Many millions have served, many thousands have made the ultimate sacrifice and many more have suffered heart braking and permanent injuries.
Yet, when it comes to our gutless politicians, few if any, have the decency to make any type of sacrifice or demonstrate anything bordering selflessness.
Lamentably the same can be said most Americans. We have become averse to abnegation.
We are fiscally broke yet seem unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices.
If we remain behind the curve we will eventually pay in any event.
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Yesterday I tried to have a conversation with someone who's still an Obama supporter.
I had such a hard time making any eye contact with him ...
I just gave up . . .
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Obama believes the mid year election would have been different if unemployment was
5%. Perhaps. We will never know because his anti-business policies and rhetoric are not likely to bring unemployment down.
Obama does not understand business. Liberals do not understand business. Democrats do not understand business. Progressives do not understand business. Community organizers do not understand business. Understanding business is none of their business.
I alerted you to the 1099 debacle moths ago. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Are we in decline or on the verge of getting tougher? (See 1b below.)
The lesson of the mid term election is one of learning. (See 1c below.)
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Big ears has a problem! He is not a good listener. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Ahmadinejad to visit Gaza at Hamas' invitation? (See 3 below.)
Clash with Hamas is inevitable? (See 3a below.)
Meanwhile Hezballah asserts they are ready for another war. (See 3b below.)
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Learn about Indiana's Governor Daniels. He is an impressive unknown who might have what it takes to turn our nation around and head it in a better direction. (See 4 below.)
Start by whacking the bureaucrats. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)The 1099 Democrats The Democrats decoupled from business—and lost the election.
By DANIEL HENNINGER.
Calvin Coolidge once said, "The chief business of the American people is business." The Democrats just lost America because they forgot that.
On second thought, you can't forget what you never knew. The Democrats running things the past two years proved they have no clue about the business of business. In their world, the real world of the private economy is an abstraction, a political figment.
Along the road to ObamaCare, the party's planners inserted into the bill the now- famous 1099 provision, requiring businesses to do an IRS report for any transaction over $600 annually. No member of Congress, White House staffer or party flunky thought to say, "Oh, wow, this 1099 requirement will crush people running their own businesses. Are we sure we want to do this?" Yes, and that 1099 fiasco is a metaphor now for the modern Democratic Party.
Exhibit B: The Obama ban on offshore oil drilling. It floated out of the White House, Energy Department and EPA without anyone thinking: "Whoa, this is going to kill hundreds of working-class guys and their families."
In recent days, both President Obama and Speaker-to-go Nancy Pelosi have said that the message of the voters in the election was that they wanted jobs. To be sure.
President Coolidge was more eloquent on this truth. The American people "are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. The great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life."
But much of what this Democratic Congress did, or tried to do, was like throwing Molotov cocktails at business. It began in early 2009 with the cap-and-trade climate bill. The country was going to have to chow down its provisions no matter how many jobs got lost in Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan and other coal-using states. The bill portended so much damage to businesses in these states that some of the Senate's most liberal members had to beg off supporting it.
At his news conference last week, Mr. Obama still wouldn't rule out the EPA's impending "carbon finding" to regulate emissions, another Freddy Krueger nightmare for the average business.
The air is filling now with suggestions of what the Democrats and Mr. Obama need to do. Always mentioned is that the president needs to repair his bad relations with "business." But this is noted as just one item on the post-election to-do list: adjust the message, go to church more, reconnect with business, put up the storm windows.
The party's decoupling from vast swaths of America at work didn't start with Barack Obama. Al Gore and John Kerry ran hard against the depredations of the insurance, pharmaceutical and oil industries. The post-modern Democrats, starting at the top, convey the impression that the average company consists entirely of three guys in spats, silk vests and top hats, like the little character on the Monopoly cards, who deserve to be indicted or monitored.
And so any argument that the top marginal tax rate hits sole proprietorships and the like blows right by them. The "rich" gotta pay. They do pay, stop hiring and then they send money to American Crossroads to unelect Democrats.
Years ago the Democrats' anti-business populism didn't matter much because most people doing politics, including the populists, took for granted that politics included staying connected to local businesses. No more. Most Democrats are driving right past the Mom-and-Pop economy to public union headquarters. The party's candidates are like brides of Dracula, locked forever in an embrace with infusions of public union political money (more than $170 million in this election).
As to the future, look at a map done by the National Conference of State Legislatures showing state-level party control now. The southeastern states, one of the most economically vibrant regions of the country, is wholly red. North Carolina has its first Republican senate since 1870. What's still blue on this map suggests the Democratic Party is collapsing into mostly urban, public sector redoubts—Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago.
One might argue that what the post-November 2010 Democrats need is their own tea party reform movement. Problem is, they just had their version—the Soros-MoveOn-Daily Kos activists who threw over the Clintons and put the party firmly in the hands of the progressive House chairmen who stopped thinking about the private sector 35 years ago.
Many activist Democrats don't want their party to do business with business until the terms of engagement change. They think once the ObamaCare entitlement flows through the veins of the private sector, its workers also will be the party's brides. What's left of the private "impulses of our life" to create industries will be sopped up with permanent public subsidies to alternative-energy entrepreneurs. With luck, this new "low-growth" economy will produce enough tax revenue to keep the party's watermills going for another generation.
There is an alternative view: The party's antibusiness compulsions have turned it to rust.
1a)Just Think of the Jobs The Democrats Saved:
Regarding your editorial "The Pelosi Minority" (Nov. 6): By my count, the Democrats have lost or are losing 64 net seats in the House of Representatives in the recent election. Given that they entered the election with a total of 256 seats, that is a startling unemployment rate of 25% for House Democrats.
To soften the bad news and use the Democrats' recent economic vernacular, the leftist agenda of President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's has "saved or created" 192 Democratic seats in the House.
Steve Hancock
Fenton, Mo.
1b)Great Nations Don't Decline -- They Just Get Tougher
By James Lewis
Hooray, we have a presidential cheerleader for American Decline. I capitalize those words A.D. the way I capitalize a lot of the fantasy slogans of the Left. Capitalizing their absurdities is a way of punctuating their empty heads and empty lives.
In Obama's Übermensch Amplified Voice, "American Decline" is another way of saying, "Na Nana Na Na!" You think you won the midterms? Well, here's my big middle finger to you! That bony digit is growing like Pinocchio's nose, and for the same reason. Watch it grow bigger and bigger for the next two years as this White House drifts farther and farther into Fantasyland. And just keep the man around for the next couple of decades to remind us what he is.
This is what malignant narcissists do when they lose face. The American people are just catching on to Obama's pathology, and you can bet you'll see a lot more of that swelling finger before he rides into the sunset. Pray for it to come as soon as possible.
Is America declining? Not once we get rid of the saboteurs: the Democrats and the lie-a-day media. Just toss out Obama and the Left and watch our screeching tires as we take off. America is ready to roar back as soon as the O'noids get out of the way. Obama is becoming President O'noya. He can bug you, but he will keep us on the boil as long as he does. You want a big incentive to stay active in Tea Party politics? Here's all the incentive you'll need. Just watch this clown make goofy faces for another two years, and you'll be roaring to get back to the polls. Meanwhile, just cut away all the underbrush that gets in the way of the final act of disposal. Get rid of the illegal "czars.".Sell back the car companies and the banks. Get ready to roar.
Fortunately, Obama has made a good start toward his own Decline and Fall in less than two years. When he goes from Decline to Fall, with a little luck, he will take all the little Marxists with him. If not, just let them know they are no longer welcome in the Land of the Free.
Great Nations don't decline, but they do have ups and downs. Look at Russia twenty years after the Soviet Empire, crumbled from its own silly delusions. Look at China decades after Mao Zedong killed forty million Chinese people. America has never had to deal with those kinds of self-inflicted wounds. We are awesome, and we are just waiting to explode into a new period of prosperity and strength.
And this time, we won't be suckered by the sucker play of the Left. This time, they pay for their greed for power and corruption. It's time for them to grow up and get a job.
Great Nations come back tougher. That means they see reality more clearly than before. They wipe the delusions from their eyes and confront what's real. Then they go get 'em.
Don't mess with the United States. It's never happened over the last two hundred years. Messing with us will tell us who is our friend and who is our foe. I think we're getting the idea right around now.
Obama is a big downer for America, but he can't change our immense fundamental strengths. Can he stop the Niagara Falls? Can he stop the Liberty Bell? Has he changed you? I don't think so. He hasn't changed me. He hasn't changed America. He is a flibbertigibbet, hooting across the moon on the gloomy night. A lot of noise, but no substance.
Obama will try to weaken us psychologically, but the more he tries, the more he reveals who he really is. The more he drops that smiling mask, the more disgusted he will make us feel. Even now, a good chunk of the people don't understand what a bizarro this guy is. The defeated Democrats understand it finally, and the Tea Party activists have known it all along. Soon everybody except the most deluded will get it.
We elected this man to raise a black man to the heights of American politics. But compared to Lt. Col. Allen West, who just got elected to the House, Obama is a midget. I'll vote for Col. West or Marco Rubio or Sarah Palin any time I get a chance, because they have guts and a solid moral sense. You don't have to be a Harvard professor to be president. You do have to have your heart in the right place. Harry Truman and George W. Bush showed that strength during a time of supreme challenge. Obama will never get it. He is too blind, too much in love with his own image...and way too blind.
Next election, I don't want to choose between two dishrags running for the White House. I want a real man, or a real woman, an adult who is willing to face real challenges. Not a saboteur, not a clown, not Goofy.
We have to tolerate another 24 months of this freak show. But we don't have to keep quiet about it. Nobody got elected to take away your right to tell it like you see it.
So say it loud and proud, and make sure they hear you.
Go to it. Get tougher, especially when it comes to our arrogant and foolish power class. I'd love to see a real house-cleaning; we've only started in this election. This is the worst time of corruption since the Spoils System of the 19th century. In fact, this is just the old Spoils System come back to life.
You've got the power to break that corruption and bring in adults who will be responsible to you, the voter.
Don't drop that ball just one day between now and 2012.
It's up to you. The bad guys will attack your morale, and your morals besides. Never forget who they are. Build a new media. Clean up the hog sty in Washington and all the state capitals.
We have work to do
1c)Learning from the Landslide
By J.R. Dunn
It's taken a good part of the past week for the breadth of the conservative achievement in the midterms to sink in. Over sixty new House seats, six Senate seats (we can safely say, no matter what occurs in Alaska, since Murkowski is a member of the Murkowski Party representing only Murkowski), thirty-plus statehouses, and no fewer than twenty "trifectas" -- that is, states in which the GOP owns the House, Senate, and governorship. The 2010 election was a victory both broad and deep, one that will be paying dividends for years to come.
It could have been better. Anything, in this imperfect world, can be better. The failings, needless to say, have drawn the attention of the media and the left, along with renegades such as David Frum, who have crowed over them as triumphs, as if retaining Harry Reid is something to be proud of. This has convinced the Democrats to continue banging their collective head against that same leftward stretch of wall. Evidently, both Reid and the most successful speaker since Cicero, Nancy Pelosi, are to be retained as party leaders. That too is a product of victory.
It's quite true that Sharron Angle should have beaten Reid and that Joe Miller should have beaten the repellent Murkowski (with Specter and Grayson gone, certainly the most odious politician of either party) in a walk. Neither came anywhere near. In Colorado, Ken Buck was barely edged out, which can happen under any circumstances. As for Christine O'Donnell, she never really had a chance in hyper-liberal Delaware, quite apart from the fact that "endearingly odd" is not a compelling senatorial persona.
Could these defeats have been avoided? With the exception of Christine O., I think so. What we're dealing with is the type of error that comes with lack of experience. The failings in the cases of both Angle and Miller were self-inflicted, involving gaffes that an experienced candidate would have known to avoid. This is something that future Tea Party candidates -- that is to say, candidates emerging from outside the traditional political class, and lacking the experience of that class -- will need to consider and overcome.
Most of these difficulties involved presentation. A number of TP candidates made remarks that they came to regret. Rand Paul's notorious comment on the unconstitutionality of the 1964 civil rights act might have sunk him if he'd followed it with anything similar. Luckily, he seems to have realized this (or perhaps Dad straightened him out), and he sailed through with no more such errors, praise be to Aqua Buddha.
Not so with Sharron Angle, who made an entire series of obtuse blurts culminating in a remark to a classroom of Hispanic children that she "didn't know what country they were from," a comment unworthy of her and one which helped seal her defeat by the obnoxious Harry Reid. This has been widely attributed to personality flaws on Angle's part, but I don't think that's entirely fair. There's a tradition among populist movements, of which the Tea Parties are the latest example, to speak forthrightly without self-censorship as a contrast to the euphemisms and verbal formulae of the political establishment. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, it can lead to problems. It is often abused, as is constantly seen in public meetings where someone gets up and starts bellowing about "wetbacks" or the like, embarrassing the entire assembly and enabling the media to label all present Neanderthals. Or, as we saw in this recent campaign, populist candidates forget that the general public is not familiar with populist usage and may mistake straightforward comments for something else, which is precisely what happened with both Paul and Angle. We need to keep in mind that discretion is not an evil in and of itself and that forthrightness is a tactic not suitable to all circumstances.
Miller's problem was similar. He was railroaded into the handcuffs incident. He appears to have been unaware that he was being goaded. His opposition read him well. They were looking forward to seeing him respond to petty harassment in the style of a military officer, which is exactly what he did. It was something he simply should not have fallen for. Anyone possessing knowledge of the deeply corrupt Alaskan political milieu (and who doesn't after La Sarah's ordeal?) should have been aware that such a thing was coming and been prepared for it, mentally and emotionally as well as in every other sense.
We would not expect to see Allen West flourishing a pistol in the House chambers, and we would be taken aback if we did. The same is true of Miller. The handcuffing incident focused already existing doubts about his candidacy which he was unable to overcome. (Again, the same could have happened to Rand Paul when his security staff overreacted to the attempted sign assault. All that you can say about that is that some people luck out.)
Consider Nikki Haley in contrast. Haley was badgered even more consistently and vilely by her establishment Republican opponents. She scarcely acknowledged the attacks and ran a classy campaign, so doubts never crystallized around her despite the best attempts of the media to run with the adultery stories. Future Tea Party candidates should closely study the Haley campaign, which in many ways can serve as a model on how to prevail in a universally hostile political environment.
They should also pay close attention to experienced politicians and operatives, whether they fully share their views or not. These people possess a universe of irreplaceable knowledge that must not be thrown away. Tea Party candidates are in the position of amateurs who must develop professional capabilities without losing their amateur virtues. Professional political figures can aid immensely in this task. While the GOP handled many TP candidacies poorly, in the wake of 2010, this is not likely to recur. There has been a lot of loose talk since the election calling for open warfare on GOP figures for trivial reasons or none at all. This is asinine -- nothing can save the left at this point other than a civil war on the right. Much of this chatter appears to be coming from provocateurs, mixing as it does sheer vituperation with obvious ignorance of conservative politics. It would be best to simply ignore it.
As it stands, the current GOP is best divided into three groups:
1. Those who get it, such as Boehner (I'd like McConnell on the basis of his statement on GOP aims, which featured much of the Tea Party platform, but his stance on earmarks eliminates him. Like many pragmatists, McConnell undervalues symbolism. There could be no better symbol of a new GOP than a ban on earmarks);
2. Those like McCain, who can be shocked or frightened into straightening up; and
3. Those who need to go.
Fortunately, this last group is small. The two critical figures are Lindsey Graham, whose open attack on Tea Party candidates has simply added maliciousness to all his other virtues, and John Cornyn, against whom I have been railing since mastodons roamed the Rio Grande. Cornyn, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is perhaps most kindly characterized as erratic. While opposed to earmarks, he was the focus of much early GOP opposition to the Tea Party candidates, insisting on backing both Charlie Crist and Murkowski to the last minute and beyond. Even today, the best he could do for Joe Miller was to "encourage" the Republican rank and file to lend their support.
This will not do. Both of these professional trimmers should step down for the good of the party. If not, they should be targeted at the first opportunity.
But apart from that, we need to accept the fact that the TP-GOP mistakes have been made and need not be repeated. We must look forward to 2012 while carrying a clean slate. I reiterate here, and will repeat as often as necessary, that a Tea Party-GOP coalition will be unbeatable. No left-wing combine, not of unions, students, minorities, or whatever, will be able to challenge it. Anyone who wishes to tear apart such a winning combination should be viewed with suspicion.
One of the overlooked developments in the election was the fact that Maine flipped. During the 19th century, Maine, home of political legends James G. Blaine and Thomas "Czar" Reed, was a key Republican state. "As goes Maine," the saying went, "so goes the nation." But the state spent most of the 20th century as a political backwater, due in large part to lackluster representation. Backwaters tend to slide into liberal control, which is exactly what happened Down East.
A continuing oddity (not to say "grotesquery") of American politics is the number of conservative states with liberal superstructures, which includes Maine, West Virginia, and notoriously Arkansas, the sole holdout of the once-solid Democratic South. I lived in Maine for a short period a few years ago, and I found it just about the most conservative place I've encountered anywhere in my ramblings. Many of the old colonial ways still exist under the surface. You don't quite see the yeomanry doffing their hats and bowing to the grandees. Not quite -- but you wouldn't be surprised if you did.
And yet this ultraconservative state features one of the most ultra-liberal political establishments in the country, typified by the RINO sisters, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Nobody foresaw this as changing anytime soon, and certainly not as early as 2010. But changed it has with the gubernatorial victory of Paul LePage, a Tea Party man, along with the conquest of both legislative houses. The state of Maine has come under Republican control for the first time in fifty years.
This naturally leads us to ask: if Maine, why not West Virginia and Arkansas? The GOP has for far too long followed a policy of leaving liberal control of such states unchallenged. Why, I'm not sure. Perhaps out of judicious husbanding of resources, perhaps out of fear that the Dems would retaliate. Whatever the case, the recovery of Maine proves any such policy to be mistaken and shortsighted. Arkansas and West Virginia should be targeted as soon as 2012 and remain on the list until they are flipped at last. The Tea Parties are the perfect vehicle for carrying out such a strategy. Nonpartisan, impeccably middle-class, untainted by Republican flaws, capable of persuading where career pols would fail, the TPs can go where formal political parties cannot. The Maine example must not be ignored. There should be no privileged sanctuaries where the likes of Robert Byrd can set themselves up as state Grand Kleagle in perpetuity.
So we have three crucial lessons from 2010: one on the level of practice, one on the level of strategy, and one on the level of philosophy. There are no doubt many others that I'm too naïve or obtuse to see, but we'll all be learning from 2010 for some time to come. We have ample time to contemplate, reconsider, and make our plans.
It's an oddity of political relativity that the left, though facing the same amount of days and months, somehow doesn't have that same stretch of open time ahead of it. Even as they emerge shaking from the ruins, 2012 is closing in on them like a freight train. And that's the way it should be.
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2)Obama Has a Listening Problem
The idea that government can spend our way to prosperity doesn't make sense to voters
By KARL ROVE
The rock star Sara Bareilles sang at President Barack Obama's Las Vegas rally for Sen. Harry Reid in October. Her biggest hit, "King of Anything," includes the lyrics, "You've got the talking down/Just not the listening." That pretty well sums up Mr. Obama's reaction to last week's midterm.
The president rejects the idea that voters don't like his policies on jobs and the economy. At his White House news conference last Wednesday, Mr. Obama observed, "If right now we had 5% unemployment instead of 9.6% . . . people would have more confidence in those policy choices."
Well, yes. But isn't unemployment much closer to 10% than 5% because the stimulus package didn't work as the president promised it would when he signed it? Mr. Obama's narrative that the economy's condition has nothing to do with his policies is nonsense.
When asked at the same news conference if he felt there was "a majority of Americans who think your policies are taking us in reverse," Mr. Obama waved off the criticism, saying that the "American people understand that we're still digging our way out of a pretty big mess."
Wrong again. Mr. Obama doesn't seem to understand that the midterm "shellacking" his party took was an explicit rejection of his policies, especially by independent voters.
This is borne out by a post-election poll released Tuesday by Democrat James Carville's Democracy Corps and Republican Ed Gillespie's Resurgent Republic. The survey found that 56% of independent voters voted for GOP candidates while just 38% voted Democratic, a 36-point swing from the 2006 midterm and a 26-point swing from the last presidential election.
Independents now look much more like Republicans than like Democrats—79% believe the country is on the wrong track and they're more than twice as likely to blame President Obama and the Democrats than to blame President Bush and Republicans.
Independents share the GOP view that the government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals. They trust the GOP more than Democrats on jobs and employment (50%-27%), the economy (48-25), government spending (50-23), the federal budget deficit (53-17), and taxes (54-23). A majority (51%) support extending all the Bush-era tax cuts even after hearing Mr. Obama's best arguments against extending them for people making over $250,000.
Instead of acknowledging the need for policy correction, Mr. Obama offers the now familiar excuse that it's all a communication problem. As he told the National Journal's Ron Fournier in October, his policy successes were "a lot for me to be able to communicate effectively to the public in any coherent way."
But the problem is not with the capacity of voters to grasp the brilliance of Mr. Obama's policies. Rather, the idea that government can spend our way to prosperity doesn't make sense to voters. The more they heard Mr. Obama talk about this approach, the more they rebelled.
Something similar happened with health care. The president dismisses the notion that last week's results were a rejection of ObamaCare, saying at his White House news conference that it would be "misreading the election" to argue "the American people want to see us for the next two years relitigate arguments that we had over the last two years."
But that's exactly what voters want. The Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic poll found that 51% of all midterm voters and 57% of independents believe ObamaCare should be "repealed and replaced."
In the wake of last week's epic rebuke, Mr. Obama has two historical models to follow. He can react as President Bill Clinton did after Democrats' 1994 defeat and move to the center, which resulted in two of Mr. Clinton's greatest achievements: a balanced budget and welfare reform. Or he can emulate Harry Truman in 1947-48, sticking hard to a liberal agenda and fighting the congressional GOP for obstructing it.
It will be difficult for Mr. Obama to channel Mr. Clinton, who was a Third Way Democrat and politically nimble. In addition, after the 1994 midterms, Mr. Clinton was freed of the baggage of HillaryCare, which failed to become law. Mr. Obama is stuck with his deeply unpopular health-care reform.
But it may be even more difficult for him to pull off a Truman. It's hard to run against a "do nothing" Congress when your own party controls the Senate and the GOP's agenda is more popular than yours.
Mr. Obama is in a pickle without an obvious path to winning back independents. After turning on him so decisively, they may well tell him, in the words of Ms. Bareilles: "You sound so innocent, all full of good intent/Swear you know best/But you expect me to jump up on board with you/Ride off into your delusional sunset . . . Who cares if you disagree, you are not me/Who made you king of anything?"
2a)A Broken President
By Geoffrey P. Hunt
As the nation swept the Democrats to the curb on November 2, the sheer relief of having been rescued from consignment to a collectivist dustbin was a blast of pure oxygen. Obama was not only crushed; he was disowned. While the absolute gains in Congress and State Houses all across the country were stunning enough, it was the speed of the about-face that was astonishing and epic.
Just two years ago, Obama was hailed as a 21st-century Lincoln, the figurative progeny of FDR and JFK combined. The finest dramatic speech-maker since Sir John Gielgud dominated the Shakespearean stage. The most gifted political orator since Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King. The long-awaited enlightened emperor who would soothingly heal rifts abroad, seamlessly ushering in a new era of social justice while effortlessly repairing a broken economy at home.
Instead, we now have a broken president. His domestic agenda is dead -- è morto. His legislative gains will soon be disarmed, if not unraveled. His agenda abroad fares no better. The embarrassing extravaganza in India was another lavish display of his ignorance of history -- this time about India and Pakistan. And his cowardly evasion in defining jihad was injury enough. How insulting to Indian lawmakers to witness in their own chamber that Obama was no orator -- just a mere speech-reader, carrying his teleprompter like an IV drip, the first-ever orator in that body to require the mechanical cue cards.
Our hapless president was outdone only by the excesses displayed by his wife. More diamond-studded belts and broaches and wear-only-once satin dresses and shopping bags bursting at the seams while two out of ten of her broke fellow Americans endure another day out of work waiting for the sheriff to serve foreclosure papers.
Contrast this empty and obscene pomp with FDR's modest yet practical choice of venues for meeting foreign dignitaries -- the state rooms of U.S. Navy cruisers such as the USS Augusta. Or Eleanor's selfless outreach to poor coal miners in Appalachia and her numerous visits to CCC camps all across the country in the 1930s.
Can this man, our president, and his lady be any more imaginative in finding ways to remove themselves from the realities of everyday Americans? Was this a vain attempt at recapturing the Star of India glitter or simply Obama's last hurrah, the favorite meal and final cigar of a man condemned to the gallows?
What remains of his presidency? Where can he go from here?
With liberals desperately searching for any Lazarus scenario, Obama has neither the issues nor the votes to mount any revival. Is there any foreign policy issue that he can win? How will appeasing radical Muslims, continuing to prosecute a war he doesn't believe in, piling on further debt that leaves even European socialists gasping, devaluing the dollar by monetizing our debt, and happily denying America's greatness in the world be winning issues?
Is there a single domestic initiative remaining -- energy, labor, environment, taxes, or social justice -- where his brand of collectivist big government solutions will have the ear of the American people and the votes in Congress? And he doesn't have the votes in the Senate to name any more Supreme Court justices.
We are a nation without a president.
Of course, the office isn't vacant in a physical or literal sense. Obama still occupies that titular role as head of state, commander-in-chief able to conduct transactions. He still commands the vast regulatory bureaucracy capable of sustaining a life of its own and able to inflict considerable damage.
Yet when we consider the modern version of the president as the inspirational leader of a free people, as the advocate and defender of America's greatness around the globe, as the champion of the oppressed and dispossessed while exhorting the self-confidence of individual achievement, the presidency under Obama has shriveled up, been rendered virtually irrelevant.
Perhaps the lesson of November 2 is that the notion of this nation embracing a Moses-like deliverer of the promised land has run its course. The founders never envisioned a government where so much power, except for the ability to wage war, would rest with the Executive. It was the House of Representatives -- close to the ground, diverse, and even fragmented -- where the power, the power of the people, was to reside. And the First and Tenth Amendments reserved distributed authority for the people.
The results of November 2 declared a presidency broken but more importantly asserted the primacy of self-government, locally owned and locally operated. A broken presidency, this time, is not to be mourned, but cheered.
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3)Palestinian Hamas "moderate" invites Ahmadinejad to visit Gaza
The Hamas government's deputy foreign minister Dr. Ahmed Yousef is actively campaigning for the Gaza regime to form a strategic partnership with Iran on the same lines as the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah alliance.
Middle East sources report that Yousef heads the radical Hamas's "moderate" wing.
His initiative will certainly be welcomed in Tehran as extending the Iranian foothold on the eastern Mediterranean from Lebanon as far south as the Gaza strip. Iran would also gain a forward position close to Israel's population centers, with leverage for expanding the wedge dividing Palestinian Hamas from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The ayatollahs would also be in place to threaten the stability of Jordan, where already Hamas-Damascus controls the local Muslim Brotherhood branch sufficiently to order its members to boycott last week's parliamentary elections.
Finally, close ties between Gaza and Tehran will bolster the Palestinian extremists' military and intelligence ties with Damascus and Hizballah. This will in turn boost the bloc led by Iran and Syria and add to its leverage for derailing any fence-building moves between the feuding Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah and perpetuate the division between the two Palestinian entities - one in Gaza and the other on the West Bank.
In any case, a further round of conciliation talks broke up in Damascus Wednesday, Nov. 10, without accord.
The Fatah delegation insisted that the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas be the sole sovereign authority for all security services in both territories.
For the first time, the Fatah delegation turned up with Palestinian security service officers from the West Bank - intelligence chief Gen. Majad Faraj and Preventative Security chief Col. Samir Rifai.
But the Hamas representatives demurred and instead demanded a "reconciliation and unification" to be drafted permitting each Palestinian faction to continue to rule its respective territory.
This dispute will decisively influence the US-sponsored talks between Israel and the Palestinians - if they ever take off. It means that the only accommodation attainable would be, at best, a partial one covering only the West Bank and a far cry from "the two nations living side by side in peace and security" goal aimed for by President Barack Obama and Secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
The tighter the prospective bond between Hamas and Iran, the farther it removes US policy objectives in the region.
Wednesday, Nov. 10, Ahmed Yousef was empowered by his superiors in the Hamas regime to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Gaza. He explained that the visit would "boost the morale of the resistance front here as did Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon."
In a broadcast over Israeli TV's Channel 2 that night, Arab Affairs commentator Ehud Yaari revealed that the Hamas official had laid the religious-ideological groundwork for his invitation with a new book entitled: The Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Distributed to Hamas leaders in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the West Bank as well as Gaza, the book's subtitle is: The Dialectic of State and Nation in the Thought of the Imams al-Banna and Khomeini.
Its preface was written by Dr. Muhammad al-Hindi, head of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, a violent Palestinian organization sponsored by Tehran which must therefore have approved the publication.
The writer explains that the contemporary affinity between Tehran and Hamas is neither random nor born of a marriage of convenience but rather predestined by the common aspiration for the divine ideal of an Islamic state.
The evolving partnership between Hamas and Iran and its negative impact on the prospect of an Israel-Palestinian peace is the key determinant of the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians in recent weeks - not, as claimed in Washington and Jerusalem, the row which has sprung up over 1,300 new Israeli apartments in old-established East Jerusalem suburbs.
3a) Outgoing Gaza Division Commander Eisenberg warns that Gaza confrontation in cards
By anan Greenberg
A clash with Hamas is inevitable and the IDF's Gaza Division is taking steps to prepare for escalation, outgoing Division Commander Brigadier-General Eyal Eisenberg said Thursday.
"It's a battle between our strong desire to reach peace and the end of the conflict, and between Hamas' desire to perpetuate the conflict and prevent a solution for us and our neighbors," Eisenberg said. "These aspirations of Hamas can only lead us to an inevitable confrontation in the future."
During a farewell ceremony held for Eisenberg at the Gaza Division headquarters, adjacent to the southern Israeli Kibbutz Reim, he added that even after Operation Cast Lead Hamas did not let go of its commitment to resistance, although "the operation proved to our neighbors that not only do we know how to hold a sword, but also how to swing it in a decisive, painful way.
"These were two stormy years in a time full of challenges," he said. "These challenges are in fact Israel's struggle for independence and for our right to live here as a free people in its country."
The incoming Gaza Division commander, Brigadier-General Yossi Bachar, said that "I now accept the burden of commanding with the great trepidation that comes with understanding the extent of the mission."
At the end of the event, Eisenberg passed on to Bachar his classified communication device. "It will not bring you good news," the outgoing commander said, adding "The division is lucky to receive a commander like you, and I am certain that together you will reach new heights."
3b) We are ready for another war with Israel
Group's leader Nasrallah says they will "cut the hand" of anyone who tries to arrest any member of the party in connection with Rafik Hariri assassination.
Hizbullah is ready for another war with Israel, said the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah in a televised speech on Thursday evening.
Referring to what he termed Israel's habit of becoming involved where it is not welcome, he emphasized that his Lebanese terrorist group is not at all afraid of future conflicts.
With progress in the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), charged with investigating the 2005 Rafik Hariri assassination, and the Hizbullah indictments expected, Nasrallah also said that Hizbullah will "cut the hand" of anyone who tries to arrest any member of the party.
Denying outright any involvement in the assassination, he said that the group would not accept any accusation against any of its fighters or leaders.
He added that the group would defend itself anyway it chooses.
On Wednesday, Press TV reported that Hizbullah had urged the Lebanese government to deal with the issue of false witnesses in the investigation tribunal.
The appeal came as the Lebanese government failed to reach an agreement about the issue after a four-hour meeting on Wednesday.
Hizbullah said the tribunal is marred by witnesses who gave false information.
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4)Mitch the Knife
By W. James Antle, III
The Weaver Popcorn Company's website advertises this fact as a "kernel of truth": their business was founded -- and is still based in! -- Indiana. But CEO Mike Weaver didn't come to talk about microwave popcorn. At the moment, he is more interested in touting another Hoosier product for possible national consumption: Indiana governor Mitch Daniels.
Weaver says Daniels is usually "the smartest guy in the room" and a true "servant leader" who gets things done for Indiana. "He's also very modest," Weaver adds. "Almost to a fault." Indeed, Daniels professed surprise that he's about to be the subject of another magazine article. "Did you run out of other things to write about?" he asks. But Daniels thinks the country could use a little humility from its leaders, a sense of realism about Washington's financial and metaphysical limits.
Call it a humble domestic policy. "We are approaching a moment of Republican responsibility," Daniels avers. The central question is whether the GOP can govern as well as it can campaign against Democratic profligacy. At dinner with a group of conservative intellectuals and journalists in New York -- "I'm surprised I don't have a rash," he says of his two days in the city -- he argues that the focus must be on making the federal government fiscally sound again.
"The Democrats are better positioned to do this in a Nixon goes to China sense," Daniels says. "But that's purely theoretical. It won't happen. There's no interest." Bill Clinton isn't president anymore and the era of big government was never really over. So the challenge of balancing the budget, getting control of the national debt, and reforming the country's sagging entitlements falls to the Republicans.
The Republicans have seldom been equal to the task. Party leaders have made a serious effort to reduce federal spending exactly three times since World War II: the "Do Nothing" Congress of 1947-48, the Congress that came in with Ronald Reagan in 1981-82, and the Gingrich Congress of 1995-96. In the last two cases, the results were short-lived. In the first, the Republicans were promptly relieved of their majority by the voters in the next election.
GOP bigwigs have gotten the message. When Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced a bold plan to tackle the entitlements crisis, few Republicans came to his aid. Most of his colleagues preferred a campaign document that largely confined its critique of federal spending to earmarks while engaging in a little demagoguery about Democratic Medicare cuts. Opposing Barack Obama is one thing. Cleaning up after him -- and fellow spendthrift George W. Bush -- is another.
THAT'S WHERE MITCH DANIELS comes in. Members of the Republican spending-cutters hall of fame include such flinty Ohioans as Robert Taft and John Kasich. Perhaps it's time to look next door to Indiana, where Daniels has one advantage over the Buckeye budget hawks: executive experience that might come in handy on the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue. But are the American people ready for a leader who says less is more?
Daniels started burnishing his credentials in this area before the governorship. The Princeton graduate managed Richard Lugar's 1976 Senate campaign, followed Lugar to Washington and spent eight years working in the Senate, and then became a political aide in the Reagan White House. Daniels has thus seen the inner workings of government as both an elected official and a staff member. "It's sometimes kind of intimidating to work as a staffer for a guy who has done your job, only could do it better," says former Daniels communications director Brad Rateike. "When you say something couldn't get done, he's like, 'Really?' "
Daniels worked his first magic as a budget-cutter when he returned to Indiana to become chief operating officer of the Hudson Institute. The free market think tank had fallen on hard times and Daniels was widely celebrated in conservative circles for turning things around. Introducing himself to the group at the New York dinner, current Hudson Institute president Herb London shook his head with a smile and said, "I know Governor Daniels can cut costs."
Eli Lilly & Co. plucked Daniels from the nonprofit sector and put him into the private sector in 1990, hiring him to head its corporate affairs division. He worked his way up the ranks, eventually running the company's North American operations. But government beckoned again, prompting Daniels to leave Lilly to become President Bush's budget director. In an administration known for its fiscal tomfoolery, Daniels was called "the Blade." Even the one criticism of his tenure at the Office of Management and Budget -- that he lowballed the costs of the Iraq war -- is misleading.
Daniels wasn't asked to project the cost of an eight-year occupation. His assignment was to calculate the price tag of speedy invasion with six months of war. The resultant number-crunching justified the initial Bush request of $74 billion in funding. But it wasn't Daniels's fault that there wasn't flower-throwing and a phased withdrawal afterward. By 2004, Daniels was ready to tack his budget scalpel back home and run for governor of Indiana.
Once elected, Governor Daniels started cutting right away. On his first day in office, he rescinded his Democratic predecessor's executive order allowing collective bargaining by government unions. As conservative journalist Conn Carroll later wrote, "The decision has not only cost the left's perpetual dependence machine millions in taxpayer-funded union dues, but also enabled the state to cut costs by instituting a ‘pay-for-performance' personnel system." Daniels trimmed the state payrolls by 14 percent and Indiana now has fewer state employees than it did in 1982.
Daniels eliminated a $200 million deficit and transformed it into a $1.3 billion surplus, boosting the state's bond rating and cash reserves after eight years of unbalanced budgets. He was able to cut property taxes by an average of 30 percent despite a Democratic-controlled lower house of the legislature, delivering the largest tax cut in Indiana history.
Under Daniels, all state agencies were made to cut their budgets by 10 percent and Indiana sold two-thirds of its state-owned airplanes. Most state employees didn't get pay raises in 2009 or 2010 and the governor's pay was cut. But more than 50,000 low-income Hoosiers received health coverage through a relatively free-market reform -- the Healthy Indiana Plan -- that combined health savings accounts with catastrophic insurance (though the program's health savings accounts may now run afoul of ObamaCare's new qualified coverage standards).
These statistics and professional accomplishments will count for little on the national stage unless they are connected to a broader vision of governance. "Talking about what you've done in Indiana is kind of like showing home movies," Weaver admits. "People pretend to listen but they don't really care." It is, however, a track record that suggests Daniels might be qualified to meet the challenges that lie ahead
"ANY FAIR READING of the nation's balance sheet suggests we're in a dangerous moment," says Daniels. "If we don't act soon, we don't have a prayer." What is needed, Daniels contends, is a president who will do whatever it takes to get the country's fiscal house in order, political consequences be damned. Think Ross Perot without the resemblance to that crazy aunt in the basement.
Daniels is coy about whether he would like to be that president, but he is already beginning to cobble together the message. "Nobody wants as their legacy plundering their children and grandchildren's inheritance," he says. "I think the American people are beginning to understand that we are spending money that we don't have. The Tea Party has raised consciousness."
"Social Security needs to be protected from inflation, that's it," Daniels continues. "Who are the real enemies of Social Security and Medicare? The people who want to keep them exactly as they are right now." The responsibility to fixing these programs and restoring them to solvency, he says, is about to fall "on the party whose uniform I wear."
In that sense, though Daniels eagerly identifies as a supply-sider, he is the anti-Jack Kemp. Kemp argued that budget-cutting was a form of "root-canal politics," a model of austerity that could not compete with income redistribution the way a model of growth can. The few flaws in Daniels's fiscal record come on taxes. He refused to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge during his first campaign for governor in 2004. He raised the cigarette tax to help pay for his Healthy Indiana Plan and he partially offset his property tax reductions with a 1 percent increase in the sales tax (it still amounted to a substantial net tax cut). Daniels even contemplated a one-year tax increase on the wealthy to help balance the budget. "It was worse than a crime," he admits. "It was a mistake."
But this is a different era, and Daniels argues that reining in spending is as crucial for empowering individuals as paring back tax rates was during the Reagan years. "Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of 'Change you can believe in,'" he says. "I'd start with ‘Change that believes in you.' You are a child of God who can make your own decisions."
Daniels is also the antithesis of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and putative frontrunner for the 2012 Republican nomination. Romney is famous for telling GOP constituencies what they want to hear. Daniels is gaining a reputation for delivering unwelcome news. He told the Weekly Standard, of all places, that military spending would have to be cut. "When Bush arrived we were spending $300 billion on national defense, and he thought that was plenty," Daniels said. "Now it's what, $800 billion?"
When Commentary's Jennifer Rubin invited Daniels to take a whack at the Obama administration's fecklessness on foreign policy, the governor praised peace through strength and then promised to "ask questions about the extent of our commitments" overseas. "If we go broke," Daniels argued, "no one will follow a pauper." Rubin was disappointed: "It's not clear whether [Daniels] has thought these issues through, or whether he views foreign policy as anything more than a cost-control issue."
NOTHING DANIELS HAS SAID has gotten him in more trouble with a Republican voting bloc than his proposed "truce" on hot-button moral issues. The next president, he told the Standard's Andrew Ferguson, "would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We're going to just have to agree to get along for a little while." Win the budget battle first, wage the culture war later. Daniels is pro-life and believes marriage is between a man and a woman, but social conservatives were outraged.
At the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., speaker after speaker-all possible Republican primary opponents-not too subtly criticized Daniels's truce formulation. "Those who would have us ignore the battle being fought over life, marriage, and religious liberty have forgotten the lessons of history," said Rep. Mike Pence, the fellow Hoosier who chairs the House Republican Conference, in his speech to the Family Research Council-organized gathering. "America's darkest moments have come when economic arguments trumped moral principles."
"We must realize there's a direct correlation between the stability of families and the stability of our economy," former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who had previously attacked Daniels by name in a fundraising solicitation, said in his address that day. "I'm so tired of people telling me we don't want to hear about issues of the family." Former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) called the separation of fiscal and moral issues "a very dangerous idea," saying, "It's not just economics." Taking aim at both Daniels and Republican Haley Barbour, who was also seen as downplaying social issues, Christian right first lady Phyllis Schlafly declared, "That's not only wrong, that's dumb because we need the social conservatives as well as the fiscal conservatives to take those seats in November."
Pence finished first in the Values Voter Summit presidential straw poll, one of the early tests of social conservative activist support. Huckabee finished second. Politico pronounced Daniels the event's loser. Speaking to the people in the audience, one found that many knew little about him besides the fact that he was the guy who wanted a truce on social issues while judges impose same-sex marriage and the new health care law paves the way for taxpayer funding of abortion. "I could never vote for someone like that," says one middle-aged woman who came from Tennessee to attend.
It's a situation not unlike that faced by Phil Gramm during the 1996 presidential race. Like Daniels, the Republican senator from Texas had been a stalwart social conservative and had compiled a particularly strong pro-life voting record. Gramm took all the right positions in his official platform. But with his background as an economist, he preferred to run as a green-eyeshade government-cutter. When social conservative leaders met with Gramm to try to persuade him to talk about more than money, he demurred.
"I'm not a preacher, I can't do that," Gramm was later quoted as saying. "I'm not running for preacher, I'm running for president." The social conservatives stormed out. James Dobson fumed to reporters that he had entered the meeting planning endorse Gramm for president and now couldn't vote for him. Gramm's failure to consolidate economic and social conservatives ended up dooming his presidential campaign, and he ultimately won fewer votes than either Pat Buchanan or Steve Forbes.
GRAMM'S FATE DOES NOT necessarily have to be Daniels's. Daniels has begun to refine his social issues comments, walking back his early noncommittal response on banning taxpayer funding for groups that promote abortion abroad -- he says he'd now back reinstating the Mexico City policy -- and clarifying what he meant. "A truce is not a surrender," said Daniels. "Who are the aggressors here? Gay marriage advocates. Those who divide us on race and gender." The implication is that Daniels is offering a truce, but only if social liberals honor it too.
But it is clear where Daniels's priorities lie: fixing the federal government's balance sheet. "I'm prepared to set aside almost anything else," he says. Daniels wants to try to get "50 percent plus one" in a national election running as a cost-cutter for whom Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense are all on the table. "Damn, these are supposed to be the third rails, impossible," he continues. "But I'm optimistic it can be done. We need a new compact for young people."
The voters will get it if politicians are honest with them, Daniels insists. "People know these things," he argues. "It's crazy to send Warren Buffet a pension check." But one thing is certain: "We'll never know unless someone tries." Will Daniels try? "I sure hope so," says Weaver.
With his focus on austerity, Daniels doesn't talk like a presidential candidate. The next challenge is whether he looks enough like one. He is 5'7 and balding. He is affable but not exactly larger than life. Ferguson, who described Daniels as having "sunk into a black hole of personal magnetism and come out the other side, where the very lack of charisma becomes charismatic," paints the following picture of the 2012 presidential contest: "I see [Daniels] as he strides toward the middle of the stage to shake hands with Obama before the first debate and comes up to the president's navel. Election over."
Such descriptions astonish and confuse Daniels's fans. "I don't get why all these magazine profiles keep saying he's not charismatic," says one current aide. "Have they ever actually talked to him?" Rateike begins to guffaw just thinking about the governor. "He's one of the funniest guys I know," he says. "You may not believe me, but he has really got a lot of charisma." They all point to Daniels's common touch, his preference for sleeping on voters' couches rather than in fancy hotels, his love of Butler basketball and Harley Davidson motorcycles, his starring role on the YouTube phenomenon "MitchTV."
MIKE WEAVER REMEMBERS the exact moment he was sold on Mitch Daniels. He sent the governor an e-mail telling him he needed to break the stalemate with the Democratic majority in the state house of representatives to get anything more done. That means the Republicans needed to retake the house. For that to happen, Weaver told the governor, Daniels needed to be involved.
"At 8:43 on a Saturday morning, six minutes later, I got an e-mail back," says Weaver. "I later told my employees that they hardly ever get back to me within six minutes." As it happens, Daniels took Weaver's advice. He went out and recruited promising Republican candidates for the state legislature. The GOP now stands a decent chance of retaking the lower house and thwarting Daniels's Democratic nemesis Pat Bauer, the house Speaker who was first elected in the 1970s and bears a passing resemblance to the Dukes of Hazzard character Boss Hogg.
In Indiana, at least, Daniels has managed to appeal to a large number of people. After a tough race in 2004, he was reelected four years later by an 18-point margin even as Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1964. Daniels won young voters and carried 20 percent of the black vote, both groups where Republicans fared abysmally across the country that year. Daniels's approval rating is usually more than 60 percent and has reached as high as 70 percent.
"Would his appeal translate well with the national press? I don't know," Rateike admits. "But I think people are ready for substance." This is an especially common sentiment among Republicans who are tired of inarticulate presidential candidates -- George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain -- and want someone who can explain what they believe and why. Daniels is seen as someone engaged with policy details who can go beyond trite Obama-bashing and deliver a critique of federal spending that isn't limited to wisecracks about earmarks.
"If government spending prevented pain, we wouldn't have pain," Daniels says. "Obama's budget leads to disaster." According to him, the question is whether we are ready to do something about it. If Daniels runs for president, he will be asking the American people to do something they have seldom if ever done since Calvin Coolidge: elect a frugal candidate who combines government-cutting with a good-government ethic and doesn't look like a commander in chief straight out of central casting.
The above seems like a tall order. But after the country's first brush with progressive rule, Americans were ready for a little normalcy. As the bills come due, maybe another Coolidge Republican's time has come.
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5) The Rollback Begins
Public Pay And Pensions: Voters across the nation — California included — are signaling an end to the government workers' gravy train. Even the unions may be starting to get the message.
Last week's elections didn't just upend the Democratic Party in Congress. They also delivered a warning to the public-sector unions that form the core of the party's support. In nearly all elections where public pay and benefits were an issue, the voters ruled that the era of ever-richer rewards for government was over: Say goodbye to fat pensions at 55. Get used to living like the rest of us.
We can count one contest in which the unions beat back an attempt to trim public workers' benefits. This was in San Francisco, where voters defeated a measure that would have required city workers to pay more for health care and retirement.
But even in that union-friendly town, the unions didn't win them all. Another proposition, to end automatic pay increases as part of reforming the city's transit system, won handily.
Elsewhere in California, voters in eight cities and counties approved measures to cut public pension benefits. In Illinois, dozens of suburban communities voted for a resolution urging the legislature to lower benefits for new state workers.
Six new governors won on platforms that endorsed the idea of moving toward 401(k)-style plans, in which public workers would contribute to their own retirement and are not guaranteed a pension income. Republicans Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Robert Bentley of Alabama, Bill Haslam of Tennessee and Scott Walker of Wisconsin all supported these "defined contribution" plans, which are the norm in most of the private sector.
Republican Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and independent Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island have endorsed hybrid plans combining defined-contribution elements with those of traditional defined-benefit pensions, which guarantee retirement income.
The Pew Center on the States, at its Stateline Web site, summed up last week's voting as "in some ways the first national referendum on the future of public pensions." It was also a referendum on priorities, with the public choosing to put public services before the self-interest of public workers.
Back when the economy was humming and pensions thought they could get 8% annual returns in the stock market forever, unions seemed to have it both ways. They could make their members richer (especially on the retirement end) without the public feeling any pain.
But people now see how untenable this sweet deal was — and how it endangers the very services that the public workers are paid to deliver. The revenue hits taken by states and localities in the Great Recession have forced the issue by requiring real trade-offs: Either cut pay and pensions or have fewer teachers, police and firefighters.
Then there's the Bell effect. Earlier this year, struggling taxpayers learned just how well some public-sector employees were doing. The revelation of outrageous salaries in the California city of Bell was a catalyst for scrutiny of public pay in general. All kinds of data have surfaced since then about six-figure salaries and lavish overtime in places large and small. It's clear that the governing class has not been shouldering its share of sacrifice in these tough times.
Even unions may be starting to get the message. California's largest state employees local, representing 95,000 workers, has just ratified a new contract that rolls back pension benefits for new workers to pre-1999 levels and saves the state just under $400 million annually in labor costs.
The future is clouded in California because voters there have just chosen a union ally, Jerry Brown, as their next governor. But as Brown and the unions well know, these voters are also used to taking matters into their own hands through the initiative process. If their actions last week at the local level are any indication, they're tired of writing so many blank checks.
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