That's Incredible! Harry Reid's Attempt To Defend Wonderboy's Jobs Act

"It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about."

Just incredible.That's Harry Reid's defense of Wonderboy's public sector union-hiring proposals, according to a recent Wall Street Journal staff editorial.

The piece noted that 111.8MM Americans were employed in the private sector at the end of 2008. As of last month, the number was 109.3MM, a loss of roughly 2.5MM private-sector jobs, and a 2% decline. At the federal level, government employed 1.9MM FTE in late 2008, which increased to 2.1MM at the end of last year, for a 11% gain.

State and local government employment numbers in the editorial don't go back to 2008. Instead, the Journal reports that local governments cut just 210,000 by last month out of 14.28MM a year earlier. For state governments, the numbers were 49,000 and 5.14MM. That's only a quarter of a million state and local government employees cut out of some 19MM, or just a 1.3% decline. Even so, these numbers are polluted by the first stimulus having paid for some of those workers in prior years. That also would make comparisons from the end of 2008 problematic.

What's clear, however, is that the private sector has taken the most pain in terms of job losses.

You would like to think the Senate Majority Leader would at least be able to understand that fact.

Harry Reid's Budget Priorities

It looks like the Senate won't come to a compromise on budget cuts in time to avoid a suspension of some government activities at the end of March or early April, thanks to the Democrats' intransigence on spending cuts.

The House Republicans agreed, I believe, on less than $100B in cuts, but more than $40B, for the continuing resolution to fund the remainder of 2011.

In response, I believe Democrats have agreed to what was recently characterized as the daily rate at which our federal government over-spends its budget- $4B.

Here's Harry Reid explaining his budget priorities.

Precious, isn't it? Cowboy poetry requires federal subsidization. There's no way it could occur without federal aid. All those thousands of people spending money in Nevada won't come if private capital has to be risked.

You truly cannot make this sort of thing up, can you? Reid, the leader of our upper chamber in the federal government- the alleged deliberative body- comes off as an idiot.

Senate Control Through 2012

Several conservative pundits, most notably Fred Barnes, in a recent Wall Street Journal, post-election editorial, have opined that control of the Senate won't necessarily be in Harry Reid's hands for the next two years.

With this month's election already in the rear view mirror, these pundits are already looking forward to November, 2012, when something like twice as many Democratic Senators are up for election, relative to only about 12 Republicans.

With so many Democrats at risk, and the potential for the Tea Party-inspired conservative pressure on spending and reversing liberal social legislation and regulation, these observers contend that perhaps as many as half of these Democrats in the Senate will want to appear more moderate, if not conservative. This could mean surprising majorities for Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Even if a few Northeast liberal Republicans (Snowe, Collins) defect, they could be more than replaced by ten Democratic Senators suddenly allying themselves with McConnell's agenda, at least in some cases.

Should make for an interesting next two years, as House GOP control could occasionally be joined by occasional Senate GOP control, as well.

Another Example of The Hazards of Government Intervention In The Private Sector: Harry Reid's Green Energy Donors

Last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal published a staff editorial detailing one of the negative consequences of allowing government to direct economic choices in the private sector.

The case in point is Harry Reid's new financial donors from the "renewable energy" sector.

As the editorial notes,

"The companies that belong to the American Wind Energy Association or the Solar Energy Industries Association (among the fundraiser's hosts) produce costly products that can't compete against traditional fuels. Their business plans are written around Washington subsidies and mandates. They're obviously worried a Republican majority might pare back the grants, loans and tax credits, in the name of cutting government waste."

This is what happens when government gets into the business of funding specific technologies or sectors with subsidies, rather than contracting for competitive bids without subsidies.

The editorial also notes,

"Mr. Reid has been a strong advocate of this transfer, and the industry is showing it knows how to give back."

Essentially, allowing government at any level, including states, to use government, i.e., taxpayers' money, to directly fund private enterprises, invites reciprocal bribery in the form of campaign donations to help the benevolent elected officials remain in office, the better to keep the gravy flowing back to the private companies.

It's corruption, pure and simple. And sort of embezzlement, in that public money is appropriated by an elected official for a favored few private entities, knowing they will repay her/him directly through campaign contributions.

Do you think that's why the Constitution mandates that Congress' laws must apply to all citizens, and never just a select group?

Harry Reid: Racist

I've been away for about 11 days, and, thus, have probably missed some priceless political moments. I'm told Elena Kagan has been confirmed to join the Supreme Court.

But I did catch this little gem from the past few days.



Here's Megan Kelly on Fox News moderating a discussion of Reid's remarks.

It's truly disappointing that the Senate Majority Leader so explicitly engages in racially-based political statements and behaviors. That he seeks to divide Americans based on their race, and expectations likewise attributed to that source.

Hopefully, come November, we'll learn that Harry will soon be leaving his current office.

Sharron Angle's WSJ Interview

Sharron Angle's weekend interview in the Wall Street Journal was very impressive.

Nevermind the false liberal claims that she's a right-wing nutcase who wants to obliterate all of Social Security and the like. Angle is far more rational than that.

My admiration for her escalated when I read of her fight over a tax hike in Arizona. When the state supreme court illegally violated the state's own constitution and overruled the legislature to validate the take increase, Angle went after the court.

At the next election, the members of the court who didn't retire were defeated, and the new court reversed the earlier one's illegal ruling.

Angle fought for what she believed was right, and against blatantly unconstitutional power grabs in her state.

How can you not like someone like that?

I've been very disappointed with Scott Brown, to whose campaign I contributed. I've consoled friends that at least he's better than Martha Coakley would have been.

But I don't think I'll have any regrets sending financial support to Sharron Angle's campaign to dethrone Harry Reid. And I will do so.

Has The NRA Gone Crazy?

The news out of Washington and Arizona today was that the NRA is expected to endorse Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his bid for re-election.

If you want to understand why ordinary voters have become so sceptical of most, if not all, government and special interest groups, this is a good example.

Evidently, the NRA has decided that supporting Reid will give it a pass on potential gun control legislation, should Reid win.

It's not enough that the NRA has already sold out on the Democrats' bill to squash political free speech by accepting an exemption in exchange for silence on the legislation.

Now, the NRA is apparently prostituting itself by backing a brainless liberal in exchange for narrow protection of its own interests.

This is why 'special' interests are so slippery and suspect.

Reid is one very bad Senator. The NRA has typically been out for its own narrow interest. Now that the two are apparently about to share a bed, look out for a big sellout by the NRA, for probably no real gain in the end.

When's the last time Democrats held up their end of a bargain with business or other special interests, other than the UAW and other labor unions?

Harry Reid's Twisted Logic

Perhaps this week the nation has seen why Harry Reid will probably be leaving the Senate next year after an electoral defeat.



That's right. Democratic Senate majority leader equates speaking out against his health care bill with having been for slavery.

Never mind that Reid, nor his ally, Baucus, steadfastly stiff-armed Republican ideas and amendments to their bills.

Nor that many voters simply want more reasonable, reasoned, considered reform that is genuinely bipartisan.

No, to simpleton Harry Reid, if you are not backing his style of health care reform, then you're no better than someone who backed slavery.

So much for free speech and debate in America. Try that, and a Democratic Senator will accuse you of supporting slavery.

No wonder he's trailing both GOP candidates for his seat in next year's election.

Kim Strassel On HarryCare's Public Option

Kim Strassel wrote an interesting piece in last Friday's Wall Street Journal regarding the reason Harry Reid added the infamous "public option" to his HarryCare bill.

It may be cynical, but Strassel thinks he added it as a diversion, so people would sort of forget the bigger, simpler issue of just not wanting the basic HarryCare bill at all.

Specifically, the idea that, in order to allow US consumers to spend less on health care, you don't need to: reform tort law, allow interstate purchase/marketing of health insurance, or level the tax-preference basis of health insurance between those who receive health insurance as a pre-tax benefit, and those who purchase it with after-tax dollars.

Instead, HarryCare will ignore all of that, and offer the dubious claim that his bill will 'fix' health care, with or without the public option.

Very reasonably, and not alone, Strassel argues that Reid can now say he tried for the uber-liberal goodie, the public option, and thus shed responsibility for whatever happens next. At moderates, if it passes, he can thumb his nose, while, if it doesn't, he can explain it was never his idea anyway. Liberals pushed him to it.

But as Strassel points out, Harry has now gotten everyone squabbling over this frill, and perhaps they'll forget the big elephant to which it is attached.

She notes that he's Senate Majority leader for a reason, and it's not because he's stupid.

Perhaps so.

Perhaps today's two gubernatorial and the special upstate NY Congressional elections will give liberals pause.

Or it may make them accelerate the damage they can do before they lose the House next November and end the Reign of Wonderboy for good.

HarryCare's Surprises

Surprise, surprise!

Harry Reid has managed to stuff the public option back into his HarryCare Senate bill. I erred in my prior post when I stated that a House-Senate conference was underway. In fact, it was simply the numerous Senate committees' Democrats caucusing to stitch together their Frankenstein of a health care bill- HarryCare.

Under Nevada Democrat Harry Reid's mis-leadership, the Democratic gang in the Senate have concocted a concept- because, to date, there is still no available written version of this- called a 'modified public option opt-out.'

Apparently this is Reid's attempt to have his health care cake and eat it, too. He's allowed for a public option, but states can choose not to avail themselves of it. Thus, if he has to surgically remove it, he can say he tried, placating his liberal colleagues.

If it passes, he'll probably claim that there's no need for added CBO scoring, since states can 'opt out.' And he'll use that, in all likelihood, to claim to other Senators that it isn't really a public option.

You know, like a fully-federalized, hobnail-booted mandate.

Trouble is, Harry has already lost at least two Senate Democrats and Joe Lieberman. Lieberman is so adamantly against the public option, in any form, that he promised to side with the GOP Senators to filibuster the bill.

Meanwhile, Olympia Snowe delivered on her promise and backed off of any support, and was joined by Nebraska's Blanche Lincoln.

Funny thing about the health care mess. When Democrats, as Reid did this week, continually claim Republicans would not 'work' with them, but, in fact, keep ignoring GOP calls for interstate health insurance purchasing, tort reform, and the dropping of mandates, they look silly and lacking in credibility.

Instead of trying the simplest measures, maybe in several states, then waiting a few years to see the results, these Congressional morons insist on ignoring these sane, simplifying ideas, and going for a total redesign of the US health care system.

Nobody with a brain thinks this will work, or save anyone any money.

How is it Democrats can't understand that? Or do they just not want to understand it?

Congressional Democrats Retreat On Earmarks

Not yet a year into their domination of Congress, House Speaker Frisco Nan and her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid, have already broken their promises to reform earmarks.

Reid has contrived the Senate processes to now require his, and only his, personal, unpublicized opinion as to whether a bill complies with the chamber's earmark rules. So much for sunshine as a disinfectant.

Meanwhile, over in the House, they passed a bill containing the word 'ethics,' but have left the earmarking process largely intact.

In fact, Fox News recently reported a story wherein Pennsylvania's pompous and arrogant member, John Murtha, Frisco Nan's failed candidate for House Majority Leader, inquired, in a debate concerning a spending bill, whether a Republican member had a preferred special interest who needed to be 'taken care of,' in relation to the bill at hand.

The subject was a military need for a special paint, which Murtha had arranged to have provided, sans competitive bids, by Sherwin Williams. Further, while the government paid for the experimental process, the vendor would hold title to any patents or assets resulting from the contract.

What was truly horrific was the Republican member's recounting of Murtha's presumption that the member must be opposing the bill because he had another special interest in whose pocket he was.

With shenanigans like this occurring, I continue to dispute those pundits who think that the House and Senate remain Democratic locks for 2008.

An Historic Week

From my perspective, stretching back to recalling Kennedy's assassination, and, barely, the Cuban missile crisis, President Bush's explicit promise to veto the Democratic Senate's and House's funding bill on Iraq this week, because it contains a mandatory exit date for US troops, is an historic event.

Unlike Nixon during the Vietnam war, Bush has clearly stated , in his Tuesday address, that he is not presiding over an explicit, publicly telegraphed pullout of US troops, in order to give our enemies a precise timetable as to when they may resume their terrorist activities. But doing so, President Bush has done two things. First, he's reversed the tendency of the modern Presidency, post-Nixon, to buckle to Congress and seek accommodation. Second, he has demonstrated that he understands the lessons of Vietnam, and dealing with an enemy as well as a hostile Congress.

Upon reading the Wall Street Journal's editorial this week about 'Harry Reid's war,' I had to smile at Reid's naivete. I think he's mistaking an American dislike of losing wars for a dislike of war. By thinking that polls are finding the latter, Reid is going to do the former, and, I believe, lose his party's Senate majority come 2008. Less than going to war, Americans dislike losing a war, and they won't be charitable to one of the architects of that defeat.

I also find it curious that Reid is from Nevada, which is smack in the heart of the conservative American southwest.

Rather than pick up seats, I am reasonably sure Reid and Frisco Nan will see shrinking pluralities should the Democrats stick to their current course in forcing a date for exiting Iraq.

Thank God that the US has a President with the calm confidence, resolution and clear-sightedness of George Bush. Unlike Bill Clinton, you can't accuse him of waffling or being fickle. He doesn't sway with the winds of what is merely popular, though ill-advised or wrong.

Bush knows that publicizing a withdrawal date from Iraq will simply hand our enemies key information which they may use to await our exit, then conquer the country. Even Joe Leiberman agrees with Bush. Is this the issue what will have the wavering moderate Democrat cross the aisle, and turn control of the upper chamber back to the Republicans?