Tag Archives: political parties

Free Speech, Progressive Style—Renewed

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The Wall Street Journal has the sordid tale.  A week and a half ago, Third Way Founder, Trustee, and Andrew Cuomo ex-aide Jon Cowan and Third Way Founder and Chuck Schumer ex-aide Jim Kessler wrote an opinion piece.  The Third Way is a think tank that thinks from the Left.

Maybe you remember the op-ed: Cowan and Kessler used it to suggest that Americans aren’t quite as liberal some might think based on New York City’s strong election of someone like Bill de Blasio as mayor, that Social Security is nearly bust, and that wealth redistribution actually is pretty unpopular with most of us.

Well.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, et al., demanded among other things, that Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz (D, PA), walk away from Third Way.  She’s a Third Way Honorary Co-Chair (along with other Progressive luminaries like Congressman James Clyburn (D, SC), Senator Chris Coons (D, DE), and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius), and she also wants to be governor of Pennsylvania.  Responding to her instructions, she denounced the op-ed, in the WSJ‘s words, “faster than you can say Reeducation Camp.”  (Although she’s still listed by Third Way as an Honorary Co-Chair.)

Not to be outdone, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) sent letters to six large banks which she regulates from her perch on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and in those letters she demanded those banks disclose all their donations to think tanks.

Don’t talk, PCCC and Warren are saying to these miscreants.  Just read from the script we’ve given you.  When we want your opinions, we’ll give them to you.

Some Thoughts on the Ryan-Murray Budget Deal

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Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips has this one:

This budget compromise is not just bad policy, it is bad politics.  The American people remember hard-won bipartisan spending limits set by the sequester, and are not pleased to see their conservative representatives so easily go back on their word to rein in government over-spending.

The deal does, after all, increase spending to a skosh over $1 trillion (just about halfway to the Democrats’ spending call of $1.058 trillion from the current spending of $0.967 trillion), while increasing, slightly, defense spending (rather than the more draconian cut the sequester had scheduled for 2014) and increasing, slightly, discretionary spending—all paid for with spending cuts and fees elsewhere, with chump change left over for a net deficit reduction.  Yes, yes, this is a current increase in spending paid for with future cuts and fees.  See below.

American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas has one, too:

The solution is not to walk away from progress and add over $60 billion in spending over the next two years.  We are not impressed by the cost cutting gimmicks and urge members of Congress to tell the budget conference to get back to work[.]

What’s your plan, guys on which the conference committee should “get back to work?”  With what votes, particularly in the Senate, do you claim your alternative (you do have something more intelligent than just “No,” yes?) can pass?

Certainly, there’s much to dislike in this compromise, but it’s good enough for the next year (albeit it covers the next two).  More importantly, blocking it is tactically stupid: it moves the focus in an election year to Republican intransigence, whether that’s a fair perception or not.

I have one, also.  Take the deal, lose the distraction.  Keep the election year focus on the failed Obamacare, on the anti-business Dodd-Frank, on the Democrats’ tax and spend demands, on the Democrats’ blowup of the Senate (picking any two (so long as one is Obamacare) in order to have that focus).  Win elections, then do the budgets that are necessary, repeal Obamacare (you do have a replacement plan ready to proffer, yes?), eliminate the CFPB, and so on with the votes to do so actually present in the House and in the Senate.

Quit being chuckleheads.  Quit being the Party of Stupid.

The Progressive View of the Law

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We’re well familiar with President Barack Obama’s view of the law: it’s just a political guideline, which he’ll enforce—or not—at convenience.  See Obamacare and its Employer Mandate and Cancelled Insurance Policies, for instance.

Here’s another example.  Covered California, California’s state-run ObamaMart, has given out personal contact data—names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses—on tens of thousands of Californians who went to the CC site just to check out coverage possibilities.  None of these browsers had given permission to release these personal data in any way, shape, or form.  Nevertheless, these data were given to insurance brokers, among others, so those brokers could cold call this additional list of sales pitch spam victims.

For what purpose this egregious invasion of privacy?  Covered California Executive Director, Peter Lee, insisted with a straight face that “insurance” buyers needed help making the 23 December deadline for coverage that begins 1 January, and that he knew better how to do that—no need to obey privacy laws in the face of his higher purpose (although Lee insists that no privacy laws were harmed in the making of this move).

Lee did this while also saying

I can imagine some people may be upset[.]

Well, NSS.  But never mind about that.  Lee and his Progressive-controlled State Government employer know better (he is, after all, still on the payroll after this; that state’s government plainly agrees with his move); privacy laws are just guidelines.

As to CC’s claims that no other data were released, one victim of a spam email from one of those brokers wonders “what other details on his application were shared with the agent.”  Indeed.  What else still is being covered up?

So much for rule of law in Progressive administrations.

The Next Democratic Party Government Shutdown

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…is shaping up.  Never mind that a budget deal might actually otherwise be beginning to come together; many in the Democratic Party leadership are perfectly willing to shut down the government if they don’t get their way.  Again.

And in so many words.  House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D, MD) opposes even a continuing resolution to keep government funded if it doesn’t address the existing sequestration cut schedule.  But he won’t offer spending cuts elsewhere to offset them—just increase the damned spending.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has said she’ll oppose any sort of budget deal that doesn’t include an extension to unemployment benefits to pay folks for not working (which also is her tacit admission that President Barack Obama’s economic policies have been a dismal failure these past five years).

The House Democratic Party leadership’s colleagues in the Senate, where any deal can be blown up and the government shut down by the Democrat majority, are being cagily silent.  Here it comes.

Union Leadership Greed in Illinois

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Details of a plan reached last week appear to show [Illinois] state legislative leaders are attempting to solve Illinois’ $100 billion pension crisis in part by changing workers’ retirement age, reducing automatic pension increases, and limiting their collective-bargaining privileges.

Public union leadership disagrees with this, though, and they’re turning on that Democratic Party leadership.  These union leaders consider carefully selected and targeted Democrats to be “persuadable,” and these unionists are going to do some “persuading.”

Never mind that the plan will save roughly $160 billion over 30 years, according to Governor Pat Quinn (D) and the leaders of the Democrat-controlled State Assembly.

Illinois’ public sector union leaders object to their unions paying their fair share.  They have theirs, and to Hell with anyone else, to Hell with the fact that Illinois is bankrupt in every way but the filing.  Pay up, suckers.