Mark Byron

Lerner and Low... Down Dirty

Things might get interesting tomorrow for what someone won't say. The gal who oversaw the non-profit division of the IRS in the crosshairs for giving the white-glove treatment to conservative non-profits, Lois Lerner, is getting the congressional committee treatment and is rumored to be fixin' to take the 5th tomorrow.

Republicans will take that as a sign that she has something to hide and try to make hay over that, especially when she's one of her assistants was tabbed to take over the division that will oversee the tax parts of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a."Obamacare"). She was likely to be getting one of the hottest seats in Washington and that seat will get even hotter if she's seen as hiding something from her most recent job.

[Update 5/22- it's one of Lerner's subordinates, Sarah Hall Ingram, who "oversees the agency’s implementation of the health care overhaul." I forgot to double-check that factoid.]

I've shied away from commenting on this case, since we know quite a bit about what happened to a lot of Tea Party and pro-life groups, but not who authorized the mile-long obstacle course of hoops for groups the administration didn't like to jump through. It could be a group of unionized IRS workers doing what their political leaders would like to do but couldn't order directly or some J Edgar Hoover-style higher up dirt-dealing against the foes of the administration.

Ms. Lerner and an effective dose of truth serum would give some interesting answers to that question, but that would not pass constitutional muster. For now, we might be stuck with seeing the Vodka Pundit knock down two fifths to keep from going ballistic when Lerner takes the 5th.

Facepalming Detroit's Problems

Here's a shot of Detroit's emergency manager Kevyn Orr that speaks a thousand words;

Well, let's add a few more words to flesh it out-

Detroit’s emergency manager says the city is bleeding much more red ink than originally thought. That’s what Kevyn Orr told WWJ City Beat Reporter Vickie Thomas in an exclusive one-on-one interview. “The situation is severe,” Orr said. “It’s worse that we originally thought. It ain’t good.”

No kiddin', Sherlock.

Passing on a Fin Tax

We might see one of the East Florida teams head west. Both Jacksonville and Miami are looking for newer digs, but state-level help got shot down. Stadium funding is an issue that crosses political lines, where deficit hawks on the right and liberals preferring something more virtious to spend money on than a sports stadium combine to fight jock-sniffers on both-sides of the aisle.

Neither the Jags or the Dolphins have a foot out the door, but LA has been laying the groundwork for getting a team back. It will be interesting to see if the Florida legislature has a change of heart not unlike Minnesota did a bit ago and shell out some taxpayer cash to help or say that they'd rather have the cash rather than another football teams; for X million a year, folks can root for the Bucs.

Speaking of dolphins, Minnesota's opinionated punter Chris Kluwe went Douglas Adams on us as he got released, citing a different sort of dolphin-

"So long, Minnesota, and thanks for all the fish!" Kluwe wrote. He added: "Thank you to all the fans, my teammates, and the Wilf family for the past 8.5 years. I wouldn't have traded it for anything."

In left-leaning Minnesota, Kluwe's pro-same-sex-marriage stand would be a feature rather than a bug, but his veteran contract and mediocre stats made him Turk-bait.

Give Plan B for Her Quinceañera

The early pregnancy terminator Plan B (somewhat similar to RU-486 ["no, I'm Pentium"] back in the day) got green-lighted for over-the-counter sales for gals 15 and over.

Interesting question-what kind of ID does a 15-year-old girl have? If Democrats don't want adults giving IDs in order to vote, what kind of ruckus will result when a poor ninth-grader doesn't have a photo ID and wants to wipe out the side effects of that last hookup. A 16-year-old would likely have a drivers' licence in states where that's the legal minimum, but a 15-year-old might not have anything that would serve as a official ID, since they aren't going to get "carded" for anything.

Even stranger is a court order that would let my pre-school age niece buy it, no questions asked. She's a half-decade away from needing it at least (much later, one would hope), but one district court judge has ordered it to be over-the-counter with no restrictions; that's probably what the administration wants, but wants to tow an awkward line between the devotees of the Church of Planned Parenthood and moderate voters who might not think that letting middle-schoolers get their own pregnancy-preventer is a great idea.

[update 930AM-Plan B is different from RU-486, but does stop an early-stage pregnancy from taking root in the womb. Thanks to my natural family planning ace Kathryn for the correction.]

No Anarchy at the UK

Interesting story on May Day in Seattle, where immigration reform was the theme of the organized protest during the day. Given Washington state's recent decriminalization of wacky tobaccy, this was cute-

Another [sign] said to heck with weed, “ ... legalize my mom.”

Later, a black-shirted goon squad took the streets; the police had to stop them from taking five-finger discounts at a mall.

The crowd stalled out at Fourth Avenue and Pine Street while people tried to decide which direction to go. One woman said jokingly, “This is the downside of anarchy. We need a leader.” A few men started talking about going over to “mess with the cops.”

Three great oxymorons: jumbo shrimp, veteran suicide bomber and anarchist leader.

I wonder if May Day went peacefully in Lexington. It didn't even make news in the Herald Leader, so there was no anarchy at the University of Kentucky yesterday; at least not at a level worth noting.

It's Time to Raze the Minimum Wage

Some group on the left is putting up Facebook ads "Stand with President Obama: It's Time to Raise the Minimum Wage." Just what we need when a fifth of the workforce is either unemployed or underemployed and job market participation is at a generational low.

It does help the folks who are getting by at that wage, but raising the minimum cuts off the lower rungs off of entry-level jobs. Marginal jobs will be eliminated and any remaining jobs just above minimum will have a larger pool of workers competing for it, making it harder for new workers or workers who fall through the cracks to find a niche.

When you combine a move to $9/hr as the president proposed with the beginnings of the ACA come January, you might have a effective minimum wage of about 11 dollars an hour, taking out a whole swath of lower-wage positions with it. Not bad if you're selling robotics or are in a union that has its folks well above minimum and just took out some scabby competition, but not good if you're looking to get into the workforce.

If you insist on all wages being able to support a family, folks may never get to that point if they never get a job in the first place to learn how to work and be useful. You'll wind up creating an unemployed pool of folks who never get a career going.

Doing something along the line of an earned-income tax credit to fill the gaps would be more helpful for those folks on the bubble than another minimum wage hike; however, the former comes out of the taxpayers' hides rather than employers, so it's easier to do for politicos.

 

Let Them Eat HSAs

We're likely stuck with "Obamacare" until at least 2017, or at least 2015 if the Republicans can somehow conjure up a two-thirds majority in both houses in the 2014 election and override a presidential veto. Short of that, they're counting on the president blinking in a game of chicken if they try to hold something hostage while passing a repeal.

That being said, should Republicans make it work better in the meantime or fire BBs off the armor-plated Leviathan?

For America President Brent Bozell said that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who supports the bill and pushing it behind the scenes although he is not listed as a sponsor or a cosponsor, is to blame.

“Rather than sticking to his promise to repeal the massive government takeover of healthcare that is Obamacare, which led to Republicans taking the House majority in 2010, [Cantor] is actually advocating shoring up a portion of the law that does nothing to use free market-based reforms to cut healthcare costs,” Bozell said.

Asked about the comments, Cantor’s office pointed to support the legislation has received, including a Wall Street Journal editorial and from Freedom Works.

“The President’s health care law failed to adequately protect sick patients with pre-existing conditions, like those battling cancer, but House Republicans are determined to do so by taking funding from Obamacare’s slush fund and moving it where it is critically needed,” Cantor spokeswoman Megan Whittemore said.

The Club for Growth is also urging members to vote against the measure.

I can see where your usual suspects on the economic right are reflexively against it; they want it to crash and burn badly so that they can get it repealed sooner rather than later and lay the whole mess on the Democrats' lap.

However, the goal here isn't to "use free market-based reforms to cut healthcare costs." It's to help folks who fall through the cracks of our insurance system. The status quo gives us some very efficient fatalities of folks who can't afford to pay for big-ticket care themselves, are too well off for Medicaid, too young for Medicare and are ignored by insurance companies who are willing to cover future problems but want to opt out of paying current ones.

"Let them eat Health Savings Accounts" doesn't do much here.

 

The Drone Arranger

Rand Paul made an interesting statement in support of drones, picturing them in something of a para-SWAT role-

I've never argued against any technology being used when you have an imminent threat, an active crime going on," Paul said. "If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash. I don't care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him."

Of course, his libertarian buddies are up in arms, especially after his half-day one-man filibuster over drone policy earlier in the year. If you think the difference between government officials and criminals is merely that of job titles, any government force is excessive. Drones both let you snoop better than if you had to send a person out with it and let you lower the cost of warfare by allowing a cheaper plane to do the work while the pilot stays out of harms way; both are features to a security maven but are bugs to a paleo-libertarian.

Rand Paul seems to be staking out more of a neolibertarian stance, one that is less isolationist and less pacifist than his dad. Politics... nudging towards the Republican mainstream? Possibly, but it could also be his working out his own ideology rather than merely being Mini-Ron.

We Have Met the Enemy, and... Who Are They, Anyway?

We've got a slew of folks wanting to make our Boston bomber an "enemy combatant." Watch it Dzhokar, you're about to be gored by a couple of RINOs.

Who's the enemy in question? Militant Islam, one would assume. Define "militant Islam." Does saying tacky things about rape victims and Harry Potter count? If that's the case, than Todd Akin needs to watch what he says about Hogwarts.

While were in the neighborhood, define "combatant." The late bomber Tamerlan was a boxer; if he took a beef with one of the folks at the gym "out back", has he become an enemy combatant? If what we know about their taste in theology is enough to cast them as the enemy, then what level of violence is enough to declare them a combatant?

Unless we get some clear link with an organized terror group, we're much better off letting the justice system deal with our bomber rather than shepherding him into Gitmo. Otherwise, we're judging their theology to see if it is radical enough to count, and what I've seen so far could almost make me a militant Christian if they applied that standard across the theological board. Guess I have to be careful about what I say about rape victims, lest I get on their radar.

Take Me to the Pilot HQ

You don't think of truck stops as a point of power, but the Haslam clan has done just that, building a multi-billion dollar empire of truck stops. That money helped put one brother, Bill, into the governor's office in Tennessee and another, Jimmy, in as owner of the Cleveland Browns. The latter gives us the ESPN sourcing of this piece, but it's not about football per-se.

The FBI has been looking at the Pilot chain that the Haslams own and has accused them of shorting trucking companies of their proper rebates in federal court, raiding corporate HQ in Knoxville in the process.

There might be some political fallout from this; if the allegations are true, the Haslam clan has egg on their face and Bill Haslam's reelection campaign in 2014 is made much more problematic. The chattering classes on the right will likely point out that a Democratic-run FBI is trashing the reputation of a Republican governor.

That might encourage a Tea Party challenge to the more centrist Haslam and give a moderate Democrat a shot at winning in a rather red state.

On top of that, it might make an already dysfunctional Browns even more so, which might please the Steeler fans in the Peanut gallery

[Update 210PM-I checked the Knoxville paper, and the governor seems to be well out of the loop-

Jimmy Haslam’s younger brother, Bill Haslam, is the governor of Tennessee and a former president of Pilot Corp, although he has not had an operational role at the company in years. Bill Haslam was twice elected mayor of Knoxville before being elected governor in 2010, and was not mentioned in the affidavit.

That should take this out of the political realm for Bill. Jimmy, however, seems to have some 'splainin' to do.]

Soros isn't Dead and Burried, and Neither is Thatcher

George Soros, the forex vulture and liberal activist, is still with us. However, Reuters let a pre-obit out from its intranet.

At 5:41 p.m. Eastern on Thursday afternoon, the 162-year-old news agency accidentally published reporter Todd Eastham's prewritten obituary for Soros, complete with dummy text for the place and time of his future death:

It's not uncommon for publications to have a biography/pre-obit at the ready, and this one seems to have got out into the public eye.

Meanwhile, on to the Iron Lady. She has, sadly, assumed ambient temperature after a stretch of very high temeratures. She's not "dead and burried" since she was cremated yesterday. Therefore, we can't speak of her spinning in her grave over the modern Tories move to the left, since she won't be in a grave.

I'm temped to say something about the ashes, but it wouldn't be cricket to do so.

 

Is Tia Tequilla Bi-Partisan?

Here's a classic pet peeve; grab a couple of RINOs along with the lion share of the Democrats and a bill suddenly becomes bipartisan. There often will be more moderate Democrats opposing the bill, but the same adjective rarely applies in the other direction.

CNN goes down that trail here on a background-check bill-

The bipartisan plan brokered by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania, was backed by President Barack Obama in his push for a package of gun laws in the aftermath of the Newtown school massacre.

However, fierce opposition by the powerful National Rifle Association led a backlash by conservative Republicans and a few Democrats from pro-gun states that doomed the amendment to the broader package of legislation.

Due to procedural steps by Republican opponents, the amendment required 60 votes to pass in the 100-member chamber, meaning Democrats and their Independent allies who hold 55 seats needed support from some GOP senators to push them through.

The final vote was 54 in favor to 46 opposed with two Republicans joining most Democrats in supporting the compromise.

Actually, three Republcans (Collins, McCain and Toomey) voted for the bill while five Democrats voted against, including Harry Reid. You could have the headline "A bipartisan coalition, including leaders of both parties, stopped a background check bill," but it would seem that the b-word only applies to a center-left coalition.

I was reading a piece on PA conservatives earlier toay starting to treat Toomey as something of a RINO, getting the fighting-words title Senator Arlen Toomey? With the company of the Bull Moose and the remaining RINO Sister of Maine, it's hard not to make that case, even if he headed up the Cudgel for Growth between his two campaigns against Snarlin' Arlen.

Our Marriagist System

In the comments in the last post, my libertarian-leaning friend Alan put in a plug for getting the government out of the marriage business-"No workplace discrimination against singles ever more." As a mature single, he's been on the short end of that stick all his life.

Here's an interesting Atlantic piece from earlier this year that itemizes the cost of being single. They even miss the tendency that Alan likes to note to stick the single folks with overtime to let the married folks have more time with their families; that might be a financial boon to the singles if they get time-and-a-half, but if they're merely given comp time when they might not need it, it's a pain in the butt for the put-upon single.

If you're looking at the individual as the key unit in society, Alan and other folks have a point. However, we're subsidizing marriage for a reason; kids do better with two parents than one, and getting people into marriage helps civilize guys. That's going to be a problem China will run into in the next few years as the guy surplus created from their one-child policy creates a caste of single guys locked out of the conventional mating market and getting into more trouble than their married peers.

How much is the positive externalities of marriage worth? Good question. Enough to at least give some benefits to marrieds. Yes, that does mean that singles get "screwed" as individuals, but society as a whole is better off. For most folks who eventually have kids, they will get the benefit down the line but be on the short end while single; the barren folks don't get the benefits and are shorted, but not everyone gets perfect fairness in life.

Eileen works with special-ed kids. They're getting more money spent on them per-capita than normal kids; some of the more problematic kids have a teacher's aide (paraeducator in modern ed-speak) dedicated to them, which makes them multiple times more expensive than a conventional classroom pupil who can have their teacher run herd over a couple dozen kids.

However, we want to take care of these kids and see if they can get to a point of being somewhat self-sufficient and do stuff as adults. That takes spending more money than hard equity would dictate, but should produce a better society in the long run.

Just as special-ed kids get more money spent on them than their less-challenged peers, married folks get more bennies than single folks. It's not "fair" but it makes for a better society.

Talking Past One Another on SSM

Coming out of Bob Evans just a bit ago, a older gentleman came in with a button to the effect of "a person of faith in favor of LGBT rights." Not that such folks don't deserve to be treated as fellow citizens in the workforce and in other areas, but applying that take to marriage is a bit of a stretch.

I've got a soft spot for people getting teased, since I got more than my share as a kid. That gives me a soft spot for minorities of various types, which includes gay-bashing. That being said, same-sex marriage seems to be a bad idea, both from a scriptural standpoint and from a public health standpoint in such that some unhealthy sexuality is being normalized.

However, that goes right past the fans of same-sex marriage, since your secular types will lead with equality as their battle cry. If you ignore tradition both secular and religious, there isn't a compelling reason not to let two folks who love each other to get married; there is also not a good case not to let more than two folks who love each other get married.

That applies to folks who ignore religious thought all-together and to folks who ignore everything but the Gospels, giving use the "Jesus never said anything about..." gambit. For those folks, the counter-argument seems dated and hateful.

Dated, maybe; "timeless" would be a better description, but your mileage may vary.

Hateful, not so much. At least not from my vantage point. Disagreeing with someone's deeper urges can seem hateful; one can hear the sitcom teenage daughter slam the bedroom door and yelling "I HATE you!" to her folks when they turned down her request to do something not in her best long-term interest.

Not much I can do with that short of letting the Holy Spirit do an overhaul on the other person's take on things (or have Him do an overhaul on mine, I hear the left wing of the Peanut Gallery say; good luck on that one). That makes this an unfun topic.

Hammer and Sicker

Coming back from a spring break trip Saturday, I spotted an anti-"right-to-work" ad along I-75 near Dayton, OH. The oddity was that the union-sponsered ad had hammer and sickles flanking "Workplace Freedom Act." 

Blogger "Amoeba" (a.k.a. YFNA) both got a picture of the sign and largely echoed the rant that Eileen got inflicted with a bit further north once I we were out of the Dayton construction zone-

For the intent of the Workplace Freedom Act, like other right-to-work legislation mooted and in place around America, is to ensure that a worker can be hired for a job – any job – without having to join, or pay dues to, any labor union that may be in place at that worksite. Which is precisely the opposite of the situation in the historical Soviet Union and, if YFNA remembers correctly, other polities adhering to Marxist-Leninist ideology (“communism”), in which trade union membership (for the little it was worth) was compulsory. The “commie” label might be appropriate for the unions themselves, but couldn’t be more wrongly applied to Workplace Freedom Act proponents.

YFNA can only assume that the folk responsible for this billboard campaign are counting on people associating the hammer and sickle symbol with evil (cue Bond, James Bond) and remaining ignorant of the symbol’s actual history.

That's one evolved amoeba. Thanks for getting the picture and saving me typing part of a rant.

Vaya Con Dios, Uncle Carl

Carl Levin's packing it in. I was a teenager when he first got elected to the Senate in 1978; he's opting not to run for reelection when his term expires in early 2015. At age 78, he's old enough where you start to wonder whether another term is a wise idea, although he doesn't seem to be slowing down much mentally.

He's been a hard candidate to beat, as he puts forward the persona of an avuncular Pentagon budget-trimmer, death to the $5000 toliet seat (and to more worthy weapons systems as well). That persona has left Republicans to say he's more liberal than Michigan is, but that hasn't worked yet.

It's a bit too early to pick successors, but state AG Bill Schuette might well be an early favorite for the GOP nomination. Had Schuette not ran against Levin in 1990, he would likely be in the spot Dave Camp is now; Schuette had Camp's House seat until then and Camp didn't give it back, riding the safe Midland-area seat into a Ways and Means charmanship.

Any number of other folks like Reps. Mike Rodgers and Candiace Miller, former Rep Pete Hoekstra and former AG Mike Cox would be the other names that would be on the short list for Senate on the Republican side. Hoeskta and Cox lost a hard-fought gubernatorial primary in 2010 and Hoesktra was the 2012 nominee for Senate, getting hosed by Debbie Stabenow.

The Democrats have some interesting possibilities, especially when there is a governor's race in 2014 as well. Former Gov. Granholm might be an interesting choice, as might 2010 governor nominee Virg Bernero if he doesn't want to have a rematch with Gov Snyder.

Next year should be interesting; an open Senate seat and a hotly-contested governor's race with some union bile flowing after Snyder snuck a right-to-work (a.k.a. don't have to pay union dues if you don't want to) bill through the lame-duck legistature in December.

That's What Wayne County Sheriffs Deputies are For, Rand

Spend half a day talking and you're occasionally going to get a brain burp.

Sen. Paul said “if you are sitting in a cafeteria in Dearborn, Mich., if you happen to be an Arab-American who has a relative in the Middle East and you communicate with them by e-mail and somebody says, ‘Oh, your relative is someone we suspect of being associated with terrorism,’ is that enough to kill you? For goodness sakes, wouldn’t we try to arrest and come to the truth by having a jury and a presentation of the facts on both sides of the issue?”

It's easy to send a team of FBI agents, or even just a team of county mounties to give Abdul an arrest warrant and bring him into custody. We wouldn't bomb a cafeteria in a civilian context in the US, drone or no drone.

Change the Dearborn cafeteria to a tent in NE Pakistan where the analog to Wayne County's finest are likely leaking like a sieve to the Taliban, and the situation gets messier. There, a military solution might be the only good option, doing unto jihadis before they do unto us.

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Filibustering a Filibusterer

Filibustering a Filibusterer

The original definition of filibuster was as an "irregular military adventurer"; William Walker's pre-Civil War efforts to be his own conquistador in Central America is the classic case of that.

Modern drone warfare, especially when used to target al Qaeda leaders, could loosely fit that definition of an irregular military adventure, enough so that Rand Paul's got his libertarian Irish up and is doing a one-man filibuster on the Senate floor, 11 hours and counting. He's holding up a vote on CIA nominee John Brennan over the use of drones.

Paul took to the floor after receiving a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder that creaked open the door to the possibility of using a drone to kill an American inside the United States.

“To allow one man to accuse you in secret -- you never get notified you've been accused,” Paul said on the floor. “Your notification is the buzz of propellers on the drone as it flies overhead in the seconds before you're killed. Is that what we really want from our government?”

Paul said he’d be raising the same complaints under a Republican president.

Paul would do that. His dad was on the short end of quite a few 400-something-to-1 votes in the House, and while Rand's a bit less wild-eyed than Ron, the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

There is a bit of judge-jury-and-executioner to some of these strikes. Some of that is understandable in a war footing; you don't waltz up to an al Qaeda outpost with the Yemeni equivalent of a sheriff's deputy and serve them a warrant. A Stinger missile is the notice served in that case, but making that the rule in more civilized areas does make one take pause.

My main wonder is whether he's wearing Depends or not.

Detroit Demolition

They haven't gone Chapter 11 yet, but the state of Michigan is now poised to intervene with an emergency manager for Detroit with bankrupcy-judge level powers to scrap contracts. That's a huge political hot potato, since Gov. Snyder is a moderate Republican and Detroit is very Democratic. Unions are already smarting over legislation allowing workers to not belong to unions ("right-to-work") passed in December, and this development will futher lessen the clout of public-sector workers in Detroit.

Motown is $14 billion in the hole on its long-term liabilities. That's $20,000 per person. Were the city to take out a 30-year project to pay that off, it would $1157 per person per year to pay that off at 4% interest.

Ain't...gonna...happen.

Some sort of managed bankruptcy seems to be the primary solution. The prospect of deincorperating Detroit and letting Wayne County run the city has been bantied about. Selling off city assets has been on the table as well, but the city council was not thrilled with the idea of turning Belle Isle into a state park in return for a nice piece of cash from the state.

You'll have Democratic-Republican fights with the race card played like the ace of trump early and often. However, that might actually help Gov. Snyder with outstate voters and do little to damage the non-factor Republicans are in Detroit proper.

No Such Thing as a Free IUD

The Obama team seems to keep flunking Managerial Econ. Here's their latest stab at trying to square the contraceptive circle-

As part of the new initiative, groups that are insured -- such as student health plans at religious colleges -- would be required to let their insurer know that certain participants would like contraception coverage. The provider would pay for the contraception separately.

"The insurer would then notify enrollees that it is providing them with no-cost contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies," an HHS statement on the new policy said on Friday.

The move would allow the religious organization to avoid paying for contraception.

Excuse me. Yes, they will be paying for it, for it's part of what the insurance company is paying for. Since the insurance company will be paying for contraception coverage, they will be factoring it into the price. The price will actually be higher, since the insurance company will have extra paperwork that mundane employers won't need.

The one way around having faithy groups picking up the tab is to have Uncle Sam do it for them, or have the folks buy contraceptive riders themselves.

Trust the B____ From Foggy Bottom

Gays adopt the Q word with pride while blacks will occasionally adopt the N word; could hard-nosed females be similary adopting the B word as a badge of honor?

On my way to lunch, I spoted a Hillary bumper sticker with the motto "Just vote for the [she-dog]". This Google search shows some 2008 stickers and T-shirts with that motto, but none of them were quite the one I saw, which didn't state a year. At least one Midlander seems to be thinking ahead to 2016.

Newt got called on the carpet for using that at her expense two decades ago; now, it's something of a complement to the left.

Hizzonor Passes On

When I taught finance, I always introduced the chapter on ratio analysis with Ed Koch's patented line, "How'm I doin'?", for a hard look at the accounting stats would often answer that question for a firm.

As for Mr. Ed, the answer is "not that well"; he passed on earlier today at 88. He was an honest liberal, honest enough to back Republicans on national-security issues when Democrats were clueless on terrorism and/or Israel.

One amazing thing about him is that he never married and never seemed to have a serious girlfriend or boyfriend. He was rumored to be in the closet for as long as that was an issue; in his first mayoral campaign, he was up against a young Mario Cuomo, so the slogan for Super Mario fans was "vote for Cuomo, not the homo." However, some people can be celibate and not be a priest or nun (that wasn't an option for a Jewish guy like Koch); Condi Rice and David Souter come to mind.

He was one of the more engaging politicians I can recall, always worth a stop if he was being interviewed. Not that I always agreed with him, but he always seemed to be a happy warrior and an honest one. Pray that God smiles on him going foward; he wasn't a "completed" Jew, but a fairly honest one, for what that will buy you at the Pearly Gates.

Benign Neglect of Politics

I didn't watch any of the innagaural festivities yesterday; I didn't want to raise my blood pressure. It was somewhat fitting that the innagaural fell on MLK Day for the re-up of our first president of color; it would have made liberals squee with glee had that happened in 2009.

It reads more like a convention acceptance speech than a unifying piece; "Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall" is a major shoutout to his pro-gay flank, elevating them to the status of woman's and black civil rights fighters of the past. Also, the "decade of war" isn't quite over, if he didn't notice what was going on in Algeria and Mali.

However, the biggest theme I got was a very pro-government stance. That's what we're likely stuck with short of a second Civil War, since a GOP House can only slow things down and not assert their own will short of a government shutdown.

My prayer is that this increase in government activism go smoothly and cleanly; there's a lot to like in "Obamacare" especially from the perspective of a have-not struggling to pay for the drugs that (along with God's grace) keep Eileen and I sane and alive. The regulations and side-laws needed to get it working well are going to be a major headache, and seeing that it happens neatly is better than trying to kill it off or monkey-wrench it.

Smaller Magazines? They Could Always Publish Online and Save Paper

New York state just lowered the allowed size of gun magazines to 7 from 10. It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court chimes in at some point. Could you limit magazines to one bullet and effectively ban most guns that we currently use?

At some point, you're affecting someone's ability to use a gun in self-defence. However, your gun control mavens think it's the police's job to protect us... if we're still alive by the time they get to the scene.

Burmese Liquidity Trap? No, Japanese

Via Drudge, CNBC is announcing a currency war.

Not quite, but QE2 has set sail in Japan.

Japan has set the stage for a potential global currency war, announcing plans to create money and buy bonds as the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe looks to stimulate the moribund growth pace.

You don't want to do too much of that, lest you get run-away inflation. Devaluing your currency is helpful somewhat in trade calculations, but if everyone eases, the economy sneezes over the funny money. The loose-money Abe lobby seemed to have worked.

China has been nortorious as of late in keeping the yuan low, so there's pressue to race to the bottom. If they're not careful, the two might be fighting over the Marianas Trench like they're fighting over those islands in the East China Sea between them.

The only thing missing is for the US to flip a trillion-dollar coin down the trench to keep them company; have you ever tried to break a trillion dollar coin at 7-11?

Angus' Beef with Assault Weapon Bans

Here's a promising sign from new indy Maine Senator Angus King; he's got some gun savvy that doesn't quite buy into the push from gun control mavens-

“The assault weapon ban is a tough one because it’s hard to define what an assault weapon is,” King said on CBS’s “CBS This Morning.” “And if we’re just defining it by what it looks like, that doesn’t do much for me. I’m much more interested in the functionality and whether that’s really a different weapon than my buddies’ semi-automatic hunting rifles.”

Semi-auto is one trigger pull, one shot. Fully automatic is one pull, multiple shots, machine-gun style. Fully automatic guns are generally illegal, while semi-automatics are legal.

Defining an "assault weapon" is essentially stuff that makes it look nasty rather than having it be significantly more lethal. For instance, Lady Gaga's assault-style double-barreled slingshot looks more menacing that Madonna late 20th century DBS's.

When we had the first round of assault weapons bans in the mid-90s, the working definition seemed to be something DiFi didn't like. During that era, I recall the bounty-hunter show Renegade, with a beefcakey Lorenzo Lamas shirtless with an assault rifle with bandolier clip in the opening credits; my stock snark at the time is "Senator Feinstein is not going to be happy."

She's still not happy. However, the difference between what is and isn't in that semi-auto but nasty-looking catagory and the stuff just outside of a ban is rather sketchy. Maine has its share of hunters, especially when you get outside of the southern areas of the state that have become exurbs of Boston, so King knows his base. King's left-leaning on balance, but there are a lot of blue-collar liberals who like to hunt, and might see their Bambi-blaster be on the wrong side of Gabby's grabby hands.

Just a Giglio

An interesting lack of research on the part of the Obama re-innaugral team; they had Louie Giglio of Passion conference semi-fame slated to give the benediction at the ceremony... until folks on the left noticed that he had had a sermon against homosexuality late last century. Giglio isn't one of your usual suspect theocons, but he is (as best I can tell) an orthodox evangelical, which should have raised a pink flag for your research team.

The one thing that comes to mind is that opposition research is done on your opposition. Giglio showed up on Obama radar for his work on the world slave trade, so they might have forget to check the guy's theology to see if it'd tick off their base, since he seemed like an ally on that issue.

Giglio seems to be a good guy, just not a PC one. Politically incorrect preachers need not apply, it would seem.

Changing of the Guard

We're in that odd stretch of a two-term presidency where folks take the reelection as a cue to move on, spend time with their families and cash in big time in the private sector.

Hillary is stepping aside and has some sort of blood clot on the brain. If she can recover from whatever her malady is, she's the heiress appariant for Obama. She'll be a tougher out than people think, especially when you recall that we'll be a quarter-century past Whitewater by the time 2016 kicks in.

In that vein, we're four decades removed from Winter Soldier and John Kerry's Vietnam era Pentagon-dissing. Sadly, the modern Kerry would be a decent Secretary of State for a liberal admiistration; he was seen as the internationalist good cop in 2004 when he lost to Dubya and would keep a bit of that cache in European capitals and other left-leaning terrain.

As a senator, he'd be hard to fillibuster, even with his 2004 campaign to bring modern fodder to the oppo file. It would also give the GOP a shot at getting Scott Brown back into the Senate in the by-election.

Oddly, the reach across the aisle done by Obama is the least well recieved, mainly beacuse he picked the most objectionable Republican this side of David Duke in Chuck Hagel. Hagel was a loud critic of the Iraq surge, a louder critic of Likud types and in the err-on-the-side-of-diplomacy side on Iran. Top if off with a tin ear to more-Zionist friends of Israel and a proper-for-a-Republican-at-the-time diss of Amb. Hormel's favored form of meat-packing and he's an accident waiting to happen, getting flak from conservatives, Jews and gays.

What does he have going for him, other than that he served in the military?

Jack Lew is an interesting pick for Treasury; the name looks Asian, but he's Jewish, Orthodox at that. He's a liberal technocrat, having done stints as Obama's chief of staff and OMB direction. He has his foes, but probably not enough to mount a filibuster; he's not toxic enough to keep 5 of the more moderate Republicans to vote for cloture and give the president a reasonable pick.

Hagel, on the other hand, might not have a majority if a few moderate and/or Jewish Democrats defect on the nomination. A filibuster might work on this one.

The Rope

The prospect of tax rates going up at midnight concentrates the mind wonderfully, if I can borrow from Samuel Johnson.

As Obama spoke, Congress was closing on a $600 billion deal that would raise taxes on households that make more than $450,000 a year and individuals who make more than $400,000. The emerging deal would also permanently patch the Alternative Minimum Tax, raise the estate tax rates for high-value properties, extend unemployment benefits for a year, extend several middle-class tax cuts for five years and add a temporary fix to Medicare reimbursement rates.

It's something that everyone can live with, even if it displeases the anti-tax purists. We had some very good growth in the 1990 with those pre-Dubya tax rates, so it isn't as if we're putting the economy in the gulag for the rest of the 2010s.

The next stop is an agreement on spending cuts. They're still set to go off the cliff on those into an across-the-board sequester, but cooler heads will eventually prevail... one would hope.

That's where liberal orthodoxy will have to get it's sails trimmed like conservatives took one for the team today; the liberal tendency is to do as little as possible as late as possible, while conservatives will be asking for cuts that are real and soon rather than in outyears that will never be seen in a real budget.

That's January's brawl, and beyond, if my gut is right in that liberals are going to need to be dragged kicking and screaming into meaningful trims in things other than the defense budget. However, the biggest brawl got settled on terms that shouldn't straight-jacket the economy.

We just got handed a rope for the "fiscal cliff"; that begs the rope-a-dope line, but I'm going to give the establishment GOP folks a pass on this one. With a Democratic Senate and Obama's butt in the Oval Office for another term, things are going to be a bit more left-of-center than Republicans will like; this makes it manageably so.

 

Great Scott

The black GOP contingent in the House just got totaled; Allen West lost a squeaker for is Florida seat last month and Tim Scott just got a promotion to the Senate. He's the first black conservative to be in the Senate and only the fourth black since Reconstruction; someone with more of an interest in US political history might make the case that one or more of those black Reconstruction senators was conservative, but the three other post-Voting Rights Act black senators were liberals (Carol Moseley-Braun, a very RINOey Edward Brooke [How RINOey?-Paul Tsongas ran to his right] and the current president).

Both West and Scott are Tea Party faves, but Scott has a bit more of a pragmatic streak, both in tone and in voting record; Scott will vote with the establishment at times when there is an establishment-TP split on a vote. However, fans of Jim DeMint should rest easy that a kindred spirit is taking his place.