President Obama has opened a newfront in his re-election ad hominem campaign. Now, through his chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod, he’s accusing those who disagree with him of being criminals. This is a continuation of the Obama effort to draw attention away from those failed policies behind the curtain, and it demonstrates both his own moral bankruptcy and his inability to defend his policies on their merits or results.
What Obama is saying now, using Axelrod’s mouth:
We’re also going to be prepared, and I want to be clear, to respond to the attacks that we expect to continue from—not just from the Romney campaign but from the Karl [Rove] and Koch brothers contract killers over there in SuperPAC land, who are going to continue to pound away on behalf of Governor Romney[.]
Steven Hayward, at Power Line, wonders whether the Supreme Court could take a mulligan on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case before them. The background for his question is this:
What people forget is that Citizens United was reargued, because the Justice Department also could not give a coherent answer to a killer question, this time from Justice Alito, as to whether the campaign finance laws that prohibited the distribution of Hillary, the Movie wouldn’t also allow the Federal Election Commission to regulate the distribution of books near election day. Then-solicitor general Donald Stewart answered Yes, notwithstanding that pesky little First Amendment thingie.
Alarmed, the Court ordered the case reargued, specifically expanding its scope to ask whether certain previous cases that provided the basis for Stewart’s answer had been erroneously decided and should be overruled. During the second oral argument, a new solicitor general—Elena Kagan—was asked the same killer question, and answered: “No [we can’t regulate books]; the government’s position has changed.”
Stop and dwell on that one phrase for a moment: “The government’s position has changed.” That says about all you need to know about the rule of law in the liberal wonderland of today’s administrative state.
The question in the Court’s present PPACA case that raised Hayward’s concern was Justice Kennedy’s “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”
The question I have, though, concerns the Court’s position on the rule of law vs rule by law. Why did the Court need to wait on the Executive’s instruction to it of the distinction between one form of free speech and another form of the same speech? Surely it knows that there is no distinction, and it can rule on its own initiative. Surely, it could have recognized on its own judgment that a proper ruling in Citizens (i.e., that speech really is a matter of freedom) would require acceptance that it had decided erroneously on earlier cases, and that those opinions would have to be overruled. How many times was Brown argued on the recognition that Plessy would have to be overruled?
Surely the Court knows that when commerce does not exist, there is nothing to regulate, and by extension, government cannot create commerce out of the æther in order to have something to do.
That this Court needs these answers makes me wonder about its own attitude toward rule of law. It got Citizens right, but it shouldn’t have needed additional (and in the event both erroneous and irrelevant) instruction from the Executive in order to do so. It shouldn’t need additional instruction here, either.
The Hill is reporting on a new Progressive campaign, this one ostensibly to protect the freedom of political speech. Unions and other groups, including Common Cause, Health Care for America Now, Public Citizen, and Occupy Wall Street and led by the Service Employees International Union are getting together to prevent, they say, corporate money from swaying the November elections outcomes. As Aaron Black, of Occupy Wall Street, puts it:
If you secretly contribute and scheme to buy our elections, we’re going to come knocking on your door. And it’s not just going to be a couple of us. It’s going to be thousands of us. Everywhere you turn your head.
Does this tactic sound familiar? There’s more. A sitting public official, the Public Advocate for the City of New York (the incumbent is first in line to succeed the city’s Mayor), Bill de Blasio, has joined the movement, and he is careful to remind us of the fate of another corporation that dared speak in the public forum: Target Corporation. Target was hit with a boycott campaign in 2010 for donating to a group that supported a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota. De Blasio also assures us that that protest was only the start.
What happened to Target was child’s play compared to the strength that all of these organizations can bring to bear against companies that decide they’re going against the people’s will and involve themselves unduly in the political process.
Now it’s the government’s definition of “undue” involvement.
The Executive Director of Health Care for America Now, Ethan Rome, insists that they’re only targeting corporations because
There’s a world of difference between corporations and unions. We’re here because corporations don’t have to disclose their donations, to (c)4s and (c)6s, for example. Unions have to disclose all of their activity[.]
This misses, though, the fact that unions are corporations, also, and it misses the fact that union donations “to (c)4s and (c)6s, for example,” are treated the same as any corporation’s donations to these entities, and it misses the fact that there’s nothing stopping unions from setting up their own SuperPACs.
The President of Public Citizen, Robert Weissmann, claims
If you donate to a Republican-leaning, independent organization, trade association, we’re coming after you. You donate to a Democratic-leaning one, same deal.
Notice two things: one group donates more to Republican causes than to Democratic ones, and 13 of the 20 groups are unions. Weissman insists that, “You donate to a Democratic-leaning one, same deal.” Can we really can expect a coalition led by the SEIU—the same SEIU of Montgomery County, MD, infamy—to do anything about its fellow dozen unions that donate to Democratic causes? Or do these entities all behave correctly and so are above reproach?
Apparently free speech is free only to select groups. Only some organizations get to play in the November elections.
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?
As corporate money continues its steady flow through the post-Citizens United world of U.S. elections, general counsel may soon have a new disclosure item to worry about. Last Friday, commissioner Luis Aguilar of the Securities and Exchange Commission called for the agency to consider a new rule requiring public companies to disclose all political spending. Shareholder proxy proposals seeking disclosure of corporate political donations are at a new high this year, according to the National Association of Corporate Directors. Aguilar says shareholder pressure is working, because nearly 60 percent of the S&P 100 companies had political disclosure policies in place as of December 31, compared with only a handful seven years earlier.
Never mind that, if shareholder pressure is working, a Government rule controlling free speech in this arena is plainly unwarranted. This is just another cynical Progressive administration attempt to regulate free speech.
