Tag Archives: ethics

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!

Illegal Aliens and Amnesty

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Late last week, President Obama signed an Executive Order wherein he announced his decision to shirk his Constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”  This also violates his personal promise to do so—not a campaign promise, but his oath of office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

His EO does this: it protects from immigration law enforcement those illegal immigrants who came to the US before they were 16, are younger than 30, have committed no major criminal offenses, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, and have a US high school diploma or a GED or served in the US military.

This seems like a good idea, and it even has elements of Congressman Luis Gutierrez’ (D, IL) and Senator Marco Rubio’s (R, FL) plans for handling the children of illegal aliens.

However.

John Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Bush the Younger administration, had this to say about the Obama Amnesty Program:

President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law.  He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served.  There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

Under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, the president has the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”  This provision was included to make sure that the president could not simply choose, as the British King had, to cancel legislation simply because he disagreed with it.  President Obama cannot refuse to carry out a congressional statute simply because he thinks it advances the wrong policy.  To do so violates the very core of his constitutional duties.

As  Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales notes, the move is both “political” and “well short of what we need as a country.”  He told Fox News in a recent interview,

Substantively…it fails to deal with securing the border, visa over-stayers, enforcing tougher work place enforcement, and the millions of adults that came into the country illegally as adults.

Procedurally…it’s bad timing because it’s being done during what [Gonzales] calls “political silly season.”

“Rightly or wrongly, it is viewed as political, given the fact that we’re in an election season, and this is something that he could have done, certainly, well before now,” he said.

It is political, though; it doesn’t only look like one.  It’s naked vote pandering.  This “fix” is only temporary, as Obama himself admits; one President’s EO can be rescinded by another.  Moreover, what is it that Obama is saying to Americans and to those who come here from other countries?  He’s saying, as Gonzales emphasizes, that laws are what Obama says they are:

…by selectively failing to enforce the law faithfully he’s not doing his job making sure all laws are faithfully executed.

There’s that violation of a promise thing, again.  And

…there are things that should be done in conjunction to reassure everyone that not only are we a compassionate nation in taking care of these kids, but we’re a nation of laws, and that we enforce our laws.

Gonzalez is being polite, though.  Obama’s vote pandering by giving amnesty to some illegal aliens does nothing actually to address wither of the nation’s problems in this context: our immigration difficulties or our problem of what to do with the existing population of illegal aliens.

No effort has been made at all by Obama to address that overall problem of immigration into America: securing our borders (although, he is actively suing states to prevent them from doing so within the framework of existing Federal law); making it easier for foreigners to enter our country legally, and to stay here longer (e.g., once they’ve graduated from college, they have to leave; when the time limit on any other entry permit has expired, they must leave; when their work visas have expired, they must leave; etc.  In the meantime, it takes weeks to months to get a green card or to convert an existing visa to one, and other visas are shamefully quota-ed); or to deal with the existing population of illegal aliens—a problem for which Congressman Gutierrez and Senator Rubio, as I mentioned above, have good beginning ideas.

Nor does this address the millions of Americans—citizens all—who are out of work today, or are badly underemployed.  This Obama Amnesty Program adds an additional roughly 800,000 individuals to that pile (they are “required” by his Amnesty Program to apply for work permits, which are good for two years; although, in truth, there seems to be no requirement actually to apply for work with those permits)—where will they fit in the millions-long queue?  If they go to the end of the line, what good will the work permit do them beyond allowing the fiction of their remaining in the US “legally?”  Will the work permit then make them eligible for 99 weeks (nearly those two years) of unemployment insurance (or the reduced duration, should the Democrats actually allow the current 99 weeks to expire without extension)?  On the nickels of the states forced to harbor these people?

And there’s more.  Whose definition of “significant misdemeanor” will apply, and what is an example of such a thing?  The illegal aliens already have committed one significant illegal action: they’re in the country illegally.

In the context of this post, that they were brought here without the capacity to decide for themselves whether they wanted to commit this offense certainly might be cause for mitigation.  But we can’t forget that, having reached their age of majority, they certainly did have the capacity to decide for themselves whether they wanted to continue the (now their own) offense.  However, we also cannot forget the power of family ties, the developed community ties, their childhood histories, and so on.  Plainly, for the children and young adults in this situation, a solution will not be easy.  But that puts a premium on solving the illegal alien problem as a whole, and not just layering on epicycles of special case treatments whose aggregation will doom the whole orrery to catastrophic failure.

Finally, as Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC) said,

I think it’s pretty clear there are 10 million illegal immigrants not affected by this.  What about them?  I don’t think it’s a brilliant move for a president of the United States to tell a federal agency to stop enforcing a law.

And as Governor Mitt Romney pointed out, in an echo of Gonzales,

If he felt serious about this he should have taken action when he had a Democrat House and Senate, but he didn’t.

In the end, though, I don’t think Americans of Hispanic heritage are as stupid as Obama thinks they are.

Ballot Box Stuffing the Chicago Way

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From the city so democratic even the dead get to vote to the nation so democratic even illegals get to vote.  This is the goal of the Progressive administration, led by that Chicago community organizer.  Ballot box stuffing is so critical to this administration that it’s even suing states for trying to protect the sanctity of an American’s vote by eliminating the ineligible from the roles so that a citizen’s vote is not diminished or canceled by vote fraud.

Progressives even go so far as to argue, with a straight face, that there is no voter fraud, it’s a phantom problem.  We didn’t hear that, though, about the Florida Presidential election outcome a while back.  We saw the power of it in a Minnesota US Senate race in 2008, and in a recent Washington Governor election, where the recounts were repeated until the right candidate won.  And in some jurisdictions, it’s simply a way of life.

And so, we have the Obama jurisdiction suing Florida for trying to remove Mickey Mouse from the voter rolls.  Certainly, in a massive effort like Florida’s we get the occasional outlier case like the war vet whose citizenship was questioned in that same Florida drive.  However, this just demonstrates the cynical hypocrisy of Obama’s administration: the Department of Homeland Security refuses to let Florida officials bounce their list off the DHS databases—the most current we have—as another check of who is a citizen and who is not eligible to vote.

Permitting ballot box stuffing by allowing anyone to vote—even white guys claiming to be Eric Holder—is the broadened Chicago Way to preserve Progressive incumbency.

Whither Responsibility?

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The financial crisis threatening the Spanish government deepened Thursday as its borrowing costs hit a new euro-era high, touching levels that previously forced other euro-zone countries to seek sovereign debt bailouts.

So writes Jonathan House in a recent Wall Street Journal article.  Emese Bartha echoed the sentiments in her own WSJ article.

The Italian government’s borrowing costs soared at a bond auction Thursday, a development that will make it more difficult for Prime Minister Mario Monti to avoid having to seek financial help from other euro-zone members.

And just what are these nose-bleed borrowing costs that send whole nations scurrying for OPM?  They’re in the range of 6.0%-7.5% interest rates.  The Spanish 10-year bond, for instance, now runs for 6.96%, “a new euro-era record,” while the Italian 10-year bond goes for 6.23%.

What were the interest rates in another one-among-twenty or so nations (which august club includes these nations of the EU), the US at  the end of the Carter/beginning of the Reagan era?  In 1980, the US 10-year bond rate peaked at 12.84%; in 1981, it got as high as 15.32%.  Our 10-year bond rates had been above 6.96% since early 1974, and they didn’t fall below that level again until mid-1992.

Who bailed us out when we had such trouble?  We did.  We handled our own problems.

But there was a sense of responsibility in those days.  Today, it’s all OPM, and that’s a bottomless piggy bank from which every nation should be able to draw.

How is this Possible?

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In an apparent attempt to obviate the need to move forward with a Congressional contempt citation of the Attorney General of the United States, that AG, Eric Holder, last Thursday sent a letter to the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Congressman Darrell Issa (R, CA).  In this letter, Holder offers to provide to the Committee many of the “Fast and Furious” documents subpoenaed and heretofore withheld by Holder, and Holder offered personally to brief Issa in the subject.

This is a good start, but there’s more to this story.  Here’s an amazing paragraph from that letter [emphasis added].

The record in this matter reflects that until allegations about the inappropriate tactics used in Fast and Furious were made public, Department leadership was unaware of those tactics.  Indeed, as the documents we provided to the Committee relating to the drafting of the February 4 letter reflect, Department leaders were assured by the heads of Department components in the best position to know the true facts that the allegations being made were “categorically false.”  However, over a period of months in 2011, as documents to be provided to the Committee were collected and reviewed, and as witness testimony before the Committee was evaluated, Department leadership learned more and began to assess the facts of this matter independently.  The Department’s understanding of the facts underlying Fast and Furious became more developed, particularly as evidence came to light that was inconsistent with the initial denials provided to Department personnel.  Over time, Department leadership came to recognize that Fast and Furious was fundamentally flawed, as I noted in my October 7, 2011 letter to you and other members of Congress….

This fast and Furious operation was conducted under the auspices of the DoJ.  These data, concerning the misbehavior, were in the DoJ’s hands all along.  “Department leadership” (read: Holder) didn’t know these data?  How is he leading his Department if he can’t even get his own subordinates to talk to him?  How is he leading his Department if, alternatively, he chooses to be ignorant of the data in his subordinates’ hands until outside agencies force him to look at them?

What level of competence produces this quality of performance?

Finally, keep in mind that the House Committee didn’t begin its own investigation until well after Agent Terry’s murder.  Holder could have put this whole matter to rest—indeed he could have avoided all of  this hoo-raw, all of this expenditure of taxpayer money—if only he’d listened to the Clue Bird when it presented him with the murder of a government agent, presented him with a murder victim with weapons his own Department was turning over to drug cartels near the body.

The complete Holder letter can be seen here.