and is ranked as the 74th wealthiest member of Congress.

I will stipulate right now that what Stark is doing is perfectly legal. His children are entitled to recieve these benefits and there's no reason why they should reject them, but still...

According to the Social Security Administration, “4.4 million children receive approximately $2.5 billion each month because one or both of their parents are disabled, retired or deceased. Those dollars help to provide the necessities of life for family members and help to make it possible for those children to complete high school. When a parent becomes disabled or dies, Social Security benefits help to stabilize the family’s financial future.” 

Under the rules, children can receive benefits if they are minors and are the biological or adopted children (or stepchildren) of the Social Security recipient, and the parent is retired.

What's funny is the media and Stark's political opponents could have brought this up anytime in the last 15 years, but haven't. It's no great mystery why everyone's piling on now. Stark is too old and addled to continue in his currect occupation. He was thought to be so far gone that he was passed over for the chairmanship of the House Ways And Means Committee, a post that should have gone to him under the House's normally iron-clad seniority rules. The local media, which was always happy to soft-peddle Stark's endlessly ugly personal attacks and dirty politicking, is now publishing every unflattering story it can find. There's no harm since, thanks to California's new "non-partisan" primaries, the Democrat Stark is facing...another Democrat in November. 

It's not often we see what the world would look like if a Democrat were held to the same reporting standards as a Republican. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

It's In My Other Wallet: State Parks Dept. Hides Millions

The California State Parks Director has resigned after an audit found millions in parks department funds sitting in two "secret" bank accounts controlled by God knows who, and used for God knows  what:

California state parks Director Ruth Coleman resigned and her second-in-command was fired Friday after officials discovered the department has been sitting on "hidden assets" totalling nearly $54 million. 

The money accumulated over 12 years in two special funds the department uses to collect revenue and pay for operations: $20.4 million in the Parks and Recreation Fund, and $33.5 million in the Off Highway Vehicle Trust Fund. 

The money accumulated, state officials said, because the parks department had a pattern of underreporting the actual size of the funds in its regular dealings with the state Department of Finance. 

Why and how this occurred remains a mystery and will be the subject of investigations launched Friday by the Department of Finance and the state attorney general's office, said John Laird,secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, which oversees the state Department of Parks and Recreation and who announced the discovery of the funds on Friday.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/21/4646682/hidden-parks-funds-spark-outrage.html#storylink=cpy

Separately, there was another parks department group that was using public money to secretly buy out unused vacation pay from dozens of members of the headquarters staff.

A high-ranking official at the California Department of Parks and Recreation carried out a secret vacation buyout program last year for himself and other headquarters staff, according to an internal audit, former employees and other documents obtained by The Bee. 

The buyouts cost more than $271,000, said Richard Stapler, a spokesman for the California Natural Resources Agency, which oversees the parks department. The money was spent even as the department was planning the unprecedented closure of 70 state parks due to budget cuts. 

The program, in which employees were allowed to sell unused vacation time back to the state, was not approved by the California Department of Human Resources, as required by state law, said Lynelle Jolley, a spokeswoman for the human resources department. Due to the state's precarious budget condition, she said, no vacation buyouts have been approved by the agency since 2007. 

"They definitely did not authorize this," Stapler confirmed.

I love this detail:

To avoid a paper trail, the buyout requests were submitted in some cases only on Post-It notes, not official forms, according to an internal parks department audit obtained by The Bee.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/15/4631669/unauthorized-vacation-buyouts.html#storylink=cpy

For some reason, everyone is acting like the above are related, but they don't seem to be. The secret buy-out program amounted to $270,000, while the secret accounts contained tens of millions of dollars. Really they just reflect a culture of profound indifference to the public - which considers the parks department to be one of the state's worthiest public services - and to the utter waste of public money. 


The parks - along with the schools, the courts, the prisons, and public safety officers - have taken the brunt of Jerry Brown's budget cuts, even as Dems ramp up spending on high speed rail, DREAM Act scholarships, and state employee pensions. The goal, of course, is to make the public cry uncle so they can keep all the stuff they want (i.e. essential public services) while state Dems keep all that they want (high taxes combined with absurd give-aways to their constituents). 


But, hey, keep voting for Democrats if that's what makes you feel smart and sophisticated. 

Cut-Rate: Getting Ready For The End of the Bush Tax Rates

If there's one bit of conventional wisdom I know, it's that the "Bush Tax Cuts" were "for the rich" and "exploded the deficit" on the "backs of the poor." (the phrases in quote marks are intend to demarcate crass left-wing demagoguery from rigid Free Will-ian analysis). So what's up with this article about how the non-rich will see their taxes go up next year when the Bush rates end and the Obama/Clinton rates return?

You might think only individuals in the top two brackets will face higher federal income taxes if the Bush cuts evaporate as scheduled on Jan. 1, 2013. But unless Congress takes action and the president (whoever that is) goes along, rates will go up for everyone. 

Specifically, the existing 10% bracket will go away, and the lowest "new" bracket will be 15%. The existing 25% bracket will be replaced by the new 28% bracket; the existing 28% bracket will be replaced by the new 31% bracket; the existing 33% bracket will be replaced by the 36% bracket; and the existing 35% bracket will be replaced by the 39.6% bracket. 

Right now, the maximum federal rate on long-term capital gains and dividends is 15%. Starting next year, the maximum rate on long-term gains is scheduled to increase to 20% (or 18% on gains from assets acquired after Dec. 31, 2000, and held for over five years). The maximum rate on dividends will skyrocket to 39.6%. 

People in the lowest two rate brackets of 10% and 15% currently pay 0% on long-term gains and dividends. Starting next year, they will pay 10% on long-term gains (or 8% on gains from assets acquired after Dec. 31, 2000, and held for over five years) and 15% and 28%, respectively, on dividends. 

The Bush tax cuts included several provisions to ease the so-called marriage penalty, which can cause a married couple to pay more in taxes than when they were single.
Right now, the bottom two tax brackets for married joint-filing couples are twice as wide as those for singles. This helps keep the marriage penalty from biting lower- and middle-income couples. Starting next year, the joint-filer tax brackets will contract, causing higher tax bills for many couples.

This, of course, is at odds with the Dem/MSM talking points, summarized above. Even calling them the "Bush Tax Cuts" is an attack, suggesting that the Clinton-era rates were somehow "correct" until rascal Bush came and cut them, no doubt shredding the Constitution as he did so. The fact is that the Bush rates made economic sense at the time, and benefited everybody, whether directly or indirectly. 


(as a long aside, I am getting tired of the right-wing talking point that says almost half of working population pays little or no tax, which often gets elided to "50% of the country doesn't pay tax." The implication is that taxes for these untaxed multitudes should go up. This is a winning message? The "almost 50%" certainly do pay taxes, even if their taxes are not income taxes. These folks pay an enormous amount of tax, much of it regressive and without off-set. They pay sales tax. They pay gas tax. They pay those taxes on the phone bill (including that "temporary" tax passed to pay for the Spanish-American War). They pay fees to the DMV, which are high enough in CA to constitute a near-penalty. And, they get socked when they run afoul of the dozens of government ministries whose jobs are less about regulating behavior/enforcing the law, and more about raising revenue. A middle class guy who gets ticketed in San Francisco might be annoyed, but a parking ticket for a poor person can ruin their week. A small laundromat owner might not be paying income tax, but he'll get killed if he's got the wrong kind of pipes. Plus, the lower-income crowd gets hit worse by the hidden tax of inflation. And don't get me started on things like housing, energy, education and health care, which are becoming priced out of reach due to incompetent government policy. The almost-50% are burdened just as much as the over-50%).


Agreed that the Bush Administration did a piss-poor job of defending their tax policies. Everyone thinks "tax cuts for the rich" not "lower tax rates for everybody." As with the Iraq War, the Bush folks were great at implementation, awful at follow through. It didn't help that the Bush-era Treasury Secretaries were, to a man, not up to the task of effectively defending their pro-growth policies. 


Still, you won't find a better example of sheer propaganda and lies becoming the truth. Dems have been yelling tax cuts for the rich since 2001. Even as the Bush rates are set to expire, we will no doubt continue to hear about the (hisssss) "rich" even as ordinary folks are getting creamed, and wondering when they became rich. 

Small Favors: Fortney "Pete" Stark's Re-election In Trouble

I always thought obnoxious East Bay Congressman Fortney "Pete" Stark (Burma is not Myanmar. Saigon is not Ho Chi Minh City. Fortney is not "Pete") was one of those unshakable incumbents who would go out on his shield, but maybe not. He's gotten a strong primary challenge from Eric Swalwell.  More important, the SF Chronicle is really going after him following a disastrous meeting at a meeting of its editorial board. 

California's perfect storm of political change - legislative districts were redrawn by a citizen's commission rather than political parties and a voter-approved new primary system sends the two candidates with the most votes to the November general election, regardless of political party - has made the seemingly invincible Stark appear to be a surprisingly vulnerable candidate. 

"The last time Pete Stark ran for office in a competitive race, they phone-banked with rotary phones," said Paul Mitchell, president of Redistricting Partners, a Sacramento political consulting firm. "He hasn't run a campaign since before 'The Candidate' was a movie," in 1972. 

Stark's old 13th Congressional District, which stretched down the East Bay shoreline from the city of Alameda to Fremont, was one of the state's most-liberal bastions. Now he's in the redrawn 15th District, which includes the more moderate cities of Pleasanton and Dublin, as well as parts of his old district. 

In addition, the state's new primary system makes Stark one of "the most endangered incumbents" in California's congressional delegation, said Larry Gerston, professor of political science at San Jose State University. 

Stark's territory, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 2 to 1, has become the "classic case of what people wanted in the 'top-two' primary," said political analyst Tony Quinn, co-author of the California Target Book, which studies state congressional races. "You have a virtually assured general election race between two Democrats in November."

For all the talk of "greenfail," you might not realize that the notoriously bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra's factory was located in Stark's district. It's as much a Stark scandal, as an Obama one. Here's what Stark had to say:

The 80-year-old Democrat, in a meeting with Chronicle editors and reporters this week, appeared to be confused about Solyndra, the Fremont solar power company whose collapse has fueled Republican criticism of the Obama administration's energy policies this election year. 

"I wish I had enough expense allowance to get one of those new S's that Solyndra's going to make down there - the electric car," Stark said, after being asked about the company. "They run $60,000 to $90,000." 

Solyndra doesn't make electric cars - or anything else. It declared bankruptcy and shut down last year after receiving $535 million in government loan guarantees. The electric car company in Fremont is Tesla Motors, which took over part of the abandoned Nummi plant and will release its next car, the model S, this summer.

Remember that mafia don who used to wander around Greenwich Village spouting nonsense in hopes of being declared too mentally incompetent to stand trial? Just sayin' 


Stark is walking disaster, and not because he's 80 years old. The guy was trouble the minute he walked up the steps of the Capital. In addition to being an enthusiastic spender of other people's money, he's also a repellent human being, insulting and demeaning to anyone who may disagree with him. Liberals love to moan about "incivility" but Stark is unquestionably a black hole of incivility whom Dems have happily returned to office 20(!) times. The guy has something, I guess, (one imagines his most eager supporters are the folks who line their pockets building the Solyndras of the world) but whatever that "something" might be is not obvious those on the outside looking in. 


This is not to say Stark is definitely on his way out. The Chronicle's declining to endorse Barbara Boxer last time around that proved to be little more than a speed-bump. More important, the voters in his district don't strike me as being geniuses. Redrawn boundaries or not, many people have been voting Stark back into office year after year for decades. This is also the same territory that voted the now-notorious Nadia Lockyer into office. And, it's not like Stark's district is paradise. It's mostly seedy with some of the worst traffic in the Bay Area. Integrity, accomplishment and temperament don't seem to count for much around there. 

Nadia Lockyer Train Wreck Keeps A-Rollin'

The SF Chronicle had the headline "Bizarre Twist In Nadia Lockyer Saga," which was a dog whistle to start blogging since her "saga" (it's a sex/meth/DV scandal) has been one bizarre turn after another. Turned out, the latest twist wasn't all that bizarre, given the high bar she has established for herself. Still it probably is worth noting that she is accusing her husband, State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, of feeding her drugs: 

More drama involving Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer - this time concerning an e-mail from her Web address that was sent to the San Jose Mercury News suggesting she was in serious distress and blaming her husband, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, for hooking her on drugs. 

After receiving the e-mail Wednesday, the Mercury News called police in Hayward, where officers and paramedics were promptly dispatched to the Lockyers' home to check on her. 

According to law enforcement and other sources, Nadia Lockyer insisted she was fine and denied sending the e-mail. 

However, she did tell a Mercury News reporter who showed up at her door that she had in fact drafted part of the e-mail - but that "everything in regards to my husband was all added." 

Tom Dresslar, spokesman for Bill Lockyer, called any suggestion that the treasurer had given his wife drugs "100 percent false."

Nadia claims that the email was planted by her bete noir, Steve Chikhai, which makes total sense (snort). Really what we're dealing with here is a woman who has simply lost her faculties. It's incredible that she hasn't resigned, at least to stop the never-ending disclosures of her frankly sleazy double life. It's even more incredible that no one in California's one-party political apparatus hasn't called for her resignation. Instead, everyone's talking about how high-profile addicts can make a come back if they are willing to deal with their problems. I don't think that would be the standard if Lockyer had a (R) after her name.   

Understanding Tax Resistance With William Voegeli

Paragraph of the week comes courtesy of William Voegeli, who writes in defense of the anti=tax absolutism of the GOP:

These critics (of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist) would have you believe that the antitax movement is nothing but belligerent extremism. The truth, however, is that you don’t have to embrace Norquist’s famous ambition—to shrink government until it’s small enough to be drowned in a bathtub—to conclude that opposing tax increases is both smart politics and wise policy. Nor do you have to make the maximalist supply-side assertion that tax cuts always pay for themselves. In rejecting tax hikes, Republicans aren’t trading in fanaticism. Rather, they’re confronting a governing failure—an abiding lack of candor about what our welfare state costs—that voters grasp but Democrats refuse to admit.

Read the whole thing. 


Democrats and their voters have never been intellectual paragons - when your raison d'etre can be summed up literally as buying votes, how can you be? - but that last 10 years have seen a real devolution in their rhetoric. The insults hurled at the likes of George W Bush and Sarah Palin, from all levels of the Democrat-media complex, were much worse than anything said about Ronald Reagan or Clarence Thomas. You never previously saw leading Dem politicians like the president and the minority House leader (and former Speaker) publicly embrace a riotous socialist movement like Occupy. And, you never previously saw Democrat appartchiks insulting Catholic bishops and demanding that they pay for contraception (with the prospect of Catholic Church funded abortions on the horizon). And so on. 


But, you also never saw thousands of people descend upon Capitol Hill on the eve of a vote on a massive expansion of the entitlement state and loudly (but peacefully!) declare their full-throated opposition, as happened on the weekend before the Obamacare vote. 


The Dems' increasingly strident behavior is a reflection not of strength, but of desperation. They may hold power now, and they may have enough votes to remain in power in the future (they certainly do here in CA). But there is no money, and the opposition is getting more organized, and obstinate by the day. 


Democrats may be dumb, but some of them can still do math, and the numbers are not good. 

Hunter & Hunted: CA Dems Seek To Remove Fish & Game Comm'n President

One of the few Republicans in a CA political office is Fish & Game president Dan Richards (no, I'd never heard of him before this week, either). CA lawmakers are now seeking to remove him from office for, get this, shooting a cougar in Idaho. (illegal in CA, but perfectly legal everywhere else) Calls for his resignation started from Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome (insert "he only knows one type of cougar" joke here), but have gotten more serious as Assembly Dems are drafting legislation to remove Richards from office. Dan Waters gets to the nub of the matter: 

So Richards appears to be guilty only of offending the sensibilities of the Legislature, whatever they may be. 

This is the same Legislature that offends the sensibilities of most Californians, according to a recent Field Poll, because lawmakers habitually ignore important issues, carry bills of self-serving trivia, help special interests, and manipulate their schedules to maximize their incomes. 

This is the same Legislature that didn't react when one of its members was caught by police with a prostitute in his car, parked alongside a busy Los Angeles highway, or when another crashed her state-issued car while driving recklessly, injuring two people. 

More recently, this is the same Legislature that didn't respond when a member was nailed for shoplifting, or when another carried a loaded pistol into an airport security checkpoint. 

As for Newsom, a politician who had an affair with his top campaign aide's wife shouldn't moralize.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/29/4298896/dan-walters-california-legislators.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=c

Waters might have mentioned San Francisco sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, presently on trial on a DV charge; and Alameda Supervisor Nadia Lockyer, presently embroiled in a crazy sex & drugs scandal. Also I will point out that most of the above worthies represent districts in the Bay Area, which kind of belies any progressive claims about their supposed sophistication. I mean, how dumb would you have to be to vote for Nadia Lockyer?


This is nothing more than a Democrat-MSM (but I repeat myself) "furor" that is good for just one thing: generating headlines and holding a political rival up for ridicule. Richards is standing his ground, and more power to him. 

Get Back In The Van: Van Jones Takes Star-Making Turn At Democrat Convention

The CA Democrat Party held its convention over the weekend, and you'll never guess who was the star of the con-fab, drawing praise from bigwigs like John Burton and Nancy Pelosi:

Van Jones, the former Obama Administration green czar who resigned in controversy, appears on the fast track to a political comeback — emerging as a star at this weekend’s California Democratic convention and lauded by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a “leader of the future.” 

Jones, who as head of an activist group called “Rebuild the Dream” has become a leading voice of the Occupy movement, was given the star speaking slot to address hundreds at the kickoff Friday night reception here sponsored by state party chair John Burton. 

To the cheers of the grassroots activists, Jones endorsed a “millionaires’ tax” as a means of firing up younger voters in the 2012 election, saying “that will get their attention.”

That's right, baby! Van Jones is back! And he's ready to make up for lost time after the unpleasantness of a couple years ago:

The effusive reception given to Jones underscores that the former community activist appears in resurgence since the days after the Obama Administration green czar was forced to resign after controversial statements and ties with grassroots groups that Republicans claimed had radical roots. 

Jones apologized for some of his actions, including signing a petition for 911Truth.org which appeared to suggest the Bush Administration “may indeed deliberately have allowed 9/11 to happen.” 

The activist himself joked Friday that the stint with the White House represented “the best six months of my life..followed by the worst two weeks.”

Pardon me, but wasn't the problem with Jones the fact that he was an avowed, unapologetic communist? A communist who gave speeches explicitly calling for the overthrow of "The System" in favor of a "new System?" That 9/11 stuff was just icing on the cake, the bridge-too-far even for his leftist protectors in the White House and in the media. But, no matter, he is ready to fight to re-elect Mr. Moderate himself:

Jones repeatedly won cheers when he defined what he said were the issues and challenges faced by Democrats — and President Barack Obama — as the 2012 election approaches. 

“I’m tired of being accused of being anti-American,” said Jones. “”They call it class warfare…if anything, it’s warfare against people who have no class…they won’t even return our phone calls when our houses are underwater.”

But don't call Obama and Pelosi socialists! (or even leftists) That's H8!


Honestly, this stuff is more funny than anything else. Go ahead and try to get on a state-wide ballot somewhere "Van." I have no doubt you could win a congressional seat in Oakland or some other left-wing hellhole, but if we ever get to the point where Van Jones is any kind of future star of the Democrat Party we'll be so far gone it won't be worth getting upset over.