Red State

Growing up in South Georgia I quickly learned that if someone wanted you to know who they voted for in an election they would tell you.  If not, well, you were best to just leave the subject alone.  That’s because voting is a precious personal decision.  When Georgia voters go to cast their ballot in the December 2 runoff, no one will know who they voted for unless they feel compelled to tell someone.  The same should be the case in labor union votes.

True elections are conducted with anonymity for voters.  Secret ballots allow people to freely vote their conscious when selecting those who will create and enforce our laws. It is a right so fundamental to legitimate elections that a group of Democrat Congressmen sent a letter to Mexican labor authorities imploring them to institute secret ballots in labor elections. Yet, this past summer Democrats held a press conference to pledge their support for eliminating secret ballot elections in the United States.

Why would they do something so contradictory? To me the answer is clear; they want to pay back Big Labor for financing their recent elections.

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Promoted from diaries. Have fun. - Moe Lane

Almost every state has a conservative policy organization, and if your state DOESN'T then that is a problem that Moe and the boys need to know about. I highly recommend that all district diaries be updated to include links to the applicable policy organizations in your state. These are the folks that get those tax relief and defense of marriage amendments on your ballots.

The State Policy Network is a web clearinghouse for all of these organizations, and posts useful articles from members. It also has a handy page here that will give you a directory of the organizations operating in your state, along with website, email and phone numbers.

So hop to it! You want to win in 2010 don't you? Then get dialed into these folks!

"Left-wing billionaire financier George Soros is using his financial muscle at a Manhattan fund-raiser tonight to help Al Franken win a recount in Minnesota's Senate election," says today's New York Post, which continues:

Soros - the hedge-fund honcho and sugar daddy of the Democratic Party - will host a soirée for Franken at his Carnegie Hill digs to help cover the candidate's costs to monitor the statewide recount.

The special guest: Al Gore, who knows a thing or two about recounts.

Franken sent an email to supporters on November 14 informing them of Don Soros's approval of his candidacy and asking them to contribute to his election-stealing "fair recount" efforts, which include challenging unmistakably clear votes for Norm Coleman if the voter marked his or her ballot for Democrats in other offices.

Franken currently trails Coleman by 216 votes out of nearly 2.9 million.

A spokesman for Senator Coleman dismissed Don Soros' ability to control the outcome of the recount, saying, "This race will not be decided by New York billionaires or the US Senate. It will be decided by Minnesotans, and we are confident Sen. Coleman will prevail."

"We're screwed," said Franken in reply. "We think all of the ballots will be counted, and we think we'll prevail."

Did you ever hear the one about the inadvisability of shooting at kings, and missing?

Yeah, well, that applies to Senate Minority Leaders, too.

In the hours and days following his re-election win, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fielded dozens of congratulatory calls and reached out to Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as President-elect Barack Obama.

But despite a previously solid working and personal relationship with his Democratic counterpart, McConnell chose to ignore both the election night call and a subsequent follow-up call from Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), whose party had dumped more than $6 million into Kentucky in an ultimately futile push to knock off the Republican leader.

In fact, according to Democrats and Republicans familiar with the situation, while McConnell and Obama spoke on the Thursday following the election, it took McConnell some nine days to ultimately respond to Reid's overtures.

You know, it's interesting: objectively speaking, neither Speaker Pelosi nor Senate Majority Leader Reid have actually done all that much in the last two years to thwart the GOP. And yet my opinion of Pelosi has somewhat improved, while mine of Reid's has sunk through the floor. It must be because the former at least knows how not to let her opponents get away with slapping her down at every opportunity.

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I'd like to take this opportunity to heartily encourage you to come on down to Macon, GA to campaign for Saxby Chambliss. He needs all the help he can get — we can't have 60 Democrats in the Senate.

I'm happy to buy you cup of coffee and show you around the office. There are lots of venues. I guarantee you'd turn out a huge crowd. In fact, McCain signs only went up around here after your name got added.

Okay, so it's somewhat self-serving. Still. I just gave Saxby 500 bucks. Now he needs to win. You can put him ahead. So come on down.

We’re told that the winds of political change have come to Washington. President-elect Obama has promised to govern from the center, to be the President of the whole nation. I certainly hope that is the case. But his record as a Senator hasn’t suggested moderation. And with large majorities in both the House and Senate, it is difficult to believe that Democrats will be able to restrain themselves from pursuing a liberal, tax-and-spend agenda that will harm Americans all across the nation.

The potential for a sharp left turn is especially great on issues that go through the House Ways and Means Committee. President-elect Obama appears to be sticking with his promise to raise taxes, a move that threatens to exacerbate our current economic crisis. He has promised to “fix NAFTA” and, echoing the position of Speaker Pelosi, continues to oppose a fair trade agreement with Colombia. Higher taxes and anti-trade policies failed miserably during the Great Depression, and they shouldn’t be tried again—on any scale—during this crisis. Meanwhile, while avoiding reforming our unsustainable entitlement programs, the Democratic majority will likely push for a trillion-dollar, government-run health insurance program, which would inevitably lead to higher taxes on small businesses and workers, and longer delays for medical care. Ways and Means will clearly be the major battleground for our fiscal future.

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I'm one of those who refuses to proclaim Sarah Palin as "the next Reagan." To do so would be to open myself to all sorts of attacks from Reagan admirers and detractors alike, but that's not why I refrain from equating the two. I truly believe that Ronald Reagan was a rare and unique leader, a giant of the conservative movement who pushed it ahead as much as did Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley. I do admire and support Gov. Palin, and I think she has her own brand of uniqueness. Rather than cast her as "another" Reagan, I see Palin as one of Reagan's disciples, as is Fred Thompson. Sarah and Fred both preach the Gipper gospel of fiscal restraint, national security, smaller government and traditional values.

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I've a few thoughts before I see my Oncologist this afternoon.

Identity-confused New York Times columnist David Brooks once played an oncologist, as reprinted triumphantly in the Huffington Post:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning.

Brooks was "dazzled" by Obama's "intellect" and "powers of social perception." Brooks marveled at Joe Biden's "great virtue," excusing his gaffes with a double negative: "He can't not say what he thinks."

Brooks calls himself a conservative. Brooks calls himself a "reformer," defining the term thusly:

The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.

That is not conservatism, by any bending of the imagination. Thinkers and intellectuals, of which Dave Brooks fancies himself one, have the capacity to construct in their minds interlinking thoughts which can offer proof of the fanciful, but the crystalline thoughts often shatter when confronted with the single tone of A is A reality. And such as what "conservative" Brooks ponders "reforming" the Republican Party could be is not conservatism.

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We all know about ACORN right? The group masterfully steals elections by overwhelming the system with fraudulent voter registration applications that translate directly into voter fraud. They stampede election centers causing chaos so votes can be cast while people are distracted. They vote for the dead and claim racism when they are challenged.

Well now we know how an unpopular jackass like Al Franken has been able to get so close to Norm Coleman in Minnesota. He used ACORN for help. This no doubt explains precisely why Franken is so insistent that straight Democrat ballots that had no mark next to Franken must actually be Franken votes, but somehow a ballot that clearly had a mark for Coleman must be challenged. (So much for counting all the votes, eh Al?)

One of Franken's lawyers couldn't keep his mouth shut.

Even the observers and lawyers have been instructed by their respective campaigns to not talk to the media. But Minneapolis lawyer Bill Starr, who is volunteering for the Franken campaign, was willing to say a few words. He said he thinks Franken will prevail. His hunch is based on a theory he has.

"People who voted for Coleman are more likely to have taken the SAT in their lifetime," he said. "They've filled in circles. Franken voters are probably not college-educated. They're new voters and immigrants. They've been brought in by groups like ACORN, from the inner cities. They're more likely to make mistakes. I've bounced this off of minority people, and they agree with me."

Now we know.

President-elect Barack Obama's advisers have indicated that his administration will impose startling and unprecedented regulations on the economy.

The Obama administration would act quickly to implement the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed controls on carbon dioxide, which amount to a massive new energy tax. Why do they want to move so quickly? They say their rules are in response to the dangers posed by global warming.

But the truth is that these rules would hurt Americans by driving up gas prices, food prices, transportation costs, and the price of manufactured goods. This greatly outweighs the negligible benefits the regulations might provide the environment.

This intrusive regulation will cost the American economy nearly $7 trillion dollars in lost GDP in just 20 years, and result in massive job losses. Heritage's respected Center for Data Analysis estimates non-farm employment losses will exceed 800,000 in some years, and manufacturing jobs will plummet. Some industries would lose over half of their jobs. (Some liberals claim that environmental legislation such as this could add "green" jobs, but these new jobs would be offset by larger losses elsewhere.)

Government permits would be needed to expand small businesses and build homes, hospitals and schools. To add insult to injury, foreign competitors will not have to abide by these regulations, leaving American businesses at a disadvantage.

In times of economic uncertainty, the last thing American workers, consumers, and families need is more tedious regulation and costly obstacles engineered to limit and tax American economic growth.

That's why I'm asking for your help. Visit StopEPA.com today to tell the bureaucrats at the EPA what you think about these disastrous regulations.

The EPA's deadline for comments is just eight days away on Nov. 28. Your voice for economic freedom will make a real difference in this fight.

There are words you don’t ever want to use in polite company, and deflation is one of them. Unfortunately, it’s a serious possibility that we now need to consider.

Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the overall level of consumer prices declined by about 1% in October. The so-called “core inflation rate” declined by 0.1%, the first such decline in more than twenty-five years.

(The core rate subtracts out food and energy prices, and is seen as a more stable and relevant price index for policy purposes.)

The biggest declines in October came in prices for apparel, transportation, and energy. But even in the sectors which showed price increases (such as health care and food), the gains were considerably lower than in preceding months.

One month of data does not a trend make, so why am I raising the flag about this? And besides, isn’t it a good thing that we’re all paying less for gasoline?

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You tell us what it means, then.

Open thread.

I wrote a brief little something about the appointment of former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle as the next Health and Human Services Secretary. But I really wish that prior to writing what I wrote, I had the chance to read this article first. Evidently, Daschle comes replete with conflicts thanks to past lobbying efforts and puts the incoming Administration--with its jeremiads against the lobbying culture fresh in the minds of voters--in an awkward spot. What exactly is going to be the use of having an HHS Secretary whose past work in the health care industry is going to cause him to recuse himself from addressing a whole host of important health care related issues?

Oh, and Tom Daschle is yet another un-fresh face with close associations with the Clintons. I keep waiting for Change I Can Believe In to kick in at some point, but thus far, that hope appears to be forlorn.

Let's turn the microphone over to Amity Shlaes, who discusses Obamaian plans for an economic stimulus by bringing up the inconvenient facts about the stimulus plan passed earlier this year:

The limits start showing up with the tiniest of stimuli, those government checks Americans received in the mail last spring. The idea was that having the cash would cheer up consumers so that they would start shopping again, helping retailers. That in turn would revive wholesalers, shippers, suppliers -- on up the production line.

But that stimulus failed, as the University of Michigan's Joel Slemrod and Matthew Shapiro noted. Interviews with consumers showed that only a fifth said they would spend their cash.

Savings rates tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis seemed to confirm that, with personal savings rates rising about the time the checks were mailed. Slemrod and Shapiro weren't surprised. They have spent much of their careers documenting failed stimulus plans. Their study of the effects of the 2001 Bush stimulus was so damning you might think that Washington would never repeat it. But Washington did.

One reason consumers don't want to spend is that they don't react instantaneously, as Keynes posited they would. They follow, rather, the theory of an economist oft-presented as the anti-hero of the moment, Milton Friedman. Friedman's permanent- income hypothesis said that consumers consider their entire future, and not just their mood, when they shop. If expectations of lifetime earnings drop, then so will spending. That too tracks reality. Many of us are beginning to wonder if we will ever get back the price we paid for our houses.

Shall I mention again how Shlaes is right?

That Mr. Obama had been sent by history to assuage the insecurities of the middle class with a "New" New Deal was always a tad detached from reality anyway. The reason is those giant legacies of existing New Dealism known as Social Security and Medicare, about which he was careful to say nothing intelligible during the campaign. These programs worked for a while too, but now their expected revenues are (in present value) about $99.2 trillion short of the expected outlays required to assure present and future workers their promised comfort in retirement.

Then again, Mr. Obama did say something in his campaign about tax rebates for all these payroll taxpayers. He also said something about government matching contributions to incentivize today's low- and middle-income workers to save for their own retirement.

Voilà, personal accounts funded by payroll-tax givebacks -- strangely similar to the solution our current president promoted to help workers escape the impending insolvency of the government retirement programs. Mr. Obama envisioned himself extending FDR's work. He may end up finishing George Bush's.

--Holman Jenkins.