10.13.07
The Sunday Morning Talk Shows - preview
Originaly from Source
On media bias, political cowardice and taking voters for granted: The Michigan Experiment
Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.
On March 29, 2007 the Congressional Black Caucus announced a historic agreement with Fox News Network to broadcast a Democrat Presidential debate live from Detroit, Michigan on the 23rd of September.
Republican Congressman to co-sponsor anti-Rush resolution… seriously
RedState is evidently on fire today about the Rush Limbaugh controversy, and efforts by the Democrats to waste legislative time on their pet anti-Rush resolution.
As such, I thought I would mosey on over and make sure that the RedState community is aware of the fact that on Tuesday, errant Republican Rep. Walter B. Jones (NC-3) told FOX that he will be co-sponsoring the resolution condemning Limbaugh.
This follows months of Jones– who represents a conservative (and military-heavy), not a moderate or liberal district– voting with Democrats on the war, and taking quite a few bad economic votes, too, earning him a worse rating from the Club for Growth than five Democrats, and a number of Republicans not usually recognized for their devout fiscal conservatism. It also follows him spending evidently quite a bit of time hanging out with the likes of Dennis Kucinich and Cindy Sheehan.
As some readers will be aware, Jones is being challenged in next year’s GOP primary by conservative County Commissioner Joe McLaughlin (full disclosure, I’ve done some work for McLaughlin). McLaughlin has today been running a radio ad in the district, which blasts Jones for his actions, and describes him as a “phony Republican.” For any of you concerned about how the Rush controversy is playing out, and the Republican who’s playing along with the Democrats on this one, I’d encourage you to check it out. You can also learn more about McLaughlin here.
Liz Mair writes daily at lizmair.com.
Originaly from Source
White House Catches Nancy Pelosi in a Lie
2) Pelosi said the bill was “about private medicine.” Yeah right, says the White House.
Under Congress’ plan, one out of every three additional children moving onto government coverage would be moving from private insurance. Of the approximately 6 million enrollees Congress’ legislation would attract by 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that 2 million would drop private insurance to enroll.
The policies of the government ought to be helping people get private insurance, not Federal coverage. That’s why the President believes strongly in Association Health Plans to help small business owners better afford insurance for their workers and believes we ought to change the Federal tax code to help individuals better afford insurance in the marketplace.
3) Pelosi said Bush “missed an opportunity to say to the children of America, your health and well-being are important to us.” She obviously didn’t listen close enough.
Today, President Bush reiterated his strong support for SCHIP. THE PRESIDENT: “I strongly support the program. I like the idea of helping those who are poor be able to get health coverage for their children. I supported it as governor, and I support it as President of the United States.”
This year, the Administration will spend about $35.5 billion to provide health insurance for poor children through Medicaid. THE PRESIDENT: “In other words, when they say, ‘Well, poor children aren’t being covered in America,’ if that’s what you’re hearing on your TV screens, I’m telling you there’s $35.5 billion worth of reasons not to believe that.”
Originaly from Source
Recall Fever sweeps the MSM in Michigan
If the tax-and-spenders in Lansing were hoping the public outcry over their $1.35 billion theft would die down after a couple of days and a couple of news cycles it’s starting to look like they’re plum out of luck.
Turbulence for Airbus
You’ve probably heard about the evil problems Airbus has had in launching their new flagship product, the enormous four-engine A-380. This product is based on a bet that the explosively-growing East Asian economies will generate sustained demand-growth for long-haul air travel over the next few decades.
(Airbus competitor, Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes division, made a very different bet. They believe that future travel patterns will favor more flight legs, with passenger-counts not as high as in the Airbus vision, which led them to invest in the 787 Dreamliner platform. The competition among Boeing and Airbus will ultimately be decided by how well each firm has read their tea leaves.)
The A-380 (which has now had its successful maiden flights) will join the world’s commercial fleets. Notice I was careful not to say that the product will be commercially successful, as this term means something different in Europe. As I wrote here several months ago, Airbus is more than a business. It’s also an industrial “champion,” a source of pride for the European governments that part-own it, and a focus for labor unrest as they’ve tried to cut costs by shedding jobs. Airbus doesn’t define success only in euros and eurocents.
But the A-380’s road to production has been studded with terrible execution problems. I’m working very hard now to resist the urge to say that the American way of management (which demands strict performance to quarterly financial metrics) necessarily results in better execution. We have our own problems.
But on the whole, American businesses don’t have to deal with problems like internal corruption:
France’s stock market regulator is investigating top executives at Airbus, its parent company European Aeronautic Defense And Space…, and major EADS shareholders DaimlerChrysler… and defense conglomerate Lagardere… over alleged insider trading that occurred between late 2005 and mid-2006.
…
According to Le Figaro, the investigation will focus on 21 executives across the three companies involved, who apparently sold EADS shares with insider knowledge that mounting delays and manufacturing problems in 2005 were becoming insurmountable. When the damage became public in mid-June 2006, after the executives had allegedly completed their stock sales, it caused EADS’ share price to fall 26% in one day.
What I loved most about the story was this reaction by senior management at Airbus’ parent company:
“EADS is most surprised by the publication of information in today’s press concerning the investigation currently conducted by the French stock market authority,” said EADS on Wednesday. “EADS considers that such leaks constitute an unlawful violation of the confidentiality of the current investigations and of the principle of the presumption of innocence.”
Riiiiiiight: they think the problem is not self-dealing and criminal malfeasance by corporate managers. It’s the press. As you can see, journalists are an occupational hazard even in places without a First Amendment.
All of these are problems of Airbus’ own making. The more important and more general story relates to value of the US dollar:
The Franco-German plane-maker said… that it would have to find an extra 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in savings if the strong euro continued to outpace the dollar at such an alarming rate…
A spokesman for Airbus said that for every 10 cent increase in the euro’s value, the company stands to lose 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion). He declined to comment further on whether more job losses could be expected as a result of the exchange rate…
Airbus, like other peer firms in the aerospace industry… already has some tactics in place to mitigate the effect of a weaker greenback. These include hedging the dollar in the financial markets, as well as “dollarizing” the supply chain by sourcing more suppliers from the U.S.
I like that phrase: “dollarizing the supply chain.” I think I’ll lift it for my own use. It basically means more jobs and more industrial output for Americans. That’s the inexorable logic of how exchange rates interact with global trade flows: it’s a self-correcting feedback loop of gargantuan size.
But the reason this story caught my eye is because it follows right along with the theme I sounded here:
Europe’s monetary policy is being whipsawed by the Federal Reserve’s recent cut in interest rates. And Europe’s large economies, particularly Germany, are considerably more export-driven than ours, so the strong euro hits them hard.
Europe, and its top central banker Jean-Claude Trichet, are facing an extremely tricky decision matrix with regard to short-term interest rates in the next few months. Especially with French President Nicolas Sarkozy nipping at Trichet’s heels to lower rates, largely for political reasons.
Inflation is already hot and getting hotter in Germany. If Trichet cuts the benchmark euro interest rate, the inflation fires will probably burn even brighter and hotter, eventually causing an economic slowdown.
But if he tightens or stands pat, then overstrength in the euro (now at an all-time high of nearly $1.43) may do the job for him.
Update: Here’s a wire story about today’s ECB meeting in Vienna.
As a final note about American inflation: partly as a result of the continuous waves of Ron Paul insanity rolling through RedState recently, I’ve been poring through the Federal Reserve’s published data on money-creation here at home.
I’m now confirmed in a suspicion I’ve had for several months now: the US economy suffers more from deflation in certain sectors than from inflation. I’ve got a complete story in the works on this subject, so stay tuned.
Originaly from Source
Cal Dems Go After Rudy: The Wages of Campaign Finance Laws
Of late we’ve seen a plethora of cases in which campaign finance laws are being invoked for blatantly political purposes, see here and here, or for blatant silliness. See here.
This week brings another case of what might be termed “complaint abuse,” this time in a complaint filed against Rudy Giuliani by California Democrats. “
More . . .
Here, a Democratic group calling themselves Californians for Fair Election Reform, with longtime Democratic operative Chris Lehane as spokesman, Democratic lawyer James Harrison signing the papers, and Democratic donor Tom Steyer in the Chair, has filed a complaint against Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. It appears that their theory goes something like this: 1) An initiative was proposed in California that would award the state’s votes in the electoral college by congressional district, rather than winner takes all. As it is presumed that Democrats will take California statewide (although perhaps not, ironically, if Giuliani is the GOP nominee), dividing the vote by congressional district could give the Republican nominee approximately 20 extra electoral votes in 2008; 2) the man who provided $175,000 in funding to Take Initiative America, the Republican oriented group promoting the change, is Paul Singer; 3) Paul Singer is a friend and supporter of Rudy Giuliani.
That’s it. No wait, that’s not it - there’s more: Chuck Bell, a law partner of Tom Hiltachk, the lawyer reprsenting the petition group, has contributed to Giuliani. Wow.
Well, if that doesn’t spell illegal coordination, we don’t know what does. Paul Singer, who is according to the Hotline the “Eastern Regional Finance Chair” of the Giuliani campaign (a title that usually means he has no say whatsoever in anything the campaign does - he raises money), gives money to a group pushing a reform that is widely perceived as intended to benefit the Republican nominee, whoever that is. What a surprise that a Republican would do support a proposal that might benefit Republicans. What more do we need to prove that this is a Giuliani front? Oh, that’s right - we need this: that a partner in the law firm of the attorney representing the group also contributed to Giuliani.
It is absurd. Moreover, Democrats ought to be very worried by this, for if this is the standard for finding “coordination,” then every Democrat running for president is also open to charges of illegal coordination. The reality of politics, of course, is that major donors tend to know major candidates - it would be surprising if it were otherwise. Republican groups tend to hire law firms with Republican partners, who often contribute to Republican candidates; Democratic groups tend to hire law firms with Democratic partners, who often contribute to Democratic candidates.
Of course, we all know what is up here. Democrats are using the complaint process as a weapon to try to damage a leading Republican candidate. This is no surprise: both parties do it all the time. The goal in this case is to get some headlines, fire up Democratic base voters who want to see conspiracies in every event, and tie up the Giuliani campaign’s resources. As Mr. Lehane says, “We want to get to the bottom of this.” There probably is nothing at the bottom, but hey, while we race to the bottom to get a look it will tie up Mr. Giuliani and give him some bad press.
On the other hand, this could backfire. Under the standard that Californians for Fair Election Reform is using, they could be found to have illegally coordinated with Democratic candidates. After all, Chris Lehane is a well-known Democratic spokesman. Californians for Fair Election Reform is a “shadowy group” (go to its website and try to figure out “who is behind” them). Chris Dodd claims to “stand with” the group. FEC records show that the groups chairman, Tom Steyer, is a contributor to Hill PAC (Hillary Clinton’s PAC) and numerous Democratic candidates. And by filing a complaint against Giuliani, aren’t they helping the eventual Democratic nominee? Of Course. And there we have it. Voila! Coordination. At least, it appears, according to Californians for Fair Election Reform. Or, as Mr. Lehane might say, at a minimum, “We need to get to the bottom of this.”
What all this illustrates is the problem of “regulation” of campaigns. Give a politician a weapon, and you can’t blame him for using it. But we cannot separate policy from enforcement. One reason we have a First Amendment is that the dangers of enforcement of speech restrictions were recognized. People will file claims, and will have every incentive to file frivolous, or at least marginel, claims against their political opponents. And the government will have to investigate, or make choices, rife with political overtones, about which ones to investigate and which to pass over.
Ever since the California initiative was announced, Democrats have denounced as the lowest of low, partisan politics masquerading as good government. Just this week Howard Dean called it a “dirty trick,” although it’s hard to figure out what was dirty or tricky about it, seeing as how it was a perfectly legal and rather well publicized effort. Still, it may well be that. But so, then, must be the use of campaign finance law to harass one’s political opponents, as Californians for Fair Election Reform are now doing. It makes their complaints about the initiative ring hollow - apparently they don’t think that the California initiative was a “dirty trick,” at all: political rules of the game are just weapons to be used to bludgeon one’s opponents.
The lesson the rest of us can learn, however, is that it is best when regulation is least, when there is as little as possible that is open to manipulation. To put it another way, when we talk about regulating politics, as in campaign finance regulation, we’d best be darn sure that we have considered all the costs, and one such cost - not a trivial one - is the abuse of the law to try to silence, harass, or deplete the resources of one’s political opponents.
Originaly from Source