Category Archives: Politics

The Stupid Party

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Back in 1976 the argument against Reagan and conservatives in general was they could not win. It was not an unreasonable argument, given what happened to Goldwater in 1964. Nixon winning in 1968 seemed to reinforce the idea that the winning hand for the GOP was a hawkish liberalism versus the Democrat’s dovish liberalism. For conservatives and libertarians that was a revolting development, but political parties are about winning elections and distributing the spoils to their supporters.

The funny thing is this debate rarely happens with Democrats. The American media is far to the Left of the party on most issues. The cultural elites are way out there where the buses don’t run. They lose faith in the Democrats now and again, but they have no problem yanking the party back over to the Left every decade. In the 1970’s Ted Cruz would have been a typical Democrat. In the 1980’s he would have been a moderate Democrat. Today he is extreme right wing Republican.

Since 2008 the GOP has been locked in a battle between the Wets and Dries of the party. The fight is between those who wish to strike deals with the Left and those who want to take a pipe to Nancy Pelosi. In 2010, Tea Party types who lost were held up by the Wets as an example of their side’s argument. Mitt Romney was waved around by the Dries after 2012 as an example of why you can’t win with a limp noodle.

History, polling and logistics say the GOP should wipe the floor with the Democrats in November. Obama is less popular than Bush in 2006, according to some polls. The Wets made sure they had their people in keys races so they would not be derailed by a weirdo claiming to be a witch or an old perv talking about rape.You can’t come up with a better scenario for the Wets than what they have right now. If they win the Senate by a few seats, then they win the argument.

You really have to admire the ruthlessness with which the Wets have snuffed out the Dries. In Kansas the Wets carried a corpse to victory over the Tea Party candidate. In Mississippi, they played the race card to carry another corpse to victory. In open races, all of the Wets won. They even found a way to split the anti-Graham vote in South Carolina so that ridiculous pansy could keep his seat. I’ve followed politics for a long time and this is about as thorough of a house cleaning as I can recall.

That’s what makes this post by Jim Geraghty interesting.

It is not quite time for Republicans to panic about the Senate races in Colorado, Iowa, and North Carolina, but it’s worth ratcheting up the concern another notch.

In Iowa, it’s been a while since Joni Ernst enjoyed a lead:

The last poll that had her ahead — by 1 — was conducted from July 5 to 24.

In Colorado, the good news is that incumbent Democrat Mark Udall remains below 50. But Cory Gardner can’t seem to get over the hill and take the lead:

In North Carolina, the concerns about Thom Tillis are triggered mostly by one poll showing a surprising six-point lead for incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan. But he, too, has had difficulty getting the lead against an incumbent with indisputable problems, and this is in a state Romney won.

Republicans can still win control of the Senate without these races. They need to hold GOP-held seats Kansas, Kentucky, and Georgia; win the expected near-locks of Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia, and then win in Arkansas, Alaska, and Louisiana. But it must be disconcerting that as the national polling environment looks better and better for the GOP, these three races — and for that matter, Michigan — are not seeing a comparable boost for the Republican candidates.

If those three states remain Democrat, the GOP will not win the Senate. They would need a miracle in New Hampshire to get a 51-seat majority. When you look at the numbers in Kansas, the corpse is in a dead heat with the Democrat, an actual live human. People are funny about voting for dead people. They tend not to do it. Maybe the GOP can reanimate their guy before election night. It probably results in a 50-50 result, which means the Democrats retain control of the Senate.

Banksters

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The beginning of the end of the Roman Republic was when the ruling class loss respect for and the willingness to abide by their own rules. Scholars don’t frame it like that because it’s hard and boring. Instead they focus on economic changes like the flood of slave labor after the defeat of Carthage and Corinth. Alternatively, the political changes make for nice stories because the characters are interesting. The road off the cliff, however, started with the loss of respect for the spirit of the laws and customs.

The point when our politicians stopped punishing criminal financiers will similarly be looked at as an inflection point. There was a time when politicians and wealthy members of the ruling elite faced criminal punishment for breaking the law. Nixon was run out of DC for talking about what Obama boasts of doing. Michael Milken went to jail for two years for what is common today on Wall Street. A great trivia question is how many bankers went to jail for the sub prime mortgage scandal. The answer is zero.

This article on Bloomberg points this out.

Yesterday, we looked at why bankers weren’t busted for crimes committed during the financial crisis. Political corruption, prosecutorial malfeasance, rewritten legislation and cowardice on the part of government officials were among the many reasons.

But I saved the biggest reason so many financial felons escaped justice for today: They dumped the cost of their criminal activities on you, the shareholder (never mind the taxpayer).

Corporate executives theoretically work for the owners of the company, namely, the shareholders. But there is an agency problem in that owners can’t closely manage and object to the actions of these executives. Collective owners, such as mutual funds, seem to have no interest in doing so. What we end up with is a management class that works for itself instead of on behalf of the owners of the publicly traded banks. Many of these executives committed crimes; got big bonuses for doing so; and paid huge fines using shareholder assets (i.e., company cash), helping them avoid prosecution.

As for claims like those of white-collar crime defense attorney Mark F. Pomerantz, that “the executives running companies like Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan were not committing criminal acts,” they simply are implausible if not laughable. Consider a brief survey of some of the more egregious acts of wrongdoing:

Foreclosure fraud: Of all the crimes committed during the financial crisis and in its aftermath, this is one that should have been the easiest to identify and prosecute.

Any bank that owns a mortgage with the debtor in default must follow a simple set of legal steps in order to foreclose. The procedure is time consuming, specific to each state’s laws and involves lawyers, so foreclosures are expensive. Hey, it is the cost of issuing credit, and a simple reality of the rule of law. There are no shortcuts.

Except the banks took many short cuts and did so on purpose and with the goal of improperly expediting the process. They failed to review the documents of the mortgages they were foreclosing on, then told courts they had. They didn’t verify information, but claimed to have done so in sworn affidavits. They hired $8 an hour burger-flippers to “robosign” these documents, pretending the underlying legal work had been done. They knowingly used falsified records, some of which they bought en masse. They were aided by a company called DocX, which had a price list of fabricated documents for use in court. (DocX, by the way, was eventually indicted on charges of mortgage fraud).

After creating phony dossiers on borrowers, the banks signed and notarized affidavits stating they had taken all of the legal steps. In many cases, even the notarizations were fakes. Submitting a falsified notarized affidavit to a court is perjury and fraud.

Of course, the burger-flippers who did the paperwork didn’t think up the whole scheme — someone much higher did. Somewhere between these low-level workers and the chief executive officer were managers who masterminded robosigning. So far, just one midlevel executive has been convicted at Bank of America, while scores of others have gone untouched.

Mortgage underwriting: Then there are the crimes committed in mortgage underwriting, where defects were knowingly ignored. The FBI investigated these cases early on, but investigators never moved forward with prosecutions.

Maybe the scale of the financial penalties bank agreed to pay had something to do with this inaction. Bank of America, for instance, using shareholder money, paid $16.65 billion to settle allegations of fraudulent mortgage originations, securitizations and servicing. One can’t help think that this money bought immunity from prosecution for executives.

Money Laundering: Banks have been laundering staggering sums of money for drug dealers and terrorists. Hey, there are big bucks in high net worth narco-terrorists. Awash in cash, drug cartels relied on big banks to launder their ill-gotten money. Apparently, it was just good business to grab a slice of that pie. However, these are deeply offensive, very illegal activities, and deserve not just penalties, but jail time.

How much of this dirty money made its way through the banks? One analysis estimates that $1.6 trillion of tainted proceeds has been laundered through major money-center banks around the world.

A U.S. Senate report linked HSBC to drug lords and terrorists, leading to a record $1.9 billion fine. The Federal Reserve faulted Citigroup over its controls, allowing money laundering to go on. And Wells Fargo admitted to laundering money for Mexican drug gangs.

• Market manipulation: We haven’t even gotten to the manipulation of markets in violation of U.S and international law. Whether it was aluminum or Libor rates, prices were either improperly manipulated or illegally rigged, with knowledge of the bank executives and the traders they employed and supervised. Let’s not forget manipulating the multitrillion dollar derivatives market.

• Fraud, skimming and bid-rigging: Then there is just good old-fashioned fraud and bid-rigging: State Street Bank was accused of skimming money off of the pension transactions it handled while BNY Mellon was accused of skimming money for “fictitious” foreign-currency costs for pension funds.

• Accounting fraud: We could spend months discussing how some executives at banks cooked their books, but really, this is so well known that it hardly merits mention.

So next time you hear the claim that “there were no crimes committed by bankers,” just remember that this may be the biggest lie of the 21st century.
That’s a strong and accurate indictment. When you add in the multiple LIBOR scandals and the ISDAfix scandal, the image we get is of a rapacious bandit class rampaging through the world financial system like pirates. Theft, graft and corruption will always be a part of the financial class. Banks attract bank robbers and the banking system will always attract grifters and confidence men. It is the duty of the civil authorities to police the financial system and punish the people who commit crimes.
If there’s going to be a reform of the ruling class, it has to start with the bandit problem on Wall Street. The reforms following the Great Depression ended for a generation the type of spiritual corruption we see today. Those reforms were not perfect, but they gave an advantage to the type of men who put their reputation and their firms reputation ahead of quick profits. Top to bottom the modern financial firm is filled with men who would gladly murder their mother for a bigger bonus check.
The answer lies in those reforms a century ago. Separating commercial banking from investment banking is where it must start. The former is vital to a strong economy, while the latter is just gambling and popular only in good times. Similarly, retail banking should be separate from commercial banking. A firm offering boat loans and second mortgages should not be financing factory expansion and land acquisition. They have different regulatory needs and different degrees of transparency.
For any of this to happen, the ruling class has to abandon the idea that you can have a civil society based on purely transactional relationships. When all relationships are measured purely on monetary terms in the moment, there’s no reason to be honest in your dealings with others. Completely bankrupting the other guy is fine because you win the deal. Squeezing your vendors into poverty is acceptable, even if it destroys your ability to do business down the road. All that matter is the here and now. That’s a recipe for a low-trust society, not western civilization.

Worth Remembering 9/11

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This day has become an unofficial holiday for Red Team. Members of Conservative Inc get to go on TV and act solemn and serious, maybe even say a bad word about Islam. The Forever War crowd gets to compare some batch of Muslim fanatics to Hitler, demanding we blow them up before, wait for it, we have another 9/11. The only good thing is Lefty stays home and hides under his bed. Otherwise, Derbyshire is right on this one. You don’t celebrate great failures or humiliations.

Jim Geraghty has this on his blog.

We remember how the 9/11 era began today, and the emotions are still fresh and strong, 13 years later.

But that was only one part of the story.

Take a good look, ISIS. You never know when the U.S. Navy SEALs are at your door.

My response:

Not really. It was a stunning failure by our rulers, for sure, but not one worth remembering. If our rulers had learned from their blunders leading up to 9/11, then sure. But, they learned nothing. They continue to troll Muslim countries for immigrants. Inviting people who want you dead to settle in your lands is madness, but here we are anyway.

If anything, our rulers drew all the wrong lessons. They reasoned that the Muslims attacked America because it was full of Americans. If they could just replace all the Americans with foreign imports, problem solved! Since 9/11 Muslim immigration has gone up with over one million of them coming here from places like Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

I guess if you want to get weepy on 9/11, the thought that our rulers are not the only people who want us dead is a good reason.

The lesson of 9/11 is big bureaucracies are not good at this stuff. That’s not what they are built for, which is why they fail at small, complex tasks. Government is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. In order to prevent another 9/11, we should have immediately ended all immigration from Muslim countries. Visas for visiting should have been limited to diplomatic and high level trade. If an oil sheik needs to come here to do a deal with Exxon, fine.

Further, Muslims here should have been deported if they were not citizens. The foreign funding for mosques should have been confiscated. We can’t ban the religion, although I would be in favor of it, but we can encourage our citizens to put out the unwelcome mat to Muslims. Islam is a fine religion that brings its adherent happiness. It is incompatible western democracy. It is hostile to western culture. We should have learned that 13 years ago. Our rulers learned the opposite.

Happy 9/11

Ted Cruz

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I’m not sure where I am with Ted Cruz. I like some things he has said, but I have my doubts about his sincerity on issues important to me like immigration, guns and the size of government. I’m still open minded about him, but given the state of his party and the Right in general, he’s probably just another grifter working a scam. Stories like this make me wonder if he is an idiot or extremely clever.

Sen. Ted Cruz was booed offstage at a conference for Middle Eastern Christians Wednesday night after saying that “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.”

Cruz, the keynote speaker at the sold-out D.C. dinner gala for the recently-founded non-profit In Defense of Christians, began by saying that “tonight, we are all united in defense of Christians. Tonight, we are all united in defense of Jews. Tonight, we are all united in defense of people of good faith, who are standing together against those who would persecute and murder those who dare disagree with their religious teachings.”

Cruz was not reading from a teleprompter, nor did he appear to be reading from notes.

“Religious bigotry is a cancer with many manifestations,” he continued. “ISIS, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, state sponsors like Syria and Iran, are all engaged in a vicious genocidal campaign to destroy religious minorities in the Middle East. Sometimes we are told not to loop these groups together, that we have to understand their so called nuances and differences. But we shouldn’t try to parse different manifestations of evil that are on a murderous rampage through the region. Hate is hate, and murder is murder. Our purpose here tonight is to highlight a terrible injustice, a humanitarian crisis.”

“Christians have no greater ally than Israel,” he said, at which point members of the crowd began to yell “stop it” and booed him.

EWTN News Nightly’s Jason Calvi caught the moment on video.

“Those who hate Israel hate America,” he continued, as the boos and calls for him to leave the stage got louder. “Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room will not recognize that, then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ. And the very same people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians, who behead children, are the very same people who target Jews for their faith, for the same reason.”

The cries of “stop it, stop it, enough,” and booing continued. “Out, out, leave the stage!” At this point IDC’s president, Toufic Baaklini, came out to the stage to ask for the crowd to listen to Cruz, but Cruz had already had enough.

I probably know more about Arab Christians than most people, but guys in his league have sharp people around them who do their homework before sending their man out to speak. Arab Christians hate Arab Muslims and they hate Israel. They have good reason to hate both camps. They are typically used as canon fodder by both sides. The Israelis and Arabs have run most of the Christians out of Lebanon, for example.

Now, maybe Cruz is just a blockhead, who assumed all Christians are like American Evangelicals. He went in thinking he had a great pitch only to find they thought he was flinging poo at them. On the other hand, it may have been a setup. The three “I’s” still apply to some degree in American politics. That’s Iowa, Ireland and Israel. Get the support of all three and you win the presidency. Ireland has fallen by the wayside now, but Israel still counts for a lot. Taking one for the Tribe looks pretty good on the resume if you’re planning to run for president.

Rand Paul and the Right

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Libertarianism is nonsense, of course, but it has always been hard to hate people like Rand Paul or his father Ron Paul. Rand appears to be a lot less wacky than his father and a much better politician. That’s probably why the GOP establishment treats Rand Paul like an eccentric uncle. The old man was no threat because he always said something nutty to turn off people attracted to his libertarian arguments. Rand is far more ambitious and far more disciplined as a politician.

Anyway, Rich Lowry has a wishful thinking post about Rand Paul coming around to the neo-con foreign policy view. It is wishful thinking because neoconservatism will end up on the the left side of the Washington establishment in a few years. They wore out their welcome with most conservatives, so they are grabbing their bags and headed off to the next opportunity. They are like hyperviolent gypsies.

I wrote a column last year on the Rand Paul moment, on how events in the midst of the NSA controversy and Paul’s canny capitalizing on them were making him a real force in 2016 Republican presidential politics. He’s obviously still such a force, but events haven’t been so favorable to him lately. We’ve been starkly reminded of how dangerous the world is and how important American leadership is over the last few months. Now, on two very important questions, Paul has had to reverse field after initially, we can assume, going with his gut. First, he counseled against “tweaking” Vladimir Putin and sounded like we should give him running room in Ukraine, then toughened up his rhetoric. Second, after the Islamic State took Mosul, he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled, “America Shouldn’t Choose Sides in Iraq’s Civil War.” Now, as Eliana notes below, he wants to declare war on the Islamic State.

In both cases, I obviously agree with his second position, and always welcome evolution in the right direction. His defenders can argue that none of these positions are strictly contradictory and defend it all on “when facts change, I change my mind” grounds. But the more cynical interpretation is that he was following the politics. Amazingly enough, if he had maintained his initial attitude of not doing anything to check the rise of the Islamic State, he would be to the left of Elizabeth Warren right now.

There are two big problems for Paul here. One is that the politics of foreign policy are shifting, not just on the right, but more broadly. That means that Paul’s foreign policy, which was running with the grain of Republican sentiment in the post-Bush era, is now running against it. Navigating that for him will obviously be tricky, and creates the second problem. Paul is a conviction politician. That is an enormous part of his appeal. If he is seen as playing it too cute on foreign policy — trotting out robust Paulite sentiments, before walking them back into more conventional positions — he will undermine a major part of his broader appeal as a straight-shooter. Paul can run as a Paulite purist on foreign policy or he can run as a traditional Republican/cautious hawk. He can’t run as both.

Engaging in the debate in the comments section, it strikes me that the Right is really out of gas. They have nothing to offer. They are making a huge deal over ISIS and Iraq, because that’s all they have right now. The GOP seems to have gone underground, hoping public disgust with Obama is enough to carry them to victory. There are no Republican leaders anyone finds interesting, except Rand Paul and he’s not on good terms with Conservative Inc.

There’s not a lot of space between the parties now. There is the legacy belief that the Republicans are for the rich while the democrats are for the poor, but that’s just a bunch of nonsense now. Both parties are tools of the emerging oligarchy. The great American middle-class has no party. There is no tribune of the people. Both parties make commercials declaring their love for the people, but no one can name a single policy or position held by either party that benefits the middle-class.

That’s the attraction of Paul and to a lesser degree libertarianism. Even though it is not said, their offer is simple. Since the state does nothing but harass you and steal your money, why not vote for the guys who will not harass you or steal your money? Instead of promising to rebuild your trust in the state with the politics of personal apology, they offer to help you get even with the state. It’s populism for dorks and compared to what the GOP has on offer, it may look pretty good in two years.

Racial Politics

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In the 1970’s, Nixon began to win over southern whites to the GOP by appealing to middle-class, suburban voters. The Left called the “Southern Strategy” racist because that’s what they do, but it was really just a strong defense of whites. In the face of the liberal onslaught on whites, those southern whites out in the burbs started to reconsider their long relationship with the Democrat Party. The Left squealed about “code words” and racism, as they just assume all whites in the South are racists. The fact is those early converts to the GOP were the southern whites looking to close the books on segregation and racial strife.

This argument carried on through the 80’s as the transformation of the South from Democrat to Republican was completed. If you know your Faulkner, Nixon converted the Compsons, while Reagan brought over the Snopes clan.

In fairness, race did play a role. After the 60’s, urban blacks rioting and looting became the face of disorder, the great enemy of the suburban burghers who fled the city for the suburbs. In the 1970’s, many of those people living in suburbia were there because their city neighborhoods collapsed in the 1960’s. The liberal enthusiasm for mayhem was amplified when they backed groups like the Panthers and the Nation of Islam. Nixon’s appeals to law and order naturally carried with them the image of the black rioter. He did not have to mention any of this. It was simply understood.

The thing about the Left is they tend to go craziest when applying their faults to their enemies. No one has cynically used race as a political weapon like the American Left. LBJ built his career long before the Civil Rights Movement on the back of race. He would appeal to blacks for votes and then use that support to lever support from the Texas elite. His cynical use of race as President still casts a shadow over the nation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was as much about funneling tax money into the Democratic Party as anything else. It also made blacks a reliable voting black that the party could take for granted.

Steve Sailer links to and comments upon a story in the NYTimes about how the Left is trying to use the Ferguson riot as a get out the vote tool. It says something about our times when the Times can report on something like this without bothering to notice the evil of it. The banality of the report is what’s shocking.

With their Senate majority imperiled, Democrats are trying to mobilize African-Americans outraged by the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., to help them retain control of at least one chamber of Congress for President Obama’s final two years in office.

In black churches and on black talk radio, African-American civic leaders have begun invoking the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, along with conservative calls to impeach Mr. Obama, as they urge black voters to channel their anger by voting Democratic in the midterm elections, in which minority turnout is typically lower.

“Ferguson has made it crystal clear to the African-American community and others that we’ve got to go to the polls,” said Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a civil-rights leader. “You participate and vote, and you can have some control over what happens to your child and your country.”

The push is an attempt to counter Republicans’ many advantages in this year’s races, including polls that show Republican voters are much more engaged in the elections at this point — an important predictor of turnout.

What the Left is doing is encouraging blacks to riot. Think about that for a second. Appealing to voters on the basis of civil order can be racist, but it is not racist in itself. Order is what you must have in a civil and sane society. The Left is turning this on its head and telling their constituents that only through mayhem can they attain a civil and sane society. “Burn baby, burn” is fine when you’re sacking the village. It’s madness when it is your village.

Mr. Lewis is headlining efforts to mobilize black voters in several states with competitive Senate races, including Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina. The drive is being organized by the Congressional Black Caucus, in coordination with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Other steps, such as recruiting N.B.A. players to help register more African-Americans, are also underway.

Anyone who has read and understands Invisible Man will be reminded of the scene where the narrator examines the paper doll Clifton is selling. The Sambo doll is a metaphor for the life of the narrator and for blacks in America, maybe even the world. Kwame Nkrumah was a fan of the book and the metaphor. Specifically, whites manipulate blacks in the same way a puppeteer manipulates the puppet. The point is to entertain the patrons of the puppeteer. Mr. Lewis has volunteered to be the puppet for this latest drive by SWPL-ville to keep their enemies at bay.

While Democrats always seek to increase African-American turnout, that they are taking such aggressive steps to rally their most loyal constituency reflects the increasingly difficult landscape they face. In recent weeks, seats in Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire, once expected to tilt toward the Democrats, have become more competitive. Mr. Obama’s approval rating has tumbled below 40 percent in states with some of the most competitive races, and Republicans already seem assured to win at least three of the six seats they need to take back the Senate.

And the terrain is tricky: Many of the states where the black vote could be most crucial are also those where Mr. Obama is deeply unpopular among many white voters. So Democratic senators in places like Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina must distance themselves from the nation’s first African-American president while trying to motivate the black voters who are his most loyal constituents.

One of the fascinating things about the Left is the urge to commit suicide. In the 1990’s, they looked at the Clinton model and rejected it. The Clinton model was an old fashioned blend of agrarian populism and high brow elitism. Clinton could mix it up with the ruling class, but also hang out with the servant class. Reagan had this same quality, but without the seedy grubbiness we got with the Clintons. Bubba was a dirtbag who cleaned up well. Reagan was an aristocrat with the common touch.

The Left hated this and worked to destroy it, even as it put the GOP in the majority from 1994 through 2006. Obama was dumb luck. His team was great at running two campaigns, but they got lucky with the perfect candidate for the moment. Hillary would have won in 2008, but would have lost in 2012. She would have been a better president than Obama, but she lacks the unique appeal of Obama. Obama motivated the black vote in ways no one else will do and he got the SWPL vote out writing checks.

The thing is, the Obama approach works once. It’s why his vote fell off in 2012. You can only be the first black President one time. You can only be the Progressive Messiah once. It’s not that the coalition that supported Obama is temporary. It’s that its natural size is not enough to win elections. Without some way to get these people infuriated enough to vote in bulk, it is a loser hand. 2010 was a GOP blowout, despite the fact even the most loyal Republican thinks the party is run by idiots. 2014 is looking like another blowout, even though the GOP is just a little more popular than cancer.

Fools And Their Money

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Way back in the olden thymes, I worked in the Imperial Capital. I was just a kid and that allowed me access to a lot of scuttlebutt. That may seem odd, but no one has anything to fear from a kid running errands and doing office tasks. Consequently, the young people, mostly interns and pages, used to hear and see more dirt than just about anyone else. In the age of cell phones, that’s probably no longer true.

The thing about people in power is they don’t have a high regard for rich people. We like to think that the rich run the pols, but it is not really that way. The powerful of DC live pretty well by normal standards. The currency of DC is influence. Knowing how the system works counts for a lot more than money. Knowing who to call will always trump the ability to stroke a check. Lots of people have money. Few people know the right number to dial to get things done.

As a result, there’s a degree of contempt for the rich, in general, amongst the ruling class. The Rodney Dangerfield rich guys who barge in thinking they can buy their way into the right parties are particularly loathed by the Ted Baxter set. Even so, the sophisticated classes that run things in Washington are very good at handling wealthy rubes from the provinces. They want their money, of course. They just don’t want to put up with the bullshit that rich people bring with them.

So, they direct them into harmless endeavors. I once had the task of giving some rich guy and his old lady the tour of a UNICEF office. I knew nothing about UNICEF, but the congressman I worked for was on their board, I think. Maybe it was his wife. I was young and earnest looking so I guess I filled a role in the hustle. It was a long time ago and all I remember is how flattered the rich people looked. A Congressman’s wife and her people doting on the rich people made for a good show.

Later in life I figured out that the game was to guide the rich dumbasses into funding projects that employed friends of the political class. It was a form of patronage. It was also a way to keep the rich people from doing something stupid. Think about all of the Hollywood assholes who get involved in a cause. Most of them can’t count their balls twice and come up with the same number, but they are loaded and they have free time. That’s a dangerous combo if they want to “make a difference.”

That’s what you see with Bill Gates and his gun grabbing efforts. The nitwit who wrote the article is generally clueless, but that’s part of the game. The Left needs to keep tools like Cliff Schecter toiling in the fields.

Somewhere in a large glass tower in Northern Virginia, there’s a guy who runs guns with a French name having a bad day. With good reason.

It was reported Monday that Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and incredibly wealthy guy, and with his wife, Melinda, have given $1 million to Initiative 594 in Washington state. The ballot initiative, if passed by voters on November 4 (and it currently enjoys overwhelming support), will require universal background checks for all firearm purchases in the state.

Gates is only the latest Washington billionaire to give to the effort, with original Amazon investor Nick Hanauer providing crucial early funding, and more recently upping his overall donation to $1.4 million. Additionally, Gates’s Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, has provided $500,000 for the cause.

The ballot issue in question, #594 is largely a nothing initiative. It requires a background check for private transfers of firearms. This is a favorite hobbyhorse issue for the crackpots because they think it will lead to registration and then confiscation.

You see, there’s no way to enforce regulation of private sales without registration. Registration is the precursor to confiscation. The trouble is it will never survive court challenge. Imagine needing a permit to post comments on the Internet. That’s how the courts will treat this measure.

The bigger problem for the gun-grabbers is that another initiative on the ballot would forbid background checks and it has broad support as well. But, some low-level flunkies get a paycheck for a while courtesy of rich suckers like Bill Gates. That’s what counts.

Christian Blues

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The collapse of Christianity as both a social force and a political force in America has gone unnoticed. One reason for this is the Left stick mocks Christians, despite their disappearance from the scene. The other is the conditioning most people have from their youth, when it was assumed Christians played an active role in politics. The fact is, Christians are disappearing and that means the Christians, social conservatives and Evangelicals may find themselves without a candidate in 2016.

Perched on the edge of his chair in a study overflowing with books, Pastor Gino Geraci reels off the Republicans he no longer believes in. His friend Mike Huckabee is an “odd bird” who couldn’t win a general election. Sarah Palin doesn’t inspire him with her “cliched responses to difficult questions.” Rand Paul is “fascinating but frustrating.”

Of all the Republicans weighing a bid for president in 2016, the only one who puts a smile on Geraci’s face is doctor-turned-conservative-media-darling Ben Carson. And yet, Geraci concedes, Carson is “not in the mainstream” and has little chance of ever being elected.

The assessment from Geraci, the founding pastor of Calvary South Denver, a sprawling evangelical church with several thousand congregants, reflects a broader sense of despair among white evangelicals about the Republican Party many once considered their comfortable home.

Many social conservatives say they feel politically isolated as the country seems to be hurtling to the left, with marijuana now legal in Colorado and gay marriage gaining ground across the nation. They feel out of place in a GOP increasingly dominated by tea party activists and libertarians who prefer to focus on taxes and the role of government and often disagree with social conservatives on drugs or gay rights.

Evangelicals have always it wrong, as far as how to engage in politics. They think putting people who are from their sect in office is all that’s needed to get their desired policy outcomes. That was never going to work because big government is incompatible with religious liberty and social conservatism. The liberal democratic state is always at war with private association and private contract. The bigger the state, the more hostile it is to these things.

Meanwhile, the list of possible front-runners for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination includes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has a limited relationship with evangelical activists, and the libertarian-leaning Paul, the senator from Kentucky who only recently began reaching out to social conservatives. One prominent establishment favorite weighing a bid, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), is a supporter of legal same-sex marriage who claims his views on the issue could help him and his party appeal to younger voters.

This is where the Post shows itself to be blazingly ignorant of what’s going on outside of Washington. Tubby is not getting elected to anything and he is pro-life. Rand Paul has been playing the social conservative side of the street for years, as did his old man as a the leader of paleo-libertarianism. He’s not winning the nomination, but he is hardly a typical libertarian. Rob Portman is a company man who has no chance in the GOP primary, even assuming he runs.

The disconnect between social conservatives and the GOP has become a “chasm,” said Gary Bauer, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and is now head of the Campaign for Working Families. He pointed to the party’s two most recent presidential nominees, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, as examples of candidates who were touted initially as having broad appeal to centrists in the general election but ultimately never inspired evangelicals and lost.

Neither McCain or Romney were centrists. McCain has always been a bit of nut and hostile to Evangelicals. He went into Suffolk Virginia in the 2000 primary and told Evangelicals to shove it. Romney actually did well with social conservatives, despite the fact no one believed a single word that came out his mouth. His problem was not his positions. His problem was no one believed him.

Fundamentally, that’s the problem facing the GOP. No one believes them. If you are a social conservative serving the cause for the last twenty-five years, you have to be discouraged. In 1990, there were pro-life Democrats and no trace of gay marriage or tranny rights. The DLC was advocating a more conciliatory tone with social conservatives. Things were looking pretty good.

Today, even Republicans flinch at the mention of opposition to the most extreme perversions. This garbage is jammed in your face everywhere you look. The degenerates have been running wild now for a decade and the damage is immeasurable. It seems that the hours has passed for Evangelicals, at least as a political force in modern American democracy.

Shit Ain’t Free

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Stop if you heard this one before.  Stupid woman is shocked to learn there is no free ride – even from the government.

Ending insurance discrimination against the sick was a central goal of the nation’s health care overhaul, but leading patient groups say that promise is being undermined by new barriers from insurers.

First off, you cannot insure the sick. Insurance is a gamble. The customer buys a policy believing they will use more health services than they will pay in health insurance premiums. The other side of the insurance bet is the insurance company. They are betting they will charge you more than you cost them over the life of the policy. The insurance company is almost always right about that bet. Otherwise, they lose money and go out of business.

When you force them to insure people with known illnesses, they bake those known costs into the premium. If they cannot, then they find other ways to mitigate the costs, like not selling you a policy or jacking up the rates on the healthy. Like all gambling propositions, the losers pay the winners, while the house takes a piece.

The insurance industry responds that critics are confusing legitimate cost-control with bias. Some state regulators, however, say there’s reason to be concerned about policies that shift costs to patients and narrow their choices of hospitals and doctors.

With open enrollment for 2015 three months away, the Obama administration is being pressed to enforce the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination provisions. Some regulations have been issued; others are pending after more than four years.

More than 300 patient advocacy groups recently wrote Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to complain about some insurer tactics that “are highly discriminatory against patients with chronic health conditions and may … violate the (law’s) nondiscrimination provisions.”

Among the groups were the AIDS Institute, the American Lung Association, Easter Seals, the Epilepsy Foundation, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the National Kidney Foundation and United Cerebral Palsy. All supported the law.

Coverage of expensive drugs tops their concerns.

Sure it is. People like free stuff. Men who spend their weekends in bathroom stalls with strange men, contracting an incurable disease, would love it if the rest of us had to pay for their treatments. People who engage in risky behavior are more expensive to insure than people who play it safe. In a sane world, the risky pay more while the prudent pay less, but that’s not America. At the end of the piece we have this gem.

“People who have high cost health conditions are still having a problem accessing care,” said law professor Timothy Jost of Washington and Lee University in Virginia. “We are in the early stages of trying to figure out what the problems are, and to what extent they are based on insurance company discrimination, or inherent in the structure of the program.”

No, they have plenty of access to care. They are having trouble getting someone else to pay for it.  When you believe you can defy the laws of nature, deny the realities of the physical world and force everyone to pretend your fantasies are reality, you are a probably insane. Many of these people are insane or just stupid, but many are liars, who make money getting us to pretend that fantasy is real.

Many of these people truly believe their is an unlimited, inexhaustible supply of health care in the world. The only reason everyone is not dipping their cup into the well of health care is the mean old health insurance companies are guarding it. Like the hero who slays the dragon, these people imagine themselves slaying the reality of health care so everyone gets free medicine.

The End Of The Republic

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Historians disagree about when the Roman Republic ended. Some argue that it was when Tiberius Gracchus stood for re-election as tribune in 132 BC. Some argue it was when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon refusing to disband his army and submit to the Senate. some argue in favor of the lex frumentaria as the beginning of the end. That’s the law passed by Gaius Gracchus providing subsidized grain to the poor.

It is one of those debates historians and cranks enjoy having as there is no right answer, just what works for your theory about the present. You pick a date that fits your needs and go from there. The best case for the end is when Tiberius Gracchus stood for re-election in 132 BC. It was at this point when the ruling elite of Rome, the patrician class, lost their respect for their own rules.

At that point the law was no longer the agreed upon rules under which they would settle their differences. It became an obstacle to power or a weapon to wield against rivals once you attained power. The spirit of the law, the point of the law, no longer matteredto the people charged with enforcing the laws. From there is was a short road to a “who, whom?” social order.

Of course, none of this could have happened without the destruction of the small landowners after the destruction of Corinth and Carthage. In 146 BC the Romans finally defeated their old enemies. Both cities were destroyed in spectacular fashion. The Romans burned the cities, killed all of the men and sold the women and children into slavery. That created a glut of cheap labor.

The influx of slaves changed the economics of the Republic. Large landowners could now replace their free Roman labor with slaves. This undercut the small landowners, who could not compete with slave labor. The result  was a consolidation of the land and a massive influx of people into the city, mostly former farmers and soldiers. This removed the check on the ruling elite.

This story from yesterday makes suggests we are firmly in the lawlessness stage of decline that we saw with the Romans. The people in charge no longer respect the laws that are supposed to keep them in power.

Senior White House officials are in talks with business leaders that could expand the executive actions President Barack Obama takes on immigration.

Obama was initially expected to focus only on slowing deportations of potentially millions of undocumented immigrants and altering federal enforcement policies. Now top aides are talking with leaders in big companies like Cisco, Intel and Accenture, hoping to add more changes that would get them on board.

Representatives for high-tech, agriculture and construction interests have put forward a range of fixes, from recapturing unused green cards to tweaking existing work authorization programs.

The outreach is an effort to broaden the political support for Obama’s decision to go it alone on immigration — another sign that suggests the White House fears a backlash in November, particularly among independent voters in battleground Senate races where Republicans are seizing on the issue.

“The president has not made a decision regarding next steps, but he believes it’s important to understand and consider the full range of perspectives on potential solutions,” said White House spokesman Shawn Turner. “The meetings were in keeping with the president’s commitment to do whatever he can, within the constraints of the law, to address the immigration issue.”

Turner said the meetings with business leaders were among more than 20 “listening sessions” with outside groups.

“They are very seriously looking at a big variety of things to figure out what people think would be helpful,” a source in one of the meetings said, describing the meeting as a “productive listening session.”

Senior administration officials stepped up their engagement with companies and business groups over the past month as they look to produce a series of executive orders starting in September. Aides are asking industry executives for ideas and are trying to earn their support against an expected barrage from Republicans opposed to Obama taking any action.

You’ll notice that the Obama administration is not looking for how they can enforce the spirit of the laws passed by the people’s representatives. They are not looking at the law as a limit to their power. They are looking at the law as an obstacle and spending all of their time scheming to get around it.

All of those quislings from corporate America in there know they are a part of an effort to subvert the law and harm the American people. They just want to line their pockets with your money. If we had any sense, the roads leading out of Washington would resemble the Appian Way after the Third Servile War.

No one can point to a single line in the Constitution that gives the president this power, but the Constitution is a museum piece now. No one can point to anything in the law that gives him this right. Obama probably does not understand any of it, but the people around him surely know it. They don’t care about the law or the results that will flow from their lawlessness. Whether or not it is the point of no return is unknown, but it is on the way to a might makes America.