Monthly Archives: November 2012

An Immigration Plan

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House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R, VA) said last week that the Republicans were (finally) ready to take up the question of immigration reform.  President Obama has said (again) that he wants immigration reform to come on the heels of answering the fiscal cliff and tax reform deficiencies.

Immigration reform is a subject on which the Republicans, and we conservatives, have been lagging for too long.  If Boehner and Cantor, et al., are serious, it’s also important that the House take the initiative, and quit bleating about the necessity for the President to lead.  The House led on budgeting, spending, Medicare, and so on for the last two years, and it got them overwhelmingly reelected, even though Progressive obstinacy and partisanship in the Senate and the White House ultimately scotched those efforts.

The best way to seize the initiative after all these years of lagging is to come with a complete proposal—not just vague platitudes and half-formed ideas.  The proposal need not, indeed should not be, cast in concrete, but a complete reform package proposal—one that is well thought out and actually addresses all aspects of immigration (not just the tear-jerking, feel-good bits about “the children”)—will do two critical things.  For one thing, it will take us a long way down the path toward finally fixing this problem.  For the other, it will leave the Democrats either to work with the Republicans to adjust the Republican reform plan or to put forward their own and make them look as though they’re just blowing off another Republican idea for no better reason than that it’s Republican.

I’ve offered one such proposal.  It’s a three-legged stool, and like a stool, all three legs must be implemented together, not one or two at a time.  Those three legs are securing, tightly, our borders; making it easy to cross those borders legally, and finally dealing with the existing population of illegal aliens.  Both Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) and Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) have good ideas that can serve as seeds for that third leg.

Certainly, any one of those legs will take courage and initiative to get done; doing all three together will require even more courage and initiative.  It’s time for conservatives and for Republicans to step up and show that courage and initiative.

Good News

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There really is some coming out of the election last Tuesday.

Reelecting President Obama notwithstanding, voters validated central conservative tenets:

  • Exit polls demonstrate that by a 51%-43% margin, Americans believe that today’s government already does too much that more properly belongs to the private sector.
  • By a 63%-33% spread, Americans said not to raise taxes as a means of cutting the Federal budget deficit.
  • Concerning the economy, the national debt, and the budget deficit generally, the voters preferred the Republican over the Democrat.
  • Voters also reelected an overwhelmingly conservative and Republican House, thereby explicitly and materially validating the House’s expression of those conservative tenets over the last two years.

There’s more.

In California, Democrats won voter approval to raise the top income tax rate to 13.3%.  More importantly, they also won a legislative supermajority.  California has in its state constitution an amendment requiring a two-thirds majority of both houses of the state’s government in order to raise taxes.  The Democrats have won that two-thirds majority in both houses.

Now we’ll have an object lesson, fresh in our minds at the time of the 2016 elections, about the outcome of Progressive policies implemented wholesale.  California will be that demonstration.  Watch carefully.

Conservatives and Communication

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…or how we lost a Presidential election.  Note that carefully: we lost the Presidential election, we did not lose the election—we retained a vast majority in the House, we lost only trivially in the Senate, we gained three governorships to reach an historic high in the State Houses, and we held in the state legislatures.

The exit polls show that the voting population fundamentally agrees with conservative principles: Americans believe, by a 51%-43% margin, that today’s government already does too much that more properly belongs to the private sector.  By a 63%-33% spread, Americans said not to raise taxes as a means of cutting the Federal budget deficit.  Concerning the economy, the national debt, and the budget deficit, generally, the voters preferred the Republican over the Democrat.

Yet despite this, there is much bodice-rending, much breast beating, much wailing and wringing of hands over the Presidential contest defeat and a large argument that we conservatives must alter our message, must change our fundamental principles, in order to win another election.

I demur from this, not only because it’s defeatist, but because it’s wrong.

We conservatives, and the Republicans among us, have historically had a communications problem, and last week we lost a Presidential election that should have been a slam dunk.  We didn’t talk to all Americans about our values and principles, and we didn’t take our message of how those principles, implemented by us in this term, would help all Americans as individuals.  Instead, we just talked to one group of American citizens and fundamentally ignored the rest.

We made a speech to an NAACP convention and ignored Blacks otherwise—nationwide.  We made a few Spanish-language speeches in Florida and ignored Hispanics otherwise—nationwide.  We…ignored Asians nationwide.  We need to go back to being an inclusive political entity and not just talking about it.  We need to take our message into the neighborhoods where Blacks, Hispanics, Asians live and speak to them as fellow adult Americans—and especially not as Black-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans.

We need, also, to be specific about solutions, and how they’ll help the individual to whom you’re speaking, his neighborhood, and the nation—in that order.  The “I have a plan” refrain is not only too Nixonesque, it’s too plainly empty.  Say the plan, don’t just claim its existence.  When the Progressives criticize it, and they will, ask what their plan is, and then point out they’re criticizing ours because they don’t have one of their own about which to talk.

Immigration reform?  Here’s one plan: secure our borders, make it easy to enter/stay legally and for as long as the immigrants—and visitors—want, deal with the population of illegal immigrants already present.  Ask what the other side has actually done about reform, besides talk.  Remind all, not just Hispanics, of the emptiness of Progressives’ words, made manifest by President Obama’s promise to Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) to work to reform immigration in return for the latter’s vote for Obamacare—and Obama’s subsequent complete lack of action for the next three years.

Affirmative action? Make the case that affirmative action is not just wrong morally, but inherently racist—and offer something else that is consistent with our principles and that actually addresses the problem that affirmative action originally was intended to correct: equal opportunity from the start.

Talk to everyone, also, as our fellow adult Americans, not as Blacks, or Hispanics, or Asians.  Immigration reform?  An item of importance to Hispanics, to be sure, but it’s important to everyone else, too.  Equal opportunity?  An item, under the guise of affirmative action, of importance to Blacks, certainly, but it’s important to everyone.  Especially party representatives and leadership need to do this, especially those we choose to represent us as politicians.  But all the rest of us, too, need to do this.

Further, from our listeners’ perspective, we need to explain how our conservative principles, and our solutions built on those principles, help each individual–help me.

Conservative or Progressive, at the individual level, we’re all alike, as both Adam Smith and Karl Marx understood: what’s in it for me.  The difference, though, between a Progressive and a Conservative is this: for the Progressive, it’s “This helps me, and so I think I’m better off.”  For the Conservative, it’s “This helps me, and so I think I’m better off.  And that makes me better able to help my fellows who aren’t as well off.”

From this local, neighborhood contact, we’ll reach all the other demographics into which pollsters like to fractionate Americans.  We’ll talk to the women who live there like the rational adults they are, and we won’t be using the Progressive pick-up line, either: “Hey, Baby.  Wanna see my…contraceptives?”  We’ll reach the married and unmarried, the young and old and ages between, we’ll reach the students and the working men and women and those out of work.

Next, we need to start now, and we need to do these things often; the future is now.  We can’t afford to wait until the next campaign season.  My wife has a motto hanging on the wall where she works out: “Do today what others won’t.  Do tomorrow what others can’t.”  That’s what the Democrats have been doing in communicating their…message…for years.

Speak.  Speak to individuals, speak in their neighborhoods, speak in their townhalls (that you ask them to help organize rather than just calling one together), and speak with—don’t lecture at.  Write.  Write to friends and family.  Blog.  Write letters to the editor, write editorials, and do these not just in the major national papers—as with speaking, go into the neighborhoods, write to the local papers, the Plano Star-Courier, the Commerce News Today, etc.

Don’t be afraid to talk about foreign policy.  Don’t be afraid to talk about social issues.  Don’t be afraid to talk about race.  Some of our principles need to be explained on moral grounds—don’t shy away from that.  Some of our principles can seem complex—don’t shy away from that.  Now, though, is the time to start talking in depth and not in cute 30 second sound bites.  Still, not all in one speech or in a single article, either, but cover them all, and cover them often.

Finally, the Republican Party must weed out the RINOs and it must lose, in Charles Krauthammer’s words, “candidates who talk like morons about rape.”  We’ve spent so much time in our own echo chamber that we’ve lost track of the way in which how we say things sounds to those outside our chamber: Sharron Angle’s “I don’t know that all of you are Latino.  Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”  Richard Mourdock’s “Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”  Getting out and around will let us learn how that sounds to folks who don’t know us.  It will let us adjust our phrasing without adjusting our message.  And it will help the rest of us put aside those who actually believe “like morons about rape” rather than are merely clumsy in their speech.

But above all, don’t alter the conservative message by altering (actually, moving away from) the underlying principles of conservatism.  Remain true to those principles.  Anything else is just pandering, and the dishonesty of that will turn most people away.

This Is Entirely Appropriate

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This is the response of Staten Islanders to Sandy and the nor-easter.

A lifelong Staten Island resident, Gennaro, is recruiting volunteers for the local Brown Cross and the Gateway Rotary Foundation to organize supply posts and dispatches along the island.  So far, they have an estimated 2,000 volunteers, many contractors, who are taking matters into their own hands by fixing homes, draining basements, and clearing debris.

Gennaro adds

We are not leaving our properties for other people to rebuild.  There is nowhere for these people to go.  You have to rebuild quickly.  We got to get back up.

This is private citizens and private enterprise acting first.  Government has a role, but it must come second.

Indeed, the promised Federal and state help has been notably absent from Staten Island—even that second-place role is going unfulfilled.  Without making judgments on the Federal or state agencies, they will always be late to the crisis relief and recovery effort.  Government performance on Staten Island simply emphasizes the necessity, as well as the morality, of local community response first and promptly.  Only those on the scene can act quickly.

These folks could still use lots of help, though.

Gennaro says they are in need of building supplies—not food—and private donations that can go directly to families.  He guarantees 90% will go directly to buying warehouse and building materials.  Things like electrical panels, circuit breakers, sheet rock, roofing, boilers, etc.

You can contribute here:

Welcome to Obamacare

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Here are some handy facts that my insurance company sent me the other day.

  1. Limit on flexible spending account (FSA) contributions.  Today, employers set their own caps on how much employees can contribute to these plans that let them use pretax money to pay for health care expenses.  For 2013, the government will enforce a $2,500 limit per employee.  [Because government Knows Better than you or your employer.]
  2. A new Medicare surtax on investment income.  Until now, Medicare taxes have only applied to earned income. For 2013, taxpayers filing individually with wages and self-employment income above $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples filing jointly) will pay a 3.8% surtax on the lower of:
    • Their net investment income—which includes interest, dividends, capital gains and other amounts.
    • The amount of their modified adjusted gross income that is greater than $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples filing jointly)
  3. An additional Medicare tax on wages and self-employment income for some.  The existing Medicare payroll tax of 2.9% (of which 1.45% is paid by a taxpayer through payroll deductions) will be increased by 0.9% on wages or self-employment income that exceeds $200,000 for single and qualifying head of household and widow(er) filers ($250,000 for married couples filing jointly).
  4. Higher hurdle for deducting medical expenses.  Currently, out-of-pocket medical costs only are deductible to the extent they exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.  For 2013, that hurdle will rise to 10%. But if you’re 65 or older, that threshold remains frozen at 7.5% through 2016.  [Then it rises—with 2013’s 65-year-old then 68.]

And what do we get for our money?

  • Reduced access to medical care for seniors from reduced payments to doctors and hospitals by Medicare.
  • Reduced access to medical care for the rest of us from a shrinking doctor population.
  • Elevated health insurance premiums to pay for the tens of millions of Americans now covered by fiat.
  • Elevated health insurance premiums to pay for those who still don’t buy insurance until they’re already at the ER.
  • Elevated health insurance premiums to pay for pre-existing conditions which companies are required to cover at “no additional cost.”
  • Elevated insurance premiums to pay for coverage for grown adults on their parents’ policies until these adults are 26.
  • An insurance board that will tell your doctor and hospital what illnesses, injuries, and procedures for which they will reimbursed for treating you.

It’s a brave new world.