Category Archives: Lobbyist
Crony In Chief
Ted Cruz has an ad showing Donald Trump bulldozing a widow’s home in order to make room for limousine parking at Trump Plaza. Trump didn’t do that. But he tried. He got the state of New Jersey to use its eminent domain power to go after the house. Trump lost in court but he thinks teaming up with government to seize private property for his own benefit is “wonderful”.
Crony Capitalism.
Kevin Williamson in National Review calls Trump “a lifelong crony capitalist who brags about buying political favors”. He goes on to say Trump supporters believe, “that they can dispatch a crony capitalist to undo crony capitalism in the same way that New Age healers believe that a little bit of diluted poison chases away similar toxins.”
UNCF and Koch Brothers
The hated Koch brothers give out a lot of money to libertarian-conservative causes. They also give a lot of money to hospitals, schools, symphonies, ballets, and the UNCF. Those on the receiving end usually don’t question their motives. They say, “thanks”, and spend the money.
UNCF
Some left leaning organization, however, are all about questioning motives. When the Brothers Koch gave $25 million to the United Negro College Fund, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees demanded they give it back.
Instead, the UNCF said, “thanks” and accepted the gift. The AFSCME then decided a “mind isn’t such a terrible thing to waste” after all, and severed ties with UNCF.
The Hobby Lobby Lobby
Georgetown Law School celebrity, Sandra Fluke wrote a column in the Washington Post claiming that the Hobby Lobby decision is an attack on women because it denies them birth control.
In sum, the anti-choice movement wants to limit not just affordable access, but all access to abortion and birth control, whether it is backed by the government, by employers, or purchased by private citizens. It is an attack at all levels, and today’s decision is just another success in these efforts.
Actually, Hobby Lobby does pay for most birth control but not four types it considers to be a forms of abortion. Still, Hobby Lobby can’t deny those four items to anyone. They’re legal and relatively cheap.
Liberal Fascism author, Jonah Goldberg wrote in a column yesterday, “The notion that denying a subsidy for a product is equivalent to banning that product is one of the odder tenets of contemporary liberalism”. He began that piece observing protesters holding signs that read “Birth Control: Not My Boss’s Business.” Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court seem to agree.
Nation of Laws
The constitution says the president must take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
David Mamet says our president is a tyrant. Our president says he’s a pragmatist. He also says we are a nation of laws and that he doesn’t have the power to issue executive orders ending deportations.
Except that he did issue an executive order limiting deportations after the Senate voted down the Dream Act. And he just overturned parts of his own health care law by unilaterally issuing waivers to cronies, suspending the employer mandate, and telling insurance companies to stop canceling policies that ObamaCare requires them to cancel.
Other than that he’s a helpless pragmatic bunny.
Nation of Laws
Kevin D. Williamson, in National Review, agrees that Obama is a pragmatist – a lawless pragmatist. He says Obama believes in committees of experts rather than the constitution:
Harry Reid has just helped take the brakes off of President Obama’s lawless agenda, for the purpose of installing friendly judges who will look the other way when his agenda is put to the legal test.
President Obama and his admirers choose to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are conflated with those of the president’s administration and his party.
Update:
Professor Johathan Turley says The One We’ve Been Waiting For “has become the very danger the constitution was designed to avoid”.
Pottery Barn Rules for Health Care
Back when George W Bush was putting together his coalition of the willing, to kill people and break stuff in Iraq, Colin Powell warned they were under Pottery Barn rules: you break it you own it.
It appears that Democrats have broken the health care system. They transformed it by cramming through the Affordable Care Act, under special rules, on a Christmas Eve, with a completely partisan vote, featuring Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases. Now the thing doesn’t work.
Pottery Barn Rules
Rich Lowry says that rather than try to help fix it, Republicans should let them own it.
