We have a Progressive comedian with a history of scurrilous slurs against conservative women, and we have a conservative radio talk show host making scurrilous slurs against a Progressive woman. Only the conservative is the recipient of opprobrium.
Penny Nance, of Concerned Women for America, suggests that President Obama should insist that the comedian’s $1 million donation to Priorities USA Action, which supports the Obama campaign, should be returned to the comedian.
On the other hand, Bill Burton, Priorities USA Action, while saying the comedian’s comments were “vulgar and inappropriate,” insists that it’s different than the comments from the talk show host.
The notion that there is an equivalence between what a comedian has said during the course of his career, and what the [talk show host] said to sexually degrade a woman who engaged in a political debate of our time is crazy. There’s no similarity about what Rush Limbaugh said, lying about the argument that Miss Fluke was making, a law student at Georgetown, and what a comedian has said in the past.
Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices. The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin … When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?
What’s Holder getting at? On a couple of minor notes, he apparently views benefits as entitlements, rather than things to be earned, at least insofar as “people of color” are concerned. Moreover, he’s simply ignorant of recent history. Affirmative action only developed in the 1970s—some 100+ years after emancipation, segregation, and the development of his party’s Jim Crow laws.
He considers that affirmative action must never end—it’s always to be kept in play. Yet there’s that stigma of affirmative action, whether or not justified: did the individual get the position because he was the best qualified, or because he best filled a political square? This is fair to “people of color,” how, exactly? Or to “people of no color?”
He exposes a breathtaking blindness to the segregation that is affirmative action. Groups always will be segregated—and so always actively barred from joining the mainstream—as long as they’re singled out for special treatment, such as affirmative action inflicts.
This is one of the especially corrosive aspects of such policies.
US District Judge Benson Everett Legg (Maryland District), in a Monday ruling has said that Maryland residents are not required, as a Marayland had had it, to convince authorities that they have a “good and substantial reason” to own a handgun.
Judge Legg wrote, among other things,
…the Court finds that the right to bear arms is not limited to the home. The signposts left by recent Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit case law all point to the conclusion that Woollard‘s ―claim to self-defense—asserted by him as a law-abiding citizen…—does implicate the Second Amendment, albeit subject to lawful limitations.
He went on [emphasis mine]:
A law that burdens the exercise of an enumerated constitutional right by simply making that right more difficult to exercise cannot be considered “reasonably adapted” to a government interest, no matter how substantial that interest may be. Maryland‘s goal of “minimizing the proliferation of handguns among those who do not have a demonstrated need for them,”…is not a permissible method of preventing crime or ensuring public safety; it burdens the right too broadly. Those who drafted and ratified the Second Amendment surely knew that the right they were enshrining carried a risk of misuse, and states have considerable latitude to channel the exercise of the right in ways that will minimize that risk. States may not, however, seek to reduce the danger by means of widespread curtailment of the right itself. “[E]ven the most legitimate goal may not be advanced in a constitutionally impermissible manner.”
At bottom, this case rests on a simple proposition: If the Government wishes to burden a right guaranteed by the Constitution, it may do so provided that it can show a satisfactory justification and a sufficiently adapted method. The showing, however, is always the Government‘s to make. A citizen may not be required to offer a “good and substantial reason” why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right‘s existence is all the reason he needs.
Maryland’s Assistant Attorney General, Matthew Fader, says he’ll appeal, saying “we” disagree, and taking note of the “very important implications of the ruling for public safety.” He’s wrong, though, on two counts: in the first place, the public safety is maximized by hewing to the Constitution, not by deviating from it. In the second place, he apparently wasn’t paying attention to the Legg’s ruling:
States may not, however, seek to reduce the danger [of misuse] by means of widespread curtailment of the right itself.
Here is a sample of the kind of campaign that President Obama is running in his attempt to get reelected.
They’re obsessed
By Jim Messina, Campaign Manager on
In just about 24 hours, Mitt Romney is headed to a hotel ballroom to give a speech sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a front group founded and funded by the Koch brothers.
Those are the same Koch brothers whose business model is to make millions by jacking up prices at the pump, and who bankrolled Tea Party extremism, and committed $200 million to try to destroy President Obama before Election Day.
So in the hours before Romney courts two men obsessed with making Barack Obama a one-term president, let’s see how many of us can chip in to the Two-Term Fund.
Here’s what Mitt Romney told his supporters just after his victory in the Florida GOP primary:
“We must not forget what this election is really about: defeating Barack Obama.”
Pitch in $3 or more over the next 24 hours to show that, while that message may fire up two oil-industry billionaires, it’s also one that plenty of us are tired of hearing.
The Koch Companies’ President of Government and Public Affairs, Philip Ellender, responded to this in a well-publicized manner. I won’t go into that letter; however, a copy of it can be seen here.
What’s interesting, though, is Obama’s response, through Messina, to the Koch Industries letter. I’ll cite relevant parts; the whole letter can be read at the link.
I am writing in response to your letter, in which you portrayed the oil and gas executives you represent as average citizens trying to make their voices heard.
Of course, no such representation was made. They did mention the “tens of thousands of members and contributors from across the country and from all walks of life” with respect to Americans for Prosperity. Of course Obama knows that there are not “tens of thousands” of oil and gas executives all across the country; this is deliberate, Alinsky-esque distortion.
But it is a cynical stretch to describe the political activities of your employers as furthering democracy when they are courting huge checks from special interest donors to pay for negative ads, with no public disclosure of the identity of those donors.
Hmm. Obama claims to know of “huge checks from special interest donors,” but there is “no public disclosure of the identity of these donors.” Which side of Obama’s mouth should we believe, here? Or is Obama confessing to domestic spying on private American citizens?
You argue that Americans for Prosperity is a grassroots organization of everyday citizens. But its emphasis on rolling back environmental protections and blocking a clean energy economy appears to be nothing more than an effort to promote the corporate interests of your employers and others who lavishly, and secretly, fund its operations.
This is another deliberate distortion. AFP doesn’t espouse rolling back environmental protections or blocking clean energy. AFP, along with all thinking Americans, do espouse eliminating excessive EPA regulations that hinder business—of any type—with no discernible gain for the environment. Nor do we Americans seek to block clean energy. We do object to Obama wasting our money on the Solyndras of the nation, and we do object to Obama wasting our money on “green” enterprises whose product cannot survive in an honestly competitive free market without those props.
You note in your letter that Americans for Prosperity has tens of thousands of members and contributors from all walks of life across the country, suggesting that this is the source of AFP’s funding. There is one way to verify your point: disclose those donors for the public to make that judgment.
How very Axelrod of Obama. He doesn’t have to supply any evidence. He just has to accuse, and given the accusation, of course the accused is perforce guilty unless he can prove his innocence.
But, even though I’ve spent some time on this, it’s all just cynical distraction, which is Obama’s intent with his Messina letter. What’s most important here is that at no time does Obama address the issues raised in the Koch Industries letter response to his original ad hominem attack.
If the President’s campaign has some principled disagreement with the arguments we are making publicly about the staggering debt the President and previous administrations have imposed on the country, the regulations that are stifling business growth and innovation, the increasing intrusion of government into nearly every aspect of American life, we would be eager to hear them.
and
It is understandable that the President and his campaign may be “tired of hearing” that many Americans would rather not see the president re-elected. However, the inference is that you would prefer that citizens who disagree with the President and his policies refrain from voicing their own viewpoint. Clearly, that’s not the way a free society should operate.
and
I…hope the President will reflect on how the approach the campaign is using is at odds with our national values and the constitutional right to free speech.
Oh, yeah—Obama did pretend to address the nation’s debt explosion:
That is why the President introduced a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion and put us on a path to solvency.
Obama’s “plan” is two budget proposals so ludicrous that even the Democratic party voted it out of town unanimously, and the second proposal, just last month, doubles down on that bad joke.
But he carefully elided the Progressive regulatory environment and the increasing intrusion of the Progressive government into the lives of ordinary Americans and our businesses.
And on free speech,
When you attempt to drown out their voices through unlimited, secret contributions to pursue a special-interest agenda that conflicts with what’s best for our nation, you must expect some scrutiny of your actions.
Once again, cynically unsubstantiated accusations of secret donations (since you know of them, Mr Obama, provide the data), while continuing the free speech of ad hominem attacks.
Two reasons come to mind for such a campaign. One is the naked intimidation of those with dissenting speech in which Obama is so plainly engaged. He simply will not brook any disagreement with his own hallowed positions, and he attacks, personally and with demonization, all those who do disagree. Is this the sort of President of which we want another four years?
The other reason is that Obama simply is incapable of forming an argument that defends his own position, and so he runs away from the issues at hand and dives for the cover of the ad hominem as a means of changing the subject. He knows his policies have failed utterly, but he lacks the moral rigor to acknowledge that and change course: he is capable only of avoiding the issues and engaging in personal attacks. Is his the sort of President of which we can afford to risk another four years?
Greece, last week, passed its Collective Action Clause legislation in preparation for its upcoming bond swap, wherein bondholders have agreed, in general, to a write down of some 53%: they’ll trade the bonds they hold for new bonds issued by the Greek government that will run out to just over half the value of those original bonds. This was a—more or less—voluntary swap: agree to the deal or risk losing everything as Greece explicitly defaults.
However.
What the CACs do is force all bond holders to make the swap, whether they want to or not, once a minimum per centage of holders make the swap. It’s important to note here that this was done retroactively—years after the bonds had been sold, years after a solemn debt agreement had been committed to by the Greek government (and the bond purchasers, but they’re not the ones making this commitment change). In short, the CACs change the original terms of the debt, and they do so entirely unilaterally, and only after the fact.
There are two problems with this. One, the most important, has to do with integrity and morality. The Greek government, and the Greek citizens collectively, can be derided for their foolishness in running up so large a debt compared to the country’s ability to repay, and many of us have done so. However, to things that are known a priori on any debt sale agreement are that there is a non-zero possibility of default, even on a government debt, and this is priced into the cost of buying a sovereign debt instrument, at however small a premium. The other thing that is known is that the terms of the deal will be honored by all parties to it, come what may. Even were the Greek government, for instance, explicitly to default on its bonds—to go through, for instance, the (inter)national equivalent of an American bankruptcy court proceeding—everything would proceed in accordance with already known rules and conditions.
This unilateral, retroactive change to the terms of these debt agreements, though, destroys that integrity, that morality. An entity that will welch on its commitments as soon as they become inconvenient (albeit a large inconvenience in the present case, but there are more honest alternatives even here) cannot be trusted to honor any future commitments whenever those might become inconvenient.
The other problem is a moral hazard one; although this one has a chance of not materializing. The moral hazard here is not the classical economist’s moral hazard, but a different kind. Consider, for example, a basketball or soccer player who hits the game winner as the clock expires. This player gets credit—gets the positive moral hazard—for hitting the winner. Never mind that this is wholly unjustified: his teammates and he have spent the entire game keeping it so close that a single shot out of the 150 or so in an NBA game or dozen or so on goal in a soccer match, makes the difference. Any shot from the first one taken in the first quarter to the penultimate one taken late in game, any of those, has significance equal to that last one made.
So it is with Greek bond holders in a more negative sense. Suppose the required per centage of bond holders, less one, makes the swap. The swap fails, and the Greeks default. It’s easy to identify the game winning shooter and to lionize him. It’s also easy to identify the bond holders who reject the swap, and I suggest that the last one to make that list will not be lionized. All bond holders are put into this box, also, though.
Under these circumstances, I ask again my question: why would anyone buy this country’s debt in future? An actual “I can’t pay, so I default” would bring about sore hits to Greece’s future borrowing capacity, but such a default would not, of necessity, impugn Greek honesty. They would recover, and in pretty short order. But having destroyed their integrity?
