The Plunder of Colfax

BY CONGRESSMAN TOM McCLINTOCK
Reprinted from the Congressional Record (12/1/11)

WATCH: Click to watch video of McClintock House Floor Remarks

In the Sierra Foothills in northeastern California lies the little town of Colfax, population 1,800, with a median household income of about $35,000.

Over the past several years, this little town has been utterly plundered by regulatory and litigatory excesses that have pushed the town to the edge of bankruptcy and ravaged families already struggling to make ends meet.

Colfax operates a small wastewater treatment plant for its residents that discharges into the Smuthers Ravine. Because it does so, it operates within the provisions of the Clean Water Act, a measure adopted in 1972 and rooted in legitimate concerns to protect our vital water resources.

The problem is that predatory environmental law firms have discovered how to take unconscionable advantage of that law to reap windfall profits at the expense of working-class families like the townspeople of Colfax. Continue reading →

A Pipeline and the Political Times

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
Random Thoughts

The Keystone Pipeline is a project of a Canadian company intended to double the amount of crude oil brought into the United States, creating tens of thousands of jobs, decreasing our dependence on Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil, and maybe even reducing the cost of energy. The pipeline would extend from Alberta, where oil is being extracted from oil or tar sands, through the American Midwest to refineries in Texas. It’s a private project but it is international and therefore needs approval of the State Department.

The project caused consternation among environmental groups and some of the communities along the path of the pipeline, particularly in Sand Hills of Nebraska. The solution for the local residents of the Midwestern states is to relocate parts of the line and increase safety to ensure, as best as possible, that the pipeline is as environmentally safe as a pipeline can be, balancing their concerns with the economic benefits.

The only solution acceptable to the more extreme environmental organizations is killing the project outright. Well that was until President Obama stepped in.

Wait. I’m sorry. The President didn’t step in. Presidential Candidate Obama did. Continue reading →

What Would Founders Think?

BY STEVE BELL

All you really need to know about the state of Washington, D.C., are three facts:

A–a majority of Republicans in the Senate defeated a bill to extend the payroll tax holiday that was introduced by their own Senate Minority Leader last week;
B–President Obama has decided that the only real legislative item he wants passed is that very payroll tax holiday–not deficit reduction, not extension of unemployment benefits, not ending the expansion of the Alternative Minimum Tax into the middle class, not preventing a 27 per cent overnight reduction in payments to Medicare providers;
C–Congressional Democrats and Republicans, as well as the White House, still have not approved the basic appropriations bills necessary to keep the government operating.

To extend what should be extended will cost about $200 billion plus. The President doesn’t want to run the risk as a big taxer, so he is watching as Congress wrangles, something that has been thematic about this President–talk and watch.

Congress fears both extending the items that a weak economy needs and not extending them. This confusion puts the rotten cherry on top of the melted ice cream sundae that has been this session of Congress.

Continue reading →

Referendum on Obama: One-Term President

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The political geniuses around President Barack Obama have a problem: they do not – DO NOT – want this election to be a referendum on the President.

And, for good reason. According to the three-day Gallup tracking poll, Obama’s job approval is back down to 41 percent. Two months ago his approval bottomed at 38 percent, but he has not been at 50 percent job approval since May.

Gallup goes on to compare Obama’s dismal performance rating with his predecessors. In December of their third year in office here’s where they were:

— Eisenhower (1955) 75%
— Nixon (1971) 50%
— Carter (1979) 53%
— Reagan (1983) 54%
— HW Bush (1991) 51%
— Clinton (1995) 51%
— W Bush (2003) 58%

No elected President in the past half-century has entered his re-election year underwater in approval. Let’s look at how the Obama campaign has chosen to shore up these numbers. Continue reading →

Secular, Liberal Egypt. We Hardly Knew Ya

BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from Townhall.com

One of the nice things about human history is that no matter how much people or their leaders misjudge events and make a hash of things, within a few centuries, the debris is cleared away, and we can have another go at getting things right.

Yes, I am thinking about the Middle East. Whether or not there is a message in that turn of events, I’ll leave it to theologians.

At the moment, I have in mind the latest blunder by the experts — their assessment, just a few months ago, of the nature of the Arab Spring and its democracy movement. Back in spring, the leading experts — from the Obama administration to the neoconservatives on the right to the major liberal media to most of the academic area specialists — were all overwhelmingly predicting that all those great secular, liberal, college-educated kids with their iPhones in Tahrir Square represented the new Egypt and would bring all their wonderful values to the revolution. It was primarily us cranky right-wingers who have been writing on radical Islamic politics (and, of course, the Israelis, who can’t afford to get it wrong on Muslim political habits) who warned that this was all going to end in the rise in still-ancient Egypt of radical Islamist, anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti American and anti-Western governance. Continue reading →

The Cain That Couldn’t

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Herman Cain suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination for President. I personally believe that, from the beginning, the Cain campaign was a fraud – designed not to present new ideas and a personal vision for the nation, but to sell books and raise his speaking fees.

It is tiresome, but useful, to consider that in the early part of the 21st century in the United States of America there is no difference between famous and being infamous – thus Herman Cain may well have attained his goal.

The most recent polls in Iowa show Cain with the support of about eight percent of Republicans. The question has to be: Who are those people? Continue reading →

Newt Declares Newt the Nominee

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

We can say this about our friend Newt Gingrich: He has never suffered from public self-doubt.

On the strength of a string of polls showing the GOP conservative base has fallen in love with him Newt told ABC News’ Jake Tapper: “I’m going to be the nominee. It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee.”

A Rasmussen poll which was taken on Wednesday shows Newt with 38 percent to Mitt Romney’s 17 percent among likely voters. Even being mathematically challenged I know that is a 21 percentage point lead. The rest of the field is in single digits: Cain & Paul are at 8; Perry, Bachmann and Santorum are at 4, and Huntsman continues to trail the field with three percent.

If there were a national primary and it was scheduled for this Saturday, Newt would probably be correct. He might be correct anyway, but it’s a little early to be taking a victory lap. Continue reading →

HOPE: What People Need

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“A man has gotta have hope.”

“…the dysfunctionality of the U.S. Congress is erasing hope for the men and women of this country who are struggling…”

The first quotation comes from a man who lives in Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s district in Missouri, the old stomping grounds of Harry Truman. The second is Cleaver’s, embedded in one of the most thoughtful speeches in the House of Representatives I’ve heard in a while.

I don’t know much about Emanuel Cleaver, but I was touched by his remarks on the Floor of the House Thursday, December 1. When I grow weary of the noise and intellectual numbness of Fox or CNN, I turn to C-Span for relief and it’s usually worth the channel flipping. It was again on this day.

He said what we all know. There is a growing crisis in this country. It is a separation of the people from their government. It is a crisis of governance. It is the inability of our leaders to distinguish between the perception that they are governing and the reality that they are not. It is the misconception that getting elected is a means to an end and not the end in itself.

Congressman Cleaver says it well, just click on the words listen here…listen here.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.

Lost Phone, Late Column, Political Update

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Yes, I think Herman Cain’s campaign is over but it doesn’t have nearly as much to do with this new charge of adultery as it does his continuing inability to demonstrate any knowledge about just about any issue that might turn out to be important to a high-level official such as President of the United States.

Yes, I think Rick Perry’s saying that (a) the voting age in New Hampshire is 21 (it is 18) ; and (b) Election day next year will be November 12 (it will be November 4) is a big deal. If he wasn’t sure about the voting age or election date, he should have talked around them: “For those of you who will be of voting age next November…” would have served him well.

It is another example of Perry’s absolute inability to think on his feet which might turn out to be an important skill for a high-level official such as President of the United States. Continue reading →

Let’s Drink to the Hard-Working People

BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Twin Cities Business Magazine

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier, spare a thought for the back-breaking work. Say a prayer for his wife and his children, who burn the fires and still till the earth.

Every Thanksgiving my son and I drive 90 minutes into western Wisconsin to visit the Coon Creek family farm. We buy a heritage turkey or two. They are, hands down, better than store-bought by leaps and bounds. But that’s not the only reason we go there. We go because of Vince and Julie Maro.

They are the salt of the earth. If Chicago was Sinatra’s kind of town, the Maros are my kind of folks. Vince hails from the windy city, so there’s a certain “been there, done that” intensity to his countrified manner that makes the Coon Creek space even tastier. And, the heritage turkey is the most rich and luscious I’ve ever had. My friend Andrew Zimmern gave Coon Creek a shout out a few years ago and now we wouldn’t go anywhere else for our big bird. Is this a paid political announcement? Nah. Full disclosure, we do leave the farm each year with a few squash or vegetables that Vince and Julie throw in, but let’s call them gift with purchase. Continue reading →

How to Break the Partisan Fever

BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from TownHall.com

Sunday on “Meet the Press” Colin Powell blamed divisive, poisonous Washington politics on the media and the Tea Party. The essence of Powell’s argument was: “Republicans and Democrats are focusing more and more on their extreme left and extreme right. And we have to come back toward the center in order to compromise. … The media has to help us. The media loves this game, where everybody is on the extreme. It makes for great television. … So what we have to do is sort of take some of the heat out of our political life in terms of the coverage of it, so these folks (Congress) can get to work quietly. … But the Tea Party point of view of no compromise whatsoever is not a point of view that will eventually produce a presidential candidate who will win.”

Of course this is historic. The media have been a circulation-, listener- and viewer-motivated political snapping turtle since the country’s founding (and a liberal snapping turtle since the 1940s). And, of course, the rise of divisive Washington politics predates by decades the emergence of the Tea Party to national attention in 2009. Continue reading →

Gingrich Gets Hot Endorsement

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The New Hampshire Union-Leader (neé Manchester Union-Leader) endorsed Speaker Newt Gingrich for President in the Republican primary which will be held there on January 10, 2012.

This is no small deal for Gingrich because it is a legitimate endorsement from the daily newspaper of the largest city in the state.

As I tweeted yesterday (follow me at @richgalen): Newspaper endorsements are like polls & poker: Winners whoop & holler. Losers say “Shut up and deal.”

Endorsements, polls and poker hands are generally not determinative but in each case it is better to win it than to lose it. I don’t read the Union-Leader with any regularity, but I had to tip my hat to the lead (spelled “lede” in news-speak) in the front page editorial written by publisher Joseph W. McQuaid: This newspaper endorses Newt Gingrich in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary.

In support of this simple, but strong, declarative sentence Mr. McQuaid encapsulated his reasoning by pointing to the Contract with America in 1994 and the resultant take-over of the U.S. House of Representatives in the elections that year; as well as “forging balanced budgets despite the challenge of dealing with a Democratic President.” Continue reading →

Super Committee Failure & Public Judgement

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The death of the super committee on deficit reduction was so painful to watch.

It didn’t even get a decent funeral. But then it didn’t deserve one. Its life was ill begotten and misspent.

The eulogies were a mix of  ‘I told you so’s’ by people and press who told us nothing, and politicians and interest groups pointing the finger of blame at each other—back and forth between conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, Senators and House members, Congress and the President (how does the Supreme Court always escape blame?), tea partiers and occupiers and on and on.

Nobody apologized for the failure.

The combatants remain defiant. They were still harping at each other the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  Some seem to be under the influence of an elixir that has them hallucinating about the next election. They believe if they put off governing for another year, the American people will reward them by electing more politicians of their ilk. They could then, beginning in 2013, impose their political will on the country without any of this nettlesome bickering standing in their way today. Continue reading →

Ultimate Thanksgiving

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

There is one person I know who is having a very special Thanksgiving this year, probably more special than all the others.

Her name is Tricia and just last Friday, November 18, she was what the medical community calls “clinically” dead.

This weekend she is home with her children and grandchild gathered around, no doubt looking into their smiling faces giving thanks for the miracle of her rebirth.

Tricia was at her job at a private club in Annapolis, MD last Friday. She had just left her secluded office in the lower level and gone upstairs. Moments later she collapsed. Her heart stopped beating. Someone yelled to call 911 within earshot of a doctor (a neurosurgeon) who rushed to her side and performed CPR. Continue reading →

Thanksgiving 2011

BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from Townhall.com

As we approach the festive season — the elongated, enchanting month from Thanksgiving through Christmas to New Years — my mind has been drifting through various memorable past holidays. Some have been personal — the last one with my father before he died. But one that stands out for historic reasons was Christmas 1991.

It was precisely on Dec. 25, 1991 — 20 years ago next month — that the Soviet Union expired. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his office, and the godless Soviet Union formally ended its existence. On that Christmas Day — of all days –mankind was given the gift of deliverance from the half-century-long threat of nuclear annihilation. Mankind had never been more than one human misjudgment away from the unthinkable. It seemed a miracle that for all the human blundering, the crass politics of the world, the trillions of dollars spent on nuclear weapons — we had come out the other side untouched by the long-dreaded nuclear flame.

But after expressing my heartfelt gratitude for the deliverance from such an evil, I remember thinking that it was a pity that from then on history and politics would be so boring — not that I was complaining. Continue reading →

Post Debate Download

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Generally: Every debate starts with more and longer packages, more solemn announcers, and a greater sense of import. Took 13:30 to get to the first question. I was surprised – pleasantly surprised – that for the most part the candidates had a good idea what they were talking about, and had thought through their basic positions. I say “for the most part” because Rick Perry and Herman Cain were clearly out of their depth. Continue reading →

Super Committee = FAIL

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The conventional wisdom out of Washington is that the Super Committee will not reach an agreement to cut between $1.2 and $1.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

That same narrative holds that the six Representatives (3 Rs – 3 Ds) and six Senators (3 Rs – 3 Ds) who were picked to serve on the Super Committee by their leaders have failed in their mission to effect real change in the tax code, in entitlement, and in the trajectory of federal spending.

I disagree.

I believe that the need to appoint a Super Committee in the first place was a failure of governance on the part of both parties, in both Chambers and, just to complete the rogues’ gallery, on the part of the President of the United States.

We pay rank-and-file Representatives and Senators $174,000 per year. Members of the Leadership get about $20,000 more. The Speaker’s salary is $223,500.

Continue reading →

The Chicago Guys Would Not Let Me Do It

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

A very high-level and important person that you may know personally or have heard of said that this is the answer President Obama gave when he was asked why he did not introduce the Bowles-Simpson (let’s call it ‘BS’ for brevity’s sake) recommendations as a bill in the US Congress.

Just who is the President here and who are the minions serving whom?

President Obama might have had the best of intentions when he officially signed the document creating the BS Commission by Executive Order 13531. We’ll give him credit for that at least, although at the time, we speculated on January 29, 2010 that this commission would fail just like the other 18 before it.

But when the BS Commission failed to pass the recommendations by the required 14 votes out of the 18 members present in late 2010, President Obama still had it within his power to be the Chief Executive of this great nation of ours and ask the Democrat Majority in the Senate to introduce the BS recommendations and force a vote on the floor of the US Senate and then the US House. Continue reading →

Inaccuracy on Internet Hard to Fix

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Before we start, let me advise everyone whose time is valuable that today’s MULLINGS is not going to be worth it. Go get a bagel and a cup of coffee, instead. Bye.

I have a Google Alert on myself. I have often said that I have that to make sure I have been quoted correctly, but it is really because I have an ego the size of Wyoming.

Yesterday, though, it came in handy. A website – which I won’t name because I don’t want you to go to it and increase the traffic by about 1500% – ran a column which included, essentially this:

Some months ago former Gingrich campaign manager Rich Galen quit, having likened Gingrich’s candidacy to “an airliner with no wings, no engines, and no landing gear” because the candidate was more interested in vacationing …on a Greek isle than stumping in Iowa …

I read it again to make sure I had it right. I was the manager of Newt’s campaign, and I had quit because Newt took a trip to the Mediterranean.

I not only was not the manager of the campaign; I had no contact with the campaign. I wasn’t on the staff; I wasn’t a “senior advisor,” I wasn’t a consultant. I wasn’t anything. Continue reading →

#OWS

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

City officials from coast-to-coast have finally decided to live up to their responsibilities to enforce the law and have been evicting the Occupy (fill-in-the-blank) squatters from public spaces.

The District of Columbia has decided to allow the squatters to remain in McPherson Square Park because … well, maybe so the city won’t have to mow the grass until next Spring.

I am not totally unsympathetic to the general theory of the demonstrators: The deck is stacked in favor of the people who have the lion’s share of the chips because they already own the casino.

In the end, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement was a pale shadow (how’s that for an oxymoron?) of the Arab Spring demonstrations.

Part of the problem for the OWS crowd was nobody paid much attention to them. I suppose people who actually work on Wall Street paid attention to people who were attempting to occupy it.

But Manhattan is a pretty big island and for most New Yorkers a bunch of rich kids from New Rochelle sleeping in tents and relieving themselves in garbage cans was not much of a reason to miss their morning bagel-and-a-schmear before they got to the office. Continue reading →