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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (38238)	11/5/2009 12:33:46 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Rebooting the Democrats Voters fear that liberal policies are endangering economic recovery. NOVEMBER 5, 2009. Tuesday's GOP gubernatorial sweep revealed an electorate deeply anxious about jobs, the state of the economy and the wider Obama agenda. We realize we sound like St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, but if the Democratic establishment wants to avoid a repeat in 2010 they'll dump their current ambitions and start over. In New Jersey and Virginia, the Republicans campaigned on lower taxes and more disciplined government as a way to boost growth and jobs. With unemployment brushing up against 10% even as gasoline is nearing $3 a gallon, voters were obviously sending a message about Washington's Great Reflation bet. This was particularly true for independents, who voted in droves for President Obama but broke for the GOP this year by more than two to one in both states. Suburban voters, too, went for Bob McDonnell 55% to 44%, and 51% to 43% for Chris Christie, according to exit polls. These elections should signal Defcon 2 for the 49 Democratic Congressmen who come from districts that John McCain carried in 2008, as well as Senators like Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln and Indiana's Evan Bayh seeking re-election in 2010. New Jersey's budget, with its surging taxes and structural deficits, looks remarkably like Mr. Obama's—and even the President's all-out "Weekend at Bernie's" campaign to prop up Jon Corzine couldn't save the former Goldman Sachs executive despite a huge Democratic voter-registration advantage. In Virginia, which has been trending leftward and Mr. Obama took handily, voters in the Washington suburbs of Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties all went heavily for Mr. McDonnell on their anxiety about high taxes and the expanding federal government. The former state attorney general played down his social conservatism in favor of a bread-and-butter economic message. In New York, the national media focused on the narrow (49%) Democratic victory in the 23rd Congressional district thanks to a Conservative Party challenge to the liberal Republican nominee. But even in the blue bastion of the Empire State, the three-term Democratic Westchester County executive was ousted, while Republicans captured the Nassau County legislature and almost won the county executive seat too. Michael Bloomberg nearly lost his third term as New York City mayor to the inept and unknown comptroller Bill Thompson, which shows that it's not a good time to be an incumbent even if you have an acceptable record and billions of dollars for TV ads. Some rejections of national liberal priorities were far more explicit. Virginia's southwestern ninth district, long represented in Congress by Democrat Rick Boucher, went 67% for Mr. McDonnell—largely over the prospect of a cap-and-trade energy tax that will obliterate the coal production that underlies the region's economy. For the first time in decades one part of this United Mine Workers stronghold also elected a Republican, Will Morefield, to Virginia's House of Delegates. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already forced House Democrats to walk the cap-and-tax plank, adding to the policy uncertainty that is helping to depress what ought to be a more robust recovery after a long and deep recession. The White House and its liberal allies believe government can drive prosperity. Yet the costs that cap and tax would impose—whether through Congress or via the activist EPA regulation that the Administration is pursuing—is part of the political uncertainty that is slowing the revival of risk-taking and job creation. Democrats are imposing wage controls and continuing to embrace a phony populism against Wall Street, while the new liberal industrial policy has annexed the auto sector. The Energy Department is now the largest venture capital firm in the world and is redirecting capital that could be devoted to more productive uses than green energy gambles. Private lenders to college students are being run out of the market. Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to spare 95% of Americans from tax increases, but the American middle class is slowly figuring out that it will eventually be asked—that's the polite way of putting it—to pay for all of this. These looming bills, and not only from the $787 billion stimulus, are clouding the investment outlook. Nowhere is this more true than on health care. The House bill is the very definition of a job killer, funding another entitlement program with a payroll tax equal to 8% of wages on businesses that don't offer insurance even as it inflicts a huge 5.4-percentage-point marginal rate tax hike on those earning over $500,000. The Democrats' own Joint Tax Committee says that one-third of the $460.5 billion this is estimated to raise over 10 years will come from small businesses that create most new jobs. The tragedy is that while ObamaCare is running into ever-deeper problems among moderates and sinking in the polls, Democrats could easily shift gears and build a genuine bipartisan health reform. The compromise worked out earlier this year by Bob Dole and Tom Daschle is not our policy ideal, though it would address some of the cost drivers created by the tax code and maybe garner durable political majorities. Even the bill released this week by House Republicans, and quickly trashed by Democrats, would hand out $50 billion in "incentive payments" to states that reduce the number of uninsured. Once upon a time in Washington, $50 billion counted as a lot of money—and it still does to most voters. *** Democrats entered this year well positioned to get political credit for a recovering economy, whether or not their policies had much to do with it. Yet a year later their willy-nilly expansion of government is creating fear and uncertainty that are inhibiting the animal spirits crucial to job creation—and, as Tuesday showed, endangering their political ascendancy. online.wsj.com

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (38238)	11/13/2009 8:50:27 AM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

The EPA's Paranoid Style Employee arguments against cap-and-trade legislation aren't welcome. By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL NOVEMBER 12, 2009, 7:16 P.M. ET. Give the Environmental Protection Agency credit: At least it practices equal opportunity censorship of its employees. Dr. Alan Carlin, a 37-year agency veteran, was muzzled earlier this spring. Dr. Carlin offered a report poking holes in the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming. His superior, Al McGartland, complained the paper did "not help the legal or policy case" for Team Obama's decision to regulate carbon, told him to "move on to other issues," and forbade him from discussing it outside the office. Now come Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, married, and each with more than 20 years tenure at the EPA. They too are dismayed by Democrats' approach to climate, though for different reasons. Dedicated environmentalists, they created a 10-minute YouTube video arguing Congress's convoluted cap-and-trade bill was a "big lie" that is too weak. They instead propose imposing taxes, lots of them, on fossil fuels. Their views aren't new. Earlier this year the duo sent a letter to Congress making the same case. The video has been out for some time, and the pair got clearance from the EPA before they ran it. Mr. Zabel in the opening notes that "nothing in this video is intended to represent the views of EPA or the Obama Administration." It wasn't until the couple ran a high-profile op-ed in the Washington Post in October that the agency nerved out. A few days after the op-ed, Ms. Williams and Mr. Zabel were contacted by an EPA ethics official telling them to remove the video or face "disciplinary action." EPA says the clearance was subject to "ethics guidelines," which it claims the couple violated. The agency said the video could go back up if it was altered to remove a picture of an EPA building, and to delete mentions of their EPA employment. In particular, Mr. Zabel was not to say that he'd worked on cap-and-trade issues. Meet the Obama EPA, and its new suppressing, paranoid style. It was the president who once ripped the Bush administration for silencing scientific critics, and it was EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson who began her tenure promising the agency would operate like a "fishbowl." But that was before EPA realized how vastly unpopular is its plan to usurp Congress and regulate the economy on its own, based on its bizarre finding that CO2 is a danger to health. Faced with unhappy members of Congress, dissenting employees, an opposition business community, and a backlash on the science, Mrs. Jackson is no longer a fan of open government. The goal now is to rush the agency regulations through as quickly as possible, squashing threatening dissent and deflecting troublesome questions. Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and Darrell Issa recently put out a report documenting the EPA's slippery handling of its carbon rule, in which it truncated the process and dismissed contrary views. The Chamber of Commerce has been waiting all year for a response to its request for a hearing into the science underlying the regulation. Not a peep. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski in September requested a discussion with the agency about carbon regulation and legislation. That discussion has yet to happen. Louisiana Sen. David Vitter recently quizzed Mrs. Jackson about a provision in Congress's climate legislation that would give the president awesome power over energy regulation. Mrs. Jackson said it was a "premature" discussion. "The EPA is playing dirty to get green," says Rep. Sensenbrenner. "The agency can't be allowed to silence its scientists just because what they say threatens to delay its political agenda." There is a legitimate debate over what right administrations have to clamp down on rebel staffers, yet the EPA's stomp on dissenting views appears unprecedented. Dr. Carlin says he's been treated "relatively well" since the blow-up. Yet he has been forbidden from working on climate or attending climate seminars. When asked how this compares to previous administrations, Mr. Carlin says that years ago he actually believed the science was "correct"—a position that put him at odds with the Bush administration. Mr. Carlin knew one of his top supervisors back then disagreed with him. "At no time did he say don't work on it, don't express these views which are contrary to mine. And he in effect allowed me to work on climate change for five years. . . . I had no problems until March of this current year." The problem for the EPA is that the Williams-Zabel dust-up is growing, and underlining the gap between the agency's transparency rhetoric and reality. The very media and activists who ran hit jobs on Mr. Carlin are, of course, now furious the agency is quieting card-carrying environmentalists. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a left-leaning outfit that represents scientists has latched on to the Williams-Zabel video, is lamenting that "EPA is abusing ethics rules to gag two conscientious employees" and promising to assist with any litigation. If the EPA were so proud of this power grab, it ought to be eager to have a discussion, right? Write to kim@wsj.com online.wsj.com