Barack Obama, Bewildered Bystander 
He’s angry, but not angry enough to fix what’s wrong. 

By Charles Krauthammer

• 

(Pool Photo/Getty Images)

 

Charles Krauthammer 

The president is upset. Very upset. Frustrated and angry. Seething about the government’s handling of Ebola, said the front-page headline in the New York Times last Saturday.

There’s only one problem with this pose, so obligingly transcribed for him by the Times. It’s hisgovernment. He’s president. Has been for almost six years. Yet Barack Obama reflexively insists on playing the shocked outsider when something goes wrong within his own administration.

IRS? “It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,” he thundered in May 2013, when the story broke of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups. “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS.”\

Except that within nine months, Obama had grown far more tolerant, retroactively declaring this to be a phony scandal without “a smidgen of corruption.”

Obamacare rollout? “Nobody is more frustrated by that than I am,” said an aggrieved Obama about the botching of the central element of his signature legislative achievement. “Nobody is madder than me.”

Veterans Affairs scandal? Presidential chief of staff Denis McDonough explained: “Secretary [Eric] Shinseki said yesterday . . . that he’s mad as hell and the president is madder than hell.” A nice touch — taking anger to the next level.

The president himself declared: “I will not stand for it.” But since the administration itself said the problem was longstanding, indeed predating Obama, this means he had stood for it for five and a half years.

The one scandal where you could credit the president with genuine anger and obliviousness involves the recent breaches of White House Secret Service protection. The Washington Post described the first lady and president as “angry and upset,” and no doubt they were. But the first Secret Service scandal — the hookers of Cartagena — evinced this from the president: “If it turns out that some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then of course I’ll be angry.” An innovation in ostentatious distancing: future conditional indignation.

These shows of calculated outrage — and thus distance — are becoming not just unconvincing but unamusing. In our system, the president is both head of state and head of government. Obama seems to enjoy the monarchical parts, but when it comes to the actual business of running government, he shows little interest and even less aptitude.

His principal job, after all, is to administer the government and to get the right people to do it. (That’s why we typically send governors rather than senators to the White House.) That’s called management. Obama had never managed anything before running for the biggest management job on earth. It shows.

What makes the problem even more acute is that Obama represents not just the party of government but a grandiose conception of government as the prime mover of social and economic life. The very theme of his presidency is that government can and should be trusted to do great things, and therefore society should be prepared to hand over large chunks of its operations — from health care (one sixth of the economy) to carbon regulation down to free contraception — to the central administrative state.

But this presupposes a Leviathan not just benign but competent. When it then turns out that vast, faceless bureaucracies tend to be incapable, inadequate, hopelessly inefficient, and often corrupt, Obama resorts to expressions of angry surprise.

He must. He’s not simply protecting his own political fortunes. He’s trying to protect faith in the entitlement state by portraying its repeated failures as shocking anomalies.

Unfortunately, the pretense has the opposite effect. It produces not reassurance but anxiety. Obama’s determined detachment conveys the feeling that nobody’s home. No one’s leading. Not even from behind.

A poll conducted two weeks ago showed that 64 percent of likely voters (in competitive races) think that “things in the U.S. feel like they are out of control.” This is one degree of anxiety beyond thinking the country is on the wrong track. That’s been negative for years, and it’s a reflection of failed policies that in principle can be changed. Regaining control, on the other hand, is a far dicier proposition.

With events in the saddle and a sense of disorder growing — the summer border crisis, Ferguson, the rise of the Islamic State, Ebola — the nation expects from the White House not miracles but competence. At a minimum, mere presence. An observer presidency with its bewildered-bystander pose only adds to the unease.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2014 The Washington Post Writers Group

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391044/barack-obama-bewildered-bystander-charles-krauthammer

The Optimistic GOP Story Everyone Is Missing

The Optimistic GOP Story Everyone Is Missing 

Obama’s head will spin from the new conservative agenda. 

By Larry Kudlow

• 

(The White House)

 

Larry Kudlow 

The vast majority of political journalists — and I include some of my conservative colleagues — are missing a very big story.

The Republicans are going to recapture the Senate, picking up more seats than most any forecaster expects. And the House GOP is going to add to its majority. But then comes the big story: The beginning of a new conservative revolution.

The idea that nothing much will change if the GOP captures the whole Congress is just plain wrong. The politics and policies in Washington are about to change in a major way.

Obama may still be president. But he is going to be immediately confronted with a flood of new bills that will change the debate on tax reform, energy, health care, education, international trade, and regulations.

Obama will no longer be able to hide behind Harry Reid, who has stopped all voting on these matters. And Mitch McConnell, as Senate majority leader, will be able to move forward the reform ideas of his caucus and House policy leaders like Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling, Kevin Brady, and many others.

Obama’s head will spin with all the new paperwork on his desk. He may even have to cut back on his golf game.

Of course, because of his left-wing ideology, Obama may veto everything. But if he does, he’s setting up a new Republican agenda for the 2016 presidential race. Either Hillary Clinton completely jumps the Obama ship, or she’s pulled way left by the Democratic party’s Bill de Blasio/Elizabeth Warren/Sandinista wing. Either way she’s in trouble.  

And maybe some Senate Democrats vote to override Obama’s vetoes, with some even converting to Republicanism. An Angus King or a Joe Manchin may cross the aisle after the likely midterm GOP landslide.

Unfortunately, the current GOP never put together a clear national-policy election agenda. Not even a downsized Contract with America. But I suggest two Big Think thoughts for the first 100 days of the new Congress.

First is optimism: We know what the problems are, we know what the solutions should be, and we can make these changes quickly. Second is a re-energized evangelism by the Republican party for pro-growth, market-oriented, consumer-driven, pro-family policies.

“We all see this coming,” House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan told me in a recent interview. “Energy and tax reform are going to be at the top of the list.” And House Financial Services chairman Jeb Hensarling told me, “It’s time to put up or shut up for tax reform. Fairer, flatter, simpler, so the American people will at last know what the GOP would do for economic growth to rescue the country from the worst recovery since World War II.”

Hensarling also emphasized the need to expand the energy revolution and to stop the massive overregulation that has stunted growth. “The regulatory red-tape burden, which violates the Founding Fathers’ Federalist paper 47 by diminishing the rule of law and increasing bureaucratic power in the executive branch at the expense of the constitutionally mandated legislative branch, has got to be stopped.”

Let me weigh in on the first two bills that the GOP should put on Obama’s desk.

The Republicans should start with energy by legislating a Keystone Pipeline Authorization Act (this is how the Alaska pipeline was approved in 1979), and include energy reforms that would open federal lands to development and drilling and remove all restrictions to energy exports.

More energy supply means lower energy prices and more overall economic growth. Everybody benefits. Who loses? Our enemy Vladimir Putin and his client state Iran. And if Obama kowtows again to the left-wing enviros, so be it. It’s a 2016 GOP agenda item.

Second would be a business tax-reform plan that would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, stop the double taxation of foreign profits, and allow small business S-corps (including unborn start-ups, which are America’s real job creators) to take advantage of the new lower corporate tax rate. This tax cut should also be scored with a reality-based economic-feedback model.

But the key here is that the GOP regains its footing as the party of optimism and growth. A new Republican Congress should message that they’re tired of obsessing about Obama’s mistakes. Everybody knows about those. The trick now is to focus on solutions. On change. On saying, “We can do this. We can fix this.”  

Harking back to Ronald Reagan, Republicans should also remind everyone that a nation that’s strong at home is one that becomes strong abroad. Not only can we put people back to work in the U.S., with real take-home pay, but a new recovery will gather new respect from our allies, and new fear from our enemies.

This is the potentially huge story that so many in the media are missing.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391135/optimistic-gop-story-everyone-missing-larry-kudlow

The Poison Tree of Jihad

The Poison Tree of Jihad

Why can’t we acknowledge that the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and Hamas have a shared ideology?

By Matthew Continetti

Last month, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Benjamin Netanyahu made a connection between the Islamic State and Hamas. These terrorist entities, Netanyahu said, have a lot in common. Separated by geography, they nonetheless share ideology and tactics and goals: Islamism, terrorism, the destruction of Israel, and the establishment of a global caliphate.

And yet, Netanyahu observed, the very nations now campaigning against the Islamic State treated Hamas like a legitimate combatant during last summer’s Israel–Gaza war. “They evidently don’t understand,” he said, “that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.”

The State Department dismissed Netanyahu’s metaphor. “Obviously, we’ve designated both as terrorist organizations,” said spokesman Jen Psaki. “But ISIL poses a different threat to Western interests and to the United States.”

Psaki was wrong, of course. She’s always wrong. And, after the events of the last 48 hours, there ought not to be any doubt as to just how wrong she was. As news broke that a convert to Islam had murdered a soldier and stormed the Canadian parliament, one read of another attack in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian terrorist ran his car over passengers disembarking from light rail, injuring seven, and killing three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, who held a U.S. passport.

The Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Hamas — these awful people are literally baby killers. And yet they produce a remarkable amount of dissension, confusion, willful ignorance, and moral equivalence on the part of the men and women who conduct U.S. foreign policy. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’” President Obama said of the terrorist army imposing sharia law across Syria and Iraq. “Obviously, we’re shaken by it,” President Obama said of the attack in Canada. “We urge all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident,” the State Department said of the murder of a Jewish child.

“Not Islamic,” despite the fact that the Caliphate grounds its barbarous activities in Islamic law. “Shaken,” not stirred to action. “All sides,” not the side that targets civilians again and again and again. The evasions continue. They create space for the poison tree to grow.

The persistent denial of the ideological unity of Islamic terrorism — the studied avoidance of politically incorrect facts that has characterized our response to the Ford Hood shooting, the Benghazi attack, the Boston Marathon bombing, the march of the caliphate across Syria and Iraq, and the crimes of Hamas — is not random. Behind it is a set of ideas with a long history, and with great purchase among the holders of graduate degrees who staff the Department of Justice, the National Security Council, Foggy Bottom, and the diplomatic corps. These ideas are why, in the words of John McCain, the terrorists “are winning, and we’re not.”

A report by Katharine Gorka of the Council on Global Security, “The Bad Science Behind America’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy,” analyzes the soil from which the poison tree draws strength. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, Gorka writes, U.S. policymakers have faced a dilemma: “how to talk about Islam in a way that is instructive in dealing with Muslims who are enemies but not destructive to those who are friends.” For decades, the preferred solution has been to declare America’s friendship with Islam, and to distinguish between jihadists and everyday Muslims.

One of Gorka’s earliest examples of this policy comes from former assistant secretary of state Edward Djerejian, who said in 1992, “The U.S. government does not view Islam as the next ‘ism’ confronting the West or threatening world peace.” Similar assurances were uttered by officials in the Clinton administration, by Clinton himself, and by President George W. Bush. The policy was meant to delegitimize terrorism by denying the terrorists’ claim that they are acting according to religious precepts. “Policymakers believed that by tempering their language with regard to Islam, they might forestall further radicalization of moderate Muslims and indeed even potentially win moderates into the American circle of friendship.”

George W. Bush, Gorka notes, combined his rhetorical appeals to moderate Muslims with denunciations of the immorality of terrorism and illiberalism. And yet, for the government at large, downplaying the religious and ideological component to terrorist activities became an end in itself.

The Global War on Terror was renamed the “global struggle against violent extremism.” In 2008 the Department of Homeland Security published a lexicon of terrorism that said, “Our terminology must be properly calibrated to diminish the recruitment efforts of extremists who argue that the West is at war with Islam.” State Department guidelines issued in 2008 said, “Never use the terms jihadist or mujahedeen to describe a terrorist.”

Then came Obama. As a candidate, he stressed his experiences in Indonesia and Pakistan. He told Nick Kristof of the New York Times that the call of the muezzin is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” In one of his first major addresses as president, he traveled to Cairo to inaugurate a new beginning with the Muslim world. His counterterrorism adviser, now director of the CIA, called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” and referred to Jerusalem as “Al-Quds.”

The change in the manner in which the government treated Islamism was profound. “Whereas the 9/11 Commission report, published under the presidency of George W. Bush in July 2004 as a bipartisan product, had used the word Islam 322 times, Muslim 145 times, jihad 126 times, and jihadist 32 times,” Gorka writes, “the National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, issued by the Obama administration in August 2009, used the term Islam 0 times, Muslim 0 times, jihad 0 times.” The omission is stunning.

For Bush, terrorism consisted of immoral deeds committed by evil men animated by anti-Western ideology. Obama downplayed such judgmental language. He preferred an interpretation of terrorism as discrete acts of wrongdoing by extremists, driven by resentments and grievances such as the American failure to establish a Palestinian state, American support for secular Arab dictatorships, American forces in the Middle East, U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, and, infamously, an anti-Islamic YouTube video. “The logic that follows,” Gorka writes, “is that once those grievances are addressed, the extremism will subside.”

Some logic. Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’s backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.

The result? The Islamic State rules Mosul, threatens Baghdad, and has conquered half of Syria as Bashar Assad gasses the other half. Libya has collapsed into tribal warfare. Egypt has gone from military dictatorship to Islamic authoritarianism and back again. An Islamic strongman rules Turkey, Hamas murders with impunity, Al Jazeera broadcasts anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda around the world, and the Taliban are biding time in Afghanistan. Not only is al-Qaeda not on the run, it governs more territory than at any point since 2001. It is once again the “strong horse,” attracting jihadists to its crusade who inevitably turn their attention to the West.

“Without an ideological catalyst,” Gorka writes, “grievances remain merely grievances. They are dull and banal. They only transform into acts of transcendental violence when ignited by Sayyid Qutb or Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. It is the narrative of Holy War that gives value to local grievances, not the other way around.” Before we can hope to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State or the al-Qaeda movement, we must recognize the poison tree of jihad for what it is. We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.

— Matthew Continetti is the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, where this column first appeared. © 2014 All rights reserved

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391127/poison-tree-jihad-matthew-continetti

Don's Tuesday Column

        THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   10/28/2014

Democrats no longer moderate

There will be a fascinating and important program on DVD tonight at the Tea Party Patriots meeting. Titled “The Border States,” it was produced by the Tea Party and promises to be part analysis and part solution to the horrendous reality that America effectively has no southern border under this President. That’s at 6 PM at the Westside Grange.

This is probably the best week to let people know for whom I’m voting and why; to each their own, as they say, so readers can take or leave my preferences. I don’t think the pain pills I’m taking for my injured knee are having any dilatory affect on my political judgment but it is a bit challenging to string the words together properly. There is another bottle of stronger medication for after the surgery so it remains to be seen if next week’s column will write itself or not.

Again, I don’t presume to know what others may be deciding but it comes down to a fairly simple equation, the way I see it. There is no longer any such thing as a “moderate” Democrat politician (as opposed to your more typical reasonable Democrat voter). Those who have, or had, level heads, such as Presidents Kennedy and Truman or Senators like Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, are gone from the ranks of Democrats much like Ronald Reagan and many others who left a political party that talked, walked, trended and lurched its way to further leftward extremes with each new issue.

Democrats that have ushered in the era of hard core progressivism—culminating in Barack Obama’s, Harry Reid’s and Nancy Pelosi’s ascent to the Presidency, Senate and House leadership respectively—would not be recognized by party leaders and rank and file Democrats half a century ago. Even as recently as the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and many in his party could proudly claim membership in the moderate, business-friendly Democratic Leadership Council. Today’s Democrat core constituencies are so beholden to ideologically pure leftism that they think Hillary Clinton is insufficiently liberal enough to carry out their radical redistribution agenda.

Some Democratic candidates, like the ones we see vying for office here in the rural parts of northern California, can talk like moderates, call themselves moderates and even take a stand now and then that veers away from the uber-liberal positions held by party leaders. However, when ideological push comes to shove they will toe the left side of the line. They may even flat-out lie to the public and then wink and nod to their core supporters who know that you can’t get elected in, for instance, coal mining areas while supporting efforts to destroy coal as a source of inexpensive electricity. They can’t be honest with voters if you know that their Democratic party agenda is going to continue to jack up energy prices, make it more expensive to hire employees and staff a business, cut “we, the people” off from using our collectively owned resources, and fail to provide the water that is essential to a rural economy.

I have therefore come to the conclusion that there is no way to vote for any Democrat for any office, high or low. When I look at the ballot sheet and see “Party Preference: Democratic,” that candidate’s qualifications, accomplishments or ethical strengths are irrelevant to what must be done locally, in Sacramento or Washington, DC, to restore an abundant and free America. One might find differences with a belief or position of any particular Republican candidate but a vote for anyone but a Republican is essentially a vote to empower and legitimize the undermining of our Constitution, our liberties and our economic system. That may be a harsh judgment but until Democrats come to their senses, that’s going to be my stand.

I’ll gladly work to make the Republican Party conform to the maximum degree with what is best for America, its people and our system as envisioned by our Founders through the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. For those reasons I have no hesitation in voting for Doug LaMalfa, Jim Nielsen and James Gallagher for their respective offices. I know that Doug will carry out my desires and vision in Congress and that Jim and James, although badly outnumbered in Sacramento by the leftist Democrat majority, will do their best to protect our interests and way of life.

In the “Judicial” section, I’ve been informed by sources I trust that Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, Vance W. Raye, Andrea Lynn Hoch, Ronald B. Robie and William J. Murray, Jr. deserve a “Yes” vote. I’ve marked all the others with “No.” For Superintendent of Public Education, I’m voting for Marshall Tuck; I concluded from reading that the teachers’ union gives their support to Tuck’s opponent that the best choice would be the candidate not supported by the union. Tuck has apparently earned the unions’ ire by favoring charter schools and reform generally—that’s kind of like holding up a cross in front of a vampire. Likewise, if you see that the unions support any of the candidates for any school district, vote for the other ones.

On the propositions, I’ve concluded that none of them—1, 2, 45, 46, 47 and 48—should be passed by voters. I don’t trust that any of the high-sounding goals and purposes will ultimately pan out as intended and that money raised for bonds will just unnecessarily add to California’s fiscal burden.

The Ferguson Collapse

The Ferguson Collapse 
Evidence discredits the progressive narrative. 

By The Editors

• 

Protesting the Ferguson shooting in St. Louis, October 12, 2014 (Scott Olson/Getty)

The “Freedom Summer” of 2014 started with a bang but appears to be ending with a whimper. Before the investigation had even begun, the progressive narrative of the death of Michael Brown had crystallized: A white police officer murdered a young, unarmed black man trying to surrender with his hands up — the latest example of the systemic racism that renders black Americans de facto second-class citizens.

But that story has all but collapsed. Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Brown in early August, recently told investigators that he was pinned in his vehicle and feared for his life when Brown reached for his gun. FBI forensic analysis has confirmed that, as Wilson claims, two shots were fired in the car, and Brown’s blood was found in the vehicle, on Wilson’s clothing, and on the gun. The Washington Post reports that “seven or eight African American eyewitnesses have provided testimony consistent with Wilson’s account” that he fatally shot Brown when the young man moved toward him in the street. And, according to the official court autopsy report, Brown probably did not have his hands raised in the “Hands up, don’t shoot” position that has become the defining meme of the protests in Ferguson, Mo. An eyewitness who claims to have seen the shooting from beginning to end further corroborated Wilson’s account in an anonymous interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The forensic and eyewitness evidence seems to be coalescing around a particular account — or, at the very least, suggests that Wilson did not murder Brown in cold blood. Alas, St. Louis County grand jurors face heavy pressure to issue an indictment. There’s a real fear that the protesters who have taken to disrupting the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, brawling with St. Louis Rams fans, and burning the American flag will, in the event that the grand jury refuses to indict, demonstrate their devotion to justice by enkindling a variety of local establishments.

But the jurors should not be cowed by that threat. What happens next in Ferguson may well be, to quote Al Sharpton, a “defining moment,” though not in the way he, other progressives, and Ferguson protesters mean. To their minds, the case required little scrutiny: Michael Brown was a new Emmett Till; Ferguson, a new Selma. But that determination was made well in advance of a careful sifting of available evidence — evidence that shows that the events of August 9 do not lend themselves to a convenient racial parable. If the grand jury, having heard and weighed the available evidence, believes that Darren Wilson is not criminally culpable for his actions, they should not indict him. The judicial system cannot be used to assuage imagined racial grievances.

Michael Brown’s death, unfortunate though it was, is not part of an ongoing civil-rights struggle. The racial antipathies that animated the South in the 1960s are largely vanished — an extraordinary accomplishment that is rarely, if ever, acknowledged by those who point to present-day bigotry. Moreover, the racist justice system that some Ferguson residents decry is nowhere to be seen. The results of a police investigation, closely observed by a suspicious community and national media, have been brought before a grand jury (also under the scrutiny of a nation), which has, by all accounts, slowly and deliberately considered the available evidence. There is no indication that the system has worked otherwise than normally.

Unfortunately, racial demagoguery, too, is pretty normal in America.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391144/ferguson-collapse-editor
s

Could non-citizens decide the November election?

By Jesse Richman and David Earnest 

(AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

Could control of the Senate in 2014 be decided by illegal votes cast by non-citizens? Some argue that incidents of voting by non-citizens are so rare as to be inconsequential, with efforts to block fraud a screen for an agenda to prevent poor and minority voters from exercising the franchise, while others define such incidents as a threat to democracy itself. Both sides depend more heavily on anecdotes than data.

In a forthcoming article in the journal Electoral Studies, we bring real data from big social science survey datasets to bear on the question of whether, to what extent, and for whom non-citizens vote in U.S. elections. Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races.

Our data comes from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study(CCES). Its large number of observations (32,800 in 2008 and 55,400 in 2010) provide sufficient samples of the non-immigrant sub-population, with 339 non-citizen respondents in 2008 and 489 in 2010. For the 2008 CCES, we also attempted to match respondents to voter files so that we could verify whether they actually voted.

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

Estimated Voter Turnout by Non-Citizens
	2008	2010
Self reported and/or verified	38 (11.3%)	13 (3.5%)
Self reported and verified	5 (1.5%)	N.A.
Adjusted estimate	21 (6.4%)	8 (2.2%)

Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.

We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.

An alternative approach to reducing non-citizen turnout might emphasize public information. Unlike other populations, including naturalized citizens, education is not associated with higher participation among non-citizens. In 2008, non-citizens with less than a college degree were significantly more likely to cast a validated vote, and no non-citizens with a college degree or higher cast a validated vote. This hints at a link between non-citizen voting and lack of awareness about legal barriers.

There are obvious limitations to our research, which one should take account of when interpreting the results. Although the CCES sample is large, the non-citizen portion of the sample is modest, with the attendant uncertainty associated with sampling error. We analyze only 828 self-reported non-citizens. Self-reports of citizen status might also be a source of error, although the appendix of our paper shows that the racial, geographic, and attitudinal characteristics of non-citizens (and non-citizen voters) are consistent with their self-reported status.

Another possible limitation is the matching process conducted by Catalyst to verify registration and turnout drops many non-citizen respondents who cannot be matched. Our adjusted estimate assumes the implication of a “registered” or “voted” response among those who Catalyst could not match is the same as for those whom it could. If one questions this assumption, one might focus only on those non-citizens with a reported and validated vote. This is the second line of the table.

Finally, extrapolation to specific state-level or district-level election outcomes is fraught with substantial uncertainty. It is obviously possible that non-citizens in California are more likely to vote than non-citizens in North Carolina, or vice versa. Thus, we are much more confident that non-citizen votes mattered for the Minnesota Senate race (a turnout of little more than one-tenth of our adjusted estimate is all that would be required) than that non-citizen votes changed the outcome in North Carolina.

Our research cannot answer whether the United States should move to legalize some electoral participation by non-citizens as many other countries do, and as some U.S. states did for more than 100 years, or find policies that more effectively restrict it. But this research should move that debate a step closer to a common set of facts.

Jesse Richman is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Old Dominion University, and Director of the ODU Social Science Research Center. David Earnest is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Old Dominion University, and Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Letters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/could-non-citizens-decide-the-november-election/

A LEFTY EXPLAINS WHAT THE ELECTION IS ALL ABOUT

A LEFTY EXPLAINS WHAT THE ELECTION IS ALL ABOUT

 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN LIBERALS

Rob Stein is the founder of the Democracy Alliance, an umbrella a group that organizes the funding of left-wing causes by rich liberals and interest groups. In The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado by Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer, at page 7, Stein explains candidly what politics is all about for the Left:

“The reason it is so important to control government is because government is the source of enormous power,” Stein continued. “One president in this country, when he or she takes office, appoints…5,000 people to run a bureaucracy, nonmilitary nonpostal service of 2 million people, who hire 10 million outside outsource contractors–a workforce of 12 million people–that spends $3 trillion a year. That number is larger than the gross domestic product of all but four countries on the face of the earth.”

“So the reason we’re doing what we’re doing…and the way we get progressive change, is to control government,” Stein said. “That’s what this is about.”

This will to power explains why the Left, a clear minority among Americans, consistently punches above its weight, politically.

Glenn Reynolds once commented on the seeming paradox of liberals who are terrified at the prospect that libertarians might take power and leave them alone. Actually, liberals probably do want to be left alone; they just don’t have any intention of leaving you alone. Liberals hunger for power so that they can enrich themselves, in many cases, but more generally, so they can remake the world according to their own preferences. This doesn’t mean that they will have to change, but it does mean that you will have to change. As long as liberals’ hunger for power is stronger than conservatives’ desire to be left in peace, the Left will continue to dominate our public life.

STEVE adds: I’d never seen that Stein quote before, and I’ve never seen a liberal ratify so directly and so clearly Michael Oakeshott’s great warning of this disposition:

To some people, “government” appears as a vast reservoir of power which inspires them to dream of what use might be made of it. They have favorite projects, of various dimensions, which they sincerely believe are for the benefit of mankind, and to capture this source of power, if necessary to increase it, and to use it for imposing their favorite projects upon their fellows is what they understand as the adventure of governing men. They are, thus, disposed to recognize government as an instrument of passion; the art of politics is to inflame and direct desire. In short, governing is understood to be just like any other activity – making and selling a brand of soap, exploiting the resources of a locality, or developing a housing estate – only the power here is (for the most part) already mobilized, and the enterprise is remarkable only because it aims at monopoly and because of its promise of success once the source of power has been captured.

As Oakeshott concluded, the conjunction of dreaming and ruling generates tyranny.

Eleven days.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/a-lefty-explains-what-the-election-is-all-about.php

New Republic Editor Decides Political Hack as Ebola Czar Is OK

By P.J. GladnickMore Sharing Services

One has to give The New Republic editor Jonathan Cohn some credit. At least he was beset with some brief soul searching over the fact that the new Ebola Czar is a political hack with no medical experience. However, after checking with his fellow liberals, Cohn finally got his "mind right" and returned to the proper groupthink fold.

Although, as we shall see, Klain was front and center of the crony capitalism scandal in which the Solyndra green energy company cost the taxpayers over $500 million, all is forgiven and he is now allowed to become Ebola Czar. First we join Jonathan Cohn while he was still in a state of some doubt about the propriety of an unqualified political hack becoming Ebola Czar:

One thing Klain does not have is deep expertise in medicine or emergency preparedness—and that surprised me. Why not pick somebody whose resume includes a stint at the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, or maybe the Federal Emergency Management Agency? This is not the first time the federal government has confronted a biological menace. An official who’d lived through and worked intensely on responses to SARS, Avian flu,or even HIV might bring critical and beneficial experience to the table.

A liberal lifeline was sent out to Cohn from uber leftist Neera Tanden in the form of an email:

He also has a keen understanding of how to manage the Hill, press, communications, layers of government. The reality is that this situation calls for dealing with multiple and diverse agencies—CDC, military, NIH, State—managing diverse issues, from direct patient health to airline travel. He is extremely capable and there are few managers as good as him.

So Klain has a "keen understanding" of PR and the labyrinths of the kleptocracy. So not to worry about his lack of medical qualifications.

Klain's bonafides as highly experienced in the ways of crony capitalism was laughably backed up by journalist Michael Grunwald:

"Ron basically ran the stimulus," says journalist Michael Grunwald, whose book, The New New Deal, is the definitive account of ARRA. "He was Biden's henchman—he made the trains run on time. And under budget. And with almost zero fraud."

Got that, Jonathan. "Almost zero fraud." As the rest of us burst out laughing at that notion of the fraud free scheme to funnel money to favored friends of Democrats, let us check in with Bryan Preston at The PJ Tatler who informs us about the "zero fraud" of Solyndra which cost the taxpayers $500 million:

...Klain was involved in the Obama administration’s Solyndra debacle.

In January 2012, ABC News reported that Klain, then Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, was right in the middle of the administration’s poor and controversial handling of Solyndra’s bankruptcy.

Senior White House officials knew in late October 2010 that government-backed Solyndra was planning to lay off nearly 20 percent of its workforce just prior to the congressional elections the next month, recently released e-mails show.

E-mails released by the White House last week showed that Heather Zichal, an energy aide to President Barack Obama, relayed the news about the Fremont-based solar firm’s planned layoffs to top White House officials, including Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Ron Klain.

In another story, ABC details Klain’s role:

On May 24, 2010 — two days before the president’s visit — California businessman Steve Westley emailed senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, referencing the audit and saying the visit might “haunt him in the next 18 months if Solyndra hits the wall, files for bankruptcy, etc.”

Jarrett reached out to Ron Klain, then the chief of staff to Vice President Biden, saying that “we clearly need to make sure that they are stable and solid.”

Klain contacted Energy Department officials and then wrote back to Jarrett, saying “Sounds like there are some risk factors here – but that’s true of any innovative company that POTUS would visit. It looks like it is OK to me, but if you feel otherwise, let me know.”

“I’m comfortable if you’re comfortable,” Jarrett wrote back.

Responded Klain: “The reality is that if POTUS visited 10 such places over the next 10 months, probably a few would be belly-up by election day 2012 – but that to me is the reality of saying that we want to help promote cutting edge, new economy industries.”

By October, Summers, Klain, and director of the Office of Energy and Climate Policy Carol Browner wrote a six-page memorandum to the President about the loan guarantee program, detailing the fights between the Department of Energy and OMB and giving the president four options to deal with the program, one of which would have terminated it altogether, seeking congressional approval to move the funds into a Department of Energy grant program.

The Washington Post reports that Klain “dismissed auditor’s concerns about Solyndra’s solvency” in 2010, “reasoning that all innovative companies come with risk.” In Solyndra’s case, the risk was borne by the US taxpayer in the form of government-backed loans.

- See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick/2014/10/17/new-republic-editor-decides-political-hack-ebola-czar-ok#sthash.ZBmjoVIq.dpuf

Democrats on the Defensive

Democrats on the Defensive 
As the world spins out of control, the U.S. government looks less and less competent. 

By Michael Barone

• 

(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

 

Michael Barone 

Things are spinning out of control. Out of control, at least, by government, and by the United States government in particular. You don’t have to spend much time reading the news — or monitoring your Twitter feed — to get that impression. Armed fighting in Ukraine. Islamic State beheadings in Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Hong Kong.
Ebola spreading from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to Dallas, Texas, where 100 people were exposed to the Liberian who lied to airport screeners and arrived in the United States with the disease. Not to mention the Spanish nurse who came down with it.
No wonder the embattled Senator Mark Pryor (D., Ark.) stumbled when asked whether the Obama administration was handling Ebola well. He had run an ad in August accusing his Republican opponent, Representative Tom Cotton, of somehow leaving the nation unprepared for the epidemic. But Pryor had nothing coherent to say this week.
The Ebola death in Dallas and the beheadings in the Middle East illustrate how what happens elsewhere in the world doesn’t stay there. It comes back to strike the United States sooner or later — sooner and sooner, it seems, these days.
It is a misreading of history to believe that Americans typically have been unconcerned with what happens across the oceans or south of the border. Since the 1790s, when the Founders split into two political parties — one sympathetic to revolutionary France in a world war, one sympathetic to British royalists — Americans have recognized they are affected by foreign developments.
In the last century, after seeing threats arise from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, they have come to expect their presidents to prevent things from spinning out of control abroad.
And they have come to expect that government should perform competently at home. More competently than, say, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Secret Service have been performing lately.
Barack Obama came to office believing that in a time of economic distress, voters would want an even larger government to respond to financial crisis and bolster the economy. In 2009 and 2010, he and his congressional supermajorities believed that their major policies — big spending increases in the stimulus package, Obamacare, and higher taxes on high earners — would be popular. People would be happy if a competent government gave them more of what Mitt Romney infelicitously called “free stuff.”
Turns out that’s not the case. The stimulus package and Obamacare were unpopular when proposed and, even after the bills were passed so that we would know what was in them, they have remained unpopular. As for higher tax rates on high earners, voters just don’t seem to care.
That’s why it is Republicans and not Democrats who are running ads this campaign cycle on Obamacare. It helps explain the apparent trend toward Republicans in most seriously contested Senate races, as well as why the House Democrats’ campaign committee is pulling money out of races to unseat Republicans and putting it into races to protect incumbent Democrats.
Undermining the case for big government is an increasing perception that big government just doesn’t work very well — even at things nearly everyone agrees government should do, such as providing health care for veterans and protecting the president and his family.
The deterioration in government’s competence is not just a recent or an American phenomenon. That’s a point made in three recent books — by The Economist’s John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Yale law professorPeter Schuck, and New York lawyer Philip Howard. It’s also a major topic in Francis Fukuyama’s recently released Political Order and Political Decay.
But it is a process that has gained speed under a president who doesn’t seem much interested in the mechanics of government and whose confidence that more spending will produce better results keeps being undermined by events.
Democrats this year are running not just against the trend that presidencies usually (though not always) grow stale in their sixth year. They are also in the uncomfortable position of defending policies that work against the grain of change in an Information Age, and for putting more trust in a government that isn’t competently performing basic tasks.
That’s an uphill climb as the world spins out of control, government keeps floundering, and the president seems unable to master events.
― Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor, and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. © 2014 The Washington Examiner. Distributed by Creators.com

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389997/democrats-defensive-michael-barone