You never had it so good

Carol Platt Liebau's latest article diagnosis an issue in America.

According to the Department of Labor, when it comes to hourly wages, the average in the private sector is $19.68 per hour; for workers in state and local government, it’s $26.25. While 74% of private-industry workers receive paid sick leave and 8 paid holidays per year, 98% of state and local government workers have paid sick leave, along with 11 paid holidays yearly. And 99% of government workers have retirement benefits (with the same percentage enjoying medical benefits), compared to 74% and 86% respectively of private sector employees. Finally, in the private sector, an average of 20% of medical premiums are paid by employees, while state and local government workers pay only 11% on average. By almost any measure, it pays to work for the government – subsidized by taxpayer money and unconstrained by the economic discipline imposed on the private sector by the need to compete -- rather than as a taxpaying employee in a private enterprise.

It wouldn't suit her point to talk about the history, but the truth is back in the day both private and public sector jobs had many of these advantages. But as unions dwindled, businesses moved to the south and to other nations, the standard of living in the private sector has steadily decreased relative to the public sector. The solution for Republicans isn't that American workers have it to hard and should be improved; how could they think that? Rather, in their quest to support big business, they find the one class of workers that have closer to decent wages and benefits and attempt to strip those away.

Townhall readers are varied on this issue. Some are pro-business and therefore want to see the union smashed. Others were very down on the governor, comparing him to Mubarak. And some are just envious and want to tear public sector employees down.

But why is the hussein, who wanted to be elected as president for all the people, chopoing to stand with a ghreedy minority of parasites, more concerned about their over generous slariies and benifits that many working in the private sector will never enjoy through their jobs.

Seems rather selfish that well paid public sector union parasites, have no qualms about those with lower paying jobs be asked to pay higher taxes just to enrich these union slugs

it's long past time tyo end the public unions and have them pay the same proportions of their incomers for retirement and health benefits like the rest of us.

The use of the name hussein to refer to President Obama is of course intended to remind us he's not really an American.

Does She Believe It

Sometimes when you are reading an article, and they say something particularly non-sensical, you wonder if they believe it themselves. Carol Platt Liebau's latest article provides a case in point.

From the gay marriage case to the Ground Zero mosque debate, the elites don't even offer the courtesy of presenting principled rebuttals of their opponents’ arguments. Instead, they dismiss them scornfully as the product of inferior minds, unworthy of consideration by intelligent people.

Laughable. The truth is that of course Liberals and Populists have expounded on why they support Gay Marriage and support the Cordoba Center ad naseum. How you can read, for example, Mayor Bloombergs defense of the Cordoba Center, and feel like he hasn't presented a principle rebuttal of those who oppose is impossible. And there have been plenty of other well reasoned responses.

Getting Humble

Carol Platt Liebau's latest article is directed, indirectly, at the base. It explains to them the facts of life; they are out of power now, and if they want to get back in power they need to pull together.

You shouldn't really say that directly to the base. It's a downer message. "You guys can support us and put your ideals on hold or you can not support us and watch Obama and his minions remake America." If you say that directly, the base might not go for it. They might go third party ("The lesser of two evils is still evil") or they might stay home ("Once America sees how bad liberalism is they will elect real conservatives instead of those losers we got in office now").

So Liebau says it indirectly, as a message to both the party and the tea-partiers. The message to elected Republicans and the RNCC is to support Conservatives in areas where conservatives can win (She singles out Charlie Crist as someone Republicans shouldn't be supporting). And then she addresses the Tea Partiers.

On the other hand, Tea Partiers need to be realistic, and understand the limitations of political passion and zeal. Plenty of congressional districts wouldn’t support even a second Ronald Reagan, simply because they are irremediably liberal. Rather than allowing the “best” to become the enemy of the “good enough,” activists could best further their cause by supporting the most conservative candidate who can win, rather than the most conservative candidate, period – when it means that candidate will surely lose.

Those who oppose such a course are prone to claim that insufficiently conservative Republicans are the functional equivalent of Democrats. But they are wrong, for one fundamental reason. Compared to the status quo, every Republican – of whatever stripe – who heads to Washington next year will ultimately empower the most fiscally-responsible wing of the party.

We'll see if the base listens to her, but I doubt it. Not yet. They still have plenty of conservative commentators telling them, again and again, that Americans largely agree with their point of view. All you need is the right conservative message and the Democrats/Liberals will be heading for the hills.

Pulling the Plug

Carol Platt Liebau's latest article is undoubtedly heartfelt. She writes about her father who sounds like a great guy and who recently passed away. Charity should require me to let it go at that, but honesty requires me to write on a bit more.

Whatever his health profile looked like on paper – the only way a “cost containment” bureaucrat would ever have encountered it – his life was precious both to him and to those of us who loved him.

That’s why I’m grateful that he wasn’t required by some version of ObamaCare to participate in “end of life counseling,” where someone who knew nothing about him – and couldn’t have cared less – might have tried to convince him that he (and his children) would be better off if he were dead.

As has been repeatedly noted, the end of life counseling is optional and intended to be a service for those who would use it; it's not intended to be mandatory as a cost saving measure.

At least until now, there’s been no question about whether someone’s life is “worth” saving; we’ve presumed that everyone’s life is important – not just those of the powerful or the important or the connected. Or the young.

Once government mandates replace market forces in allocating health services, the resulting rationing will do more than destroy the most innovative medical system in the world.

Aye theres the rub; because of course insurance companies currently aren't acting like everyone's life is important. They aren't, Ms. Liebau. It's great that your father got the kind of care he deserved, presumably because you and your family were able to pay for it. On the other hand there are plenty of deserving people, just as deserving as your father, who are denied care because of your glibly named "market forces."

Obama's First Justice

Well Conservatives have already started working on Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court - a nomination he hasn't made yet, but one they know will be just awful. Carol Platt Liebau decries the possibility of Obama picking an empathetic justice, which she takes to me empathetic to unwed mothers and accused criminals. From this (and ignoring the rest of Obama's statement, she concludes that Obama wants a super legislator on the bench running roughshod over the constitution and decent Americans.

Instead, Obama wants a policymaker sitting on the Supreme Court – in fact, a super-lawmaker on steroids. He’s looking for a judge willing to engage in an enterprise that has nothing to do with the actual process of adjudication – that is, interpreting the laws that have been passed by a legislature and signed by an executive.

Of course the assumption Liebau makes here is that the conservative interpretation of the laws is the only reasonable one; the only way that a justice would rule in agreement with Kennedy or Ginsburg is if they were being essentially unreasonable. Empathy clouds their minds and they vote by something other than the law.

Poppycock. While I might strongly disagree with an Alito or a Scalia, I'm not going to pretend like they don't know the law. Nor am I going to pretend like they don't have legal rationales for why they vote the way they do; I simply disagree with their interpretation (or to be more precise, I agree with people who know far more about such issues than I do).

In other news, Kevin James suggests Daffy Duck as the ideal candidate for the Surpreme Court; largely because he is a minority, black, handicapped (speech impediment), and a perpetual victim. Because the only thing we liberals are looking for is minorities, not qualifications. Clearly this must be so because if we were interested in a qualified candidate we would select another White guy.

Why did McCain Lose?

I've missed out on the opportunity to comment on a lot of Conservative Post-Mortems of the election but there are still a few being written, including Carol Platt Liebau's latest article. In it she gives four reasons, the Media, Campaign Finance Reform, Latinos and McCain. Yep, John McCain must share a portion of the blame for his campaigns failure.

For almost his entire Senate career, John McCain prided himself on his status as a “maverick.” In doing so, however, he alienated a good number of regular Republicans who would have contributed more and worked harder to elect a candidate about whom they were more enthused.

Obviously the key element in any conservative post-mortem is to remind readers that Conservatism didn't lose. Conservatism is the best policy and the American people really love Conservatism. So once you absolve Conservatism, well, you have to find something else to blame the movements failures on, and the culprit is usually the media or insufficient conservatism.

Some other Expressions the Obama Camp may not want to use

When Pigs Fly - as in "With McCain in office, we'll have to wait till when pigs fly before we bring our troops home from Iraq.

Pig in a Poke - as in "The American Voters need to be careful, when looking at a McCain Presidency, that they don't get stuck with a pig in a poke."

Make a Pig's Ear - as in "If McCain and Palin get into office you can be sure they will make a pig's ear out of it."

Pearls before Swine - as in "I don't want to get down in the gutter with McCain; I don't want to throw my pearls before swine."

High on the Hog - as in "If McCain and Palin are elected, expect corporate america to be High on the Hog."

Guinea Pig - as in "We don't need America to be the guinea pig in Sarah Palin's uninformed experiments."

For those who don't know Obama used the phrase put lipstick on a pig in referring to how McCain and Palin, who are pretending to be mavericks but are really the same sort of Republicans who have been running this country for the past 8 years. The sensitive Ms. Palin, the sensitive McCain Campaign, and the ultra-sensitive conservative commentator corps have interpreted that to mean he called Sarah Palin a pig. Nonsensical I know.

Frankly I think the whole thing is ridiculous - if Sarah Palin is shedding any tears over being called a pig, I am sure they are crocodile tears.

Wait, did I just call her a crocodile? Back the dictionary of idioms.

Image over Substance

Carol Platt Liebau's latest article argues that the American people want and deserve style over substance.

Normal Americans are tuning in to get a gut feel for the candidates – to decide whom they like and trust, whose views they generally agree with and, of course, whom they can best tolerate seeing on television every night for the next four years.

That’s why last week’s debate was actually the most informative of the entire season. For once, along with all the wonky canned policy responses, it offered real, new insights into the candidates as human beings, and forced them to answer the “character questions” that are central to shaping everyday voters’ gut-level decision making.

Of course these kinds of "character questions" have given us eight years of George Bush and are poised to give us four years of John McCain (who would sure like to invade or bomb Iran). Because of course it is only the Democrats who have "character questions." The sainted McCain, despite having very bad policies and programs, doesn't have to worry about having his character questioned.

So when Liebau writes in praise of the idea that character matters and that these kind of gotcha characters reveal character, well, she already knows that the press is disinclined to go after her candidate.

The Democrats Fatal Mistake

Apparently the Democrats have fatally wounded their chances to get power once more by criticizing General Petraeus and by failing to condemn MoveOn.Org vociferiously enough. Or that's the current spin from our Republican pundits. Take, for example, Carol Platt Liebau's latest article.

In calling General Petraeus a liar, Democrats by implication accused him of betraying his country by recklessly sacrificing the lives of American fighting men and women for strictly political reasons – a frontal assault on his patriotism and his honor. In doing so, they overstepped. In the wake of the general’s testimony on Capitol Hill, newspaper headlines noted the need for Democrats to find a new political strategy to end the war.

Worse yet for the Democrats, their attacks on General Petraeus offered Americans a moment of clarity. Democrats’ vitriol, their political gamesmanship, and their patent disregard for the substance of the General’s testimony opened an all-too-revealing window into the party’s soul – and showcased its stunning lack of seriousness about national security in general and the Iraq war in particular.

It must be comforting for Liebau to believe that her own perceptions are those of the American peoples. To believe deep in her heart that America is really tired of Democrats asking tough questions (such as they are) on the war in Iraq.

Must be very comforting even it is unlikely to be accurate.

Conservative Pundits Want Conservatives to vote for Republicans

Big news eh? But they seem pretty insistent about it. Check out these articles.

Burt Prelutsky: Vote early and often
Carol Platt Liebau: Election '06 matters to everyone
Doug Wilson: V Squared: Why you must vote and volunteer

And there's a few others that seem to touch on this issue indirectly. The argument is pretty consistent - You should vote because as bad as Republican rule has proven to be, Democrat rule would be even worse.

The truth is, I know an awful lot of conservatives and I don’t know a single one who is so irresponsible, so unconcerned about America’s well-being, that he would sit idly by and allow this catastrophe to take place.

It would be bad enough to allow Democrats for the next two years to determine where and when, or even if, the war on terror will be waged; bad enough to allow them to eliminate Bush’s tax cuts; bad enough to let them decide whether or not to erect a wall along our southern border; bad enough to give them an even bigger say in who gets appointed to federal judgeships. But the worst part is that there’s not only no guarantee that they’d be gone after a single term, but in fact not the slightest chance. There is a reason, after all, that they’re called incumbents, not outcumbents.

Burt Prelutsky, and you can see why he's called an humorist.

We must set aside our anger and frustration and support Republican candidates across our nation. Why the switch from critic to supporter? Because the alternative is much worse. For example, Nancy Pelosi, the would-be Democrat majority leader, is no friend of the taxpayer. In fact, she has voted 19 times against eliminating the death tax. She also voted against the historic welfare reform bill of 1996; against protecting the right to say “one nation under God,” in the Pledge of Allegiance; against banning partial-birth abortions; and against requiring voter identification at polling stations so that we can ensure that only legal citizens cast votes.

This one's from Doug Wilson, who is very keen on preventing voter fraud, as all Republicans are. Because, of course, they want to make it harder for minorities to vote, and being tough on voter fraud accomplishes this important goal, without being as crude as some of their other tactics.

. . . if Democrats are given the power to weaken America’s position in the war on terror, not only will they put all of us in greater jeopardy, but – through a premature retreat from Iraq – they could also undermine the cause for which so many brave American soldiers have died. Next Tuesday, we need to vote as if our lives – and our families’– depended on it.

And this is the money quote, from Carol Platt Liebau. If you don't vote for Republicans you are going to die.

These are not the kinds of articles you want to write at the end of an election cycle. It should be a forgone conclusion that voting for your candidate is the right thing to do. It says a lot about how far the Republicans have fallen that they have to keep hammering this point home.

And then they don't even offer any positive accomplishments, they simply press the "hate Democrats" button a couple of times and call it a day. "Yeah I know our guys are a bunch of losers, but come on. Democrats are far worse." That's not inspiring. We'll have to see if that strategy works.

Aiding and Abetting

Carol Platt Liebau's latest article accuses Senator McCain (and others) of aiding and abetting the enemies of freedom, i.e. Democrats and Terrorists.

Certainly, it would be wrong for the United States to condone behavior that routinely transgresses the boundaries of humanity and the traditions of civilized warfare. But those who would tie America’s hands likewise must understand that it’s unconscionable to place the lives of their fellow citizens at risk because of their own moral vanity, excessive concern about world opinion, or unrealistic hopes about how our treatment of detainees will impact terrorist behavior. It’s time for Senators McCain, Graham and Warner to demonstrate that they care as much about the safety and security of everyday Americans as they do about the “dignity” of terrorist detainees.

I think it's clear that Conservative Punditry would like to see McCain not run for President in 2008. They are likely to be dissapointed in this desire. But I do encourage Conservative Punditry to continue fighting for torture - it really does put their ideals on display for us all to see.

A Godless Constitution

Good article today at Townhall by Carol Platt Liebau, on Katherine Harris's remarks from a couple of weeks back.

That’s why recent remarks by Rep. Katherine Harris, a Republican candidate for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat, were so remarkably offensive. Playing into every stereotype that the left has purveyed about religious conservatives, Harris insisted that America was not intended to be a “nation of secular laws,” called separation of church and state a “lie we have been told” and asserted that, “If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin.”

Rep. Harris’ statements run counter to the text and plain meaning of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which holds that “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” By insisting that “sin” will be the essential byproduct of the work of non-Christian legislators, Harris falls into the worst kind of religious bigotry – and conveniently overlooks the unorthodox positions on social issues assumed by Christians like Teddy Kennedy and Mario Cuomo.

It is a bit unfortunate that Ms. Liebau chooses to portray Ms. Harris has a rhetorical lone gunman. Unfortunately that is not accurate. The dominionist movement would agree with everything Ms. Harris said, and, like her, seek an America where non-Christians do not hold public office.

But, rather than dwelling on the negative, let's give Ms. Liebau credit for dealing with Ms. Harris honestly, something many of her fellow Republicans have failed to do.