These are my links for February 1st through February 2nd:
In Bad Break for Romney, He Wins Trump’s Endorsement – A portion of today’s Morning Jolt covers the reports last night that Donald Trump would endorse Newt Gingrich for president. Moments ago, news broke that Trump would endorse Romney.
Sigh.
2012 Michigan Republican Primary – Romney 38%, Gingrich 23%, Santorum 17%, Paul 14% – Mitt Romney, coming off his big win in the Florida Primary on Tuesday, is the clear front-runner in the first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the Republican presidential race in his home state of Michigan. Voters in this hard hit state see Romney as the much better choice to manage the economy. The Michigan Republican Primary is on February 28.
Romney earns 38% support from Likely Republican Primary Voters in Michigan, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich a distant second with 23% of the vote. Seventeen percent (17%) prefer former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, and nearly as many (14%) favor Texas Congressman Ron Paul. One percent (1%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided
Coulter’s shameful defense of Romneycare – Ann Coulter’s support for Mitt Romney entered a new stage today with a column offering an all out embrace of Romneycare. In the process, she insults the intelligence of conservative critics of the law and doesn’t address their actual arguments against it.
Her first defense of the law is to name other conservatives who supported it at the time. So what? Many of us were opposed to it all along. For instance, in August 2006, before Barack Obama even announced he was seeking the presidency, I fretted that Romney’s support for universal health care made him the natural heir to President Bush’s big government “compassionate conservatism.” In July 2007, I wrote that, “It is hard to imagine anything representing a greater affront to conservative principles than using government to coerce private citizens into purchasing healthcare.” David Hogberg was another early critic, among many others.
Have Democrats Succeeded in Pre-Destroying Romney? - – Tuesday’s installment of the left’s crusade to destroy Mitt Romney began like this: an operator chirping, “I’d like to welcome you today to the Mitt Romney Would Destroy Social Security and Medicare Conference Call.”
A few moments later, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, was on the line. “Thanks, everybody, for joining the call today,” she began. Within minutes, she had accused Romney of “political pandering,” supporting “the extreme tea party agenda,” and lying to senior citizens, Hispanics and supporters of the space program.
Just another day in the life of the vast left-wing conspiracy.
Practically every day for months, Democrats and their allies have been hammering Romney like this. Unions, party committees at the national and state levels, independent groups such as American Bridge and Americans United for Change, and the Obama campaign itself have undertaken an unprecedented effort to tarnish the front-runner while virtually ignoring the rest of the GOP candidates. And it appears to be working.
Even as he finds increasing success in the Republican primary, negative views of Romney have skyrocketed, particularly among independents, according to recent polls. An ABC News/Washington Post survey released last week, for example, found Romney viewed unfavorably by 49 percent of voters and favorably by just 31 percent. Among independents, just 23 percent viewed Romney favorably, compared to 51 percent who felt that way about President Obama.
One emerging strain of the conventional wisdom holds that it’s the harsh attacks on Romney from Newt Gingrich — and blowback from Romney’s own brutally negative campaign — that’s causing this to happen. Democrats have been pushing this line, in fact, arguing that Romney is winning at a steep cost and will limp into the general election bruised beyond repair.
Having told us only Romney was viable (with half-nods to Huntsman and Santorum) and having trotted out Elliot Abrams to smear Newt Gingrich with out of context quotes, even National Review is having trouble defending their candidate today.
This morning Mitt Romney said he wasn’t concerned about the poor. The poor, after all, have food stamps and Medicaid. But don’t worry. If the safety net is broken, Patrician Mitt Romney will fix it so the poor can stay comfortably poor. After all, just look what he did in Massachusetts. The poor can now wait 44 days to get in to see a doctor. Excelsior!
After making sure we all understood the poor were for the Democrats to be worried about, Romney decided to keep digging his hole even bigger. By the end of the day, Jim DeMint had to rebuke him.
Romney derangement syndrome (on the right) – So what gives? Perhaps it is frustration, especially among talk-show hosts, at not being able to derail Romney. Maybe some shrill bloggers understand that Romney threatens to prove that they are less in tune with Republicans than the “squishy” Republican candidates and officeholders. And maybe conservative political journalists have more in common with their mainstream counterparts than they’d like to admit — a suspicion of wealth, ignorance of the business world and a fixation on the candidates’ interaction with them. After all, Romney never really courted and flattered conservative pundits the way Newt Gingrich did (especially by bashing the mainstream media competition).
None of this is to say there isn’t strong and valid opposition to Romney in the conservative press. (Michelle Malkin, who recently endorsed Santorum, and staunch critics of Romneycare certainly fit this description.) But it’s hard to ignore the conclusion that for some in the conservative press there is an element of anti-Romney animosity that is not quite grounded in reason or ideological consistency — it is personal. And other than Romney’s being “handsome, rich and successful,” as Kathleen put it, it’s really hard to fathom where it comes from.
Romney Poised for Blowout Win in Nevada – A new Las Vegas Review-Journal poll in Nevada finds Mitt Romney leading the GOP presidential race with 45%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 25%, Rick Santorum at 11% and Ron Paul at 9%.
However, Carl Bunce, the Nevada chairman of the Paul campaign, “dismissed the poll results, saying most Paul supporters refuse to participate or lie in surveys because of a bad experience in Nevada four years ago. He said Sen. John McCain’s campaign did robocalls to identify Paul supporters and then sidelined them at the state party convention.”
Panetta: U.S., NATO will seek to end Afghan combat mission next year – The United States and NATO will seek to end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year and shift to a role of providing support and training to Afghan security forces, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday.
U.S. military commanders had said in recent weeks they would begin a transition this year toward taking more of an advisory role as Afghanistan’s national army and police take greater responsibility for fighting the insurgency. But Panetta’s remarks were the first time the Obama administration has said it could foresee an end to regular U.S. and NATO combat operations by the second half of next year.
Figures on government spending and debt – Figures on government spending and debt (last six digits are eliminated). The government’s fiscal year runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
Total public debt subject to limit Jan. 30 15,313,699
Statutory debt limit 16,394,000
Total public debt outstanding Jan. 30 15,356,140
Operating balance Jan. 30 158,596
Interest fiscal year 2012 through December 62,662
Interest same period 2011 56,780
Deficit fiscal year 2012 through December 321,735
Deficit same period 2011 368,960
Receipts fiscal year 2012 through December 555,437
Receipts same period 2011 531,797
Outlays fiscal year 2012 through December 877,173
Outlays same period 2011 900,757
Gold assets in January 11,041
San Onofre Nuclear Plant Closed After Radiation Leak – A small quantity of radioactive gas leaked inside one of the buildings at San Onofre nuclear power plant north of San Diego, according to a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The spokesman said the radiation levels were “barely measurable,” but the plant was shut down as a precaution.
“At no point were the public or our workers in any danger,” Southern California Edison spokesman Gil Alexander told ABC News.
Officials say the radiation leak likely occurred in the steam generator tubes of San Onofre’s reactor #3. The steam system, which is supposed to be shielded from exposure to radiation, was replaced in December 2010. Alexander said plant officials will be conducting an investigation into why the new steam tubes leaked.
Cities with highest and lowest unemployment rates – Nearly 90 percent of major U.S. cities had lower unemployment rates in December than the same month a year earlier, a reflection of stronger hiring nationwide.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that unemployment rates fell in 329 cities last year. They rose in 37 cities and were unchanged in seven.
The national unemployment rate fell in December to 8.5 percent – the lowest level in nearly three years. Employers added 200,000 net jobs, the sixth straight month of solid hiring.
Unemployment rates rose from November to December in a majority of U.S. cities. However monthly metro area unemployment data can be volatile because they aren’t adjusted for seasonal variations, such as holiday hiring.
The government will report Friday on U.S. hiring and unemployment in January.
Below are the cities with the highest and lowest rates:
Best and Worst Metro areas
Figures are in percentages
Highest unemployment rates December 2011
El Centro, Calif. 26.8
Yuma, Ariz. 23.1
Merced, Calif. 18.7
Yuba City, Calif. 18.1
Visalia-Porterville, Calif. 16.2
Fresno, Calif. 16.2
Modesto, Calif. 16.1
Stockton, Calif. 15.9
Hanford-Corcoran, Calif. 15.3
Ocean City, N.J. 15.1
Lowest unemployment rates December 2011
Bismarck, N.D. 3.2
Lincoln, Neb. 3.6
Fargo, N.D. 3.7
Burlington, Vt. 3.8
Logan, Utah 3.9
Midland, Texas 3.9
Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, La. 4.3
Sioux Falls, S.D. 4.3
Ames, Iowa 4.3
Iowa City, Iowa 4.3
Romney supports automatic hikes in minimum wage – epublican presidential contender Mitt Romney renewed his support Wednesday for automatic increases in the federal minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, a position sharply at odds with traditional GOP business allies, conservatives and the party’s senior lawmakers.
“I haven’t changed my thoughts on that,” the former Massachusetts governor told reporters aboard his chartered campaign plane, referring to a stand he has held for a decade.
He did not say if he would ask Congress to approve the change if he wins the White House this fall.
Congress first enacted federal minimum wage legislation in 1938 and has raised it sporadically in the years since. The last increase, approved in 2007, took effect in three installments and reached $7.25 an hour for covered workers effective July 24, 2009.
It has never been allowed to rise automatically, as Romney envisions.
Obama pushes plan to help homeowners with underwater mortgages – President Obama on Wednesday announced a string of proposals aimed at helping to rejuvenate the sagging housing market, including one plan that would allow responsible homeowners to take advantage of historically low interest rates.
As the housing market enters its fourth year of high foreclosures and sluggish sales, the president said his proposal — targeted at the middle class — would help homeowners save about $3,000 a year, without “red tape” or a “runaround” from banks.
Theodore Olson: Obama’s Enemies List – How would you feel if aides to the president of the United States singled you out by name for attack, and if you were featured prominently in the president’s re-election campaign as an enemy of the people?
What would you do if the White House engaged in derogatory speculative innuendo about the integrity of your tax returns? Suppose also that the president’s surrogates and allies in the media regularly attacked you, sullied your reputation and questioned your integrity. On top of all of that, what if a leading member of the president’s party in Congress demanded your appearance before a congressional committee this week so that you could be interrogated about the Keystone XL oil pipeline project in which you have repeatedly—and accurately—stated that you have no involvement?
Consider that all this is happening because you have been selected as an attractive political punching bag by the president’s re-election team. This is precisely what has happened to Charles and David Koch, even though they are private citizens, and neither is a candidate for the president’s or anyone else’s office.
Gingrich 2012? Going, Going, Gone – Last week, New York magazine’s John Heilemann pointed out a deep truth about Newt Gingrich’s peculiar presidential campaign: The very media elite that Gingrich delights in hammering has actually been in his corner all along. The press likes a horse race; the press likes outsize personalities; the press favors an underdog; and the press even takes a strange sort of delight in being ruthlessly attacked.
Of course most political reporters don’t want Gingrich in the White House. But they’ve had every incentive to keep him in the headlines and overrate his odds of defeating Mitt Romney for the nomination.
Tuesday night’s Floridian drubbing won’t change those incentives, so we can expect a last burst of media chatter about how Gingrich could still recover, ride a wilderness campaign to a Super Tuesday comeback and fight Romney tooth and nail all the way to the convention. But chatter is all it will be. For Gingrich and his media enablers alike, the dream died in Florida – and here are four reasons why.
If Gingrich can’t compete in Florida, he can’t compete nationally.
These are my links for October 3rd from 08:00 to 12:42:
The Bloomberg Hit Piece on the Koch Brothers – Bloomberg Markets has a print cover story on “The SECRET SINS of KOCH INDUSTRIES” (unusual capitalization and italicization choices theirs), which is plugged heavily in a long (nigh interminable) web item headlined:
“Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales”
The nut of it is that, in 2008, a newly-hired Koch ethics officer discovered evidence of improper bribes paid by a French subsidiary to secure six different deals in Africa, India, and the Middle East. (I know, I know. But try to contain your shock that doing business in Africa could be anything but above-the-board.) Koch HQ then dispatched a larger investigative team that confirmed the findings and the parties responsible were terminated.
Fast-forward to over a year later: The ethics officer who first discovered the impropriety, having since been promoted, is let go for emerging performance issues. She files suit against Koch for wrongful termination, and not only loses, but is ordered to pay Koch’s legal fees. Now she’s giving quotes to Bloomberg. Unrelatedly, and this is crucial, the Koch subsidiary also had some business (which has since completely desisted) with Iran at a time when — both Bloomberg and Koch reps seem to agree — that business was perfectly legal under U.S. law. Again, the Iran business was entirely separate from the alleged bribes. But go back and look at that headline. Would you ever know?
I reached out to the Koch Industries and got this statement from general counsel Mark Holden:
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Koch responds to Bloomberg – In an exclusive interview with Right Turn, Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden responded to a lengthy investigative piece by Bloomberg news citing various legal incidents and allegations of wrongdoing by the industrial conglomerate owned by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have become the target, if not the obsession, of left-wing groups who take issue with their libertarian politics and political activity.
The two issues featured most prominently by the Bloomberg report, according to Holden, are rife with errors and/or are old, long-since resolved matters.
Social media giving small firms a boost – Laid off after 23 years in the mortgage lending business, Dede Parise couldn't find a job. So she took a marketing class to reinvent her career, and before long she turned an assignment into a company.
Parise invented the Bandee, a headband women wear while playing golf and other sports. She sells her product mostly on the Internet, working from home.
Her audience is big, and growing. In a year, using Facebook, she has parlayed her reach into 15,000 fans.
For small businesses such as Parise's, social media has become a portal to success.
"It's really important," said Parise, 49, of Weston, Fla. "It's just the way the market has gone."
No question, the use of social media by businesses is booming.
According to a recent study by EMarketers, 80% of leading companies will participate in social media marketing in 2011, nearly double the number from three years ago.
And a 2011 Social Media Marketing report by SocialMediaExaminer.com found that 90% of marketers said social media was important for their business. Eighty-eight percent said it generated more business exposure, and 72% said it increased traffic to their site.
The most commonly used social media tools, the 2011 report found, are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs, in that order.
These are my links for September 23rd through September 26th:
Here comes another Koch/Tea Party smear – Evidence was found four years ago that other KGF employees had paid bribes to obtain business. An investigation was begun, and Egorova-Farines was one of the investigators. Ultimately, more than two dozen people were either terminated or allowed to resign.
Koch USA officials say they were as surprised and angered as anybody else when they were first apprised of the bribery allegations, and moved as quickly as possible to get to the bottom of the situation and fix it.
But, during this period, Egorova-Farines grew progressively unhappy with KGF, allegations of discrimination were lodged, and her case went to the Employment Tribunal of Paris.
All of Egorova-Farines' claims were dismissed. She appealed and the decision was overturned on a technicality. KGF and Egorova-Farines then settled out of court.
I spent a lot of my reporting years working with whistleblowers, mainly within the government, and generally find them admirable. But, like the rest of us, they're just human and can have very mixed motives, of which careful journalists must always be aware.
A former U.S. government official of my acquaintance was approached recently by one of the Bloomberg reporters working on a Koch investigative piece. After some conversation about the French case, the reporter said, "the other interesting thing here is Koch has strong ties to the Tea Party."
When the official asked what the Tea Party had to do with French bribery allegations, the reporter dropped the topic.
I've also had occasion to meet a lot of Bloomberg journalists over the years and have been unfailingly impressed by their professionalism. But they're human, too, and can make mistakes.
Joining the rampant Koch-bashing would be a mistake.
Koch addicts seek another hit – As The Washington Examiner reported last week, Bloomberg Markets appears to be on the verge of dropping a lengthy treatise on the Kansas-based energy conglomerate Koch Industries.
According to an individual interviewed by Bloomberg (who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity), much of the focus will likely be devoted to re-litigating past legal peccadilloes. But the piece may also reveal at least one previously unreported controversy: Koch Industries’ connection to the sale of petroleum industry equipment in Iran in the early-to-mid 2000s.
Koch currently has a policy prohibiting its subsidiaries from doing business in Iran, and the past sales (some of which likely involved state-owned Iranian companies) appear to have been conducted by a foreign subsidiary of a subsidiary of Koch.
Still, this comes on the heels of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN General Assembly — and at a time when Tehran’s nuclear ambitions are receiving increased attention.
All of this, of course, means the story could provide political fodder to Koch’s political enemies — which are legion. (In 2005, you might recall, Halliburton, the company once run by former Vice President Dick Cheney, also came under fire for doing business in Iran.)
In reality, the revelation isn’t terribly newsworthy. While U.S. law bans American companies from making direct sales in Iran, foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations may do so under certain circumstances. And many of them do.
Dozens of multinational companies — including household names like General Electric, Exxon Mobil, Hewlett Packard, Caterpillar, and Honeywell — conducted business in Iran during the time period. For example, a 2010 New York Times analysis identified 74 corporations — many of whom received government contracts — that have conducted business in Iran over the last decade.
Regardless of whether or not one finds this troubling, the fact that the practice was ubiquitous raises an obvious question: Why is Bloomberg singling out Koch?
43% of Twitter Users Access Twitter From a Mobile Phone – The latest data on mobile phone usage is out, and the numbers show that mobile isn't slowing down. And where inbound marketing is concerned, some of the key mobile data centers around how people are using their phones to access content and social media.
MarketingCharts' mobile research has found that people are increasingly using their mobile phones to access content on browsers, apps, and social networks:
In March 2011, nearly 39% of US mobile subscribers were browsing the internet using their mobile device. That's up by 2.2 percentage points from just 3 months prior.
Mobile apps are almost as popular as browsers; 37% of subscribers used downloaded apps.
Subscribers are also increasingly using social networks on their phones. In March, 27.3% indicated they used a social network on their mobile phone, up from 24.7% just 3 months prior.
These are my links for September 7th through September 8th:
Older GOP voters – Or Why Social Security Matters – After the theatrics last night on Social Security I wondered how big a deal this could be with the Republican electorate. The Post’s polling director Peyton Craighill told me that “the GOP has significantly fewer young voters.” In the general registered voting population about 17 percent are 18- to 29-year-olds; only 12 percent of Republicans are in that age bracket. For 30- to 39-year-olds the difference is 15 percent (for all registered voters) vs. 19 percent for Republicans and Republican leaners. Put differently, in the GOP electorate that is likely to be selecting the next GOP nominee, 69 percent are 40 or older. Forty-eight percent are 50 or older.
No wonder the Mitt Romney campaign is recirculating its e-mail from the debate, entitled (all in caps) “RICK PERRY: RECKLESS, WRONG ON SOCIAL SECURITY.” It reads:
“Our nominee has to be someone who isn’t committed to abolishing Social Security, but who is committed to saving Social Security.” – Mitt Romney
Governor Perry Believes Social Security Should Not Exist:
Perry Does Not Believe Social Security Should Exist, Asking: “Why Is The Federal Government Even In The Pension Program. . .?” PERRY: “When you look at Social Security, it’s broke. . . . Get it back to the states. Why is the federal government even in the pension program or the health care delivery program? Let the states do it. . . . That, I will suggest to you, is one of the ways this federal government can get out of our business, save a lot of money and get back to that Constitutional way of doing business in those enumerated powers that they’re supposed to have.” (MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” 11/5/10)
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On Disclosure – Writing about the Koch confab referenced in today’s morning links, my friend Dave Weigel points out that Mother Jones has published profiles of some top donors to various Koch organizations. Dave comments:
And it’s just a disgrace that this information is smuggled out of a meeting like a heroin shipment, instead of being disclosed. The Tea Party movement, the GOP, etc — no one who benefits from this disagrees with the goals of these people in making more money. Why hide it?
First, I wouldn’t assume that everyone who donates to these causes does so to enact policies that will make them more money. The Kochs themselves, for example, spend money advocating for an end to ethanol subsidies, even though their business benefits from those subsidies. You could certainly call that hypocrisy. But it doesn’t fit the narrative that their political activism is all about enriching themselves. The easier explanation is simply that they’re free market ideologues. And if you’re not a free market ideologue, that’s a fine reason to criticize them.
But I also want to address Dave’s point about disclosure. I can think of lots of reasons why someone wouldn’t want their donations to political causes to be made public. For example, there’s a bi-partisan history in this country of using the IRS to target the political opponents of the party in the White House. I could also see a business executive not necessarily wanting a regulatory agency to know that he’s donating money to groups that would like to dismantle or diminish that agency’s power.
I suppose those two examples aren’t going to win much sympathy from Koch critics. So let me offer a couple more: I could also see why a progressive-minded businessman in, say, Salt Lake City, would want to keep secret his donation to a group advocating for gay marriage in California. Or why the trust fund kid of a Raytheon executive may not want his family to know he gives to anti-war organizations.
But the best example of what I’m getting at here may come from Mother Jones itself. Mother Jones is published by a non-profit organization called the Foundation for National Progress, which “exists to publish and support Mother Jones.” Which means that the magazine is mostly funded by donors. So who donates to Mother Jones? Good question. They won’t say!
Ignored the debt problem for two years by kicking the can to a commission.
Promptly ignored the commission’s December 2010 report.
Delivered a State of the Union address in January that didn’t even mention the debt until 35 minutes in.
Delivered in February a budget so embarrassing — it actually increased the deficit — that the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected it 97–0.
Took a budget mulligan with his April 13 debt-plan speech. Asked in Congress how this new “budget framework” would affect the actual federal budget, Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf replied with a devastating “We don’t estimate speeches.” You can’t assign numbers to air.
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Pretty amazing….. but the Presidential 2012 polls tell the story – Obama is sinking.
Dem Senator Patty Murray Asked Koch Industries for Donation – Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), head of the Senate Democratic campaign effort, apparently left a voice mail for the president of Koch Industries asking for a donation. The company is owned by billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch.
Koch president Philip Ellender wrote back: "I'm hoping you can help me understand the intent of your request because it's hard not to conclude that DSCC politics have become so cynical that you actually expect people whom you routinely denounce to give DSCC money."
DSCC asking Kochs for cash – The Kochs have become a major target of Democratic ire recently — but that hasn't stopped the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from asking their company for money. A Koch company executive fires back in a letter to DSCC chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray:
For many months now, your colleagues in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee leadership have engaged in a series of disparagements and ad hominem attacks about us, apparently as part of a concerted political and fundraising strategy. Just recently, Senator Reid wrote in a DSCC fundraising letter that Republicans are trying to “force through their extreme agenda faster than you can say ‘Koch Brothers.’”
So you can imagine my chagrin when I got a letter from you on June 17 asking us to make five-figure contributions to the DSCC. You followed that up with a voicemail* indicating that, if we contributed heavily enough, we would garner an invitation to join you and other Democratic leaders at a retreat in Kiawah Island this September.
I’m hoping you can help me understand the intent of your request because it’s hard not to conclude that DSCC politics have become so cynical that you actually expect people whom you routinely denounce to give DSCC money.
These are my links for June 13th through June 14th:
Is Every Lesbian Blogger a Middle-Aged Man? – By Mark Steyn – We’re one lesbian away from a bona fide Fleet Street “trend”. Further to yesterday’s post, a lesbian blogger who helped unmask the Syrian lesbian blogger as a middle-aged American male has herself been revealed to be a middle-aged American male:
In an apology to its readers, one of the other owners, Linda Carbonell, wrote: “The past three days have been devastating for all of us on LezGetReal. ‘Paula Brooks’ has been a part of our lives for three years now.”
Mr Graber told the Associated Press news agency he set up LezGetReal to advance the gay and lesbian cause. He said he felt he would not be taken seriously as a straight man.
Yeah, tell me about it.
Miss Brooks, the founder of LezGetReal, turns out to be Bill Graber, a 58-year old construction worker from Ohio. Mr Graber feels that he should at least receive credit for unmasking yesterday’s faux-lesbian blogger, 40-year old college student Tom McMaster:
Mr Graber defended his actions, saying he had helped unmask Mr MacMaster by tracking his posts to computer servers in Edinburgh.
“He would have got away with it if I hadn’t been such a stand-up guy,” Mr Graber told AP.
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Good grief
Veepstakes – Was just chatting with Andrew Langer at the Institute for Liberty for his podcast about last night’s debate, and he asked something along the lines of: If Romney is the frontrunner in the end, will he have to pick Michele Bachmann?
It’s way too early to consider Romney the nominee, of course — we’ve had one debate and the whole field may not even be in place yet. But I think the vice-presidential choice will not have to do with demographics so much as enthusiasm and inspiration. And if the presidential candidate is eminently steady, an impatient streak in a veep will be appreciated. Rep. Bachmann could have all these things. So could Senator Rubio.
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Romney – Bachmann would be a viable GOP ticket.
Quickie Elections: Rigging the Rules to Favor Big Labor – After the forces of organized labor lost their battle for mandatory card check in Congress, it was widely anticipated that the board would give them the next best thing — “quickie elections,” which are held seven to ten days after a petition is filed. Like card check, quickie elections rig the rules to favor a union outcome. With NLRB chairman Wilma Liebman’s term ending in ten weeks, we may well see something issued soon.
Imagine a political election in which only one party were given the opportunity to tell voters its side of the story, and could set an election date only days away, all without prior notice to the other side. Sound unfair? This is the model the Obama board intends to impose on American business for union-representation elections.
One of the cardinal roles of the NLRB is to protect employees’ free and informed decisions on the issue of union representation. Consistent with that goal, the board has over many decades arrived at election procedures that allow for an election window of three to six weeks after a petition is filed. This permits the board to conduct a statutorily required hearing if the parties are unable to reach agreement on certain pre-election issues and to complete other pre-election requirements. The window also gives management the opportunity to learn about the union and either support it or assemble a case against it and make its reasons known to its workers. Organized labor abhors this opportunity because employees are less likely to vote for union representation if they are given the opportunity to consider both sides.
The current election procedures work. Under this system, union density in the private sector reached 35 percent in the1950s, when the election window was roughly the same or a bit larger.
Big Labor wants the rules of the game changed.
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Unions have failed in the marketplace so why not rig the system?
Koch Brothers, Grover Norquist Split On Ethanol Subsidies – Opponents of ethanol subsidies got a boost Monday from Koch Industries as the company announced its opposition to the giveaways on the eve of a major vote in the Senate.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is pushing a vote on an amendment Tuesday that would end ethanol subsidies and eliminate tariffs on foreign supplies of the biofuel. That would allow companies to use sugar-based Brazilian ethanol, which is both cheaper and less environmentally damaging than the domestic corn-based variety.
Ethanol is a key national issue for the GOP because of the importance of Iowa's early caucus to the presidential primary. Former Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-Utah) is skipping the state, he has said, because his opposition to the subsidies is toxic in the state. The issue has split the Republican Party, with free market advocates and deficits hawks pushing for elimination of the subsidies and corn-state politicians fighting back.
These are my links for May 19th from 07:13 to 07:14:
Boeing-busting union admits: PAC $ buys access to politicians – The Machinists Union lodge in the Puget Sound — the guys whose complaint led to the National Labor Relations Board's decision that could force Boeing to shrink back from its expansion into South Carolina — has a new newsletter out asking members to allow a payroll deduction to the union's political action committee.
The union explicitly states that such campaign contributions buy access. Here's the relevant passage:
Q) What difference will my small contribution make when it takes so much money to elect a candidate?
A) STRENGTH IN NUMBERS – By itself, your contribution does not mean much. But then, your voice alone would not mean much in improving your wages, hours, and working conditions.
When we pool our MNPL dollars, like we pool our strength in collective bargaining, we are strong. Collectively, MNPL money gains your Union access to officials, which is critical to get our issues addressed and ensure our input is heard.
This is nothing scandalous. It's just unusually honest.
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This is how the unions roll….
Charles Koch: Economic freedom key to improving society – Our government made a point of reforming its welfare policies for individuals but not for corporations. Cap-and-trade proposals, the health care bill, federal bailouts and "green" subsidies all favor a few businesses (usually large ones) at the expense of consumers, taxpayers and most other companies.
Unfair programs that favor certain companies — such as the current well-intentioned but misguided suggestion that the natural-gas industry should receive enormous new subsidies — don't just happen. They are promoted, in large part, by those seeking to profit politically, rather than by competing in a market where consumers vote with their wallets.
By contrast, we lobby against regulations or policies that would increase our profits at the expense of consumers. We believe in satisfying customers by competing on equal terms, rather than the government picking winners and losers.
For example, because ethanol use is mandated, we were compelled to be in that business, so we chose to be in it in the most competitive way we could. We still oppose ethanol subsidies and mandates, even though some of our businesses would benefit from them.
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