Daily Archives: 22 June 2012

When the Shoe’s on the Other Foot

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Progressives spent $741 million on their 2008 Presidential campaign, and President Obama announced a goal of $1 billion for his spending on the current campaign.  Candidate John McCain spent all of $228 million on his.

Today the Republicans are competing on even ground—even leading the Progressives in some areas—in campaign funding, while Obama’s $1 billion goal is at risk.

The Progressives’ response?  They’ve petitioned the Federal Election Commission with a formal complaint, demanding that the Republican donors to those SuperPACs that don’t side with the Obama camp be revealed; in particular, they’ve complained out the Crossroads GPS SuperPAC.

Never mind that Crossroads, and the other SuperPACS, is organized under a section of the tax code that allows it, and all SuperPACS—conservative and liberal—to keep its funding sources private.

Robert Bauer, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, wrote in the complaint to the FEC, in all seriousness

There has never been any doubt about its true purpose: to elect candidates of its choice to the presidency and Congress.  Crossroads has tried to shield its donors—wealthy individuals, and corporations who may be pursuing special interest agendas that are not in the national interest.

They make this complaint even though there’s no requirement for donors to SuperPACs to lose their anonymity.  Never mind what the law says.  The law is what Progressives say it is, as Obama has already made clear in another matter.  Never mind what the national interest is.  The national interest is whatever the DNC says it is.

That this is simply a dishonest attempt to stifle campaign donations by the wrong side (in the manner of the KeepingGOPHonest Web site, among others), and so to stifle the political speech of those who are saying things of which the Progressives disapprove.  That there is no legitimacy at all to this beef is demonstrated by the Progressives’ decision to file their “complaint” first with a newspaper (The New York Times) and only after that with the Federal Election Commission.

Oh, yeah—the Progressives have Priorities USA, which is organized under the same tax code section as is Crossroads.  And whose donors are carefully kept secret, as is entirely appropriate under the law.  But Priorities isn’t having the same fund-raising success as Crossroads.

It’s no fair the other side is doing well—we’re supposed to win, dammit!

Food Stamps and Poverty

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John Hinderaker, at Power Line, notes that the Progressives in the Senate have voted down even a modest (some might say trivial) reduction in Federal spending on food stamps—using your tax money.  (Note, by the way, that 100% of the spending on food stamps is by the Feds; no state spends one red cent of state monies on these.)  The offered reductions were in the form of three  amendments, two put forward by Jeff Sessions (R, AL):

  • establish a federal asset test to ensure that food stamps aren’t going to families that may not have an income but have tens of thousands of dollars in savings or may even live in a million-dollar home
  • prevent states from waiving federal eligibility requirements for the program
  • eliminate the bonuses that the federal government now pays to states that deliberately swell the ranks of food stamp recipients.

The spending mandated by the Farm Bill to which these amendments were to be attached is shockingly weighted, as this graph shows: There are a couple of other aspects of this Progressive demand to spend your money on their food stamps.  Forty-six million Americans currently live below the poverty line as a result of President Obama’s failed economic and social welfare policies.  Thirty-nine states have no limits at all on the fiscal well-being of a family in determining that family’s eligibility for food stamps—anyone who applies qualifies—and twenty-eight states have limits that are more than 130% above the Federal Poverty Guideline (which differs in a trivial way from the Federal Poverty Threshold that the Census Bureau uses to determine the number of Americans living in poverty).

Of those 39 states (the full list can be seen in Table 1 of the Congressional Research Service’s “The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Categorical Eligibility“), California, Illinois, and New York alone account for 70.5 million Americans.

Under Federal law, which the Progressives have refused to alter in any meaningful way, vastly more Americans are eligible for food stamps than are actually living in poverty.  Food stamps no longer are a program to help the needy; they’re a program to get and keep Americans dependent on a Progressive-run government for their welfare.  They’re a Progressive Incumbency Welfare program.