What if there were a job that paid decent, was almost impossible to get fired from, required no tangible performance targets, and had contractually guaranteed raises? Would you still complain about how much you make? Would you be willing to put in a few extra hours when you’re failing at your job? The teachers unions wouldn’t. John Stossel recently wrote:

“Gallo also asked teachers to do a few things for no additional pay, like spending an extra 25 minutes in school. I’d think dedicated teachers in struggling schools would be willing to spend a little more time with their students. But these teachers are in a union. Their reaction?

Union officials said they wanted to be paid for more of the duties and wanted to receive a higher pay rate –– $90 per hour.”

That kind of attitude is irritating but it isn’t limited to unions. Given the chance to have merit-less raises, most of us would probably welcome the opportunity. What is unique to the unions, is that they may be the only place where you can actually get a raise for poor performance and none of your peers will bat an eye. In Chicago, even Mayor Daley says unions need to get with the “real world” and accept an end to automatic yearly pay increases. The Chicago Sun-Times writes:

“Noting that he is personally taking 29 days off without pay this year to help solve the city’s budget crisis, Daley said, “Government has to diet. … When people are suffering, you can’t live in the abstract. You can’t say, ‘Everything is great. It’s like 20 years ago.’ It’s not gonna be that way. People are suffering. You have to be able to cut back and start sharing the loss that people have.”

Does that include the Chicago Teachers Union’s attempts to hold the Board of Education to a contract that calls for four percent annual pay raises?

“That includes everyone,” Daley said. “I don’t want to take 29 days without pay. But, you have to be able to be able to lead by example.””

Outside of public sector employment wages are down. Those that have jobs are working more hours, doing more jobs to pick up the slack of laid off workers, and they do it for the same pay they received years ago.

Some might complain about the lack of raises in recent times but there hasn’t been much inflation, either. In fact, this year is on track to have the lowest inflation we’ve had since 2003, except for 2009. Just 2.3% inflation is expected in 2010. Four percent pay hikes just don’t hardly make sense given recent economic conditions. Unions will point out that they have a contract, but contracts were made to be re-negotiated. That’s what the State is trying to do, re-negotiate a contract they can’t possibly ever pay for. Do unions think they’d fare better in bankruptcy court?

Our rocky economic times have had one (and perhaps only one) advantage in that costs for most products have remained relatively stable. That doesn’t stop those who live off taxpayers dollars from asking for more, though. Stossel, in another peice on public sector abuses writes:

“That federal bureaucrats enrich themselves during an economic downturn with pay raises — 2.4 percent this year, 4.8 percent last year, 4.5 percent the year before — is bad enough. Now comes word that Uncle Sam is dishing out “recruitment, relocation and retention incentives” to the tune of $285 million in 2008 (the latest year available) to bring workers onto the payroll or persuade them to stay.”

As long as public sector workers feel they are entitled to the same (or better) pay as the private sector, we can look for steady increases in our deficits. In the private sector greed is seldom tolerated past one’s ability to improve business. In the public sector greed is just a way of life.

The goal of any poll is to get a general idea of where a respondent stands on issues, not to drill down to minutia. For that reason, polls usually ask broad questions with multiple choice answers that may or may not accurately describe an individual’s exact position. Here’s one example:

This question is designed to draw the reader’s eye toward the fourth answer. Note that each answer provides some commentary (that’s generally a no-no in polling), and that the wording of every other option uses pejoratives. Also, notice the other options invoke a labyrinth of if/then type statements, or strong absolutes designed to direct respondents to other answers.

The goal of this article isn’t to beat up on the Nolan Chart Survey, however. Instead, this article asks you to question your own beliefs. Were it not for a political party constantly yammering on about national security, might you feel differently about foreign policy? If no one identified “green energy” with Democrats would you have a different take on it?

Americans do themselves a huge disservice when they vote a party instead of a person. Here in primary season voters have a critical chance to decide the next crop of Republican leadership in Congress. Instead of listening to candidates blather on about who is more conservative, voters need to decide for themselves which issues really matter, given our current state. That means ignoring issues that simply are not as essential to focus on right now.

The two-party system has been extremely effective at putting voters into two groups and then getting them to declare outright war on each other. So, in effect, we’re taught that anyone who doesn’t vote for a given Democrat is a conservative right-winger. If you voted for Doug Hoffman in NY23, you’re a right-winger. Martha Coakley declared that MA had elected a hard right winger, in Scott Brown.

When the labels are peeled off, and voters are asked where they stand on issues, that’s where we get real answers. The brand name of a political party is simply too powerful for most to resist. Like the 1980′s soft drink taste tests, many are surprised to learn the candidate they would support if they had to vote strictly on issues.

Sadly, we are a two party nation, and that means there is a political reality that conservatives need to get behind less than ideal candidates if they want to keep the “greater evil” from winning in November. That doesn’t mean we need to have mediocre options in November. This season’s primaries could set the stage for a true conservative landslide in November…but only if voters pay close attention.

Michael Steele certainly hasn’t done anything to help the situation. With at least one Republican chair calling for him to step down, it seems that his days could be limited. Perhaps it will help Republicans if Steele is gone, but is the rest of their house in order? Perhaps not. The health care debate might have confused some who thought the GOP had returned to traditional conservatism. While the GOP did manage to stay completely on message for about a year in regard to the toxic health care bill, after it passed they seem to be falling apart again with a mixed message of “repeal”, and “replace”. Why would you bother to say you’re going to replace a bill which is universally hated in your base? A more logical approach would be to maintain the hard line “repeal” message. Conservatives are looking for signs of weakness, and this “replace” funny business fits the bill.

The Tea Party is seen as something of a force to contend with in the May primaries, and in November. While championing conservative causes and candidates they have rightfully been brutal on liberal Democrats. What the GOP needs to remember is that the Tea Party is independent. They have a self-assigned primary obligation to serve conservative, traditional values. That means on occasion they have come out swinging against various “moderate” Republicans. Many conservatives see that as a good thing, since they feel they are weeding out the “weak” Republicans in favor of “true” conservative candidates. It could cut into Republicans votes in November.

This is a bitter sweet movement for conservatives. For years they’ve simply been taught that Republicans are the slight lesser of two evils. For the most part the GOP has been reliably against personal entitlement programs, and it’s worth repeating that they were solidly against health care reform (at least until it passed). To their credit, they have, at times tried very hard to stay true to conservatives. On the other hand, they have a legacy of Medicare Part D, endless war funding, Wall Street bailouts (which amount to a Washington takeover of finance), and near complicity on auto bailouts.

Conservatives have been awakenedand have realized that while Bush was hands down better than the current administration, he did spend, as one conservative put it “like Paris Hilton on a binder”. That seems like a fitting assessment. He blew through the savings the previous Republican Congress had managed to accumulate, almost instantly. There is a lot of apprehension about simply putting in another John McCain, Lindsey Graham, or even George Bush. These are all like-able people in the GOP camp, but most conservatives know they are not conservative and represent the same Washington mentality that landed us where we are.

November will indeed be a great month for the GOP no matter what. Conservatives, however, know that one election will solve very little. That’s especially true if attempts to install more conservative candidates wind up putting Democrats in for another term this country simply cannot afford.

“If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes”

That statement makes the case sound pretty open and shut. It’s a good thing Reagan didn’t listen to everything Mr. Volcker said, or we’d be in even deeper trouble now. The Library of Economics and Liberty has this to say on Reagan and Volker:

“High inflation was the result of a dozen years of bad fiscal and monetary policy under two Republicans — Nixon and Ford — and two Democrats — Johnson and Carter — that was brought under control only when Paul Volcker, the Carter-appointed head of the Federal Reserve, jammed interest rates up to national-heart-attack levels and left them there until inflationary expectations were well and truly tamed. Reagan had nothing to do with unemployment and interest rates falling; that was the inevitable result of a drastic monetary tightening finally working its way through the economy.”

The more we hear about Volcker, the less there is to like. True, he brought down inflation, but only by raising interest rates. No one dares address out of control Washington spending, right? Instead, we’ll just tinker with the Federal Reserve piggy bank. A Democrat at heart, the only answer Volcker has to any budget crisis is higher taxes.

That’s a shame. With so much redundancy in government spending, so many failed programs, and funding of State programs that shouldn’t be Federally funded, it seems like there are lots of ways to cut deficits without raising taxes. Of course, no one can deny that pork is built right into Washington politics. If you try and rip away any entitlements watch the liberals go after you. If you try to take away a farm subsidy or military spending, watch the Republicans go after you.

Maybe Volcker is right, but for a different reason. If Americans won’t stand up and tell Washington to just stop the spending (even if it costs them personally to do so), we may just need to have another tax. At the end of the day, Volcker deserves this one piece of credit: A new tax is better than going further and further into debt.

Better still would be to knock off the out-of-control spending. But without government power and money, how would any votes be purchased?

So what made up those 162,000 jobs we did get? Well you can thank Uncle Sam for a lot of them, about 29.6% of them to be exact.

“Employment in federal government was up over the month, reflecting the hiring of 48,000 temporary workers for the decennial census.”

But those are all temporary workers. What happens when the census is over? We’ve been hiring a lot of these census workers, it isn’t limited to March’s report. When those workers hit the streets again, it may make 9.7% unemployment look pretty good. Looking at census hires is only part of the picture, however. While America’s private sector has struggled, our public sector has escaped the economic turbulence, thanks to you – the taxpayer. Since one year ago, the Feds have hired 170,000. Were it not for the postal service letting some folks go, the Federal government would have taken on 51.3 thousand last month alone. If you take out the census workers that’s still 3,300 new Federal jobs in one month.

I was recently criticized in a post online for suggesting that Congress is paid too much. I was instigating “class warfare”, they said…plus the idea of making Federal officials earn market rate for their services was just “stupid” according to one participant. Perhaps that individual and other like-minded people would reconsider that position given the growing scope of Federal employment. It isn’t class warfare to wish for a Federal government that eat, sleeps, and works like its citizens do, but it might be unrealistic. No one in Washington wants to rock the boat of the ruling class that makes, on average, 45% more than us losers in the private sector.

So we are hiring more and more Federal workers, and paying them increasingly gaudy sums of money. The worst part is, that we keep electing politicians to keep it this way. For my friends who think Congress ought to keep getting regular raises because their jobs are so tough, I ask this: Why not let those people go find work in the private sector that provides those kinds of benefits? Some may succeed in doing so, some may become vastly richer working in the private sector, even. I say, let ‘em, at least we won’t be financing them.

“But 64% say Congress is doing a poor job. The good news is that’s a seven-point improvement from last month’s 71%, the highest negative grade recorded in over 40 months of tracking. The bad news is that 64% is the second worst grade the legislators have earned in that same time period and is up 21 points from late March a year ago.”

64% is bad, but it’s not bad enough. Time and time again, no matter how people view Congress as a whole, they tend to believe their own Representative is doing better than the others. This poll was taken just before the health care reform vote. The scary part is that as it became more clear that Congress was going to ram the health care bill through, their ratings actually improved. So we can conclude that some respondents in both polls were left-wing voters who were only upset that Congress wasn’t acting aggressively enough to enact the legislation in the previous polling period.

In New York it would appear even more dire for incumbent State legislators:

“A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of New York voters finds that 69% think it would be better if most incumbents in the state legislature were defeated this November.”

So what? As I’ve written before, we re-elect 90% of Congress people no matter how much we hate them. It seems that taking the chance on an unknown candidate is perceived to be too great a risk. Well, let’s say we could take the voters who got polled at their word and that they represent the mood of the country pretty adequately, where does it leave us? If 64% of Congress were to actually get the boot in November (which isn’t possible since not every Senate seat is up), who would we replace them with?

Well if the recent generic ballot poll Rasmussen conducted is correct, we’ll be hiring a lot more of the same:

“46% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate, up three points from last week, while 39% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent”

That poll was conducted after the health care vote. We see that Republicans are gaining in popularity, slightly. The bad news for Republicans is that Democrats are too.

“Voter support for Democrats is at its highest level measured since early December 2009, while GOP support matches the highest level measured since weekly tracking began in early April 2007.”

Democrats actually picked up some points by voting for the controversial health care bill. What’s interesting about this poll is that we see a gap of 15% between the total electorate and supports of Republicans and Democrats combined. Wow! Guess that means 15% of people will vote for an independent candidate (hopefully conservative) right? Wrong again. It only happened once, when Ross Perot got 18.9% of the popular vote, and not even one electoral vote.

Voters want real change, or at least they always say they do. When it comes to the voting booth, however, they rarely mean what they say. More likely, is an outcome where we repeat the pattern of the last few decades. We’ll simply shift the power in favor of one party, and then the other after a short time. Each time we get sick of Democrats we just elect some Republicans. Then we get bored with low taxes and high debt, and move back to the Democrats where we’ll get higher taxes and high debt. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In recent days Max Baucus and Howard Dean have both come out and admitted what we already knew. That the health bill is about redistribution. Dean was at least kind enough to suggest that you can’t push redistribution too far, because you risk removing the incentive for work.

Republican Operative – Dean And Redistribution

That was sweet of him. Baucus wasn’t quite as kind. He indicated that some people simply make too much money.

“Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind”

It’s helpful to know that while we’re all out here working for higher and higher taxes, that Mr. Baucus is working behind the scenes to figure out just how much money we should be allowed to make. I wonder where that line is exactly. Sure, it’s been painted at $250k for now, but how long can we expect it to be there. We already know that every socialist program goes over budget. We already know that no matter how many votes you purchase today with spending, you always seem to need more tomorrow. How can we be assured that the socialists won’t need to lower that threshold tomorrow?

Once the signing ceremony ended for the unconstitutional health care takeover, we were then treated to baseless (and videoless) accusations of violence, name-calling and spitting. Now we’ve finally moved on to the truth. It was all a giant ruse from day one. This was never about helping anyone. In typical Democrat fashion, the bill was only about shifting power and jobs to the Federal government while fleecing the American public for more money to find Democrat games.

When listening to liberals discuss the free market, emotions usually give way to falsehoods. Some are driven by malice found in popular media, while others are founded only in ignorance of the free market system. Since failure to make a family’s budget stretch to end of the month can have disastrous results, the subject naturally becomes heated. That’s one reason politicians latch on to a natural human tendency to blame others for our own problems.

In critical industries, politicians will explain, we need to have some special circumstances. Whenever you hear a politician bellyaching about price gouging, unfair practices, etc., eye such statements with extreme scrutiny. In principle there is no industry or sector which has such greatly different economic conditions that is require separate and increased government oversight. If grocers can successfully make sure everyone has a loaf of bread to buy, then health care can make sure every paying customer gets to see a doctor.

In reality, most of these claims from politicians are a power grab. It gives people a nice warm and fuzzy when a politician tells you they’ve reigned in some evil corporation and put the extra dollars they were “stealing” into your pocket. It might give you a warm and fuzzy feeling at the time, but it should have made you queasy. Government can only make things worse, if history is any indicator.

Other times, politicians’ populist claims make no sense at all, but they are supposed to make you feel better anyway. For instance, we recently created a health care law that says, in essence: Insurance companies are evil, so we will force all of you to buy a policy from them; but at the same time, we’re raising your taxes to buy even more people an insurance policy. It’s the subject of another article to debate the government’s intentions with this bill, but suffice to say it’s double-minded to say you want to reign in insurance companies, but also force people to buy from them.

In the free market, people engage in commerce with minimal interference. That means you can buy and sell products and services at a mutually acceptable price. When we shop, we’re acting as buyers. At work, we’re just acting as sellers of our own services. There is no difference between selling bread at a grocery store and selling your services to an employer. In a free market you can ask any price you like for your good or service, and any potential customer is free to agree to it…or not. When you try to ask too high of a price, customers will naturally seek out other sources of the same product or service for a lower price.

Despite claims by politicians to the contrary, free markets have no inherent evil personality. In fact, they have no personality at all; The market is just a system. While greed is often cited as the driver of free market economies, that’s usually the wrong way of describing the markets. A better way to phrase it is “self-preservation”. Just like you are constantly trying to make the same amount of money as yesterday (or more), companies also try to maintain and grow profits. Unsurprisingly, they do it for the very same reasons as you: They want to maintain a safety cushion for rainy days, and give themselves room for future growth.

The free market is, in essence, the only true economic system. Every other system is an attempt to pervert, guide, interfere with, or overtly control otherwise free markets…but free market principles still exist underneath it all, just in a severely contorted fashion. In our next article in the series, we’ll discuss how the buyer and seller interact.

Myth: Corporations are greedy. They tend to hurt customers because they’re always worried about making higher and higher profits.

Truth: Self-preservation is at the core of free markets, so if a desire to exist tomorrow is how you define “greed”, then perhaps corporations do have lots of “greed” in them. However, they can’t sell a product no one wants to buy, at a price no one wants to pay. In general, every company works in an industry teeming with competitors waiting to eat that company’s lunch. Rest assured that if a products price isn’t at the lowest currently sustainable level right now, it soon will be.

Myth: My job treats me and other co-workers poorly. There’s nothing we can do about it, since the company refuses to open its wallet and do right by us. They’ve even taken away certain benefits that cost the company very little.

Truth: You always have a choice. Most obviously, you could look for another job. If you don’t want any of the other jobs near you, then you’re making a choice to stick with your employer because it’s the best deal available in the market today. Keep in mind, as an employee, you’re the seller, and your boss is the buyer. So in this case, your boss (and every other boss you’ll ever have) is continuously trying to get the lowest market rate for your labor. This is akin to how you look for the cheapest gasoline when filling up your car, without resorting to gas that will make your engine stall.

Having said that, it’s expensive for companies to train employees, so in general, they actually do want employees to stick around. When it comes to workplace safety, many point to how well OSHA has worked out. That may not be a great example, though. OSHA was implemented when workplace injuries were already falling rapidly. As John Stossel once said: “Sometimes government likes to jump in front of a parade and say it’s leading it”.

Myth: Without government controls, we’d have a lot of safety hazards in the market place. We need government to at least protect us from greedy corporations who would otherwise make shoddy products that endanger us to make a higher profit.

Truth: This myth makes two fatal assumptions. One is that we still don’t have dangerous products on the market because government saves us from them. The second is that government is generally more effective at stopping dangerous products than companies would be themselves. Both are false. Recently, Toyota proved that you can have a lot of government oversight and rules about how your products are made, and still create a dangerous product. Although, Toyota is an anomaly, because in general companies try to produce safe products. However, sometimes companies try to reduce costs by reducing the quality of their wares. If successful, you get a product that does the same thing but costs less. If unsuccessful, you could get hurt. In that case we have tort law that lets you take that company to court. Since companies want to avoid that, they try to keep the products safe while lowering costs.

Myth: Because companies have so much money, they don’t have to care about individual customers and they cheat them because the customer can’t afford to fight back.

Truth: Well firstly, not all companies have that much money. Companies start off life with less money than you probably have, and most of them fail. Just because you declare you’re in business doesn’t mean you’ll ever make a single thin dime. With that out of the way; Cheating customers certainly happens. The free market is filled with free people, not robots, so sometimes even best company will make a regrettable decision. However, companies that continuously behave this way eventually suffer consequences. Customers talk, and they especially talk about a company that “screwed them”. However, if you just mumble and take it but you don’t tell friends, you’re part of the problem.

When reasoning about our markets, it’s useful to remember a few basic facts:

• Greed exists in every nation, in every industry, and in any economic system
• People who endanger others have legal liability, government almost always “fixes” problems after they make it to market, not before (FDA recalls are a good example).
• Companies are like individuals in that they have a need to sustain themselves, but that doesn’t make either you or them evil.

We’re all buyers and sellers at various points in time. Since free markets rely on competition to work, it’s understood that multiple sellers of comparable products will generally exist. It’s also fair to assume that multiple buyers with varying needs will exist. The basic premise of the buyer/seller relationship is that the buyer has something they want less than the product or service a seller has. If the grocer charges $2.00 for bread, and I really need to eat, my $2.00 becomes less valuable than the loaf of bread so I make the trade. You can think of every single trade between parties in the free market this way. With this in mind, the phrase “that’s gotten too expensive” really means “my money is now worth more to me than that product”.

As buyers we’re provided a chance to shop anywhere we like, so we generally get a wide variety of products and prices. These prices tend to always be at the lowest possible level because sellers will try and compete with each other. If an existing company’s prices are “too high”, a would-be competitor will see that money is being “left on the table” because that would-be competitor believes he could provide the same product or service at a lower price. The new competitor is encouraged to enter the market because he knows buyers will want to buy from him, at his reduced price. Of course, that’s just theory. In reality we don’t have perfectly low prices, because companies have operating expenses and also have an obligation to their owners to make a profit.

There exists a concept in pricing called “perfect competition“. Under this theory (that doesn’t exist in the real world), every seller makes just enough profit to exist, with absolutely no extra profit. In the real world, no market is “perfect” and companies do make more profit than strictly required, but the theory is true to the extent that prices are generally pushed downwards. Some politicians would like us to live under “perfect competition”, but it simply doesn’t permit any innovation. If our primary concern is to ensure that every just barely breaks even, then who will have any capital to create new products?

In our jobs we act as sellers of services. For those in small businesses, we are selling services directly to a buyer. If you have an employer, you’re still selling to a direct buyer, just in a more structured, long-term arrangement. Companies don’t have any built-in desire to hurt employees anymore than you, as a buyer, have built-in desire to hurt the grocery store you buy from, or the gas station where you fill up. Just the opposite is true; Training employees is expensive and no one wants to lose their investment.

As a seller of your own services, you are naturally looking to “increase sales” constantly. In small business that’s pretty straightforward to explain; you try and take on new customers. You do it as an employee though, too, by marketing yourself through your resume and networking. If a new job with better pay and better benefits comes along, it establishes a new market rate for your services. If your current employer isn’t willing to pay the new rate, they do without your services and you move on to your new job.

To put this relationship in context, we shouldn’t bash a company for having high prices (except that you can and should choose not to do business with that company, if you feel that way). To bash them is to bash yourself for wanting a good paycheck. Almost no one would opt to receive less pay than the market will bear (at least not permanently), and likewise, no company would choose to make less money than it potentially could.

When we continue with part three in the series, we’ll take on some specific common misconceptions heard in the media and elsewhere.

Entitlement programs in America have a troubled past. Once a ponzi scheme is born, it is nearly impossible to get rid of it, no matter how costly it becomes. However, despite the fact that we’ve shown weakness in removing social spending programs when they threaten to bankrupt us; we have a good history of penalizing leaders that take us in the wrong direction. Obama’s dangerous legacy will be well remembered at the polls.

No one can see the future. It’s possible that Obama will get himself involved in some mess near 2012 that tricks the electorate into giving him another four years. However, the history is clear: Democrats will not get another turn after Obama. If he’d turned out to be the moderate he advertised himself as, this would potentially be avoidable. As it stands, however, the country will happily abandon Democrats. We won’t need to wait for 2012 to see it happen either.

Mid-term elections are usually brutal for the President’s party during the first term. Republicans and Democrats agree that many Democrat seats will be lost in November. What Democrats will deny is the growing tide of resentment at liberals and progressives who simply can’t cut up the country’s credit cards. In a way, it would actually be better for Democrats if Obama gets the boot in 2012, because it might stop the bleeding for their reputations.

Similar to how George Bush became more careless toward the end of his second term, ultimately costing the party a win in 2008, Obama could destroy his party’s image (more than he already has) near the end of his Presidency. March 21st, we witnessed the damage party ideologues can impose on the country with a party-line vote. Now the fate of the country rests in voters’ hands who can no longer assume that voting a party line will lead to predictable results. Republicans rebel against moderates John McCain, Charlie Christ and others. Independent voters who were swayed for Obama in 2008 will think twice before pulling the lever for the “D” again. These voters tend to favor fiscal responsibility over social policy and they gave Obama a chance because Republicans’ spending was out of control. When you take out all the groups Obama has alienated and angered, he’s hardly got any voters left.

Obama has certainly changed the political landscape, but not because he’s an outsider who doesn’t play Washington games. Precisely the opposite is true; Obama is the ultimate Washington insider and he and his party have proven that they won’t stop trying to foist their socialist policies onto America. Indeed, there is no country for Obama.

Recess appointments were once a necessity. Back when we had a part-time Congress, the time between sessions could last as long as 9 months. It was felt that during this time important positions may be left unfilled because the Senate would not be in session to confirm nominees. As time as progressed, Congress is in session longer and longer, however. Now, the time between sessions is hardly justification for recess appointments. Now they are simply a tool to push through a nominee the Senate has problems with.

Since World War II, the recess appointment has been increasingly used to overcome Senate opposition to controversial figures up for confirmation. The process is still relatively benign, however, since the appointment would normally expire at the end of the next session of the Senate, unless confirmed. In some cases, pay can even be withheld until confirmation. Much of the detail is tied into exactly when the position becomes vacant versus when the Senate went into recess.

It’s almost inevitable that recess appointments will happen in a Senate which is not heavily imbalanced in favor of the current President. While today’s usage is a gimmick, there is a legitimate purpose for them and for that reason will probably be around forever. The Congressional Reference Service has put together a PDF that describes the origins of the recess appointment, and some notable instances of its usage. You can read the report here.

Right now there is a slow boil happening. A large scale, immediate reduction in our rights would never pass muster here. Citizen uprisings would have overwhelmed law enforcement, and the politicians who attempted it would have been hauled off in cuffs, or worse. The more realistic, credible threat is what we’ve seen since the beginning of the 20th century: Incremental, gradual, and “justifiable” cuts in our liberties. Most of these are disguised as “common sense” tweaks to our laws. Health care reform seems outrageous now, and it is, but our government has spent the last 100 or so years robbing us of business liberties, personal liberties, and perhaps most noticeably, the right to keep the money we earn.

Liberals will tell us that it’s just necessary to have some business licensing to keep things in order. Cities have taken it and run with it, though. John Stossel discusses it.

“Our most outrageous example of licensing madness is the plight of David Price, a man who learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished, especially when messing with lawyers. Price made the mistake of helping Eldon Ray, a fellow Kansan who was fined for practicing architecture without a license. Price didn’t represent Ray in court; he just helped Ray by writing a letter to respond to the fine. In states like Kansas, that practically makes Price Perry Mason. A judge (a lawyer with a robe) threw Price into jail on contempt charges, not to be released until he promised to never give legal advice again – ever.”

So we’ve lost our freedom to conduct business without State approval, which may come at a high cost, or it may not come at all. Well, it’s not that bad yet. Do you trust that it won’t get that bad?

If you’re not planning on starting a business, perhaps you’d be more concerned about government’s interest in your diet. Again, liberals find justification for their increasing restrictions. You’re too fat, they say. You could get sick if you eat too much of one thing or another and only government can help keep us on track. So there are limits on salt, increasingly gaudy food labels, bans on trans fats, and probably a dozen more senseless rules coming in future years if these food tyrants aren’t stopped.

Want to build on your property? Better check with City Hall. They’ll probably help you out, unless they deem you aren’t building a safe enough structure. After all, if they don’t help you make safe buildings, who will? Once you get done putting up that new structure, they’ll ask for a small token of your appreication in the form of higher taxes into perpetuity.

If we don’t stop the constant senseless erosion of freedoms, we are doomed to live as Soviets once lived. At some point, conservative defenders of the Constitution will need to simply stand up to “common sense regulation” and tell the progressive liberals “no more”. Sadly, it’s proven impossible to do that so far.

There are emotional segments of a society that just can’t bring themselves to turn down a new rule. Especially, if a slick looking politician brings out some fancy graphs and statistics to justify the new rule. Cautious mothers want those life saving seat belts, air bags, and other expensive automobile safety features. Established businesses actually root for competition killing barriers to entry. It’s a shame that we’ve become so short sighted that we root for the very laws which will someday enslave us. It is nearly impossible to roll back nanny state laws. Once these progressives get their hands on your freedoms they will use every hyper-emotional trick in the book to con you into keeping them.

Eventually the tyranny became too great for our Founders and they left. They knew it would be tough to keep our freedoms in this country since politicians have a way of tricking us into giving them up. Can we prove them wrong?

Originally meant to guarantee you the right to practice religion in any manner you see fit, the clause now offers the “right to not be offended”. It turns out the latter is far more potent. The recent failure of the Supreme Court to hear the Ave Maria case is simply indicative of where we are in the national discourse. It was one thing to remove prayer and references to religion in State sponsored curriculum, it’s quite another to ban students from using their talents to make such references. A “right” not to be offended is a dangerous presumption to make. Yet, this is the exact basis for removal of Christmas decorations from public property. It harms no one, and represents the vast majority of the community, but it also offends…maybe. If you’re Atheist, the mere idea that someone else worships God cuts deeply. The courts have taken it upon themselves to keep that from happening.

The ban on an establishment of religion has, ironically, done just the opposite: Established a national religion…atheism. Liberals love it. Disaffected hippies from the flower power era rejoice at the idea of finally slinging mud in the face of their parents. Rebellions teens appreciate the defiance against authority. Socialist leaders need it, since real religion interferes with State worship.

The new national religion is on display everywhere. You can find it in the public school system, in the courthouse, in town halls, and especially in Congress. If you are atheist, the State is on your side, and will decide in your favor the vast majority of the time. Your right to believe there is no God trumps the right of anyone else to believe there is one. It also trumps anyone else’s First Amendment rights. Worse, even if everyone else believes there is a God, you still can’t talk about it. That’s what the Ave Maria case is all about; We could offend someone. Better safe than sorry.

When it comes to government coverage, C-SPAN is one of the best places to go. We have the images of sleepy House debates replete with boring parliamentary procedure blazed into our brains from the network’s infancy. It’s true that watching “sausage being made” can be boring, but we are lucky to have the resource available to us. So which government program provides for the funding of C-SPAN? None of them do. C-SPAN is an example of a corporation (really a group of them) providing a public service at no direct cost to consumers.

Available in every cable tier and on all satellite packages, C-SPAN receives no government finding for its operations and airs no commercial content. Cable and satellite operators fund C-SPAN in its entirety. So what do they give us?

C-SPAN covers every Senate and House session in their entirety without interruption. They cover various special events like the recent health care summit at the Blair House. There is virtually no analysis, commentary or opinion on the networks except for the occasional call in period (usually during the votes). Even at that, the network ensures that callers of opposing persuasion are presented in alternating fashion.

The feed is still offered in standard definition only. How many viewers want to see Nancy Pelosi’s face with greater resolution than standard definition can provide, anyway? In fact, the presentation is dull and non-glamorous by design. From their mission statement:

“To employ production values that accurately convey the business of government rather than distract from it;“

Over the years, the politicians have become increasingly aware of the cameras and the number of people watching. This makes the more sensational pieces of legislation turn into a circus. Sunday we saw Nancy Pelosi declaring the civil rights victory of health care reform, and John Boehner screaming about the fact that no one had read the bill. These theatrics aside, the majority of the coverage is simply instructive. Watching how Congress works is painfully dry. Part of that is by design and part of it just hearkens back to a simpler time when the institution was created.

Whether or not it’s fascinating to watch, it’s a valuable service. Government simply isn’t interested in offering a direct, unfiltered view of what politicians are doing with your money. C-SPAN is, and that’s a good thing. Now, you don’t even need to own a TV to watch C-SPAN; up to the minute archives are online at C-SPAN’s website.

While the administration pays lip service to playing peace broker in the middle east, Biden’s comments may legitimately call into question whether or not Israel can rely on America.

“The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now…We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them.”

The Associated Press was giddy to jump on the story:

“Joe Biden condemned an Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in disputed east Jerusalem today, casting a cloud over a high-profile visit that had been aimed at repairing ties with the Jewish state and kickstarting Mideast peace talks.”

Left-wing pro-palestinian sentiment aside, Israel is America’s biggest hope for representative Democracy in the middle east. In a part of the world where the tie that binds is deep-seated hatred of all things American, Israel is the near sole voice of support for the United States. That doesn’t mean we need to condone Israel’s every action but a public chide looks more like a nod of support to Israel’s enemies than a word of advise to our friends.

The real danger posed by Obama is that by destabilizing our ties with Israel, we may loose influence into Israel’s reaction to the Iranian arms race. If Israel loses confidence that we will support them, they may cease to seek our guidance and alliance on issues of Israeli national defense. There is no doubt that Iran has been building nuclear weapons for years, and after “extending our hand” failed, Obama appears content to accept a nuclear Iran. Israel will not be so complacent.

We shouldn’t allow the White House to chalk up such missteps to a communication gap. No one has a better command of media portrayal nor has more friends in the liberal media than Obama. After all, he managed to keep the health care debate focused for a year and have virtually no negative press in the mainstream media. He needs to keep a tight watch on his VP’s words, however, or he may land us in some very hot water. Long after Obama’s gone, some other President will have to pick up the pieces of the Israeli relationship Obama handled so carelessly.

Readers might also remember that shortly after that legislation passed, the credit card companies abruptly raised interest rates on consumers of all stripes. While this was much less reported in the media, it affected far more people than the legislation was designed to help. People who don’t pay their bills are a minority. People that do pay are, of course, the overwhelming majority. Yet, Congress’ law said that credit card companies have to offer someone the same interest rate for the life of the purchase. That meant that even consumers who do not pay their bills are insulated from the consequences of their actions. So where did those costs get shifted to? The responsible payers, of course.

Legislators are free to try and impose their personal wills on companies, but they can’t really control the revenues companies need to survive. Laws can say who a company can and cannot raise rates on, but the effect is always like the chest of drawers in a Three Stooges Episode; as soon as you push one drawer in another one pops out.

Utility companies are more or less government controlled organizations, yet we’ve seen energy costs go up tremendously over the past 15 years. Weren’t oversight and price controls designed to make price hikes a thing of the past? While it’s true that utilities need to go to various regional advisory boards to seek permission to raise rates, but they always get that permission. At the end of the day, these regional board succumb to the pressure to keep utilities from having to ration service, and they opt to let the companies raise rates. Yet, because utilities aren’t free to work in the open market we’ve seen breathtaking lack of innovation. Ten years after everyone on the planet accepted credit cards, many utilities still don’t. As every bank worth doing business at offers online banking, many utilities don’t have online facilities for managing and paying your account. With all that oversight, there simply isn’t enough money to innovate.

March 21st marked a solemn occasion in America. With sweeping health insurance regulation, we have again expanded our reach into the inner workings of private industry. When government pretends it knows business better than businesses do, we can expect the stories above to play out again and again. Some liberal voters might get a warm and fuzzy feeling when companies are “cut down to size”, but inevitably those same voters complain again later when rates continue to climb. It’s easy to wonder how high prices need to go before consumers realize government is the problem, not the answer.

Mounting pressure from protesters, other politicians, and Constitutional lawyers were bound to create some apprehension about the controversial legislative approach. However, it wasn’t this pressure that led Congress to drop the “deem and pass” technique in favor a straight vote on the two separate pieces of legislation. No, the real reason this Constitutional “slaughtering” never saw the light of day was that Democrats simply didn’t need it.

Concerned Americans learned the truth on Sunday as their stomachs tied into knots and their hearts hung low when they heard Bart Stupack (D-MI) announce he had made an unholy alliance to sell his vote. The 30 pieces of silver? Handouts to airports in Stupak’s home district and an ineffective Executive Order banning public funds for abortion. As has been widely publicized, the order isn’t worth much more than the ink used to sign it. Since courts have repeatedly ruled that abortion will be legal and eligible for funding by the Federal government, the only legal way to prevent the funding is with real, old fashioned laws. The Hyde Amendment language, in place since the 70′s, provided that. At least until yesterday it did.

Beyond the typical horse-trading and vote purchases we’ve come to expect to secure passage of unpopular legislation, the bill is flatly dangerous on its face. To make this argument acceptable to people of all political persuasions, the remainder of this article will assume the left is correct and that insurance companies are evil villians who need to be eliminated. With that assumption in mind, we’d have to examine what makes health costs so darn high. For example, let’s say you have a “bad” insurance policy so you end up paying many costs out of pocket. Would it enrage you to learn that a doctor’s office visit has a real cost of $300 or more? Or that a simple preventative blood test could cost more than $200? Putting aside the issue of whether or not insurance companies are to be trusted (as this article has promised to do), we could all agree that these prices are insane.

Obama has repeatedly submitted the idea that the current health care legislation will reduce these costs, but there is no evidence of it. In the bill we find laws requiring more people to purchase insurance. We find punishments for business with employees that don’t provide insurance, and we find laws that target insurance companies themselves. The bill is 50% insurance company give away (which is ironiuc on its face), and 25% new taxes and laws on you the taxpayer, and 25% retribution on insurance companies. Which component of the multi-thousand page bill asks hospitals to charge less than $2000 for the privledge of sleeping in their bed one night? Which part causes drug makers to make their products available in generic form or at reduced rates?

No conservative could support those measures either, but at least one could truthfully say that they would actually lower health care costs. At least they would in the short term. Instead, the bill focuses only on these evil, hateful insurance companies. Remembering that for the remainder of this article we all agree that insurance companies are dubious at best, how much of the increased premiums and higher co-pays are simply insurance companies passing along the real cost of health care? Based on the prices above, it’s starting to look like we’ll have to get angry at some new industries.

For these reasons, and for the simple incremental loss of freedom Americans suffered yesterday; Congress’ new way of passing bills is still just a little better than the old way. It certainly didn’t make the bill a good one, and it doesn’t make it any more likely to survive more than a couple years before its repeal.

Everyone from the House Speaker to lower ranking members of the House to our President have directly or indirectly likened the bill to more defensible legislation protecting the rights of black Americans. It’s a stretch to say this bill will even benefit anyone directly, except government. To compare it favorably to civil rights legislation is an outright abomination. Black Americans, and indeed, all Americans have certain human rights no one can deny them. Not included in that list is free health care. While the nation was moving in the right direction on the civil rights bill, we are most certainly moving away from freedom with this bill. It’s ironic to hear proponents of freedom restricting laws praise a bill that promised more freedoms to minorities decades ago.

So what is the bill? While no one can look you in the eye and tell you everything that 2,000 pages of legislation will do, here’s what we do know will happen between now and 2014:

• Taxes go up. Cadillac health plans pay higher taxes (if you aren’t a member of a union). You’ll also pay Medicare taxes on investment income, for the first time in our history.
• Kids will have to be accepted into insurance plans, no matter what conditions they have. That will jack premiums for children up (assuming somewhere in the thousands of pages we don’t have price controls).
• Uninsured Americans will be forced to purchase insurance or face a 2% (of salary) fine.
• Employers who don’t buy their employees insurance will pay fines. That means employers will slow down hiring or halt entirely.

In summary, we have a job killing, insurance destroying, premium hiking bill. If you support that, that’s fine. Most conservatives would think you’re wrong, but you’re entitled to your opinion. Just don’t call it civil rights, and don’t regurgitate Democrat party talking points about cost savings that no one can prove.

How many months has it been since you came home and politics didn’t get discussed? I’ll hazard a guess of about 14. Since the day our infallible leader was placed upon his throne we have had constant chaos. Each day is a new disaster, that our fearless President is diligently working on. Sometimes he’s working on problems we didn’t even think were problems, like trying our military and old Bush administration officials for crimes. Whether or not you agree with him, Obama’s on TV each and every day letting you know what you need to be thinking about. That’s the problem, right there.

You have your own life. You’ve got a job that’s probably a lot more ridiculous than it needs to be, but you have to keep it because Obama’s long-term normal is 10% unemployment. Probably, you’d enjoy going for walks, playing a sport, talking to neighbors about any old thing, being involved with church and the like. Obama has different plans. He’s got lots of help too. With a Congress America can’t trust, we’ve got to keep a very close eye on Ms. Nancy Pelosi, her partner in crime Mr. Harry Reid, and about 532 other crooks on Capitol Hill.

So while you’d prefer to be doing a plethora of other activities, the liberals have you glued to the TV to find out what they’re about to do to you next. You never know when you’re going to need to show up a protest, get in a letter writing or phone calling campaign, or keep an eye on your paycheck. That’s just beautiful for the tyrant-in-chief. Obama knows he has your 100% undivided attention. Because of this, Obama is always setting your agenda, not you.

In November, when Patriotic Americans across this beautiful land kick these clowns out of office, you’ll probably have a lot more free time. You can just spend a couple hours each weekend watching how Congress whipped up on our misguided, ineffective leader. Until then, buckle up, grab some popcorn, get a drink and stay put. It’s going to be a long eight months.

In the past, even Democrats didn’t think that way. Of the post-WWII tax cutting Presidents, three tax cutters stand out above the rest: JFK, Reagan, and Bush. The Tax Foundation has posted hard analysis of all three. The report shows that JFK’s cuts were the biggest of the three:

“Contrasting the size of the tax cuts with national income shows that the Kennedy tax cut, representing 1.9 percent of income, was the single largest first-year tax-cut of the post-WW II era. The Reagan tax cuts represented 1.4 percent of income while none of the Bush tax cut even breaks 1 percent of income. The Kennedy tax cuts would only have been surpassed in size by combining all three Bush tax cuts into a single package.”

It’s interesting to note that while Democrats relentlessly cry about the Bush tax cuts, you would have to combine all of them into one package to beat JFK’s tax cuts. He understood something about the markets and the economy that today’s politicians mostly miss. The economy will thrive when it’s workers are free to keep as much of their money as possible. Don’t be confused, Kennedy was liberal. He argued for all the typical liberal spending preferences (education, medical care, and so forth), but he didn’t let his liberal social agenda confuse him into thinking the government could actually prosper at the expense of its citizens.

Reagan’s cuts come in at a respectable second place. They had a similar effect of relieving the nation of its recession and actually served to boost government revenues from $244B to 446B by 1989. Bush’s cuts, while small by comparison, did have a stimulative effect as well. However, the effect of these cuts was blunted by the fact that the cuts were split into three rounds. One can speculate that if they had been combined the effect might have been greater.

Today’s leaders have much to learn. Rather than punishing upper income earners and making them into objects of ridicule and hatred, our Tax Cut Professionals let them keep more of their money and our economy has always benefited from it.

It’s basic stuff we’ve been taught since grade school. We know that you need 50% majority in the House to win and 60% to win the Seante. Evidently, statist corrupt politicans don’t have access to this most basic level of education. If you want the bill badly enough, apparently, you just “deem” bills into law. What is most sickening about this process isn’t even the Constitutionality of the process, it’s the intention behind it.

The intentions are something like this: Democrats have an unpopular government intervention into the private sector (not the first such intervention, but definitely the biggest), they can’t use normal means to pass the bill. Instead of reforming their bill to be able to catch votes, they simply invent new rules. It has gone beyond arm twisting, beyond cutting backroom deals, beyond a majority punishing citizens who votes for the opposition party. It’s entered an era of simply rewriting the fundamental laws governing how new bills are created.

It’s extremely difficult to stomach this. The Democrats have come up with a bill so radical and so left wing that they have essentially created two parties within the Democrat party. The left wing, and the ultra left wing. In the final hours before “deemage” of the bill, we watch the Ultra Left Party twist the arms of the Left Party. Faced with loosing their own jobs, they stand defiant. They aren’t defiant because they know it’s right for the country, they are defiant because they know they will get Americans hooked on the crack rock of socialism. Once you start to depend on the government you cannot get off the sauce. It is simply impossible.

Look at Greece. Workers on the government dole cannot tolerate any cuts in government spending. Willing to bring Greece to a halt public officials leave their posts to participate in riotous protests against the government. Even as they know the government has no choice but to cut spending because it’s own creditors are cutting it off, protesters are unsatisfied. America will become Greece. We’re already as bad as most of Europe. In some cases European leaders have even chided us for being too quick to spend on unnecessary programs. That’s a really bad sign.

We know Meidcare is a broken entitlement doomed to run up deficits and the national debt into perpetuity. We know the social security program is no different. No one can do anything about it, though, because we’re all hopelessly addicted to the drug. We can’t get off it, and no one even wants to bother to try. If they do try, they are accused of trying to take away your entitlements and demonized by the establishment.

If this bill passes it will be impossible to repeal it practically speaking until Obama’s gone in 2012. Democrats bet that by then public pressure will be to keep the program since two years of taxes will already be paid into it. We can’t take that chance. It really is time to get every boot on the ground making noise to oppose this horrible abuse of power.

If you have a friend that doesn’t watch the news or doesn’t know what is going on…educate them. If you know someone who opposes this bill but isn’t the type to speak up, now is the time for them to do it. Our final hours will mark what we were willing to do to stop this. If we fail to bring hell on our opponents in Washington, they will certainly bring hell on us.

“The Medical Loss Ratios memo is the smoking gun.  It shows that indeed, Democrats have been submitting proposals to the CBO behind closed doors and tailoring their private-sector mandates to avoid having those costs appear in the federal budget.  Proposals that would result in a complete cost estimate — such as the proposal by Sen. Rockefeller discussed in the Medical Loss Ratios memo — are dropped.  Because we can’t let the public see how much this thing really costs.”

Certainly, a number of important facts have been shrouded or hidden entirely. Smoking gun number one is the fact that 6 years of expenditures are financed by 10 years of revenues. Because the CBO calculates 10 year windows, this little gimmick makes the bill look less expensive. Perhaps the most telling bit from the memo comes last:

“A proposal to require health insurers to provide rebates to their enrollees to the extent that their medical loss ratios are less than 90 percent would effectively force insurers to achieve a high medical loss ratio. Combining this requirement with the other provisions of the PPACA would greatly restrict flexibility related to the sale and purchase of health insurance. In CBO’s view, this further expansion of the federal government’s role in the health insurance market would make such insurance an essentially governmental program, so that all payments related to health insurance policies should be recorded as cash flows in the federal budget.”

We added the emphasis above. Democrats like to hide behind the CBO currently because they’ve been more effective at gaming it than before. It doesn’t mean the CBO is accurate. As the CBO points out in it’s non-filtered communications, the bill does exactly what most conservatives say it will: destroy private insurance. So what of Mr. Obama’s promise that if I like my plan I can keep it?

If execs at a major corporation behaved this way and it became public, they would be indicted, flogged, ridiculed, and probably publicly hung. Why does Congress get a free pass?

To justify tax hikes in a time period where there has been virtually no inflation, lawmakers are trotting out tired fear tactics. They claim if we don’t hike taxes, we’ll have to cut schools. So what if we do have to cut schools? Teachers’ unions have negotiated for themselves pay hike after pay hike, while test grades have stagnated.

It seems like massive cuts to education would just be the harsh economic realities of bad job performance coming home to roost. Unions collude to make sure we can’t fire bad teachers and that they all get generous pay raises. The downside is that since we can’t fire the under-performing teachers, we’ll have to fire lots of undeserving educators along with the derelicts. That’s the downside of being a union shop, and taxpayers shouldn’t feel guilty about the cuts.

Obama’s plans for No Child Left Behind involve removing many of the measurable goals schools need to achieve. That’s typical since liberals prefer intangible education goals like “learning climate”. That effectively makes sure schools will never be held accountable for poor performance, at least not with to Federal funding. That’s a shame because there’s a lot of poor performance in the schools and all tax payers are helping to fund it. Once again, liberal ideology defies common sense the rest of us live by.

Instead of discussing how social spending could be cut or how tough negotiations could happen between unions and the State, we’re told to accept inevitable tax hikes required to keep the kids in school. After all, isn’t America’s future important enough that we can buck up a few extra dollars? Or try this one on for size: “We can’t make our State’s dedicated teachers and future generations of children pay the price for our inaction”. It gets old.

When politicians had the chance to negotiate pensions that were responsible they failed. When they had a chance to say no to raise after raise, they failed. When they knew about all the waste in State budgets and did nothing for fear of losing a vote or two from special interests, they failed. Now career politicians would like to turn on the very people who put them in office and blame them for schools failing if they don’t accept one more tax hike.

“Obama has asked Reid to strike provisions requested by senators from at least five other states, in an unusual move that accentuates the culture clash between the president’s rhetoric on changing the ways of Washington and the Senate leader’s needs to exercise the old-fashioned tools of Congress to pass laws.”

Well you’d have to be Helen Keller to not know better. Obama fits right in with the Washington crew. This is the same President who succumbed to his friend Andy Stern at SEIU and gave Unions a pass on Cadillac taxes on health plans until 2018. To say that side deals aren’t compatible with President Obama is an error of omission at a minimum.

The article continues:

“The president rankled Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by criticizing them for doing what generations of their predecessors have done: cut deals.”

Admittedly, the statement is true on its face, but it doesn’t do justice to Obama’s real motive. He wants this bill passed, period. There is no doubt in any reasonable mind that if the Christmas Eve Senate bill had made it to Obama’s desk, it would be law by now.

Where was Obama’s outrage when these provisions for NE, LA, MA, and other states were put in? When your signature bill is in serious jeopardy and your approval is plummeting its easy to criticize Reid and Pelosi for allowing all the typical Washington horse trading. It would have been a lot more convincing if he had been that upset when the deals were initially written.

The Politico completely missed any mention of special interest influence into the Administration that even liberals don’t deny, as this article from US News discusses:

“I thought Obama’s sweeping condemnation of lobbyists was better campaign rhetoric than policy. The reality is that some lobbyists are as nefarious as advertised and some are not. Some want to turn their public service into big bucks and some turn around and help what we liberals would call good causes. And oh yeah: Many have experience that could be helpful for a new administration trying to enact its agenda.”

It isn’t really fair to talk about Obama’s “strict” stand on special deals without discussing his own clumsy failure to live up to his campaign promises on “special deals”.