Speechifying President Suddenly Gone Mute? Why?

For a speechifying president why has Obama suddenly gone mute over Iran?

Maybe he knows he cannot do anything about the Iranian's plight.

Maybe he does not want to muddy the water for when he subsequently negotiates with Ahmadinejad.

Maybe its because he does not know what he is doing and the shoe of being president is larger than his foot.

Perhaps all of this is beyond his pay grade.

You decide. (See 1 below.)

But, then there are others who are equally and selectively silent. (See 1a below.)

Obama's cop out on Iran may well prove devastating because while his speeches helped him soar, his silence over Iran could well cause him to crash. On the other hand, cautiousness is preferable to rashness. However, there is a fine line between hesitancy and timidity.

Fred Barnes goes a step further in dissecting Obama's speechifying tactics. Barnes poses the comparison betwen false hope and false choice. The stigma of Iran has proven un-shakeable for Carter. Could it have the same negative impact on Obama? Time will tell

But I do believe it has diminished his speechifying credibility.

What is happening in Iran has the potential of being a huge positive for the Western World. It signals that Mullahs will have to be more cautious, it is an embarassment for a repressive regime when the world sees pictures of such open revolt and it sends a message to those enduring oppression, should the Iran protests truly prove successful in overthrowing that nation's despotic leadership, that freedom can be won, albeit at a high cost. On the other hand the signalfrom Iran could unleash a period of destabilizing brush fires around the world.

What is disheartening is that our president does not seem to grasp this and remains silent in the face of Iranian courage. A tragic lost opportunity to hold out a beacon of hope from a nation which gained its independence in much the same manner.(See 1b and 1c below.)

Every once in a while Biden blurts out the truth and,in doing so, he is being truly original. (See 2 below.)

If Sen. Dodd is such a canny investor maybe he should be Sec. of the Treasury and if he received a huge gift for which he did not pay taxes then he damn well would qualify.

Dodd's real estate dealing in Irelandmay make the Clintons look like pikers. (See 3 below.)

More sticking it to our allies in order to buy off Russia? (See 4 below.)

There's a better way according to Sen. Wyden. (See 5 below.)

Liberals now call themselves progressives but nothing has changed with respect to their warped principles, failed ideas and zealous desire to intrude government into every American nook and cranny. Europe is beginning to see the light and is rejecting what Obama is seeking to impose on America - Socialism. The concern is that Europe, having failed with Socilaism, has swung to Fascism. (See 6 below.)

HAPPY FATHER"S DAY!

Dick


1) 'Freedom Fighters' and the American President
By Paul Kengor

I frequently get asked how Ronald Reagan would react to certain situations. I've gotten those questions a lot lately given the penchant for central planning by the new team Americans elected in Washington.


But nowhere is there a Reagan lesson that needs heeded as desperately as in Iran right now. The desperation is more apparent daily as President Obama doesn't seem to recognize -- or doesn't know how to support -- the huge historical opportunity before his eyes, and quickly slipping through his fingers.


What would be Reagan's reaction to what's happening in Iran? That's a slam-dunk: He would have responded as he did to every cry for freedom suffocating under the last global scourge America battled -- Soviet communism. Wherever those resisting the despots resided and raised their voices, in Afghanistan, in Nicaragua, in Poland, Reagan was consistent, never missing the opportunity, always staying on theme. He called these people "freedom fighters."


He did so unequivocally, boldly, proudly, loudly, with the left often trashing him and undermining him, contesting whether this or that group met their criteria as legitimate "freedom" fighters. Reagan was undeterred. He recognized the historical imperative, what he called the March of Freedom. The freedom marchers needed America and its president to urge them on.


The total Reagan statements promoting these freedom fighters are literally uncountable. I know this well, as I collected them for research purposes. Reagan didn't simply step to the microphone to encourage these people at certain crisis moments; he called them out routinely, regularly, including in special, newly created ceremonies with names like Afghan Freedom Day, Solidarity Day, Captive Nations Week, and honoring things like "Observance of the Afghan New Year" or speaking at the annual Pulaski Day Banquet in New York City. In these statements, the president of the United States and unapologetic leader of the free world -- Reagan took that task to heart -- mercilessly blasted the tyrants with just about every name in the book.


Reagan didn't play footsies with dictators. He knew human nature. He knew evil. He knew who was wrong. He knew the dictators were bad regardless of whether we were nice. Not condemning them wouldn't make them behave better.


Let me give me just one example, which is most appropriate right now: Poland, the heart of the Soviet communist bloc. The crackdown ensuing in Iran has many similarities to what happened to the Solidarity movement in Poland after martial law was declared in December 1981.


After martial law, an unceasing stream of words and covert activity and aid (billions of dollars worth) -- done in coordination with Pope John Paul II's Vatican -- began flowing to the Solidarity underground from the Oval Office. The stream turned into a tidal wave, and Reagan didn't stop until the levee broke.


The words alone, which constituted a powerful source of moral support for Poland's freedom fighters, were so ubiquitous that the final index to the Reagan Presidential Documents -- the official collection of all presidential statements -- lists references to Solidarity or Poland on 216 pages, with multiple references on most pages. In these, Reagan stood as an unflagging championing of Solidarity, serving up stinging rebukes of Soviet or Polish communist government actions.


Reagan had geopolitical intentions in mind. He made a commitment to save and sustain the Polish freedom fighters as the wedge to splinter the Soviet bloc; they were the crack in the Iron Curtain, and Reagan wanted to be the crowbar. It turned out that bad news in Poland was good news for freedom: In Reagan's mind, the ugliness that was the crackdown afforded beautiful possibilities.


Today, those liberated freedom fighters, who now run Poland, which has been one of our best allies for two decades, freely speak of the importance of Reagan's support. To quote merely one, Jan Winiecki, a member of Solidarity, told me:


"It's very important for those underground to know they'll have support diplomatically if they're repressed. They knew they could count on Reagan and his administration for this rhetorical, moral, public support -- this political support. It raised their spirits that they could survive."


During that critical period, the Polish people referred to the American president as "Uncle Reagan." In 1983, the organization Paris Match conducted a poll of 600 Poles traveling to the West. When asked who was the "last hope" for Poland, these Poles placed Reagan behind only the Pope and Virgin Mary, and ahead of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.


As for Walesa, he now says, "We owe so much to Ronald Reagan. We Poles owe him freedom."


Alas, Iran today, at this very moment, stands at a critical juncture much like Poland in December 1981. In fact, the Obama White House would be well-served to go back and read how the Reagan White House reacted after martial law was declared on December 13, 1981.


Tragically, Obama is not doing what Reagan did. Aside from underground aid and activity, even mere public declarations of moral support would be significant. What's he afraid of? Could Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Islamist theocrats running this Jew-hating, nuke-craving, terrorist state be any worse? Though you wouldn't know it from Obama's sycophantic American press, Ahmadinejad has already made a fool of Barack Obama since the day the new president stepped into office.


What a genuine tragedy of history that the world has gotten its two most significant shake-ups in Iran under Jimmy Carter and now Barack Obama, and not under a Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. In the late 1970s, Carter had essentially given the green light to the would-be mullahs who wanted to overthrow the Shah. Now, Obama, through his silent complicity (as Ralph Peters has pointed out), has given a green light to the enshrined mullahs in their current crackdown against freedom.


This isn't a surprise. Obama doesn't have the necessary understanding -- in the heart, the gut, the soul. He doesn't perceive America -- to borrow from Reagan -- as "less of a place than an idea." He doesn't subscribe to Reagan's oft-invoked aphorism from Thomas Paine, that America has the power "to begin the world all over again." He doesn't see America as that lighthouse, that blowtorch of liberty, that Shining City on a Hill that serves as beacon for the oppressed peoples in captive nations around the world.


President George W. Bush, for all his faults, set this nation, and the wider world, on a course to literally transform human history by remaking the Middle East. The seeds for Bush's vision for a democratic peace, his openly expressed application of Reagan's March of Freedom, would be in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he spoke of a March of Freedom igniting in the Middle East, Iran was to be a vital outpost along that path.


And for all his sincere efforts, the left bludgeoned him, joyfully beating him into a pulp -- destroyed him. The boiling well of liberal hatred was so vicious, so toxic, gushing into a geyser, that it led to the election of the one presidential candidate who most starkly opposed this inspiring Wilsonian-Reaganesque worldview.


Alas, the left got the successor it wanted and deserves.


The American people let us down badly last November. They obliviously elected a president who truly doesn't seem to get it. We are now reaping what we've sown. What a shame, for us, for Iran, for the world. Freedom be damned.



Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books on Ronald Reagan include God and Ronald Reagan, The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand, and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

1a) Mennonite Central Committee Silent on Iran
By Dexter Van Zile

When it comes to rehabilitating his image in the United States, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can count on the Mennonite Central Committee for assistance.

The organization has sponsored two dinners and an interfaith pilgrimage to Tehran during which Christian leaders have met with the Iranian President and offered kind words about the man afterwards.

Now that events demonstrate that Ahmadinejad is the public face of a brutal regime willing to suppress the people it governs, the organization has fallen silent.

After more than two days of protests and violence in Iran, the MCC has not published any statement about the organization on its website, nor does it have any plans to.

On the morning of June 15, 2009, CAMERA sent an email to Ed Nyce, the MCC's Media and Education Coordinator asking whether or not the organization was going to issue any statement about Iran.

Nyce's response, which came on the afternoon of June 15, was succinct and direct:
“We have no plans to issue a statement.”

When asked in subsequent communications (email and a voice message) why the MCC had nothing to say, Nyce reiterated in an email that the MCC has “no plans to issue a statement.”

The MCC's silence about the events in Iran is remarkable given its highly visible campaign to legitimize Ahmadinejad in the U.S. This campaign began in February 2007 when the MCC organized a meeting of Christian leaders with the Iranian President in Teheran. The delegation held a press conference in Washington, D.C. upon its return to the U.S. Christian leaders reportedly challenged Ahmadinejad about his anti-Semitic statements, but their complaints had little apparent effect. Four days after the delegation's meeting Ahmadinejad appeared in Sudan, where according to Islamic Republic News Agency (Iran's official news service), he said "Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan."

In September 2007, the MCC organized an ecumenical dinner attended by Ahmadinejad and numerous Christian leaders in New York City.

The leaders met with the Iranian president after he addressed the United Nations on September 26, 2007. According to The New York Times, Albert Lobe, executive director of the Mennonite Central committee told Ahmadinejad “We meant to extend to you the hospitality which a head of state deserves.”

Lobe's obsequiousness was apparently a response to the treatment Ahmadinejad received at Columbia University on Sept. 24, when the school's president Lee Bollinger called him "a petty and cruel dictator."

The MCC organized a similar dinner with Ahmadinejad in September 2008. After this meeting, MCC officials reassured the American people that the Iranian President had no desire to destroy Israel militarily, but merely supported a "one-state solution" to the conflict in which "Israelis and Palestinians elect a single government to represent both peoples."

When it comes to portraying Ahmadinejad in a sympathetic light, or condemning Israeli policies, such as the construction of the security barrier, the Mennonite Central Committee has been quite vocal. But when it comes time to assess the behavior of the Iranian regime in light of the Christian gospel (which it uses so often to judge Israel), the group falls silent.

1b) There's No False Choice on Iran: The consequence of a weak president.
By Fred Barnes

Rejecting "false choices" is a favorite rhetorical device of President Obama. His speeches are littered with examples. A half-dozen times, he's repudiated "the false choice between our security and our ideals." He's dismissed "the false choice between sound science and moral values." He's not only disposed of "the false choice between securing this nation and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars," he's laid to rest the clash between those who'd "conserve our resources" and those who'd "profit from these natural resources."

But confronted by a popular revolt in Iran, Obama has succumbed to a false choice. Either support the democratic forces in Iran aligned against the rigged presidential election or preserve his chance to negotiate with the Ahmadinejad regime for a nuclear arms deal--one or the other. The president thinks he's stuck with a dilemma. He's not. The two options aren't mutually exclusive. The choice is indeed false.

To escape his predicament, Obama has sought neutrality between a discredited regime and democratic protesters. This actually helps the regime, since President Ahmadinejad and the mullahs don't need Obama's support. The protesters do. In effect, Obama has tilted in favor of the regime. The result is personal shame (for Obama) and policy shame (for the United States).

The president should know better. In dealing with dictators, honey is rarely more effective than vinegar. Obama's respectful overtures to Iran's leaders evoked only angry recriminations against America and no sign of willingness to settle differences on nuclear arms or anything else.

President Bush tried the no-criticism tack with President Putin. Nice words and good personal relations failed to curb the Russian's belligerent tendencies. The same was true with Presidents Nixon and Carter in their relationship with Soviet leaders. Nixon believed he'd achieve more by the soft approach. He got bad treaties. Carter thought chumminess with Leonid Brezhnev would tame Soviet aggression. The invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 proved him wrong.

President Reagan, in contrast, knew a false choice when he saw one and adopted the opposite tack. He challenged the Soviets with strong words and stern policies. The Soviets complained, but they also made unprecedented concessions in arms control and other talks.

Obama, as best I can tell, has never considered the Reagan approach. But the corrupt and tyrannical nature of the Iranian regime is a clue it could be effective. Implacable opposition and harsh denunciations, coupled with a readiness to talk, might cause Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei to be more agreeable.

It's worth a try, unless we are to believe, as Obama seems to, that Ahmadinejad and the mullahs could be more hostile than they are now. Not likely. Is it even conceivable they are so sensitive to public criticism, so touchy, that they'd be prompted to spurn serious negotiations they might otherwise have agreed to? No.

The latest round of pandering by Obama hasn't worked. The day after Ahmadinejad's reelection, amid indications of voting fraud, the White House issued a statement. "We were impressed by the vigorous debate" in the election and will be monitoring "irregularities," Robert Gibbs said, as if he were commenting on a Chicago alderman's election.

Two days later, Obama said he is "troubled .  .  . whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting." He neglected to identify the perpetrators of the violence. Obama added he hopes "whatever investigations" of the fraud charges ensue "are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed."

The next day, with hordes of demonstrators in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities, Obama insisted, "it's not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling, the U.S. president meddling in Iranian elections." Besides, he said Khamenei "indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election." Less than three days later, he declared the election results legitimate.

Obama has a very broad definition of "meddling." It includes any expression by him of support for the Iranian protesters, many of them pro-American and eager for his backing. His reference to "history" was presumably to the American role in ousting a left-wing government in Iran in 1953--yes, 1953! Obama's implication: the events of 1953 bar him from criticizing the cruel and undemocratic regime today or siding with Iranian freedom marchers. That's quite a stretch. And the Iranians accused him of meddling anyway.

A day later, Obama made an egregious mistake. He suggested there's no difference on policy between Ahmadinejad and his presidential rival, Mir-Husseini Mousavi. Once again, that was helpful to Ahmadinejad. If the two are peas in a pod, what's all the fuss about? No reason to meddle, for sure.

In fact, there are significant differences. Mousavi leads the forces of reform and democracy. Ahmadinejad leads the forces of theocracy and repression. Mousavi wants to improve relations with the United States and says the matter of a nuclear weaponized Iran is "negotiable." Ahmadinejad has "shut the door" on both.

When Navy sharpshooters, with Obama's permission, shot Somali pirates and rescued an American ship captain, the president got well-deserved credit for smooth handling of a minor emergency. He was active and energetic when the stakes were small.

In Iran, the stakes are large, though you wouldn't know it from Obama's passive and ineffective response. He acts as if his choice of what to do in Iran is too difficult, too fraught with danger, for him to decide. It's not. A stronger president would see the choice as false.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

1c) Obama to Iran's leaders: Stop 'unjust' actions
By BEN FELLER


President Barack Obama on Saturday challenged Iran's government to halt a "violent and unjust" crackdown on dissenters, using his bluntest language yet to condemn Tehran's postelection response.

Obama has sought a measured reaction to avoid being drawn in as a meddler in Iranian affairs. His comments have grown more pointed as the clashes intensified, and his latest remarks took direct aim at Iranian leaders.

"We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people," Obama said in a written statement. "The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights."

Obama met with advisers at the White House as developments in Iran grew more ominous.

"Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away," the president said, recalling a theme from the speech he gave in Cairo, Egypt, this month.

"The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government," Obama said. "If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion."

Obama also cited Martin Luther King's statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

"I believe that," the president said. "The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness



2) Obama's Worst Role
By Randy Fardal

Vice President Biden recently confessed that the administration "guessed wrong" on the stimulus bill. Even President Obama reluctantly admitted that unemployment is likely to reach ten percent this year, after promising in February that his stimulus package would keep it from exceeding eight.


The US economy is so large and globally dominant that it probably will recover at some point -- perhaps just in time for the 2010 elections. And once it recovers, no doubt Mr. Obama will stop blaming his predecessor and take credit for it. But his actions only worsened the economic recession, just as President Roosevelt's did in the mid-1930s. According to some studies, Roosevelt's policies prolonged the depression by seven years.


So what exactly is wrong with Mr. Obama's plan? The short answer is that he is attempting to stimulate demand, rather than stimulating supply. To make things even worse, he also is taking actions that will depress supply.


For the past three decades, the Federal Reserve Board was allowed to moderate America's money supply with an unprecedented degree of autonomy. Mistakes were made, but the Fed generally has been able to offset -- or at least delay -- the harm done by the looters in Washington.


However, Mr. Obama piled on spending and debt that even the most prudent monetary policies might not be able to counteract. Stagflation and other terms that haven't been heard since the miserable Carter years now are voiced again in economic forecasts.


Mr. Obama's so-called stimulus spending is counterproductive not only because of its unprecedented magnitude, but also because of its beneficiaries. As an inexperienced policy maker, Mr. Obama naively believes that supply follows demand. If mobs of greedy supporters at town hall meetings demand taxpayer-funded kitchens and free healthcare, Mr. Obama will try to find a way to supply them.


But good leaders aren't followers and supply doesn't follow demand -- not in a sustained prosperous economy. As successful entrepreneurs know, supply usually leads demand. For example, we all demand cheap cold-fusion energy, but if it ever becomes commercially viable, it will be supplied in some unexpected way that no consumer focus group (or president) could envision. Sustained demand then will follow supply.


That business principle applies to more than just atomic energy. Ordinary things like Bedford Falls housing developments work that way too. In the 1940s movie It's a Wonderful Life, guardian angel Clarence showed George Bailey, a successful building and loan entrepreneur, what life would be like without him:


Clarence: Are you sure this is Bailey Park?


George: No, I'm not sure of anything anymore. All I know is this should be Bailey Park. But where are all the houses?


Clarence: You weren't here to build them.


The movie dialog hints at the folly of stimulus policies that fund or promote consumer demand, such as those implemented in the past by Fannie Mae, and today by the Obama administration. Demand stimuli lead to inflation and boom/bust economies. They also eventually bankrupt the George Baileys and cause economic slowdowns and massive unemployment. Stagflation.


In contrast, supply stimuli -- investment tax credits, accelerated depreciation, and capital gains tax reductions -- lead to long-term capital formation. Small businesses are started. Big factories are modernized. The results are improved manufacturing efficiency, greater American productivity, more exports, and more jobs. And the jobs turn into productive careers, not temporary day labor.


More importantly, when supply leads demand instead of chasing it recklessly, a stimulus is not inflationary. Stimulated suppliers compete in a crowded market by improving their products and cutting prices. Bailey Park gets built to endure as a well-planned community, not an overpriced boomtown hastily carved into a cornfield.


Like another movie character, Ferris Bueller, perhaps Mr. Obama simply cut class when he was supposed to be learning basic economics. Or perhaps Mr. Obama is fully aware of the destructive consequences of his fiscal policies, but the lure of shifting money and power from individuals to government is irresistible.


If you're not a movie buff, a backyard way of understanding consumer demand stimulus is to think of it as lighter fluid with no charcoal. The temporary flash of heat and light can fool gullible picnickers into thinking they soon will be dining on steak, but of course they'll be stuck with cold potato salad.


Mr. Obama actually has addressed economic supply issues, but instead of stimulating supply, he restricted it further. His new CAFE regulations effectively ban the sale of most cars currently made by US auto companies. Mr. Obama is curtailing supply while stoking demand with his stimulus spending.


It's the automotive equivalent of giving $2000 to crackheads in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and then posting DEA agents on every street corner in town. Smuggling, bribery, price-hikes, and gang wars erupt.


Will Mexican drug mules enlarge their trans-border tunnels to accommodate black market SUVs? No, but freedom loving Americans naturally resist fascism, so they will find creative ways to get another Little Deuce Coupe and avoid buying an Obama Motors Little Il Duce Coupe.


Many simply will repair their old vehicles. In doing so, they will "smuggle" safe, comfortable, productive vehicles from the past to the present. As long as automakers and offshore aftermarket suppliers continue making every part, there's no reason a gardener's full-size pickup truck can't last for decades -- or at least until the state overreach is corrected.


Mr. Obama also wants to restrict the supply of affordable coal, oil, and nuclear energy with dramatic increases in taxes, exploration bans, and costly regulations. Energy costs have risen dramatically not because of increased economic activity, but because of supply reductions. More stagflation.


Ditto for nationalized healthcare: In that sector, Mr. Obama's policies will lead to skyrocketing demand while choking off supply, just as it has in every other country that already uses his proposed system. Inflation, rationing, favoritism, bribery, and offshore "medical tourism" will follow.


One might even argue that Mr. Obama is limiting the supply of skilled American labor by encouraging union expansion. Collective bargaining seeks to restrict the number of workers and artificially boost demand for them by reducing their productivity. That will lead to stagflation and more offshore manufacturing -- and increased illegal smuggling of non-union workers across the Mexican border to do domestic jobs that can't be exported to China.


The Left finally staged that Ferris Bueller sequel we've all been waiting for. But it turned out to be a horror flick.

3) Sen. Dodd's Irish Luck: The Senator Sure Knows How to Pick an Investment

Irish property prices have plummeted since 2002. But a "cottage" in County Galway owned by Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has tripled in value during the same period, according to a financial disclosure form filed by the Senator this month.

There are two possible explanations for this remarkable turn of fortune. Maybe Mr. Dodd is luckier than a leprechaun. Or could it be that he paid well below the market price when he bought out a co-owner in 2002 and had undervalued the property accordingly? If it's the latter, then Mr. Dodd received a "gift," in IRS parlance, and should have declared it on his financial disclosure form that year. He did not. Oh, and by the way, the seller at that low, low price has been the business partner of a man for whom Mr. Dodd lobbied to receive a Presidential pardon.

It's also been nearly a year since a former loan officer at Countrywide Financial charged that the mortgage lender had classified Mr. Dodd as a "very important person" (a.k.a., a "friend of Angelo" Mozilo, Countrywide's then-CEO). As such, Robert Feinberg said, Mr. Dodd received -- and knew he'd received -- preferential rates and fees on two mortgages he and his wife refinanced in 2003. As a power on the Senate Banking Committee, he also knew this was a conflict of interest. This was the era when Countrywide originated and then sold to Fannie Mae high volumes of subprime loans.

The SEC charged Mr. Mozilo with fraud and insider trading earlier this month, and the Los Angeles Times reported in May that there is an FBI investigation which "includes a probe of [Countrywide's] role in an influence-peddling scandal involving" Mr. Dodd. The Senate Ethics Committee won't comment on its own investigation of almost a year.

Mr. Dodd denies receiving any special treatment, and nearly a year ago he promised to release the Countrywide mortgage documents and clear up the matter. We are still waiting, though he did attempt to placate the Connecticut press with a peek-a-boo release of a few select documents and a review by his own lawyers in February.

Now the Irish cottage on 10 scenic acres is bringing more trouble. At the start of the Irish real estate boom in 1994, Mr. Dodd bought the property with William Kessinger for $160,000. Mr. Kessinger has been a business partner of Edward Downe, who is a longtime friend of Mr. Dodd's. In 1986 Messrs. Dodd and Downe owned a condominium together in Washington. In 1993 Mr. Downe pleaded guilty to insider trading and securities fraud and in 2001, as Bill Clinton was preparing to leave the White House, Mr. Dodd successfully lobbied to get his friend a pardon.

The following year, 2002, Mr. Dodd bought out Mr. Kessinger's two-thirds share in the house and became the full owner. Mr. Dodd reported to the Irish government that he paid Mr. Kessinger $122,351, and Mr. Dodd says that a bank appraisal that same year valued the property at $190,000. From 2002 to 2007 Mr. Dodd reported its worth at between $100,001 and $250,000 on his annual Senate financial disclosure form.

But Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie began digging this year into the mismatch between what Mr. Dodd paid to Mr. Downe's business partner to become a full owner and what the property in Ireland was likely worth in 2002 amid the Irish land boom. Last week, when Mr. Dodd filed his annual financial disclosure form, it included a new appraisal from the same appraiser putting the current value of the house at $658,000.

In an effort to explain the gain despite the fact that the Irish housing market has since gone south, a spokesman for the Senator said that "The value of the cottage, or of Irish real estate generally, isn't something that the Dodds have thought much about." However, according to Galway County records, Mr. Dodd was so uninterested in the value of those 10 acres that he tried to subdivide the property in 1998 and put up another house. No doubt because he had no idea what it was, or would be, worth.

The Senate's financial disclosure forms are supposed to be a tool of honest government, and former Senator Ted Stevens was indicted for allegedly false disclosures. Mr. Dodd's miraculous property reappraisal is further grist for Senate and Justice investigators -- and especially for voters in 2010.

4)Obama, Russia, and the Reset Button: The president's team pushes aside concerns about Russian revanchist policies.
By Gary Schmitt




President Obama is headed to Moscow in early July for his first ever U.S.-Russia summit. The administration, in an effort to "hit the reset button" when it comes to relations between the two countries, has in fact hit the delete button when it comes to ties with friends and allies in the region.

First, there was the news from the NATO defense ministers meeting this past week that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had told his counterpart from Poland, Bogdan Klich, that the Patriot air-defense battery promised to Poland last August as part of a broader agreement to increase strategic cooperation between the two countries would be rotated in and out of Poland and used exclusively for training purposes. As such, he added, there would be no need for the missiles to be live and armed. The agreement to locate a Patriot battery in Poland was of course a late Bush administration effort to reassure Poland of U.S. interest in the country's security in light of the Russian invasion of Georgia; it was also a response to Russian threats against Poland for the possible deployment of ground-based missile interceptors in Polish territory--part of the U.S.-led missile defense program aimed at addressing the missile threat from Iran. Now, for all of Warsaw's efforts to be a solid, dependable U.S. ally--which have included sending troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan--Poland is receiving promises of U.S. troops occasionally setting up shop with the military version of "potted plants" on its territory.

Then, on Monday, Russia halted efforts at the UN to extend the UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG), following on the heels of its veto of the continuation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission to South Ossetia, one of the two now Russian-occupied Georgian territories invaded in August 2008. With typical Russian subtly, the Russian foreign ministry noted that "extension [of the UNOMIG mandate] makes no sense because it is predicated on old realities." Well, yeah, that is certainly true since, in effect, Moscow has now effectively annexed South Ossetia and Abkhazia into its orbit with barely a peep from the new U.S. team and seemingly with no consequences for relations whatsoever.

Both the decision to slow roll the Poles and ignore Moscow's behavior in Georgia is part and parcel of an Obama administration's effort to prevent anything from getting in the way of a U.S.-Russia agreement on reducing strategic nuclear arsenals. Whether appeasing Russian behavior is likely to make negotiating an agreement any easier is a doubtful assumption when it comes to Moscow these days, however. Nor is it obvious that an agreement on cutting strategic force levels will have much, if any, salutary impact on geo-political realities. Force levels have already been slashed since the end of the Cold War--from over 12,000 warheads in the early 1980s to some 2,200 today--and further reductions are not likely to make the world appreciably safer. If anything, deep cuts now will put in jeopardy the United States' ability to maintain its strategic triad of submarines, bombers, and missiles. How that will enhance strategic stability is anybody's guess. And, finally, the other justification for the agreement is the supposed impact it would have on strengthening the non-proliferation regime. But the reality is, there is no evidence that the size of U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals has any impact at all on the decision by the likes of North Korea and Iran to pursue or expand their nuclear weapons programs. What matters to them is the deterrent value of having such weapons in light of American and allied conventional military superiority. So, unless the Obama administration's next move is to radically reduce our military footprint around the globe and toss aside our various security commitments in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, reducing the number of nuclear warheads we have on hand is not likely to make a scintilla of difference when it comes to the problem of proliferation.

All of which is to say, in the Obama team's rush to get a new arms control agreement--which, by the way, is being done before the congressionally-mandated Quadrennial Defense Review and Nuclear Posture Review have been completed--they have pushed aside concerns about Russian revanchist policies. This could be justified of course if the benefits to be gained were worth the price of ignoring the damage being done to American credibility in Russia's "near abroad." But they're not. All Obama will really get after an agreement is reached is a platform for more moral preening on the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons and a Moscow more likely to think that the United States and Europe have acceded to its claims regarding a "sphere of influence" in the post-Soviet space. This is a potentially high price, indeed.

Gary Schmitt is resident scholar and director of the American Enterprise Institute's Program on Advanced Strategic Studies.

5) Wydens Third Way: The Oregon senator questions the wisdom of a government health insurance plan
By Collin Levy


'People don't want the government in the driver's seat . . . They don't want the decisions (about their treatment) made in Capitol hearing rooms with a bunch of legislators in dark suits." So says Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden of the Healthy Americans Act, his plan for compromise in the polarized politics of healthcare reform.

Mr. Wyden, slouched amiably on his office sofa with his long legs on the coffee table, looks awfully relaxed for a man in the middle of the battle over health-care reform. On the day before our meeting, the political calculus shifted: The Congressional Budget Office predicted that the bill from the Senate Finance Committee would increase the federal budget deficit by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Worse for Democrats, the astronomical price tag would still leave millions of people uninsured.

Zina Saunders Sen. Ron Wyden
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The news changed the views of some who had begun to see a bigger government role in medicine as inevitable. It also shifted attention to less-radical approaches, like the one Mr. Wyden is co-sponsoring with Utah Republican Bob Bennett.

"The country has bailout fatigue," Mr. Wyden explains. "The Congressional Budget Office said our proposal was budget neutral in the short term and that it would essentially start bending the cost curve downward in the third year."

The plans favored by Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy or President Barack Obama rely on a "public option" in which government insurance would supposedly "compete" with private insurers, a move many see as leading to a single-payer system. By contrast, the Wyden-Bennett Healthy Americans Act relies on the private insurance market while imposing a series of regulations to squeeze savings from the private sector. It also requires individuals to buy coverage for themselves, the controversial "individual mandate."

The idea, Mr. Wyden says, is to harness the Democratic desire to get everyone covered to the Republican interest in markets and consumer choice. "Everything I've been up to with this coalition is designed to make reconciliation irrelevant," he explains, referring to a political maneuver whereby Democrats might try to force through health reform on a bare majority of 51 votes rather than the filibuster-proof 60 votes normally required.

"People can't be tricked into fixing health care." If you want to bring the country together, he continues, you have to aim for 70 votes and the kind of bipartisan strength that the Healthy Americans Act has with 14 senators sponsoring the bill. "If you . . . just pound it through on a partisan vote, you don't have that kind of consensus. You have people practically as soon as the ink is dry looking to have it repealed."

Mr. Wyden knows he is walking a wobbly tightrope between the factions. At Oregon town-hall meetings six years ago, he remembers, "you'd have a bunch of people get up and talk about single payer, and a lot of applause." He claps to demonstrate. Then someone else would say, "We don't want that, we had a cousin who lived in Canada, they had to come to the U.S. to get treated because they couldn't get good care. And then both of these groups would look sullenly at each other."

When he first approached Bob Bennett in early 2007 about a compromise plan based on the kind of coverage members of Congress get, he got a similarly unenthused response. Mr. Wyden puts on a deep, croaky Bob Bennett voice and repeats words that Mr. Bennett would later use to characterize his reaction: "I told Ron Wyden I'd look at his proposal." Smiling, Mr. Wyden says, "As Senator Bennett describes it, that's the closest thing you get in the United States Senate to a 'no.'"

Mr. Bennett ultimately came around to the idea, but a lot of Republicans remained dubious. "People kind of looked at him like it was all a kind of big socialist plot. And he basically said, get over it, they've got a point."

"Both parties have come a long way," says Mr. Wyden. "The most conservative Republicans accept the idea that they didn't accept in '93, that you've got to cover everybody to organize the market," he says. "If you don't . . . there's too much cost-shifting, not enough prevention." And some Democrats are seeing the wisdom of a market system where people will benefit if they make wise selections about their care.

Mr. Wyden takes a long view: "Ever since the 1940s, we essentially disconnected individuals from being involved in health care. It's all about third parties, and they pay all the bills and individuals don't have the opportunities for the choices. In fact, millions of people who are lucky enough to have employer coverage don't get any choice."

Which brings us back to dealing with the price tag of reform. Mr. Wyden is in the hot seat because his plan would convert the current tax exclusion for health benefits into a tax deduction for individuals to make insurance more portable. But taxing health benefits was pilloried on the campaign trail by Barack Obama, and the opponents have kept after it. "I think the way to go," Mr. Wyden says, "is with a generous deduction that sends a market-oriented message." He says that means that, if you shop carefully for your health care, you're going to get your taxes cut.

The typical family of four spends about $13,000 a year for their health care for the year, he says. In the Healthy Americans plan, they set the deduction at $19,000. "If you get a deduction of between $17,000 and $19,000 for a middle-class family of four . . . [that] now spends $13,000 on health care, we've got a chance to give millions of people . . . more money in their wallet because they got a chance to shop in a new system driven by informed choice and financial incentives to make those choices."

The tax aspects of the Wyden plan have nonetheless earned him the wrath of some Democrats as well as labor unions that carry fully loaded benefits plans and benefit from the current tax exemption. Some unions have even taken out ads against him in his home state of Oregon. As a powerful Democratic interest group, their objections have caused other would-be health-care reformers to capitulate. Montana Democrat and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has said his own health reform plan will create a union carve-out.

Is Mr. Wyden surprised by the opposition his proposal has generated from the left? "Let's take it one at a time," he tells me. "First, there's a pretty good cross section of Democrats on this bill. Arlen Specter of course is now a Democrat." Other supporters include Debbie Stabenow, Mary Landrieu, Bill Nelson.

And Labor? Unions have every right to bargain for the best possible package, he says. "But nobody, be it a CEO or a labor [union] member ought to be getting what amounts to gold-plated coverage with the tax subsidies paid for by somebody who is a modestly compensated woman at a small business who doesn't have a health plan."

Breaking with the Democratic orthodoxy has earned him a few cold stares in other areas as well, including the plan's treatment of Medicaid and malpractice reform. The Healthy Americans Act transitions poor people out of Medicaid and will give them choices of private plans like members of Congress, he says. "We've taken a lot of flak for it . . . but Medicaid is a caste system. It is unfair to poor people and it is unfair to taxpayers." The system, he says, makes it hard for physicians to take care of the most vulnerable in society.

In a speech to the American Medical Association this week, Mr. Obama also opened the door to the possibility of malpractice reform, something Messrs. Wyden and Bennett support to help keep costs down. Democrats always blame the insurance companies, says Mr. Wyden, and Republicans always blame the trial lawyers. Insurance companies "are going to compete on the basis of price, benefit and quality," he insists. But a new system also requires "tough malpractice reforms."

The problem of spiraling costs is on display in Massachusetts, where a universal coverage plan started under former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, is proving more of a cautionary tale than the inspiration Democrats would like to call it. "I've gone and met with the Massachusetts folks," Mr. Wyden says, and "cost containment is the Achilles heel."

Using government health programs to try to find savings in the short term is problematic, he says, as it leads to inevitable concerns about rationing of care. "If you try to go the government route, the danger is you will find savings that are not realized with massive new commitments, and that's a prescription for trouble."

Mr. Obama has endorsed a public option, though the commitment has lately come under renewed doubt from Democrats. Former Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who was once Mr. Obama's nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, this week endorsed a compromise plan. Partnering with fellow former majority leaders Bob Dole and Howard Baker, Mr. Daschle's idea would seek a compromise on the public option, letting states establish programs with help from the federal government. North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad has likewise questioned whether Democrats could muster enough votes for a public option.

Mr. Wyden has been meeting with the president on the issue, so is Mr. Obama committed to the public option, I wonder? Mr. Wyden won't tell, but directs me instead to review Mr. Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope." In it, he says, "he talked about a system like what we're talking about in the Healthy Americans Act."

A single-payer solution is just not the Oregon senator's cup of tea. "I've never even understood how you would get there from here," he says. "A lot of the people who are for a public option want a single-payer system, and they haven't minced any words about it. Bless their hearts, extra points for honesty. But that's not where I am."

Mr. Wyden isn't necessarily opposed to a public option, he says, provided the caveats that it "can hold costs down and deal with the misguided incentives." So would he vote for the public option if it came to that?

"I'll look at it," he smiles. "I think I have an obligation as a legislator." Just like Bob Bennett used to say.

6)The Left's Collapse… In Europe, that is

America's self-declared progressives see the U.S. future in Europe's welfare model. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, voters en masse are dumping the political movement that gave them the nanny state. Hmmm.

Of late, the winning political formula in Europe is simple: Promise to ease heavy tax and regulatory burdens and shake up stagnant economies. The welfare system is seen as broken. France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi took this path to power. In the largest economy, Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel looks poised to defeat a divided left in September's elections.

Across the Continent, the left is in disarray. France's Socialist Party, which last won a Presidential election in the 1980s, refuses to move to the center -- and further sinks in the polls. Italy's leftist parties compromised themselves in a brief two-year stint in office, before Mr. Berlusconi swept them out in April of last year. The center-left ruling parties in Britain and Spain, which inherited economies revitalized by courageous politicians who implemented free-market ideas, are also in trouble.

Even in a recession so widely attributed to unfettered capitalism, socialists are unable to take advantage. Consider the results last week of elections for the European Parliament. Center-right parties gained in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and across most of eastern Europe. Sweden, Denmark and Greece were exceptions.

It's dangerous to generalize about 27 very different countries. Gordon Brown's Labour Party, in power since 1997, built on Thatcherism and now finds itself blamed for Britain's economic troubles. The new "kinder and gentler" Tories, who have sidelined Lady Thatcher, hold a comfortable lead with elections due within 12 months. Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel, though incumbents, could blame "Anglo-American capitalism" to make gains in the Parliament elections. The far right, with its bogeymen of globalization and immigration, attracts protest voters who once favored the nostrums of the left.

This political shift hardly portends the second coming of Lady Thatcher, alas. In his three tours at the Palazzo Chigi, Mr. Berlusconi has never found the mettle to push real change. Ms. Merkel, who was forced into a "grand coalition" with the Social Democrats after an inconclusive election in 2005, dropped her plans for a flat tax and other market measures. In this climate, she's not about to revive them. Two years ago, Mr. Sarkozy promised "rupture" with France's statist past and won decisively. A lot of his program has passed, but he is also a chameleon who can sound more the dirigiste than Colbert (Jean-Baptiste, not Stephen).

Except for Britain and certain quarters of Vienna, conservatism in Europe shares little with the Hayekian brand of liberalism. A paternalistic right, along with the socialists, passed restrictive labor codes and created state-run pension and health systems. The welfare state empowered narrow interests to defend the status quo. Before the Obama Administration Euro-fits the U.S. economy, Americans need to know that this model saps economic dynamism and is nearly impossible to fix.

For decades, Europeans have been frustrated with low growth, chronic unemployment and fading competitiveness. The answers tend to come from the right, and successful center-left politicians have embraced market reforms (think Tony Blair). On the Huffington Post earlier this week, columnist Robert Kuttner bemoaned the left's collapse in Europe: "American progressives used to look longingly to Europe, with its stronger trade unions and its more comprehensive social protections. Those are still there, but unraveling under assault." Failure will do that.