Buckeye RINO

U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was recently spotlighted by a Congressional ethics panel.  A plea bargain has apparently mollified the committee.

Now there are murmurings that U.S. Rep Maxine Waters (D-CA) may be the next one spotlighted by a Congressional ethics panel.

Some media pundits have surmised that these news headlines may be damaging the Democrat brand at an inopportune time–as midterm elections loom ahead.

My take on it?  It’s not going to hurt Rangel and Waters in their own districts, unlike former Democrat U.S. Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana who was replaced by Republican Joseph Cao.  The Democrat brand is being hurt by their domestic policy agenda.  The alleged unethical actions of one, or two, or three, or four, or five, or so members of their caucus, at the end of the day, has little to do with how the Democrat brand is perceived in the current political and economic environment.  The public is clearly distracted by unemployment, home foreclosures, and other perils that hit closer to home.  Few are paying attention to ethics investigations at this point (unless the tycoons of Wall Street, the Fed, and former and current officials of the U.S. Department of Treasury were being investigated–then we’d be all ears because of our collective outrage against the bailouts).

If a Congressional Democrat had to pick a time to be spotlighted by the ethics panel, this is a good time to do it.  The public distraction is only one factor in the equation.  The other important factor is that it seems likely that the Democrats won’t maintain their House majority, anyway.  If you were in their shoes, would you want an ethics panel chaired by fellow Democrats now?  Or Republicans after they take office in January?  If you wanted to strike a deal, settle a case by plea bargain, would you rather cut the deal with Democrats chairing the panel or Republicans?  If you were disciplined as a result of ethics hearings, would you rather have the penalties meted out by Democrats or Republicans?

As a Republican observer, I think it’s a win-win for Democrats who step forward for scrutiny now rather than later.  If you believe you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got to think the panel will be more fair to you now rather than later.  If you have done something wrong, it’s not likely to be remembered, not likely to cost much political clout, and not likely to be heavily penalized in the event of a sour outcome to the hearings.

If a targeted Democrat were to try to dodge an inquiry now, but couldn’t prevent it from resurfacing later,  even if the Republicans chairing the panel were quite fair in applying the rules, at the very least there will be acrimony.  Partisan rancor would be the source of that acrimony.  The Democrats would circle their wagons and lodge complaints of Republican witch-hunting.  By that time, though, the public might not be so distracted.  They might pay attention, and, despite the charges of witch-hunting, the public might not let the matter go by the wayside until all the dirty laundry has been aired before an ethics panel.  If, after that airing, the ethics probe was justified because of findings of wrongdoing, then it wouldn’t have turned out to be a witch-hunt after all, and the Democrat caucus that circled their wagons around you would be tarnished with the perception that they’d attempted a cover-up.  What would happen to the Democrat brand then, when the party is already down and needs to pick itself back up?  How sure are you that the hearings chaired by the other party will be fair?  How sure are you that a deal can be cut to settle the case?  How sure are you that the penalties won’t be harsh?  If you stayed in office this time around, will the public catch up to you the next time, as happened in Rep. Jefferson’s case?  If so, would the caucus shrink further, by your absence from it, rather than rebound during the next election cycle?  If  the panel exonerated you, and it did appear that the Republicans engaged in a witch-hunt, is that going to repair the public trust in Congress that is now in tatters (recent polls: Congressional approval rating of 11%) because of the public perception of hyperpartisanship and political posturing?  It’s a lose-lose.

If you are a Congressional Democrat with a target on your back, and an ethics probe lies in your future, then your next press conference referencing a potential probe should be “Bring it on!”  Then, under your breath, so no one else hears, whisper to investigators, “And hurry up about it!”

If you clicked the links to my prior brief posts about MSM coverage of the Tea Party in Lorain County held while Obama’s town hall was in progress, you may have noticed something odd.  A portion of the campus at Lorain County Community College was designated as the “free speech area,” where protesters were welcome to rally.

From this article by Cindy Leise of Elyria’s Chronicle-Telegram, it seems that the “free speech area” was probably not in a prime location that had a high degree of visibility among passers-by.

Just a handful of protestors gathered at the designated “Free Speech” area on the outskirts of campus near a parking area.

Most preferred being near the Abbe Road commercial area, where they spoke to shoppers and proudly showed off signs such as “Thank You Mass” and “No Recovery Here.”

Protesters shrugging off the “free speech area” and lingering along heavily traveled Abbe Road . . hmm . . . what do you think about that?  Probably a smart move that increased the Tea Party’s visibility.

Of course, in the United States of America that I’m accustomed to, the whole nation is a “free speech area.”

[UPDATE 1/23/2010] This poster reads, “Speech can segregate you from everyone,” and, apparently, the President and his entourage wanted to segregate themselves from the speech of the Tea Party, hence the “free speech area.”

Chris Ritchey, a former student of Lorain County Community College, is the creator of this poster.  It is with great pride that I reprint it here with the permission of his mother, Loraine Ritchey.  Chris was taken from our midst by the H1N1 virus on December 3, 2009, while he was trying to recover from Hodgkins Lymphoma.  A loving tribute to his legacy may be found on Loraine’s blog.

Loraine shared this piece of information about Chris with me:

“Yes, he did leave a legacy of wit and standing up for freedom . . . actually, I will be exploring that aspect of him as time goes on.”

Personally, I look forward to reading about it.  Thanks so much for sharing.

In contrast to the MJ’s reporting with an ugly slant, the Plain Dealer‘s Thomas Feran presents a more complete portrait of the 300 or so Tea Partiers at LCCC.

I’d be curious to learn other estimates of the people count.

[UPDATE 1/23/2010] Here’s another excellent article by Thomas Feran about the stalwarts who stayed all day to give Obama a defiant send-off.

Tea Partiers had their say on video, posted by David I. Anderson on the PD website.  Check it out.  It’ll put a smile on your face.

Who does Lorain’s Morning Journal hire as reporters?  I couldn’t find a byline for this story to locate the name of the person who wrote it.

Here’s the objectionable excerpt:

Just a few minutes before the north gates of the LCCC are set to close, protesters and self-proclaimed teabaggers are starting to come into the free speech area. Located as far from the president as possible, their signs read “Abortion is murder” and “Jesus is pro life.”

“Teabaggers” is a profane derogatory slur that refers to a sexual act.  Those who attend Tea Parties do not proclaim themselves to be “teabaggers.”  It’s the bloggers and vile lefty pundits like Keith Olbermann who denigrate those who attend Tea Parties with that disparaging label.

Is that a representative sample of Tea Party signs that only address the pro-life cause?  The signs are silent about bailouts, Obamacare, and cap-and-trade?

What an amateur hatchet job masquerading as MSM journalism.  And to think this doesn’t even appear on the Op/Ed page, but is being reported as real news.

It’s another Saturday of college football,  a government-subsidized, tax-exempt moneymaker for the biggest collegiate athletic programs.

I’m not suggesting we should start taxing college athletics to death.  I definitely think the federal government needs to drastically cut both spending and taxes.

But I do want to call attention to a charade.

At the end of the season, there will be bowl games, and a mythical champion will be crowned.

No playoffs.  But there’ll be a champion.

The two teams vying for the championship will be chosen by . . . pundits.

Since pundits do the choosing, why not have the championship at the beginning of the season, and what is currently the regular schedule can become mere exhibition games?  The pundits just have to pick the best team from the SEC and the best team from the Big 12, and those’ll be the contenders for the big championship game that kicks off the exhibition season.

Think that makes no sense?  What happens in reality makes only slightly more sense.  There is this ranking formula called the BCS that automatically assumes that the SEC is strongest conference.

Oh, but on the gridiron, the SEC proves its dominance with its winning record against its non-conference opponents, right?

Oh yeah!  I was totally impressed with that 62-3 beatdown that Florida gave to Charleston Southern.

I can’t wait to see how the Alabama Crimson Tide fares against Tennessee-Chattanooga.

That’s sarcasm, in case you missed it.

Charleston Southern and Chattanooga are colleges that aren’t even in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision.  It’s like a high school varsity squad cushioning the schedule with JV teams.  Yeah, there’s a chance the game will be competitive, but will the outcome of such games really inform you how good the varsity squads are?

Despite the creampuff nonconference schedule, even an SEC team with a loss can make it into the national title game, conceivably even two losses, which means that besides Florida and Alabama, LSU is still in the running.  LSU sheduled only teams within the NCAA Bowl Subdivision this season, unlike Florida and Alabama, though it’s non-conference lineup isn’t exactly scary, with the likes of Lousiana Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette, Tulane, and a U of Washington squad that lost all of its games last season.

By the way, each team plays 12 games during its regular season.  That means 6 home games and 6 away games, right?  Well, Alabama and LSU scheduled 7 home games and 5 away games.  Florida scheduled 8 home games and 4 away games.

The deck seems a little stacked, don’t you think?

Even my favorite collegiate team, the Ohio State Buckeyes, pad their schedule.  7 home games and 5 away games is standard for the Buckeyes.

The schools in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision don’t want to switch to a playoff format.  They want to make money.  The current bowl game scheme helps the fattest cats get fatter.

I’m not saying making money is a bad thing.  In America, we are at liberty to make money.

But let’s not kid ourselves that football in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision is a wholly capitalist venture.  The government does subsidize universities, and it does grant universities tax-exempt status.  Someone might even suggest that our universities are socialist, and who am I to say they’re wrong?

Occasionally, some members of Congress, and even President Obama, have called out the football bowl scheme and the so-called championship game for what it is: a charade.  Is there an approach that might improve the system that wouldn’t totally overturn it?  Sure!  That’s where I come in!

Daniel Jack Williamson is the solution.

For an annual salary of $48,000 (that’s less than $1000 per week!) and reimbursement for any job-related travel expenses (I’ll fly coach, or take Amtrak, and stay at budget motels, I promise!) I’ll go to work as the Obama Administration’s sports scheduling czar!  That’s right!  I’ll work for Obama!  Do you hear me, Mr. President?  If I work for you, that means I won’t be able to blog about you, and I won’t be in a position to criticize you!  Doesn’t that sound like a great deal?  And when Glenn Beck picks on me for being a White House czar, I won’t be thin-skinned like Van Jones, and, if Glenn Beck says something about me that’s untrue, I will not be afraid to call Mr. Beck’s phone, unlike Anita Dunn. (Oh, I’m sorry–I assumed Ms. Dunn was afraid.  I guess I assumed wrong.  Ms. Dunn is not afraid of Glenn Beck.  It’s just that the record didn’t need to be corrected because Mr. Beck was 100% correct.  My bad.)

As sports scheduling czar, I will schedule all the regular season games so that teams play meaningful schedules.  The teams won’t be playing schools who aren’t in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision (perhaps with the exception of schools who are in their first year after transitioning to the Bowl Subdivision).  If the typical school has 4 non-conference games, then, for the most part, they’ll play 2 games (one home, one away) against teams from 2 different major conferences and 2 games (one home, one away) against teams from 2 different mid-major conferences.  The regular season will have 6 home games and 6 away games for all teams, whether the team happens to be Florida, or the team happens to be Eastern Michigan.  With the more balanced regular season schedule, that I, as White House sports schedule czar, will impement, pundits will be able to compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges when bowl selection takes place.

By taking the scheduling privileges away from college athletic directors and giving them to me, your sports scheduling czar, you will be reminding the schools that they are dependent on government for a great many things.  They are socialist institutions, not capitalist institutions, and you aren’t about to let them forget it.

If you’d like, I’ll even schedule all the other NCAA sports teams from all the divisions–big school, little school, volleyball, synchronized swimming, fencing, you name it, I’ll schedule it.

I’ll have my rolodex filled with contacts at all the sports venues so I’ll know when concerts and other events have dibs on the stadiums and arenas.  For venues that house home games of more than one team, I’ll make sure there are no time conflicts.  If a game is postponed due to weather, I’ll get that make-up game on the schedule.

Major League Baseball has an exemption from anti-trust laws.  As a bonus, at no extra charge, as White House sports schedule czar, I’ll schedule the MLB regular season, too.

NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, WNBA, I’ll whip up regular seasons schedules for all of them, if you’d like.  Any day of the week you’d like to sink into a sofa and watch sports on TV while dithering and procrastinating decisions about Afghanistan, I’ll make sure there’s a compelling sports matchup on tap.

Mr. President, just email me (email address appears on my “About” page), to let me know you’d like to set up an interview for the czar job, and I’ll respond with my phone number so we can iron out the remaining details by phone and in person.  Like Glenn Beck, I’ll be waiting by my phone for your call.

😀

Last week, the Boston Globe released a story by a staff reporter named Bryan Bender that suggests that some Beltway politicos may be contemplating changing the mission of the Secret Service.

The Secret Service is entrusted with protecting our nation’s currency from counterfeiting and is also entrusted with guarding our nation’s president.  The Secret Service was created during the 1860’s to battle counterfeiting, and its mission was expanded to presidential protection in the wake of President McKinley’s assassination at the start of the 20th century.  When the Department of Homeland Security was created, the Secret Service was placed within that department.

The question at hand:  Does the Secret Service have the resources to handle these twin missions when far more safety threats to the President are being identified and when counterfeiting is so much more technologically advanced?

I’m not even sure it’s an honest question.

How are we to know the scope of resources at the Secret Service’s disposal?  How are we to know if there truly are more threats against the President’s safety?  How are we to assess the sophistication and proliferation of present-day counterfeiting schemes?

The answers to these three questions being unknowable to the public can enable alarmists to inflate the risks and to downplay the available resources with the intent of framing an ensuing debate that may be based solely on conjecture.  What fact-checking tools are available to the public to quantify and qualify the risks vis-a-vis the resources?

It’s with that skeptical eye toward the original question that I peruse the rest of Bender’s report.

What if the Secret Service were given one mission instead of two?  Would it make sense that the Secret Service be divested of the anti-counterfeiting role that it’s held since its founding?  If so, should that responsibility be handed over to the Treasury Department?

Let me ask that last question another way:  Should the Secret Service’s powers to investigate specified types of financial crimes be handed off to . . . Tim Geithner???????????

I can answer that last question:  NO WAY!

Last year, when Hank Paulson was Treasury Secretary, I blogged against the power that would be granted to Treasury Secretaries by the bailout bill (which, sadly, was passed into law):

The fundamental crux of the matter is that this bill gives Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, friend to the Wall Street crooks and enemy of the taxpayer, $250 billion of taxpayer money right up front, and perhaps $700 billion over all (and maybe more, since the precedent has already been set) to bailout whoever he pleases, with no judicial review.  He already acted on behalf of Bear Stearns without getting permission from the American people.  He already acted on behalf of AIG without getting permission from the American people.  He was able to coax Congress into going along with a bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  He’s been a crybaby that threw a tantrum to get this latest bailout approved, but it didn’t work.  Now he’s handing out candy to get this bailout approved.  Paulson and his Wall Street cronies have been more manipulative than any spoiled rotten brat I know.  Has it occurred to anyone on Capitol Hill and in the MSM that Paulson has been wrong with every move he makes?  Has it occurred to anyone that on Capitol Hill and in the MSM that Paulson has quietly assured his Wall Street cronies that the fix is in, and that he guaranteed to them that he’ll deliver the goods?  If we want accountability and oversight, it has to start with denying any of this bailout money.  It has to start with not granting additional power to the Secretary of the Treasury.

My dim view of Paulson is coupled with my dim view of Geithner, Paulson’s successor.  I distrust them both.

With a further consolidation of power over all financial aspects of our nation, what mechanisms are at the people’s disposal to check and balance any abuses that might occur at the Treasury Department?

I doubt that it would ever become necessary to trim the Secret Service’s twin missions down to one, but if it ever came down to it, I’d be much more comfortable with the Department of Homeland Security retaining the role of investigating the types of financial crimes that the Secret Service currently has jurisdiction over, and letting the Treasury Department guard our President, than doing it the other way around.

I’ve seen soundbite interviews with Pat Caddell, a self-described liberal Democrat and former pollster for McGovern and Carter, and wanted to hear more of his down-to-earth insightful analysis.

Why?  Because he’s not happy with Washington DC . . . and, quite frankly, neither am I.

So I did a google search hoping to find something longer than a soundbite, and I found one (though it’s more than two weeks old).  This interview with Pat Caddell is over 22 minutes long, and it engrossed me so much, I thought I’d share a link to it with my readers.

Hey, Fox News (or any other network, for that matter), will you please give Mr. Caddell his own TV show?  I guarantee you, this guy is not astroturf, and I’d like more of the featured voices from the left to be genuine and thoughtful, not cloned by Axelrod and knee-jerk.  He has so much information to share, soundbite appearances just don’t cut it.  He needs a lengthier format.