House Cleaning

Well, as I mentioned the other day, some of the GOP leadership is being cleaned out in DC. While Roy Blount 'resigned' his leadership position in the House, one can only imagine that it wasn't a totally voluntary resignation.

The other side of the aisle is doing some expected house cleaning too. Joe Lieberman; no longer needed to keep a Democratic Majority in the Senate; is likely to be stripped of his committee chairmanship shortly.

Joe pissed off the left by supporting Iraq. They thought they were rid of him when they organized to defeat him in the primaries two years ago, but they weren't, he won the general election as an independent.

That was very uncomfortable for Democrats, since they had to have his vote in their caucus to get control of the Senate, but hated the idea that he was even there. So they gave him a committee chair to keep his vote on their side of the aisle.

Now of course, it's different. The Democrats don't need him for anything, and of course, he supported John McCain for President, not Barack Obama. So, off to the scrap heap he goes in Harry Reid's new Senate.

Joe has been offered a spot in the GOP Caucus, though I doubt he'll take it. Unfortunately, for him, he still believes in enough Democratic ideals that he'll probably still give them his vote, though be asked for no input.

Much like McCain, Joe hasn't figured out how politics work today. It's no longer a gentleman's game, where you do what's best for country. Party is first and foremost, especially to the Democrats. If the GOP played by the Democrat's rules folks like Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, and John McCain would never have had big committee chairmanships.

This will play out again in the House, where the Blue Dog's that Nancy Pelosi mollified over the last few years are tossed onto small crappy committees with no power. The ultra liberals she prefers will ascend to more powerful positions now that she has a big enough majority to ignore the Blue Dogs.

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Climate Security Act, Part Deux

Last week I wrote about the impending disaster that is the Climate Security Act as introduced by Joe Lieberman and John Warner.

Two editorials on the subject were recently written, one in the Chicago Tribune, one in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Both beat the drum for passage of the legislation, though at least the Trib is realistic in it's assessment that it won't pass this year. The Journal-Sentinel chose the title "The consequences are too dire to remain a bystander ", which should give you an idea of the slant of the writing.

Neither of the two papers editorial boards spelled out fully the EPA concerns over the amount of tax hiking the bill contains, or the warnings on GDP consequences. To the Trib's credit, they mentioned the tax hikes, and gave some idea where they should go. The Journal, on the other hand, chose to use cherry picked data to back up their title.

The Journal also points to a new federal report that lists the dire consequences. One of the notable, and to them noble, parts of the report is (as they put it) "Scientists produced the report by analyzing research from more than 1,000 publications, rather than conducting new research."

They evidently don't realize that's one of the reports biggest short comings. More, new research is needed, instead of a report that cherry picks evidence from old information. The problem is, new research would show what's been reported, by dozens of climatologists (and ignored by the environmental movement) over the last few years; the world hasn't gotten warmer in the last six years. That data can't be included in report on the "dire consequences" of global warming, because it shoots to hell the theory that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are turning the earth into an ever hotter oven.

If the Gore/IPCC theories on warming are right, six years of steady temperatures can't happen. Yet, they have, and the government report chose to ignore that fact.

While the Tribune was honest in the fact that the EPA calculated a 1.2 trillion dollar tax increase, they forgot the part about the .9-3.8% drop in GDP over the same period. Anyone who's looked at an economics course, even in passing, knows that raising taxes and dropping productivity is a great recipe for creating a recession. The Journal Sentinel, in parrotting the alarmist mantra, ignores any economic consequences of the legislation. Damn the economy, cure the planet's fever!!

To read the Journal's editorial, you would be convinced that if this legislation doesn't pass in the next 20 minutes, it may well be too late. I doubt it. The Tribune is a little more realistic, knowing it won't pass this year, and even if it does, the majority won't be big enough to override the certain veto.

Next year, as they put it, it has a better chance. That would be assuming that Barack Obama can win the election, and drag enough Democrats along to get 61 seats in the Senate. While McCain supports parts of the bill, I'm not convinced he'd sign it. I'm sure that if he signaled he would, that the fillibuster to keep it from his desk would be nearly historic.

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Happy Memorial Day!

It's Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial start of summer. And it was 48 degrees at my house last night, not exactly "summery" weather.

I'll be out of town for the weekend, though I may still post a thing or two since I have to take the laptop and catch up on missing paperwork for the boss.

If you are traveling, be safe. If you aren't, I hope you are enjoying the weekend with family and friends.

Monday keep in mind why this is "Memorial Day" weekend, and remember those who gave all so that we can bbq, water ski, and picnic this weekend.

Now here's a little "light reading" from the Wall St. Journal's editorial pages this week.

From Friday's Potomac Watch, Kimberly Strassel wrote about "The Obama Learning Curve" when it comes to foriegn policy. Joe Biden attempts to come to Obama's defense on the same page with "Republican's and our Enemies" but omits every lesson of appeasement over the last 30 years, since the original Iranian Hostage Crisis. Not a surprise, since those lessons paint the Obama strategy as a new folly in foriegn policy.

Biden's opinion is a direct response to a Wednesday piece by Joe Lieberman, "Democrats and Our Enemies" which asks, "How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?"

Contrast the two and what you see is Lieberman giving an honest assessment of his party and it's move left. Biden's piece like the standard Democratic Party (or MoveOn.Org) lines of the last 7 years, with no real answers, or solutions, but instead whining about everything being W's fault.

Finally if you skip everything I recommended above, read Paul Ryan's (R-Wi) "How To Tackle the Entitlement Crisis", which outlines his legislative initiative "A Roadmap for America's Future". Ryan points out that, left unchecked an unchanged, which is the easy road for our Congress, by the time his kids reach 38 government spending on entitlement programs will consume 40% of our economy. That's not 40% of our taxes, we're past that point already, but 40% of GDP. In otherwords, current spending isn't sustainable.

Ryan; who should be John McCain's running mate come the convention; asked the CBO to provide him the required tax numbers to balance the budget under the assumption that no economic feedback occurred from tax increases, and that increasing taxes was the only way to balance the budget. The result was we'd need an 88% tax bracket, and the lowest bracket would have to be 25%. He based his roadmap on getting rid of that insane tax requirement.

Ryan knows that his plan will go no where, and admits it. What he hopes is that providing the rest of congress an honest assement of the state of entitlement spending might spur them to take honest steps to address it.

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