Liberalism - A Holier Than Thou Approach Being Refuted!

There was a brief period when poking fun at Tiger was what one might choose to do after an idol proves he has clay feet and believes he can drink his own bathwater. What Tiger is now about hopefully shows a desire to deminstarte the depth of his character. I hope so and that he is able to put his life back together, that he and his family overcome their problems and he returns to his other love - golf. I did not hear Tiger's mea culpa! (See 1 below.)

However, Ernie Els challenges Tiger's timing, Tanner Munroe wants a barf bag and other commentary. (See 1a, 1b and 1c below.)

The public has rejected Obamacare but Obama believes the public is wrong so he apparently is going to push forward. If so, why continue to pursue a deceptive White House meeting? (See 2, 2a, 2b and 2c below.)

Is presidency too big for small talent and will bringing in some adults restore voter's faith in Obama? (See 3 and 3a below.)

Obama is defended by a Democrat Strategist who explains why it is difficult to get voters to buy what Obama is selling - the problem of selling a negative. You decide! (See 3b below.)

Jamie Weinstein writes objectively about how the press and media treated Edwards and Palin and concludes what we all should know by now - the press and media elite are prone to bias towards a darling and smooth Liberal and not generous toward a snarling and raw meat Conservative.

We should also know by now Liberals often stoop to any level to attack those who challenge their misguided thinking by casting aspersions on their character, family and even their pet animals. It's a holier than thou thing!( See 4 below.)

So let's take a more in depth look at Edwards. (See 4a below.)

But at least one young 'pragmatist' who, as with so many in college become aware of problems and many succumb to liberal solutions, listened to his wise grandpa and has mended his thinking. (See 4b and 4c below.)

The Fed's tightening evokes many views. IBD is concerned. (See 5 below.)

Our economic problems are a symptom - politics gone wrong. (See 6 below.)



Dick


1)Tiger Woods says sorry, golf return still unknown
By DOUG FERGUSON and Doug Ferguson, Ap Golf Writers

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Missing his smile and aura of invincibility, Tiger Woods finally showed his face to a waiting world Friday and apologized again for cheating on his wife, without revealing the scope of his infidelity or when he will return to golf.

Standing at a podium before a presidential-blue backdrop in a hushed room of his closest associates, Woods stumbled a few times as he read a 13 1/2-minute statement. He offered no new details of what happened or what's next, except that he was leaving Saturday for more therapy.

"I have made you question who I am and how I could have done the things I did," Woods said.

Woods' wife, Elin, did not attend his first public appearance since he crashed his car into a tree outside their home three months ago, setting off shocking allegations of rampant extramarital affairs.

"I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated," Woods said. "What I did was not acceptable."

Woods alternately looked into the camera and at the 40 people in the room, raising his voice only to deny that his wife ever hit him and to demand that the paparazzi leave his family alone. Beyond that, there were stretches when Woods — with his formidable business empire — could have been reading from a tough corporate report.

He entered the room alone. When he finished, he stopped for a long embrace with his mother, Kultida, who said she whispered in his ear, "I'm so proud of you. Never think you stand alone. Mom will always be there for you, and I love you."

Regaining trust and support from everyone else might not be so easy.

Woods already has lost two corporate endorsements — Accenture and AT&T — and he has gone from being perhaps the most famous athlete in the world to a punch line in night clubs and on talk shows.

"It's now up to me to make amends, and that starts by never repeating the mistakes I've made," Woods said. "It's up to me to start living a life of integrity."

Woods left therapy on Feb. 11 and has been spending time with his two children and his mother — but not his wife — in Orlando, according to a person with knowledge of Woods' schedule. The person, not authorized to release such information, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Woods did not say how much longer he would be in therapy, only that "I have a long way to go."

Pool photos were released Thursday of Woods hitting golf balls on the practice range.

"I do plan to return to golf one day," Woods said. "I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out that it will be this year. When I do return, I need to make my behavior more respectful of the game."

Just as unpredictable is the future of his marriage. Woods said he and his wife have started discussing the damage he has done.

"As Elin pointed out to me, my apology to her will not come in the form of words. It will come from my behavior over time," Woods said. "We have a lot to discuss. However, what we say to each other will remain between the two of us."

After an embrace with his mother, Woods hugged the two women who sat on either side of her — Amy Reynolds, formerly of Nike who now works for Tiger Woods Design, and Kathy Battaglia, who is Woods' administrative assistant at ETW Corp.

He made his way down the front row and greeted others — his chief financial officer, Web site administrator, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and Notah Begay, who played with Woods at Stanford and withdrew from the PGA Tour event in Mexico.

Begay said Woods had a long, tough recovery ahead of him — not only at home, but before thousands of fans behind the ropes.

"It's a little bit harder than making a swing change," Begay said.

Woods remained composed throughout the statement, pausing briefly before the first of several apologies. At times, however, he looked into the camera almost on cue. Begay said he got choked up listening, and felt his words were sincere.

"This is as emotional as I've ever seen him in public," Begay said.

The only employee not on the front row was Bryon Bell, his friend from junior high who now is president of his design company. Mark Steinberg, Woods' agent at IMG, sat on the last of three rows with 14 PGA Tour executives.

"He's an American hero. And he's had his issues," Finchem said. "At the end of the day, he's a human being. We all make mistakes. My personal reaction was that his comments were heartfelt. He clearly recognizes that there has been serious impact to a wide range of individuals and organizations."

Some of the eight players at the Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona watched the coverage before the third round.

"From a guy that's done a lot of tough things in golf over the years, it was probably one of the most difficult things he's ever had to do," British Open champion Stewart Cink said. "And it was something probably that's going to help him along the way of healing."

In Sweden, Elin's father, Thomas Nordegren, saw Woods' confession.

"I watched it but I have nothing to say right now," Nordegren told The Associated Press. Elin's mother, Barbro Holmberg, declined to comment through her spokeswoman.

Friday's event was tightly controlled, with only a few journalists allowed to watch Woods live. The confession became a major television event with the networks breaking in to show it.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos called the speech "one of the most remarkable public apologies ever by a public figure."

Said golf analyst David Feherty on CBS: "The vast number of people just want their Tiger Woods back."

Certainly, no other PGA Tour player could command this kind of attention.

But Woods has always been special on the course and in popular culture. Television ratings double when he is in contention, which has happened a lot on his way to winning 71 times on the PGA Tour and 14 majors, four short of the record held by Jack Nicklaus.

Nicklaus watched the announcement, but a spokesman said he would have no comment.

Most of the associates left the room when Woods finished speaking. Among those who stayed were Mrs. Woods, who rarely gives interview but in this case said, "I would like to talk."

She said her son has a "good heart and good soul" but made a mistake. Mrs. Woods, raised in Thailand, also claims the media showed a "double standard" by keeping the sex scandal in the news for so long.

"Some of media, especially tabloid, hurt my son bad," Mrs. Woods said. "He didn't do anything illegal. He didn't kill anybody. But he try to improve himself. He try to go to therapy and help. He change that and making better. When he go do all this thing, he will come out stronger and a better person."

As his Thai-born mother sat with arms folded across her chest, Woods said part of his rehab would include a return to his Buddhist faith. Woods said his mother raised him as a Buddhist, and he practiced his faith "until I drifted away from it in recent years."

"Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security," Woods said. "It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught."

The companies that have stuck most closely by Woods, Nike Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc., reiterated their support.

"Tiger has apologized and made his position clear. Nike fully supports him and his family. We look forward to him returning to golf," the company said in a statement.

EA Sports president Peter Moore said: "It was good to see Tiger address the public today, and we're supportive of his focus toward family and rebuilding his life."

Woods' appearance drew reaction from all corners, even at the Winter Games in Vancouver.

"It's a bummer, his personal life," Olympic gold-medalist Shaun White said. "He's trying to pick his words very carefully and apologize. I respect that."

Veronica Siwik-Daniels, one of Woods' alleged mistresses and a former pornographic performer, watched the event with her attorney in a Los Angeles radio studio. She said she wants an apology for the unwanted attention the scandal has brought her.

"I really feel I deserve to look at him in person face to face in the eyes because I did not deserve this," she said.


1a)Els Was on Target With Tiger
By Art Spander

MARANA, Ariz. - Ernie Els nailed this one. He was on target. Tiger Woods only would be on cue. Only acting out a carefully staged production.

Only telling us how he made mistakes. And telling us during the golf tournament in which Els was playing before he got eliminated.

Which is why Els nailed this one. And nailed Tiger, figuratively that is. Said on the record what many of Els fellow golf pros were saying in private.

What Tiger did, or his advisors did, setting up his announcement this morning, when one of the world golf championships was underway, was petty. Was unacceptable. Was "selfish."

"You can write that," Els said before losing in the second round of the match play championship Thursday, 1 up on the second extra hole to fellow South African, Retief Goosen.

"I feel sorry for the sponsor," said Els. "Mondays are a good day to make statements, not Friday. This takes a lot away from the golf tournament."

Tiger didn't care. The way Tiger didn't care about marital fidelity. Or about trying to say he was sorry. Until this morning. Until prompted by the boys who have so much invested in him, mainly Nike. He'd been away from golf for three months. Been away from shilling for Nike for three months.

The match play, at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in the foothills above Tucson, is sponsored by Accenture, the consulting company; the same Accenture which used Tiger as its identification, its affiliation. The same Accenture which was the first corporation to drop Tiger when the stories broke of his sordid private life.

Tiger holds grudges. Forever. Tiger holds the fate of professional golf in his grasp. No Tiger, and the interest declines and the ratings fall and the ticket sales tumble.

So PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem basically laughed off Woods holding his announcement opposite the Accenture, said "We have tournaments every week. It's going to be a story in and of itself. A lot of people are going to be watching golf this week to see what the world says about it. That will be a good thing."

Not really, it's a Tiger thing. Play a refrain of Sinatra singing "My Way." Because for Tiger that's the only way. Right way or wrong way. He didn't want to accept advice to extricate himself from his difficulties, wouldn't allow any help from a crisis management team. He rarely listens to anyone, because he's rarely had to listen to anyone.

Until now. Until some of the sponsors who stayed the course told him to shape up. And so carefully, artfully, Tiger appeared before a few friends and supporters at the clubhouse of the PGA Tour course in Ponte Vedra, Fla.

It wasn't a press conference. No questions were permitted. Rather it was a coronation. His highness deigned to address us, the great unwashed, the great unknowledgeable. Told us he would return to save golf now that he himself was saved.

The great are different from you and me. They are confident. They are arrogant. Tiger's people said Tiger's announcement had to be made today. "It was an issue of timing." Timing for Tiger, but not for the Accenture.

"There was a very good reason to do it Friday," said Tiger's agent, and not do it next week."

Only Woods among the sporting glitterati could give us his side of the story, of the missed three months, of the sexual dalliances, of the plans for the future and not be obligated to answer questions.

Here I am, folks, was his premise. Now leave me alone. You're lucky I said as much as I did.

What the public will say could prove interesting. Will his followers, the ones wearing the hats with "TW" in the front, flock back. Will they be bitter? Enthralled? Will golf bloom once again? Will Tiger be given credit? Will he be blamed?

Someone called the setting where Tiger was to make his brief speech reminiscent of a Greek chorus, with friends and colleagues in the room lending support that is virtual if not vocal. It was place of safety, of security.

On a golf course, the situation will be different. He will be badgered by the media, perhaps even heckled by fans.

Tiger wasn't at the Accenture, but he was all over it. It became his event when the news got out that he would be speaking 2,000 miles away.

Maybe it was accidental, that the announcement would be opposite the Accenture. Maybe it was intentional. Either way, as Ernie Els contended, it was selfish.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was recently honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.

1b)ESPN Loved Tiger's Speech, But Get Me a Barf Bag
By Tanner Munroe

Just finished watching the Tiger Woods press conference, and I think I'm going to be sick. I couldn't disagree more with ESPN's initial reaction to his statement. Naturally Woods is a huge name, and ESPN is probably hoping to get an exclusive with him, but to hear Rick Reilly and Andy North talk about how sincere and apologetic he sounded is rather ridiculous to me.

Where in any of what all of us just saw was there any form of a sincere apology? I didn't see someone who was truly sorry for hurting people around him. Instead I saw someone who seemed more worried about how much he had hurt himself and his own image. Those of you watching the ABCNews.com broadcast of the speech on Hulu were lucky enough to see a fair and honest assessment of Tiger's words. I never caught the guys last name, but when asked what he thought about the speech, ABC's analyst, who I know only as Ron, said that the whole thing was pretty bad. To paraphrase, he said the speech seemed overly rehearsed, poorly delivered and insincere considering how long Tiger waited to actually make it. I couldn't agree more.

It's sad really. Even as I'm writing this I have ESPN on in the background. It's making me sort of angry listening to the different ESPN analysts calling his speech compelling and from the heart. Isn't ESPN supposed to have the best sports minds in the world working for them? They are the top sports network in the world. I wish some of them had some integrity on this one. They're all saying exactly what I'm sure ESPN executives hoped they'd say, because now they look like the network that's on Tiger's side.

However, I am no longer on his side. I used to watch golf frequently and the main reason was Tiger Woods. Now things have definitely changed. I was willing to give him a chance after everything happened, but this is too much. Waiting three months for this is completely absurd. I'm not saying Tiger owes me or any of you anything, because, to be honest, he doesn't. But if he's going to make a speech and apologize, at least he should sound like he means it.

From the seemingly rehearsed raising of his voice at certain points during the speech, to the completely awkward hugs at the end, Tiger didn't show any heart or actual regret about what he did in any of this. Sure he seems regretful, but it seems to be more about how he screwed up his own life rather than how he screwed up the lives of those around him. He wanted sympathy for himself, and unfortunately that's what it seems ESPN is giving him. It's a shame that so many watch ESPN and will have that opinion hammered into their brains, but it's the sports world we live in.

To be more specific about my opinion here's a list of what I didn't like about the speech:

-The extremely ridiculous exclusiveness of the whole thing. (It was like a presidential speech almost)

-The fact that it seemed like he read off the paper when to raise his voice and look directly into the camera.

-His forgetfulness to apologize to other PGA players who have had to deal with ridiculous questions since his transgressions (I may have missed if he did apologize to them because I missed about a minute of the speech)

-His need to bring up his charity foundation. (I understand he wants to apologize to them but it seemed more like he was trying to point out all the good things he does)
-The strategically planned camera placement that showed the audience. (His mom and two other women were main fixtures of the picture, which seems planned considering women are likely the most offended by his actions)

-The awkward and seemingly planned hugs at the end of the speech. (Like he wouldn't have been able to hug them when the cameras weren't rolling)

-On a side note: I hate the fact that before the speech PGA officials said that anyone heckling Tiger at all at a tournament will be kicked out immediately. That's not just exclusive to vulgarities either. Any heckling at all will not be tolerated. They say it's because they want to protect the integrity of the game. That's Funny.

1c).'Character and Decency Are What Count':A Wobbly Tiger Promises to Mend His Ways —On the Course, Too—But as Any Golfer Knows, Real Change Takes Forever
By JOHN PAUL NEWPOrt

When Tiger Woods walked through the dark velvet curtains at his news conference in Florida Friday, he looked more like a eulogist in shock about to address a family funeral than a superstar athlete facing a global television audience. He wasn't wearing his Sunday-red victory shirt, that's for sure, nor his usual cocky demeanor.

Getty Images Tiger Woods, shown in 2006 at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship at La Costa, implied he would try to cut down on tantrums and club-throwing.
.
From the start, he stumbled and slurred his words. Even though Mr. Woods is said to have labored over his prepared remarks himself, they clearly arose from a different source than the polished repertoire of stock responses he normally deploys at news conferences. Formerly, the main purpose of his public utterances seemed to be to deflect attention from the inner man. Friday, for the first time, his main purpose—however awkward it seemed at times—was to talk about what he has been going through personally, off the course.

The guy was struggling. In golf terms, he was not even close to being "in the moment."

I watched the press conference from a hotel room in Utah with my wife and daughter, and we were all impressed by Mr. Wood's apparent sincerity. My wife, who tends toward cynicism when it comes to celebrities, was the first to speak afterwards. "I believe him," she said. My 15-year-old daughter agreed. "It was genuine," she said, "but calculated."

Calculated, in this context, is not necessarily a pejorative. I know many doubters are calling this a scripted, insincere performance, but what do you expect from a young man who has just been through six weeks of humiliating therapy, and is probably deeply confused from looking at parts of himself he's always avoided?

A few especially squirmy moments grew out of his calculations. He specifically said he was "sorry" three times. As he said it the first time, apologizing to friends, he scanned the small gathering of friends, and the other two times, apologizing to a wider audience, he looked directly into the camera. All three seemed transparently like stagecraft, and since Mr. Woods is not a trained actor, the moments came off as inert and unnatural. But that doesn't mean he wasn't sincere. I've seldom seen him look more vulnerable.

Like many people before the press conference, I was critical that Mr. Woods did not plan to answer questions, but that was primarily because I assumed the purpose of the conference was to announce his imminent return to golf. Given his brilliant talent for saying much but revealing little, I feared that this refusal to take any questions betokened a business-as-usual attitude. "There, I've apologized, now get off my back and let me play golf."

But instead the news conference was more of a 12-step-style public apology and an interim report on the progress of his therapy. Any follow-up questions that stuck to subjects he raised would have been about the sticky stuff—the affairs, his relationship with Elin, the depth of his humiliation—that would have done nobody any good at all, except perhaps the tabloid media.

In fact, the moment I myself felt most like cheering was when he strongly implied that he would never answers questions of that ilk. "These are issues between a husband and a wife," he said. Most pure golf fans, I believe, have little to zero interest in the prurient details of Mr. Woods's transgressions. We are interested how this whole mess will affect Mr. Woods's future as a golfer, and we got a good initial reading on Friday.

MoreWoods Apologizes, Unsure of Return Tiger's Limited Hangout The Couch: Maybe We All Need Rehab Golf Journal: Why Tiger Woods Has a Long Way to Go Iain Martin: Tiger Woods is Only a Golfer .
Mr. Woods used the word "golf" only twice in his remarks. The first was when he apologized for his failure as a role model. "Achievements on the golf course are only part of setting an example. Character and decency are what really count," he said.

The second was when he said he plans to return to golf "one day" but doesn't know when that day will be. "I don't rule out that it will be this year," he said, leaving open at least the possibility that he could return in time to compete in the Masters in April. One possibility is the Tavistock Cup in late March, a private match between the Tour pros who live in two gated communities in the Orlando area.

But he went on. "When I do return, I need to make my behavior more respectful of the game." This almost certainly was a reference to the tantrums and cursing that have increasingly characterized Mr. Woods's tournament appearances.

The nadir may have been the two-day Tiger Slam at the British Open last summer, during which he cursed and threw his clubs countless times while missing the cut.

This bad behavior is a sign of how far out of balance Mr. Woods's life had become. On Friday he said most of the right things, but as any golfer knows, real change takes forever. As he said of his relationship with his wife, "Elin and I have started the process of discussing the damage caused by my behavior," acknowledging a lot with that word "process."

"My real apology to her will not come in the form of words; it will come from my behavior over time."



2)Evan Bayh and the Legends of The Fall
By Peter Wehner,

The resignation of Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana has sparked a debate about bipartisanship, ideology, and the institution of Congress. According to Bayh, "There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress, too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous national challenge, the people's business is not getting done."

This critique is like catnip to the media and has unleashed a predictable wave of sympathetic coverage. Let's examine these arguments, however, beginning with the assertion that "the people's business is not being done."

Actually, the people's business is getting done. In this case, "the people's business" was to stop ObamaCare, which the public opposes in significant numbers (the spread between those who oppose ObamaCare and those who support it is 15-20 percentage points). Most Americans think the Democratic health care plans are badly flawed and a majority of them want Congress to begin over again. President Obama and Democrats in Congress have tried to force-feed this legislation to the nation anyway -- and the public uprising we are seeing is in part a response to that effort.

The dominant narrative manifests a particular cast of mind, one that equates "the people's business" with passing legislation that increases the size, cost, and reach of government. In fact, sometimes the people's business involves stopping bad ideas from becoming law.

It's worth recalling that the Founders set up a system of government with what James Madison called the "auxiliary precautions" of American government -- meaning the separation of powers, bicameralism, and other checks and balances. Madison, who was shipped what he called a "literary cargo" of books on history and politics by Thomas Jefferson, rigorously studied the historical record of past governments. Out of that study Madison and his colleagues decided to put the emphasis on braking mechanisms, which they thought would help preserve liberty by limiting the power of government.

Then there is Bayh's attack on "ideology." Ideology can imply embracing a doctrine that is abstract and rigid, one that is anti-empirical and ignores experience. That is a problem. But ideology can also be another word for convictions -- and one person's "ideologue" is another person's principled politician. A persistent criticism of both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was that they were "ideologues." In fact, they were people who took seriously a coherent set of ideas. It isn't terribly helpful to go on a rant against "ideology" without saying specifically which ideas and principles one is attacking. What matters are the quality of those ideas. Arguably what we need more of in Congress are people who take ideas and political principles seriously -- who grapple with them, who understand them, and who are willing to fight passionately for the right ones.

Finally, there is the common complaint that we're not seeing enough "bipartisanship" between the two major political parties. Let's stipulate that all of us would like to see more bipartisanship for the ideas we support. If, on the other hand, we disagree with the ideas being championed by the party in power, we applaud "principled opposition." The fixation on bipartisanship is fixation on process rather than substance. The question always needs to be asked: Bipartisanship for what end? For example, should champions of civil rights legislation in the 1960s have been more "bipartisan" if it would have led to legislation that was less just? Should Ronald Reagan have given up his commitment to a strategic defense initiative, or George W. Bush his commitment to the surge in Iraq, in order to win the favor of their critics? Should Lincoln have reached a bipartisan accommodation with Stephen Douglas on the doctrine of "popular sovereignty"?

Many of the greatest political figures in American history -- whether we're talking about Reagan or Roosevelt, Lincoln or King, Jefferson or Hamilton -- are recognized for substance rather than process, for their commitment to American ideals rather than bipartisanship, for what they did rather than the manner in which they did it.
We should be clear about what's going on here. A Democratic president, with strong Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, was on the cusp of passing a massive change in our health care system. It stalled because of strong public opposition. This failure has created an existential crisis among much of the political class. And so it is said that America is "ungovernable," that the public is stupid, that Republicans are nihilists, that Congress is broken, that the filibuster is evil, and so forth and so on.

It's worth recalling that in 2005 George W. Bush made a big push to reform Social Security. I thought then, and think now, that his plan was wise and necessary. But it was also undeniably unpopular, and the effort failed. Its failure did not trigger the kind of Camus-like despair we are now seeing. No one in the commentariat argued that America was, in Joe Klein's phrase, a "nation of dodos" or that Social Security's failure could be laid at James Madison's feet.

We are not facing a governing crisis today. What we are seeing is an emerging crisis for modern liberalism. And the reason is fairly straightforward: the public, having been exposed to a liberal governing agenda for the last year, is repudiating it. Liberals cannot seem to accept that, so they are lashing out at everything else. It is unwarranted and somewhat childish; and it will only accelerate The Fall.


2a)WHITE HOUSE TO PRESENT ITS OWN REFORM BILL....
By Steve Benen

On Tuesday, White House officials offered their first hint that President Obama may present his own health care reform bill in advance of the Feb. 25 bipartisan summit. Now, the president and his team are poised to do just that.

President Obama will put forward comprehensive health care legislation intended to bridge differences between Senate and House Democrats ahead of a summit meeting with Republicans next week, senior administration officials and Congressional aides said Thursday.

Democratic officials said the president's proposal was being written so that it could be attached to a budget bill as a way of averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The procedure, known as budget reconciliation, would let Democrats advance the bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority.

"There will be one proposal. It is the president's," Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said, adding, "I think the idea is that it will take some of the best of the ideas [from the House and Senate bills] and put them into a framework moving forward."

The details of the White House plan are scarce, and by all appearances, still coming together. Based on reports, however, it seems the president's proposal will not be a scaled-back package -- it will include the same subsidies for the insured and consumer protections found in the House and Senate bills. Financing remains tricky, but the White House bill will apparently stick to the excise tax approach favored by the Senate, and include the compromise reached with union leaders before Massachusetts' special election to limit its impact on workers.

Keep in mind, this White House package is not necessarily the result of House-Senate negotiations. In fact, by all accounts, Democratic leaders haven't even seen the specifics of the president's plan and have not yet signed off on its provisions. That said, lawmakers have strongly urged Obama to get directly involved, explain exactly what he wants in the final bill, and take the lead in getting this done. It appears the president is doing exactly that.

Also note that this represents something of an ultimatum to congressional Republicans: Dems are moving forward on this. The president is inviting GOP leaders to present their ideas and arguments, and has promised to consider them in good faith, but by crafting his own proposal, Obama is also making clear that their permission to govern is not a prerequisite. He's open to incorporating Republican measures, but he's not open to letting Republicans kill reform.

In other words, the message to the GOP is simple: you'll get a chance to contribute, but we're moving on with or without you.

White House officials reportedly intend to publish the president's plan online by Monday morning. Stay tuned.

2b)What Americans Don't Understand about Obamacare
By Brad O'Leary

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama tried to offer a mea culpa of sorts for the unraveling of his health care bill. Calling health care "a complex issue," the president said, "I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people."

Mr. President, you are correct. We Americans don't understand.

However, our lack of understanding is not because we're incapable of deciphering complex issues. Rather, we don't understand how Obamacare itself is supposed to make our health care system any better.

Here is a short list of what we specifically don't understand:

How will our health care system improve by giving a $300-million payoff to Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu in Louisiana in exchange for her vote?

Three hundred million was the price tag for Landrieu's "yes" vote on the 3,000-plus-page Obamacare bill. This may improve the health of Senator Landrieu's reelection prospects, but not the health of our nation.

What is positive about exempting Nebraska from having to pay future Medicare costs but making other states foot the bill?

Democratic Senator Ben Nelson was the final Democratic senator holding out support for the bill. After closed-door negotiations, Senator Nelson provided his full support. The reason for Nelson's sudden change of heart? His state was given a special exemption and would not have to pay the projected billions of dollars in additional Medicare costs that Obamacare would create.

Why are labor unions singled out from all other Americans and given an eight-year pass on paying taxes, while non-union workers have to pick up the tab?

In another closed-door negotiation, this time with Big Labor bosses and lobbyists, union members were exempted from paying the dreaded "Cadillac tax" on premium health care plans until 2018. In dollar terms, this would save union workers over $60 billion, while the rest of us have to come up with an additional $90 billion over the same time period.

Why should taxpayers be forced to pay for elective abortions?

After being repeatedly reassured by you, Mr. President, that taxpayer-funded abortions would not be included in your health care bill, why did your Secretary of Health and Human Services brag to the pro-abortion lobby that the Senate version of Obamacare includes taxpayer-funded abortion? How does this improve our health care system?

How does putting the federal government between Americans and their doctors improve anyone's health?

The Senate version of Obamacare would make Americans enroll in a "qualified health care plan" and then dictates that doctors may receive compensation under such plans only if they perform procedures allowed by the federal government.

How does a closed-door legislative process help us understand the complexities of Obamacare?

If health care is a "complex issue" that requires clear explanation to the American people, then how does it help when all of the explaining is being done to lobbyists behind closed doors?

Mr. President, what we don't understand is why a bill that is so good and necessary requires secrecy, bribes, and lies to ensure its passage. Why do you feel the need to hide the bill from us? Why do your biggest supporters need their palms greased before they come on board with your plan? Why do you tell us one thing about the cost of your bill, only for us to find out later that you understated the actual cost by over 300 percent?

In short, Mr. President, why should we believe anything you tell us about health care anymore?

Brad O'Leary is publisher of "The O'Leary Report," a bestselling author, and a former NBC Westwood One talk show host.

2c)Live From Washington! It's Obama health care drama
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

Coming soon to daytime television: America's long-running civic drama over how to provide better health care to more of its people without breaking the bank.

President Barack Obama summons anxious Democrats and aloof Republicans to a White House summit Thursday — live on C-SPAN and perhaps cable — and gambles that he can save his embattled health care overhaul by the power of persuasion. Adversaries and allies alike were surprised by Obama's invitation to reason together at an open forum, as risky as it is unusual.

Ahead of the meeting, the White House will post on its Web site a health care plan that brings together major elements of the bills passed by House and Senate Democrats last year. Policy is important, but not as critical as the political skill Obama can apply to an impasse that seems close to hopeless in a pivotal congressional election year.

"It's a high-stakes situation for him more than anybody else," said Gerald Shea, the top health care adviser for the AFL-CIO. "If the judgment is either that it's a political farce, or if it fails to move the ball forward significantly ... that would be very damaging to the issue and to him."

A viewers' guide to the White House meeting, looking at Obama and his plan, Republicans in Congress and divided Democrats.

Obama:

He has two main goals. One is to show the American people that the Democrats' health care plan is reasonable, and much of its complexity reflects the sprawling nature of the insurance system. The other is to argue that lockstep Republican opposition is not reasonable and could spoil a historic opportunity on a problem that concerns all Americans.

"I don't want to see this meeting turn into political theater, with each side simply reciting talking points and trying to score political points," the president said Saturday in his radio and Internet address. "What's being tested here is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem."

Obama's main audience will be Democrats, who must overcome their divisions — and ease their qualms — to get a final bill. He will also tune his pitch to independents, who soured on the Democratic bills after initially being open to health care changes.

Thursday's meeting at Blair House — the presidential guest quarters across from the White House — comes nearly a year after Obama launched his drive to remake health care at an earlier summit he infused with a bipartisan spirit.

The plan Obama will put before lawmakers has virtually no Republican support. Like the congressional bills, it's expected to require most Americans to carry coverage, while providing federal subsidies to help many afford the premiums. It would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging them more. Federal and state regulators would create a competitive insurance marketplace for small businesses and people buying their own coverage. Much of the cost would be covered with Medicare cuts.

Obama will retain the Senate bill's tax on high-cost insurance plans, while easing its impact to placate labor unions. But he's expected to move closer to the House bill in other areas, such as providing more generous subsidies for purchasing insurance and addressing the Medicare prescription coverage gap.

He will point out that Republicans have supported major elements of the Democratic bills, such as the insurance mandate, new marketplaces for coverage and putting restrictions on insurers.

___

Republicans

GOP leaders in the House and Senate say they cannot accept the Democratic bills, and they want to start over to shape narrower legislation that cuts costs for small businesses and uses federal dollars to set up special insurance pools for people with medical problems.

Obama doesn't want to stop there.

Republicans want to place limits on medical malpractice judgments, an approach the Congressional Budget Office says would save money by reducing defensive medicine. Obama has toyed with the idea, saying he agrees that something should be done, but thinks limits on jury awards go too far.

Some Republican leaders have questioned whether there's any reason to go to the summit, but a boycott would play into Obama's hands. To complicate matters, Democratic liberals have begun an effort to get a government insurance plan back in the bill, a nonstarter for Republicans.

"If the president's intention for the health care summit is to finally show that he is ready to listen and work in a bipartisan way to produce incremental reforms that the American people support, he is off to a rocky start," said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the No. 2 Republican in the House. Republicans are not going to embrace a Democratic bill that's tanking in the polls, he said.


The Democrats

Before Republican Scott Brown pulled off a Senate upset in Massachusetts to claim the seat long held by Democrat Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats were within reach of passing a health care remake their party pursued for more than a half-century.

They no longer have the 60 votes needed to overcome Republican delaying tactics in the Senate, but they still control both chambers. Yet passing anything but a very modest bill would likely mean using special budget rules that let Democrats override Republicans in the Senate with a simple majority. Using the budget route — called reconciliation — to resolve differences between the House and Senate bills probably would enrage Republicans.

That means Democrats will have to stick their necks out, and some may lose their seats this fall if they support an all-or-nothing push on health care.

Democrats are looking to Obama to give them the confidence they need to get back on track. He did it once before, with his address to Congress last September, after a summer of town hall meetings at which angry grass-roots activists attacked the Democrats on health care.

Democrats "tried to climb a taller mountain than they thought existed," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, architect of the 1994 Republican election victory that followed the collapse of the Clinton health care plan. "They went on a bigger trip than they prepared for."

Now it seems they'll be asked to give it one more try.


3)Excuses for Obama's Failure to Lead
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term. The president's own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control. America had become ungovernable.

Then came Ronald Reagan, and all that chatter disappeared.


The tyranny of entitlements? Reagan collaborated with Tip O'Neill, the legendary Democratic House speaker, to establish the Alan Greenspan commission that kept Social Security solvent for a quarter-century.

A corrupted system of taxation? Reagan worked with liberal Democrat Bill Bradley to craft a legislative miracle: tax reform that eliminated dozens of loopholes and slashed rates across the board -- and fueled two decades of economic growth.

Later, a highly skilled Democratic president, Bill Clinton, successfully tackled another supposedly intractable problem: the culture of intergenerational dependency. He collaborated with another House speaker, Newt Gingrich, to produce the single most successful social reform of our time, the abolition of welfare as an entitlement.

It turned out that the country's problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn't. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills and an ideological compass in tune with the public, the country was indeed governable.

It's 2010 and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama's two signature initiatives -- cap-and-trade and health care reform -- lie in ruins.

Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: "America the Ungovernable." So declared Newsweek. "Is America Ungovernable?" coyly asked The New Republic. Guess the answer.

The rage at the machine has produced the usual litany of systemic explanations. Special interests are too powerful. The Senate filibuster stymies social progress. A burdensome constitutional order prevents innovation. If only we could be more like China, pines Tom Friedman, waxing poetic about the efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model, while America flails about under its "two parties ... with their duel-to-the-death paralysis." The better thinkers, bewildered and furious that their president has not gotten his way, have developed a sudden disdain for our inherently incremental constitutional system.

Yet, what's new about any of these supposedly ruinous structural impediments? Special interests blocking policy changes? They have been around since the beginning of the republic -- and since the beginning of the republic, strong presidents, like the two Roosevelts, have rallied the citizenry and overcome them.

And then, of course, there's the filibuster, the newest liberal bete noire. "Don't blame Mr. Obama," writes Paul Krugman of the president's failures. "Blame our political culture instead. ... And blame the filibuster, under which 41 senators can make the country ungovernable."

Ungovernable, once again. Of course, just yesterday the same Paul Krugman was warning about "extremists" trying "to eliminate the filibuster" when Democrats used it systematically to block one Bush (43) judicial nomination after another. Back then, Democrats touted it as an indispensable check on overweening majority power. Well, it still is. Indeed, the Senate with its ponderous procedures and decentralized structure is serving precisely the function the Founders intended: as a brake on the passions of the House and a caution about precipitous transformative change.

Leave it to Mickey Kaus, a principled liberal who supports health care reform, to debunk these structural excuses: "Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama's (possible/likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. ... But in this case there's a simpler explanation: Barack Obama's job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed."

He failed because the utter implausibility of its central promise -- expanded coverage at lower cost -- led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt. More broadly, the Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them the political mandate and legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country. The people said no, expressing themselves first in spontaneous demonstrations, then in public opinion polls, then in elections -- Virginia, New Jersey and, most emphatically, Massachusetts.

That's not a structural defect. That's a textbook demonstration of popular will expressing itself -- despite the special interests -- through the existing structures. In other words, the system worked.

3a)Can Washington Meet the Demand to Cut Spending? Americans have reached a consensus. What's lacking is trust.
By PEGGY NOONAN

President Obama's decision to appoint Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to his bipartisan commission on government spending is politically shrewd and, in terms of policy, potentially helpful.

It is shrewd in that he is doing what he has been urged to do, which is bring in wise men. Here are two respected Beltway veterans, one from each party. It shows the president willing to do what he said he'd do when he ran, which is listen to other voices. The announcement subtly underscores the trope "The system is broken and progress through normal channels is impossible," which is the one Democrats prefer to "Boy did we mess up the past year and make things worse." And the commission gets some pressure off the president. Every time he's knocked for spending, he can say "I agree, it's terrible. Help me tell the commission!"

It's potentially helpful in that good ideas may come of it, some rough and realistic Washington consensus encouraged.

Is it too late? Maybe. Even six months ago, when the president's growing problems with the public were becoming apparent, the commission and its top appointees might have been received as fresh and hopeful—the adults have arrived, the system can be made to work. Republicans would have felt forced to be part of it, or seen the gain in partnership. Now it looks more as if the president is trying to save his own political life. Timing is everything.

But this is an interesting time. It's easy to say that concern about federal spending is old, because it is. It's at least as old as Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. But the national anxiety about spending that we're experiencing now, and that is showing up in the polls, is new. The past eight years have concentrated the American mind. George W. Bush's spending, the crash and Barack Obama's spending have frightened people. It's not just "cranky right-wingers" who are concerned. If it were, the president would not have appointed his commission. Its creation acknowledges that independents are anxious, the center is alarmed—the whole country is. The people are ahead of their representatives in Washington, who are stuck in the ick of old ways.

Conservatives all my adulthood have said the American people were, on the issue of spending, the frog in the pot of water: The rising heat lulled him, and when the water came full boil, he wouldn't be able to jump out.

.But that is the great achievement, if you will, of the past few years. The frog is coming awake at just the last moment. He is jumping out of the water.

People are freshly aware and concerned about the real-world implications of a $1.6 trillion dollar deficit, of a $14 trillion debt. It will rob America of its economic power, and eventually even of its ability to defend itself. Militaries cost money. And if other countries own our debt, don't they in some new way own us? If China holds enough of your paper, does it also own some of your foreign policy? Do we want to find out? And there are the moral implications of the debt, which have so roused the tea party movement: The old vote themselves benefits that their children will have to pay for. What kind of a people do that?

It has been two or three years since I have heard a Republican or conservative say deficits don't matter. Huge ones do, period. As for Democrats and new spending, the air is, for now, out of the balloon.


.A question among Republicans is whether to back, as a party, Rep. Paul Ryan's road map, his far-reaching and creative attempt to cut the deficit and the debt. The Congressional Budget Office says its numbers add up: It would, actually, remove the deficit in the long term. But the Ryan plan is, inevitably, as complicated as the entitlements it seeks to reform, involving vouchers and tax credits, cost controls and privatization. It is always possible that this is right for the moment, for the new antispending era. But the party itself has some other jobs right now, and one of them is to encourage the circumstances that will make real change possible. Here the abstract collides with the particular.

In the long run the Republicans have to do two things, and one they probably cannot do alone, or rather probably cannot do without holding the presidency, and a gifted president he would have to be. They have to prepare the ground for an American decision—a decision by a solid majority of America's adults—that they can faithfully back specific cuts in federal spending: that they can trust the cuts will be made fairly, that we will all be treated equally, that no finagling pols will sneak in "protection" for this pet interest group or that power lobby, that we are in this together as a nation and can make progress together as a nation.

This is a huge job, and may ultimately require one strong and believable voice.

Second the Republicans should tread delicately while moving forward seriously. Voters are feeling as never before in recent political history the vulnerability of their individual positions. There is no reason to believe they are interested in highly complicated and technical reforms, the kind that go under the heading "homework." As in: "I know my future security depends on understanding this thing and having a responsible view, but I cannot make it out. My whole life is homework. I cannot do more."

We are not a nation of accountants, however much our government tries to turn us into one.

Margaret Thatcher once told me what she learned from the poll-tax protests that prompted her downfall. She said she learned in a deeper way how anxious people are, how understandably questioning and even suspicious they are of governmental reforms and changes: "They're frightened, you see." None of us feel we have a wide enough margin for error.

Americans lack trust that government will act in good faith, which is part of why they're anxious. They look at every bill, proposal and idea with an eye to hidden horrors.

The good news is the new consensus that America must move forward in a new way to get spending under control. The bad news is we don't trust Washington to do it. And in the end, only Washington can.

Paul Ryan is doing exactly what a representative who's actually serious should do—putting forward innovative and honest ideas for long-term solutions. He should continue going to the people with it, making his case and seeing how they respond, from the Tennessee Tea Party to the Bergen County, N.J., Republican Club. Maybe a movement will start, maybe not. But it's a good conversation to be having.

The GOP itself should be going forward with its philosophy, with the things it's long stood for and, in some cases, newly rediscovered, and painting the broader picture of the implications of endless, compulsive high spending. Those lawmakers who have a good reputation in this area—Sen. Tom Coburn is one—should be moved forward more prominently. Congressmen who focus on earmarks, on controllable spending, are doing something wise. They are trying to demonstrate that those who can be trusted with small things—cutting back what can be removed now—can be trusted with larger things.


3b)The World Without Obama
Ed Kilgore

.If you've been watching the hit TV show "Lost,"then you're familiar with the concept of parallel universes. That is, alternate realities in which history turned out differently, because people made different decisions.

It's a useful concept when it comes to thinking about President Obama's current predicament. On a variety of fronts, the Obama administration is suffering from an inability to show Americans the parallel universe in which its past policies were not enacted—and the future that will result if its current proposals bite the dust.

That's most obviously true with the early, fateful decisions to continue TARP and bail out the auto companies. They arguably averted the collapse of the global financial system, the virtual extinction of consumer and business credit, and 1930s levels of unemployment (especially hard-hit would have been the upper Midwest). Nevertheless, no matter how often the president tells us his actions kept a deep recession from developing into a Great Depression, it remains an abstract proposition for the people who are currently unemployed. The same is true for the 2009 economic stimulus package, which virtually all experts, public and private, credit with saving about two million jobs. The continued job losses reported each month make it hard to claim that one has succeeded by avoiding even greater unemployment.

The problem of “proving a negative” is even more daunting when it comes to prospective policy proposals. Critics savage Obama for a health care plan that doesn’t do enough to limit costs. Obama responds that health care costs are going up anyway, without a plan. But it’s not easy to convince people that the status quo is riskier than a large and complicated series of changes in how Americans obtain health insurance. That’s why the White House has made such a big deal out of Anthem Blue Cross’s gargantuan premium increases for individual policyholders in California. It is, they argue, a sign of where the status quo is headed absent reform. They do not, unfortunately, have such a convenient example that will help them explain the need for climate-change legislation, as conservatives, stupidly but effectively, cite this winter’s heavy snowstorms as disproof for the scientific consensus about global warming trends.

There is one way to deal with Obama's dilemma. Although it’s difficult to prove that American life under the president's policies is better than life without them, it should be easier to point to another parallel universe: life under Republican policies. But such an effort requires a basic strategic decision. Should Democrats point back to the reality of life under George W. Bush, which most people remember pretty vividly, and simply say today’s GOP wants to “turn the clock back”? Or should they focus on current Republican proposals, such as they are, which in many respects make Bush policies look pretty responsible? It’s hard to take both tacks simultaneously, since the extremism of contemporary Republican politics is in no small part motivated by a determination to separate the GOP and the conservative movement from association with that incompetent big spender, Bush, who failed because he “betrayed conservative principles.”

It appears the White House is increasingly inclined to take the second, forward-looking approach to highlighting the GOP's desired alternate reality, rather than the first, backward-looking one. As much as some Democrats wail about the "bipartisanship" rhetoric that surrounds Obama’s outreach to Republicans, which he's employed while challenging them to direct debate over health reform and economic recovery, the president's main intention is clear. He wants to force the opposition to help him present voters with a choice between two specific courses of action—or simply admit that their strategy is one of pure gridlock, obstruction, and paralysis (which, as my colleage J.P. Green has pointed out, spells “G.O.P”).

The stake that Obama and the Democrats have in convincing Americans to consider these parallel universes couldn’t be much higher. This November, if voters remain fixated on the current reality, rather than the terrible alternatives, then the midterm elections really will be a referendum on the status quo and its Democratic caretakers. Explaining life as it would be without Obama, and as it could be under Republican management, is not easy. But Democrats must do it or face catastrophe at the polls.

Ed Kilgore is Managing Editor of The Democratic Strategist and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.

4)Palin vs. Edwards, a case study in media bias
By Jamie Weinstein

No one can confuse me for someone who is an enthusiastic supporter of Sarah Palin. I think Sen. John McCain's selection of Palin as his 2008 running mate will be counted among the very worst legacies in the Arizona senator's long and storied career.

Nonetheless, there is little question that Palin has been treated unfairly by the press, at least in comparison to other politicians.

And no comparison best illustrates the double standard the media has with Palin than how they treated another former vice-presidential nominee, Sen. John Edwards.

When in 2004 John Kerry picked Edwards, whose entire resume in public life at that point consisted of six years in the U.S. Senate, to be his vice-presidential nominee, few questioned whether Edwards was qualified for the post.

Search "Edwards is unqualified" in Lexis-Nexis from the time Edwards was tapped by Kerry through Election Day 2004, and you get 11 results. Do the same for Palin and you get 174 results - and the search period is nearly two months shorter for Palin, because she was picked by McCain much later in the 2008 election cycle.

We now definitively know just how much of a liar, cheat and phony John Edwards is. But if the media had been one half as interested in exposing Edwards as a fraud as they have been in excoriating Palin, perhaps it would not have taken the National Enquirer to discover the truth that has led to the downfall of a politician who had a very real chance of becoming President.

One of the media's favorite attacks against Palin revolves around her failure to tell Katie Couric what magazines and newspapers she regularly reads. The clumsy answer was an early flash point that led many to scoff that the Alaskan governor didn't read anything at all.

But guess who doesn't read very much either? That would be John Edwards, if you believe John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's new book "Game Change." According to their reporting, when a friend inquired if John Edwards read a particular tome, his wife, Elizabeth, apparently found the idea of her husband reading laugh-out-loud funny, saying, "Oh, he doesn't read books."

Yet this impression of her husband as an anti-intellectual "hick," as Elizabeth reportedly referred to him, never became a common undercurrent during his his 2004 campaign for vice president or his later run for President.

So why did Palin get painted so quickly as a bombastic dunce and Edwards escape without such a negative characterization?

It probably has to do with the fact that most members of the media bought Edwards persona. They liked his world-view.

They believed in his claim that there were "two Americas." So they didn't dig deeper to see if there was any substance beneath his shiny surface.

Palin was never given the benefit of the doubt, in large part because the world-view to which she subscribes is anathema to the one held by so many pundits and reporters.

This double standard bleeds over into the way the presidential candidates who selected Palin and Edwards are viewed.

While it has become conventional wisdom by many that McCain was irresponsible in picking Palin, no similar consensus ever developed about Kerry's selection of Edwards.

But was not Kerry's selection of Edwards at the very least as irresponsible as McCain's selection of Palin?

Let us forget for a moment Edwards's sordid affair with Rielle Hunter, which occurred long after the 2004 presidential campaign ended.

According to an article written in Time magazine by Kerry-Edwards 2004 campaign strategist Bob Shrum, in a conversation that Kerry had with Edwards when he was testing the waters to see if Edwards was right for the No. 2 slot on the ticket, Edwards told him about the effect his son's death had on him.

Shrum wrote, "Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else - that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service.

"Kerry was stunned, - not moved - because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before - and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else."

Anyone so mentally unstable that he would use his son's death as some sort of political gimmick, as Shrum's story suggests Edwards did, is clearly not suited to be President.

Given his latest shenanigans, it is now clear just how terrible a pick Edwards was. Yet there is little question that the mainstream media had been far more critical of Palin than Edwards when the two were picked to run for the same post, albeit in different election cycles.Thats a bias that needs to be acknowleged, then corrected.

Weinstein is a columnist for The North Star National who blogs at JamieWeinstein.com.

4a)John Edwards, Mesothelioma Man, and Health Care Reform
By Ralph Alter

It has been fairly well-demonstrated that John Edwards is a pretty-boy philanderer married to a condescending harridan willing to go to any lengths to acquire stationery with the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue imprint. But what do we know about the bag-man behind the elaborate cover-up scheme designed to keep the sleeping bloodhounds of the Beltway media at bay?


The really big bucks came from a Texas attorney from the firm that brainstormed the massive Mesothelioma-chasing scam that continues to ravage the insurance and medical communities, not to mention every manufacturer who ever dealt with asbestos in any fashion. You have certainly seen the commercials trolling for new "victims" of asbestos exposure: the evening newscasts on nearly every channel are filled with them. This is because the payoffs for liability lawsuits are astronomical.


The Texas attorney who enabled the John Edwards campaign to effectively suppress the news about his dalliance with new-age purported videographer Rielle Hunter made his fortune by aggressively soliciting, and effectively settling, mesothelioma-liability lawsuits.


Fred Baron (1947-2008) built an enormous fortune by plying the vulnerable U.S. legal system and seeking financial jackpots for the alleged victims of asbestos exposure and the inferred development of mesothelioma. In so doing, Baron and his firm, Baron and Budd, P.C. of Dallas, developed a blueprint for plundering the medical, insurance, and corporate industries that has been replicated by thousands of attorneys, in hundreds of thousands of cases, resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars in settlements.


Baron's unethical tactics enabled attorneys like John Edwards to become multimillionaires by following the controversial "Baron and Budd script memo" in thousands of cases across the spectrum of potential medical liability.


Lester Brickman conducted a brilliant empirical analysis of attorney-sponsored asbestos screenings and concluded that


[i]t is beyond cavil that asbestos litigation thus represents a massive civil justice system failure. Because of the awesome power of the asbestos plaintiffs' bar, the issues posed by this failure appear impervious to resolution by civil justice reform. ...The failure to acknowledge, let along analyze, the overriding reality of specious claiming and meritless claims demonstrates a disconnect between the scholarship and the reality of the litigation that is nearly as wide as the disconnect between rates of disease. (ibid papers.ssrn)

I will paraphrase the strategy developed by Baron and his pals, as revealed by Brickman. That strategy includes:


1) Trolling for clients and then having them screened at local union halls, motels, and shopping center parking lots.


2) Asserting claims regardless of the underlying medical conditions.


3) Gaming the civil justice system to dispense with "evidentiary requirements and proof of proximate cause."


4) Forum-shopping for jurisdictions friendly to the plaintiff attorneys.


5) Developing a coterie of cooperative physicians, x-ray readers, and clinics willing to implement tests and interpret data in a manner favorable to plaintiffs.


6) Following the Baron-Budd memo for plaintiff testimony to suborn alleged victims


who frequently testify according to scripts prepared by their lawyers which include misstatements with regard to: (a) identifications of and relative quantities of asbestos-containing products that they came in contact with at work sites, (b) the information printed on the containers in which the products were sold, and (c) their own physical impairments [ibid papers].


This scandalous rigging of the justice system is at the heart of the health care problem in the United States. It's not the doctors who are the problem; it's the lawyers. Over 100,000 mesothelioma suits were filed in 2003 alone. Ambulance-chasing attorneys collude with jackpot-seeking perennial victims in looking for the judges elevated from attorney status to issue their munificent blessing and ravage the insurance-carriers.


Fred Baron and his slimy cohorts then turn around and invest their ill-gotten gains by purchasing Democrat politicians to insure that their rigged game can continue unimpeded by legislative or executive action. The unrepentant Baron understood the power the trial lawyers hold over the Democrats:


Baron has joked about the prominence he and other trial lawyers have in the Democratic Party. In a July 2002 speech, he noted a Wall Street Journal editorial that said that "the plaintiffs bar is all but running the Senate." Baron pointed to the editorial and said, "Now I really, strongly disagree with that. Particularly the 'all but.'"


Unless and until we move to enact legislative reform circumscribing the unethical behavior of tort lawyers, we are doomed to a health care system crippled by outlandish malpractice insurance premiums. Allowing unscrupulous lawyers to enrich themselves by gaming the legal system forces the medical community to practice defensive medicine and actively disincentivizes potential M.D.s from going into practice.


John Edwards is perhaps the finest example possible to demonstrate the problems of current tort law. Edwards, together with his deceased enabler, Fred Baron, made massive fortunes by fooling the American justice system and the American people. Their attempt to suppress the slimy evidence of Edwards' true character by paying hush money and perhaps practicing sleight-of-accounting with Edwards' campaign accounts was made possible by their belief that the American legal system would let them get away with just about anything.


Now Baron is dead, and the political career of John Edwards is just as cadaverous. If the conservative movement demands serious tort reform, then we can break the stranglehold the jackpot liability solicitors have on the American legal and medical systems and find our way to a more affordable health care system.

4b)The Wisdom of Conservatism
By Andrew Foy, MD

When I was in college, I didn't consider myself particularly liberal or conservative. Instead, I considered myself pragmatic, and as such, above any narrow-minded partisan thinking. At that time in my life, I started to recognize that there were real problems in society, and I believed that the role of government was to solve them. I also believed that if enough smart people -- by that I mean properly credentialed with the appropriate letters behind their names -- worked together, then they could ultimately find a solution to any problem in society.


My grandfather, on the other hand, rejected the notion that the government is capable of solving society's problems. More often than not, he would laugh at the solutions being offered by the political class. He said he'd seen it all before. According to him, the government was the problem, not the solution. At the time, I resented his attitude. I thought he was just a grumpy old man who didn't have the appropriate credentials or letters behind his name to validate his crass opinions. However, over time, I came to realize that he was right, and through the process of that realization, I came to understand and appreciate the wisdom of conservatism.


Needless to say, as a young college student, I had not given much thought to the principles of conservatism or the foundational principles of American government. But because I enjoyed political philosophy and U.S. history, I would soon begin to read all about them.


Most historians attribute the first observation of conservatism to the Irishman Edmund Burke. For Burke, conservatism was synonymous with individualism. Individualism appreciates the limitations of individual knowledge and recognizes the fact that no person, small group, or government can know all that is known among the mass of individuals in society. Therefore, the "Burkean" definition of conservatism favors limited government and opposes the use of coercion to solve problems or bring about association. Instead, it posits that problems are better solved by the voluntary and spontaneous collaboration of individuals that occurs outside of government.


Conservatism recognizes the inherent folly in the belief that government is capable of solving society's problems because government is nothing more than a group of individuals, and as such, cannot possibly take into account all the permeations, variability, and fluctuating desires of the mass of individuals who compose society. For this reason, conservatism does not believe that the government's role is to solve problems, but rather to create conditions in which individuals can solve their own problems. Therefore, the role of government from the conservative perspective is simple: to protect individual freedom and to secure peace. These were the foundational principles of American government set forth in the Constitution, making the United States the first truly conservative nation.


Unfortunately, the U.S. government has moved away from its constitutional foundation and repeatedly entered into the problem-solving realm. Today we find ourselves in a position where the government's solutions, which have been implemented over the course of many years to solve problems in society, have left us with much bigger problems than the ones originally intended to be solved.


Consider that our nation's unfunded liabilities, which most notably include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are growing much faster than the rate of economic growth.



These programs were intended to alleviate a degree of suffering that would occur for program beneficiaries in the absence of such a safety net. However, these programs now threaten to bankrupt the country and pose a severe burden to taxpayers. More importantly, they have encouraged many citizens to expect paternalistic support from the government, and this attitude has become so pervasive that any talk of cutting benefits is met with a degree of incredulity that all but stifles any hope for achieving meaningful progress in the area of debt reduction. If these programs aren't reformed in a meaningful way, then the country will soon be insolvent.


The problem of health care costs and inflation that we face today is a direct result of previous government policies aimed at addressing the problem of health care costs. Unfortunately, the problem is much worse now than when the government intervened in the 1960s and '70s.


In a policy review prepared for the Commonwealth Foundation, Laffer, Arduin, and Winegarden describe how the government's involvement in the health insurance market has resulted in


a large and growing health care wedge -- an economic separation of effort from reward, of consumers (patients) from producers (health care providers), caused by government policies ...The wedge is a primary driver in rising health care costs, i.e., inflation in medical costs.


The government's involvement in health care has become so complex that a 2,000-plus-page bill that included an untold number of backroom deals with unions, special interests, and industry lobbyists was required to achieve comprehensive reform that would have ultimately resulted in higher premium rates for average Americans.


The recent housing crisis and recession are a lesson in unintended consequences. In the government's attempt to solve the housing problem, it juiced the housing market, and, in conjunction with the Federal Reserve's lending policy, created an enormous housing bubble. In 1993, President Clinton significantly broadened the Community Reinvestment Act, originally signed in 1977, that mandated all F.D.I.C insured banks to give more loans to lower-income households (or less creditworthy borrowers). This move received broad political support. As a result of these changes, homeownership and inflation soared.





Furthermore, the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enthusiastically purchased high-risk mortgages from lenders on the secondary mortgage market. Encouraged by the knowledge that high-risk mortgages would be swallowed up by Fannie and Freddie, lenders had incentive to extend as many mortgages as possible, regardless of the creditworthiness of borrowers.


Finally, in 2006, the Fed raised interest rates from 1% to 5.25% to avoid high inflation. Suddenly mortgage payments shot up, the demand for housing dried up, foreclosures multiplied, the credit crunch ensued, and heavily leveraged firms collapsed. The resulting financial crisis, caused by government intervention, has led only to more frenzied and hysterical government intervention that shows no signs of letting up.


In the meantime, Thomas Jefferson must be either laughing or crying. After all, he favored "a government rigorously frugal and simple." He favored the kind of government that was established by the U.S. Constitution, the kind of government that was intended to protect individual freedom and to secure peace. However, over the last hundred years, the government has morphed into a limitless monster swallowing up individual freedom, encouraging irresponsibility, restricting economic growth and creating terrible problems in its wake.


In response to these problems, the true conservative position is to encourage a return to constitutionalism. Conservatism discourages further government intervention to stimulate the economy, fix health care, prevent the oceans from rising, etc., and instead advocates for legislation that decreases government involvement and respects the foundational American principles of individual freedom, personal responsibility, and limited government. For as I have come to appreciate since my college days, and as my grandfather has long known, conservatism wisely recognizes that much for which the coercive action of the state is invoked can be done better by the spontaneous and voluntary collaboration of individuals.


Hat tip: Brenton Stransky


Andrew Foy, M.D. is co-author of the upcoming book The Young Conservative's Field Guide and can be contacted through the website ahardright.com.

4c)The Left's Great Motivator
By Scott Strzelczyk

Enamored of the promise of a utopian society and aided by a complicit mainstream media, leftist ideologues constantly assail free-market capitalism, the Constitution, religion, and individual responsibility. Their actions are rooted in and justified by a dogmatic ideology. Their ideology is a charade providing a self-serving presumption of moral superiority to others.


Dig deeper to reveal their greatest motivation: fear.


Leftist ideologues comprising environmental extremists, progressives, liberals (the hijacked definition), socialists, and communists believe that the ends justify the means -- that governance may use any means necessary to achieve predetermined outcomes. Characteristics of the leftist ideology include a heavily regulated economy and/or government owned industry, equal outcomes and economic leveling, multiculturalism, moral relativism, and the perfection of mankind.


According to Russell Kirk, father of modern conservatism, characteristics of the conservative ideology include the beliefs that an enduring moral order exists, that prudent change is necessary but ought to be slow and gradual, that freedom and property are inextricably linked, the desire to uphold voluntary community and oppose involuntary collectivism, and belief in the principles of variety and prescription while recognizing that man is imperfect.


The philosophical, political, moral, social, and economic principles of the leftist and conservative ideologies diametrically oppose one another. There are numerous practical examples to support this assertion.


The Constitution is the law of the land and formed our style of government, a constitutional republic. The Constitution was established to protect individual rights and liberties against a coercive government. Indeed, it protects the very smallest minority in this country: the individual. To ensure adherence to this principle, the Constitution created a federal government with limited powers that specifically designate what the legislative, executive, and judicial branches can legitimately do. In other words, the means must conform to the constraints of the Constitution, and the ends cannot violate individual rights and liberties.


However, the leftist ideologue dismisses the Constitution's original intent and meaning, as it constrains the leftist's pursuit of ideological supremacy. To confiscate a person's property, redistribute wealth, restrict free speech, or force a person to purchase a product would violate the very principle the Constitution was established upon. The leftist must subvert constitutional intent and usurp power that was otherwise not granted to advance the leftist ideology -- often violating individual rights and liberties in the process.


The leftist ideologue believes that the needs and rights of the nation-state supersede the needs and rights of the individual. Through legislative fiat and judicial activism, leftist ideology is forced upon society. The leftist believes that the Constitution is a stale document created centuries ago by some old, crotchety men. The leftist believes in a living, breathing Constitution that adapts to the leftist ideology, which justifies the leftist's methods and outcomes. The leftist cannot acknowledge the Constitution's original intent and meaning ,as it would circumvent his ideology. The leftist functions as though the country is a democracy, where majority rules and laws of men prevail. Naturally, the leftist ideologue fears the Constitution.


The basis of our economic system is free-market capitalism. Over the past two hundred years, capitalism eroded into an economic system based partially on free markets and partially on a heavily government-regulated marketplace. Recently, the government has taken ownership positions in private companies and is attempting to nationalize the health care industry. The government manufactures, produces, and creates nothing in a pure economic sense. The government acts as arbitrator and allocator of existing resources. Tangible resources such as energy, money, or health care are allocated based upon some set of government regulations, priorities, or preferences.


Resource-allocation is primarily driven by political outcome such as captivating voting blocks, backing unions or companies that advance their causes and fund their political campaigns, or providing preferential treatment to specific industries while restricting others. In other words, governments don't rely upon free-market mechanisms like supply, demand, and price signals to allocate resources.


The anthropogenic global warming scandal illustrates how leftist ideologues in the government, environmental, scientific, and academic communities and non-governmental organizations work in concert to ensure a specific outcome: worldwide acceptance of AGW. Leftist ideologues have influenced scientists, falsified data, broken laws, and conspired with other entities to ensure AGW's acceptance. Moreover, government policy based on AGW acceptance provides an opportunity to institute new laws and regulations ensuring the leftist's outcomes is successfully implemented. American Thinker's environmental editor Marc Sheppard documented the outright lies, deceptions, and criminal activity involved in the AGW scam. Two of those articles can be found here and here.


In a leftist utopia, government would determine winners and losers in the energy industry. Entire sectors and companies would succeed or fail on the whim of a government agency or bureaucrat. Government would regulate how much and what type of energy to consume, the cost of energy, where exploration can occur, what car to drive, what light bulbs to use, and how often to shower or flush a toilet.


The leftist ideologue elevates the needs of the nation-state over the individual and tramples individual rights and liberties in the process. The leftist would never allow free markets to create and maintain the energy marketplace without the leftist's own influence. Instead, the leftist conjures up the man-made disaster known as AGW. Naturally, the leftist ideologue fears free-market capitalism because it threatens his ideology.


A conservative knows that government's role is limited and that government institutes those laws and regulations necessary for the free market to transcend it. The free market determines the outcomes -- the winners and losers -- rather than the government. A conservative insists that the scientific study of AGW is a repeatable and reliable process, conducted by multiple independent and competing entities, including peer-reviewed data and results. Only then can any government, NGO, company, or person assess and determine an appropriate course of action.


Leftist ideologues loathe moral order and religion, especially Christianity. Religion provides the basis not only for our Constitution and founding principles, but for many morals and values Americans possess. The leftist believes in multiculturalism and moral relativism. According to author Steven Lukes, moral relativists "hold that moral judgments are relative to their time and place, so that they cannot be objectively justified and so cannot be absolute." The leftist places social, economic, and racial justice above moral order. To the greatest extent possible, leftist ideologues must diminish moral order and religion from the American landscape.


A conservative believes human nature is a constant and that moral truths are permanent. Russell Kirk explains the importance of a moral order:


It has been said by liberal intellectuals that the conservative believes all social questions, at heart, to be questions of private morality. Properly understood, this statement is quite true. A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society-whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society-no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.


The leftist ideologue fears the Constitution. The leftist fears individual responsibility. The leftist fears free-market capitalism. The leftist fears a moral order. The leftist fears absolute truth. In Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address, he said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The leftist ideology embodies fear.


5)A Bad Time For Fed To Tighten?

Finance: Wasn't it just a week ago that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sketched out how he would soon undo last year's central bank stimulus? A look at some recent data suggests that might be premature.

The economy, it seems, has begun to show some modest growth. This can especially be seen, believe it or not, in the industrial sector, which in January grew by 0.9% year over year — the first annual gain since April 2008.

At the same time, the Conference Board's Index of Leading Indicators rose 0.3% last month, extending a yearlong series of gains and signaling that the economy is likely to continue to expand at least through spring.

Yet, a look at key banking and monetary indicators is troubling. Money and credit are the fuel for economic expansion, but as Britain's Telegraph newspaper noted this week, U.S. bank lending is now falling at its fastest rate in history, at least in dollar terms.

Quoting David Rosenberg at the investment house of Gluskin Sheff, writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard notes that U.S. bank lending has declined by more than $100 billion since the start of the year, for an annualized decline of nearly 16%.

And sure enough, government financial data show that despite zero percent interest rates by the Fed, and an estimated bailout and stimulus combination totaling nearly $12 trillion, banks just aren't making loans.

Commercial and industrial loans, a key gauge of business activity, are declining at a yearly rate of 17.7%. After expanding at double- digit rates through the early part of last year, C&I loans have now declined for eight months in a row — and each month has seen a deeper drop than the month before.

Worse, key monetary indicators signal a steep plunge in money supply growth, despite the Fed's printing of well over $1 trillion in new money in the past year and a half.

M2 money supply, the most frequently used gauge for measuring the economy's demand for money, has fallen from solid 8% to 9% growth just last summer to growth of less than 2% since the start of the year. This level is often seen just before recessions, and thus may augur another downturn. Despite two quarters of GDP gains, no rule says we can't have a double dip.

Likewise, total lending at all banks has been falling since September and was off another 3.6% in January. Since activity peaked just before the recession began, total lending at all commercial banks has plunged $538 billion.

All this suggests that attempts at stimulus by the government have not created a lasting recovery. And as long as loan demand falls, the recovery can't be sustained. Whether or not you agree with the Fed's moves over the past two years to keep the economy afloat, one thing's clear: With signs of financial distress still common in the economy, now isn't the time to tighten money and credit.

And yet, the Fed seems ready to do just that. Last week, Bernanke outlined how he'll go about removing the more than $1.3 trillion the Fed has put into the banking system to avoid a collapse.

On Thursday, the central bank took the first tentative step in that direction, raising the mostly symbolic discount rate from 0.5% to 0.75%. This may be in response to January's 1.4% surge in wholesale prices, for a 9.8% inflation rate over the past six months.

Scary? Sure. But the Fed's easing from mid-2007 to last year clearly did help the economy revive. And its moves would have been even more successful if they hadn't been undermined last year by the wild, ill-considered spending binge by Congress and the White House under the rubric of "stimulus."

Bernanke is a deep scholar of the Great Depression, and he knows better than most that the economic decline of the 1930s was made worse by a Fed that excessively shrank money supply.

Indeed, at a now famous 90th birthday tribute to Milton Friedman back in 2002, Bernanke told the world's leading economist: "Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." We hope he meant it.

6)The Economic Crisis Is Only a Symptom
By Monty Pelerin

There are few economic problems that don't originate in politics.


Citizens' faith in government has deteriorated recently, as shown in virtually every political poll. Rasmussen found that "63% of likely voters believe, generally speaking, that it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were defeated this November." Gallup had the federal government ranking ahead of only socialism in terms of positive image.


People know something is wrong. They know economic conditions have taken a turn for the worse. They sense that they don't matter much, at least in the eyes of their government. Furthermore, many believe that government is out of touch and corrupt. Politicians are viewed more as a ruling class than as representatives of the people.


History is replete with examples of the rise and fall of empires. Is there some mysterious, material force that produces "cycles of civilization"? History seems to support such a contention, but coincidence and correlation are not causation. Societies rise and fall as the result of policies, laws, customs, and traditions. Man creates the forces that drive civilizations.


Over the centuries, brighter folks than our elected officials experimented with virtually every combination and permutation of laws and customs. Ideas that worked were adopted, while those that didn't were abandoned. It was in the context of this evolutionary cauldron that "best practices" were discovered and civilizations advanced. Those that abandoned "best practices" deteriorated.


Our learned Founders knew history and the nature of man. They created a Constitution that represented two thousand years of wisdom and experience. Their remarkable achievement enabled a fledgling nation to rise quickly to a world power with unsurpassed wealth, freedom, and living standards.


Now we appear to be on the downside of our historical run. An enormous economic crisis engulfs our country and the world. Has our time of leadership come and gone? What happened?


At the risk of appearing simplistic, I argue that the driving force for our success was our conception of limited government. Our Founders knew the tendency of rulers and constructed a framework designed to protect citizens from government. This setting maximized individual freedom, encouraged initiative, and rewarded success.


Slowly but incessantly, the remarkable document that was our Constitution was weakened. Now few politicians understand it, and even fewer believe that it has any bearing. Politicians suffer from what Friedrich Hayek termed "the fatal conceit." As David Brooks describes it:


In moments of government overconfidence, officials come to see society not as a dynamic and complex organism, but as a machine, which can be rebuilt. In such moments, governance and engineering merge into one.


Our Constitution has been reduced to a quaint artifact of history. It no longer provides protection from government. Politicians still take an oath to uphold it, yet that oath is little more than the tradition associated with assuming office. Our Constitution's role in government appears to be no more important than the Queen is to England's government.


Our Founders rejected virtually everything that our Parliament of Whores has imposed over the last century. The Founders were not "unjust" or "unfair" or "uncaring." They were practical, and they refused to adopt policies that history has shown harmful. While today's politicians cannot explain or account for the complex set of traditions, customs, rules, and laws that have evolved over time, they believe that they can make changes that will be improvements. What hubris!


Hayek said, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." Apparently, he was wrong, because our politicians have not learned from their many failures. Greater intrusions into the economy and the lives of citizens continue at accelerating speed.


Our serious economic crisis can be attributed to the abandonment of constitutional principles that began long ago. Establishment of a central bank was anathema to our Founding Fathers. Arguably, the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 was unconstitutional. Thomas Jefferson warned against empowering banks:


I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.


President Andrew Jackson concurred with Jefferson's views:


The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.


No serious economist can overlook the key role played by the Federal Reserve in causing the current crisis. Nor can one overlook its debauch of the currency, though one of its founding purposes was to protect the value of the currency. Since the Federal Reserve's formation, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen by 96 percent. Most of that occurred after 1971, when the country left the gold standard and the Fed was without limitations.


Government is generally precluded from entering the realm of economic matters by the Constitution. Once that restriction was ignored, there was no limit to the harm that could be inflicted. Economics itself is a self-correcting system under most circumstances. However, in a world where government is unconstrained, politicians see every minor discomfort as an opportunity for an intervention and a means to gain more power.


All intervention contravenes the corrective mechanism of markets, generally worsening the original problem. This leads to demands for additional political intervention. Each one worsens the problem and weakens the economy's ability to self-correct. Interventionism is not self-sustaining, as explained by Ludwig von Mises:


An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.


Our biggest problems are in areas where government intervened years ago: schools, health care, Social Security, the banking system, poverty, the Post Office, Amtrak, etc., etc. All these problems have grown worse. It is likely that Mises's end of the Santa principle is near.


Over time, government grew into a corrupt Leviathan. Once politicians gained life-and-death power over the economy, their decisions took on value. As Sheldon Richman stated, "If there are no privileges to sell, there are no privileges to buy." Businesses don't contribute to politicians out of admiration. They do so as a means of survival, often under extortion-type circumstances.


The elimination of constitutional protections led to the demise of free-market economics and the concentration of power at the federal level. A political oligarchy willing to serve the highest bidders now runs the country. Recently, the banking industry was their patron.


Our Founders were wise men who risked their lives to create this country. Our current political representatives are arrogant, unprincipled clowns in comparison. We must return to constitutional protections if we are to regain our way of life and preserve our country.


Prospects look dismal.


Monty Pelerin blogs at economicnoise.com.