Newt Gingrich - my evaluation

Since Newt Gingrich is now leading some polls on the GOP nomination race, I think he deserves a longer discussion of what I believe is good and what I believe is bad about him.

One of the things that puzzles me is that many of the people who have problems with Mitt Romney because he changed his mind on so many things have flocked to Gingrich's cause. One thing that cannot be denied about Newt Gingrich is that his own reversals on the issues have been as big as Romney's. (Actually, although I have frequently remarked that nobody's religion should be held against him, I might be faulted for pointing out that Gingrich is a fairly recent convert to Catholicism. But it points out another inconsistency in Newt Gingrich's thoughts. In 2008, Gingrich decided that he wanted to be a Roman Catholic, being officially received into that church in 2009.) I cannot imagine anyone, after reaching his sixties, to decide that the religion he has believed in all his life was wrong and that he belonged in a different one. (Actually, this is his second change — in college he converted from Lutheranism to the Baptist church. Now frankly I find Roman Catholicism an extremely unappealing religion — anyone who can accept that one person is infallible on matters of faith, surrendering his own judgment to that of one man in Rome — or anywhere else — seems to me to be denying his own ability to think straight. But I am not holding his Catholicism against him; it is that, after attaining an age of over 65, he suddenly decided to change his religion.)

Of course, it surprises me that “family-values conservatives” would prefer a twice-divorced, three-times-married man over a man like Romney who has been married to one woman for all his adult life — over 40 years — but this is not really something that matters to me, although I don't see why it doesn't matter to people who keep proclaiming the importance of the family.

My biggest gripe with Gingrich is that — while, on some issues, like the Middle East, I agree with him — he seems to be advocating some strange, even unconstitutional, ideas on other issues, like changing the terms of federal judges so as no longer to be lifetime. (Note: while I firmly agree with Gingrich's position on the Middle East, in a discussion I had with my wife yesterday, she said her position would make her less likely to vote for him — she believes a president who is so firmly on one side of the issue cannot serve as a broker between the two sides. I concede that, but I feel that no American President or anyone else, can achieve peace in the Middle East at this time — the parties are so far apart that compromise seems impossible.)

I do need to say that, if next November I find myself in a voting booth with the names of Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama in front of me, I would have no qualms about voting for Gingrich. Obama's presidency has been so bad that I cannot imagine Gingrich being any worse. In this, Gingrich differs from such as Michele Bachmann, who could not get my vote — not that I would vote for Obama, but Bachmann on the ballot would drive me to vote for a third-party candidate in protest.

Newt has it right in one place, the Middle East

Well, I have to say one thing good anout Newt Gingrich: he has the facts right on the Middle East. A posting by Muriel Kane says:

In an interview with The Jewish Channel released on Friday, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich called the Palestinians an “invented” people and suggested they have no right to a state of their own.

“I believe that the Jewish people have a right to a state,” Gingrich told the interviewer. “Remember, there was no Palestine existing as a state. Part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs … and they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons, we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s.”

Reuters points out that Gingrich’s remarks run counter to official United States policy, which does view the Palestinians as a people with the right to a state of their own.

Gingrich, who said his worldview was “pretty close” to that of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also described the Obama administration’s Middle East diplomacy as “out of touch with reality.” He inisted that Obama and his aides “lie to themselves” about the conflict, which he portrayed as one “between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day.”

I don't like a lot of what Newt Gingrich has been saying, but on this issue, I agree completely.

One person's take on the GOP nomination prospects

My wife is nominally a Democrat. In fact, she's better described as an independent, though she is enrolled in the Democratic Party, and rarely votes in Democratic primaries. She is significantly to my left, though well to the right of much of the Democratic Party; she voted for McCain in the most recent election. (Though she considered him somewhat too right-wing, she considered Obama too left-wing, and mostly made the decision based on character. She'd found out about Obama's early history, especially the business about Alice Palmer, and she remembered that in the Dole-Clinton election, she thought Dole too right-wing, voted for Clinton, and was sorry about her decision.) At one point, because the economy soured, she had considered Obama's “change” agenda somewhat attractive, and considered voting for him, but character won out in the end. But her attitude has always been more generous toward Obama's attempts to fix the economy than my own attitude. (For more about her, see my earlier post dated November 7.)

She had been employed by Borders for 12½ years, and they closed her particular store in April; since then, she's been looking unsuccessfully for a new job. Finally, last week, she got a “yes”— from Target, for a part-time seasonal job. This week she started, and celebrated, by having a little fancier dinner than she normally considered affordable. And afterward she authorized me to quote her in this blog: “It's a sign how bad this economy is, when getting a part-time seasonal job is cause for celebration.”

She is probably willing to vote for Mitt Romney, if he is the Republican nominee. She is somewhat less likely to vote for Newt Gingrich, though she's looking more favorably at him than she had been. None of the other GOP candidates is likely to get her vote against Obama.

It's people like that that the GOP needs to win next year. One more reason I think Mitt Romney is the only nominee the GOP can choose, if they want any chance at taking over the White House.

What planet is she on?

In yesterday's Washington Examiner I read a column by Janine Turner that blew my mind. She wrote

Warning: I am going to write something radical.

Merry Christmas.

There I did it.

During the holiday season whether I am at work, at school, at a mall or the grocery store, I am reduced to feeling like a zealot when I utter those two words. As I scurry out the door, I have to resist the impulse to hide like a prairie dog before I am caught by the holiday Political Correctness police.

Though, who needs the police? The look of fear in the eyes of the clerks and other patrons speaks volumes. It's as if at any moment the emergency alarm will be pulled and pandemonium will ensue.

Like a siren in a nuclear power plant, I am exposed. I am a traitor to the New American Way. What is the New American Way? Intimidation. Conformity. Muzzling of free speech. Denial of religion.

As I journey home and put up a Christmas tree, my traditional warm and fuzzy religious experience is disturbed by an annoying angst that a Christmas tree is offensive. If I am a comrade to the cause and following the New American Way, my Christmas tree will now be a "Holiday tree."

As I stand back and admire the twinkling lights, I experience a nagging guilt that I am somehow a religious extremist.

Christmas is under attack. Christians are being silenced by the code of Saul Alinsky, an insidious intimidation creates a new pattern of thought, like a river creates a canyon.

Liberals have perverted the First Amendment to meet their agenda denying others the true intent of its meaning. It's no wonder that they consider the Constitution an ugly word. The Constitution holds them accountable. The New American Way works only by denying it or distorting it.

The First Amendment restricts the government from mandating a religion but it also guarantees the free exercise of religion, not to mention, freedom of speech. Does this only apply to atheistic liberals?

Christians are being denied freedoms to experience Christmas. This is the black and white of the issue.

If children are caught mentioning Christmas in school, they become outcasts, a disturbance, an obstacle to the New American Way. Children who are Christians are being shamed into submission.

Yet, the liberal elite has it all wrong. We are not a country of clones. We are a country of individualism and independence and uniqueness.

Is this not the true intent of the First Amendment? The liberal elite is getting away with blatant attacks on individual freedoms.

The irony is that the liberals pride themselves on their right to provocative uses of freedom such as immersing a cross in urine. Yet Christians can't say, "Merry Christmas" and children can't hand out Christmas cards in school.

All children of all faiths should be allowed to exchange greeting cards that honor their religion. It is the restriction of this freedom, or the mandating of one religion over another, that is wrong.

Things are frighteningly askew in American culture. This has occurred because by nature conservatives are reserved, respectful. Meanwhile, the loud, liberal and loquacious Left have dominated the dialogue.

Christians, and anyone else who holds religious freedom sacred, need to step up to the Christmas tree this year and embrace it for what it is: an expression of the Christian religion. This act does not deny other religions. It merely is an expression of one of many. Should we not be tolerant and respectful of all religions in America?

Christians, or any religion, should not be denied this right anywhere - in the workplace, in the school, in the mall, in the town square.

As Christians uphold their constitutional rights, they also honor other religions. It is our distinguishing quality that make us America. It is our acceptance of these that makes us Americans.

Merry Christmas.

When I read it I thought, “What planet is she on? She can't wish people ‘Merry Christmas’?” I can't get away from Christmas stuff. Yesterday I went into Barnes and Noble and the overhead speakers were playing “Oh come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.” Who is preventing her from doing Christmas things — while I want to have them put out of my life completely, and I can't avoid them? Really!

Romney's Mormonism

Sunday, I was in a Panera or Starbucks (I forget which) having a tea and pastry, and talking to a young student who was becoming interested in politics after having been mostly indifferent. He'd asked me my opinions, and I was explaining that I really wanted to replace President Obama with someone like Mitt Romney, and when he asked why, I started to give my reasons — beginning with the fact that Obama has shown no leadership (allowing Congress to write the health care law, for example) while Romney showed that he could even get his proposals through, even when he had to work with a Massachusetts legislature heavily dominated by the opposite party. The student listened to me and agreed that this was an important point, and a nearby woman interrupted to say, “You know, I totally disagree with you. Isn't he a Mormon?” I said, certainly he was, and then she railed about how only a Christian could have the necessary morality to be President.

Well, first of all, being non-Christian myself, that comment was exactly not the sort of thing that I could accept, and I told her so, adding that the writers of our Constitution were smart enough to put into Article VI the prohibition against any religious test for any public office under the Constitution. As I put it to her, “I don't care whether a Presidential candidate is a Moslem, a Hindu, or even an atheist: and we have a Constitution that says the same thing.” She kept insisting, and I pointed out that probably the most convinced Christian we ever had in the Presidency was Jimmy Carter, but he was not a very competent President. (And at this time, the student commented that Obama was in some ways like Carter, someone who seemed like a nice person, but unable to handle the Presidency.)

Actually, of course, as far as I am concerned, Mormons are Christians: the name of their church is the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” and any church that claims to follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and calls him the Christ is, according to my definition, Christian. I have seen too many cases of Protestants and Catholics each denying the other the right to the term “Christian” to say that anyone who claims to be a Christian has to be accepted on his word as one, despite the claims of any other Christian that he is not. But, as it was clear that this woman had her own ideas as to what constitutes a Christian, there was no sense arguing that point with her.

Another one bites the dust

Well, now Herman Cain has withdrawn from the race for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Whether the allegations of sexual harassment lodged against Cain are true or not, enough people will believe him that it is clear his presidential hopes have been shot down. And though some sites say that Cain will endorse Newt Gingrich, the person most helped, of course, is Mitt Romney.

The more conservative elements in the GOP seem to be trying to find someone they like better than Romney. And then one after another either gives up, or botches things so badly that nobody can picture them in the Presidency. It is clear that whatever Romney's flaws (and I admit he has some; I would perhaps have preferred Chris Christie, but he doesn't want to run!) he is the best hope of the Republican Party. And does anyone think that those right-wingers would, faced with a choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, vote for anyone but Romney?

Let's face it. Mitt Romney will be the nominee. And those who are trying to push anyone else, deal with it.

A blog post that surprised me

We are familiar with the Obama administration's push to raise taxes on “the wealthy,” and specifically his insistence on repealing some of the income tax cuts instituted in George W. Bush's Presidency. So I was surprised, in the process of looking at other blogs this morning and following links from blog to blog, to find a blog called “SayAnythingBlog.com,” on which a posting, by Rob Port, appeared today called “Social Security And Medicare Doing More To Promote Income Inequality Than The Bush Tax Cuts.” In it I read that:

…House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, in a 17-page paper based largely on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of income trends between 1979 and 2007, has [made the case that the Republican proposals would better address income inequality than the Democrats'].

Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, makes the point that the government redistributes income not only through taxes but also through transfer payments, including Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and unemployment benefits. The CBO study helpfully measures income, adjusted for inflation, after taxes and after such transfer payments.

Many may find the results of the CBO study surprising. It turns out, Ryan reports, that federal income taxes (including the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit) actually decreased income inequality slightly between 1979 and 2007, while the federal payroll taxes that supposedly fund Social Security and Medicare slightly increased income inequality. That’s despite the fact that income tax rates are lower than in 1979 and payroll taxes higher.

Perhaps even more surprising, federal transfer payments have done much more to increase income inequality than federal taxes. That’s because, in Ryan’s words, “the distribution of government transfers has moved away from households in the lower part of the income scale. For instance, in 1979, households in the lowest income quintile received 54 percent of all transfer payments. In 2007, those households received just 36 percent of transfers.”

In fact, the blog post summarizes this effect:

In effect, Social Security and Medicare have been transferring money from low-earning young people (who don’t pay income taxes but are hit by the payroll tax) to increasingly affluent old people.

Interesting. Now I am one of those “old people,” receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits, though I am hardly affluent. (The Clinton presidency impoverished me — he canceled the Strategic Defense Initiative, alias “Star Wars,” which funded the job I was working at in 1994; from 1994 to 1998 I was unemployed, unable to get a job, and since then I've never had the kind of good jobs I'd had in the years prior to 1994, though I've managed to get out of total poverty into a more “normal” existence.) But I imagine there are “affluent” Social Security and Medicare benefit recipients, so I cannot argue with Port's posting. Do you think anyone can enlighten those Democrats who insist that “the ‘Bush tax cuts’ must go”?

A continuation of yesterday's post

Yesterday I made a post that left out one point that I meant to make, but forgot when I entered it into the system.

Certainly one person who has been given license to do “Christian things” is S. Truett Cathy. To those who do not know the name, he is the founder, and still in charge, of Chick-fil-A restaurants. He has steadfastly maintained a policy that not only the locations he owns, but all his franchisees, close on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. His company's web site says it is because “He believes that all franchised Chick-fil-A Operators and their Restaurant employees should have an opportunity to rest, spend time with family and friends, and worship if they choose to do so.” But what if one of his franchisees is Jewish, and worships on Saturday? Mr. Cathy does not contemplate this.

Since Mr. Cathy is a private citizen, of course, he has every right to impose such a condition on his franchisees. And I, in turn, have every right to personally boycott Chick-fil-A. As I do.

What threat?

My blog, for some reason, gets very few comments posted, though I certainly would be happy to see more of my readers comment on my posts. One person who has commented in the past uses the pseudonym Asclepius, and he recently posted a comment on my recent post on separation of “church and state.” You can read his entire comment, but the most important point I think to consider in his comment was the following:

So your experience justifies what most Christians would contend: there should be no compulsion to participate in x, y, or z; but at the same time, that acknowledgment should not serve as a threat to those who do wish, in some way, to participate in Christian things, public or otherwise.

I wrote a reply to his comment, but I thought it really ought to be expanded upon, and this post is intended as a follow-up to my reply to Asclepius' comment as well as an extension of the ideas I expressed in my original posting.

I would not challenge Asclepius' statement that “there should be no compulsion to participate in x, y, or z; but at the same time, that acknowledgment should not serve as a threat to those who do wish, in some way, to participate in Christian things,” but I do not see where any such threat exists. In fact, if anything, “those who do wish… to participate in Christian things” are granted more license than necessary. Many public ceremonies begin with an invocation, generally given by a Christian clergyman. Our coinage and currency bears the motto “In God we trust,” which I as a Jew find acceptable, but which offends my atheistic friends. Back when I was in grade school, they added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance; again, I as a Jew have no problem with these words, but my atheistic friends have different thoughts on the matter. We have elected a black President, but we have never elected a Jewish (or Muslim, Hindu, or atheist) President.

Whenever a court has blocked “participat[ion] in Christian things” it has been because these “Christian things” would involve non-Christians as well, and would involve “compulsion to participate in x, y, or z,” which Asclepius admits is undesirable. School prayer, for example, has been abolished, a good thing because even if some students were able to opt out, the peer pressure against “being different” is great in school-age children. Sitting down when everyone in class is standing up (or leaving the room) calls uninvited attention to the child, and this alone serves as “compulsion to participate in x, y, or z.”

So I wonder what Asclepius really meant by his comment. Perhaps he sees some of these things differently from me, but I'd love to see where.

It is just not going to happen!

Although the post was made ten days ago, I just read it today. Michael Medved wrote a posting on The Daily Beast blog, entitled “Obama Should Name Unity Government to Tackle Financial Crisis.” Really, what he advocates is that President Obama should replace Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner by someone who might be respected by the Republicans, someone like Steve Forbes or former New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg (who was actually offered a Cabinet post by Obama, but at the far less prestigious Commerce Department). Well, Mr. Medved might be right in that such appointment would signify that President Obama would be willing to abandon hyper-partisanship in favor of problem solving. But the reason that won't happen is that this is not true: President Obama is not at all willing to abandon hyper-partisanship. It is his stock in trade. It would be the equivalent of Nancy Pelosi, two years ago, offering to share some of the Speaker's prerogatives with John Boehner. It has about as much likelihood as that of Obama resigning as President, or declining to be nominated in favor of Hillary Clinton, even though I've actually seen suggestions that he do the latter.

Barack Obama is the most egotistical President we have had in my lifetime, probably the most egotistical President we have ever had. He simply believes he is certain to find, on his own, the solution to all our money problems, and he is not about to show a trace of compromise here. Michael Medved obviously does not understand what makes Barack Obama tick, if he makes a proposal like the one he made.

A personal story, to explain my vehemence on the "separation" issue

One thing I consider very important, and which colors a lot of my attitudes toward specific politicians, is the issue of “separation of church and state” eapecially in its relationship to “freedom of religion.” And behind this is my own experience, so I think I should supply a personal self-portrait as this issue relates to me.

At the age of nine, I moved to a new home in New York City, at the opposite end of the Borough of Manhattan from where I had been living for the preceding few years. I had to start in a new school, of course, and there were two factors that affected my situation at that school for the three years that I went there.

First, I was something of a “brain” — I was nine, but I was in sixth grade, among mostly 11-year-olds. And second, I was a good singer. I had a boy soprano voice, and I sang well enough that I was in demand at the school to sing before other classes than my own. Perhaps if YouTube had existed in those days, I might have become the Justin Bieber of the 1950s (though, actually, years younger than Bieber was when he was discovered!), but in those days, I was only a celebrity at Public School #7 in the Bronx. (Yes, I lived in Manhattan, but so far north that my local school was over the line in the Bronx.) My singing made me an instant favorite of the school's music teacher, and in seventh grade a year later, I was in her official class and she took a special interest in me, teaching me a number of songs on a one-to-one basis.

Then, along came Christmas. I balked at singing songs with words like “Oh come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.” And this got me in trouble with my official-and-music teacher, an Irish Catholic who failed to see that, to a Jewish boy like me, these words were blasphemy. (I don't know if, at age 10, I knew the word “blasphemy,” but you get the idea.)

From that point on, I went from being a favorite of my teacher to being dirt. She and my eighth-grade official teacher actually conspired, in my eighth-grade year, to try to keep me from graduating! (The problem with the eighth-grade teacher didn't involve religion. I simply didn't like history, and history was her favorite subject!)

With this kind of background, I almost became strongly prejudiced against Irish Catholics. The only thing that prevented that was another teacher, clearly just as Irish (his name was McCarthy!) who I had for science in seventh grade. He was really not a science teacher: he was a gym teacher who was also pressed into service as a science teacher. And he knew that I actually knew more science than he did, so the classes were usually something like Mr. McCarthy starting the class with a general mention of the topic, and then I was pitched questions and really this 10-year-old, whose voice hadn't changed yet, conducted the class! It was Mr. McCarthy who suggested I apply to a special scientific high school when I was in eighth grade, and when I did, my eighth-grade official teacher ridiculed me. She conducted special sessions for the kids in her class who had applied to the specialized high schools, and I was not permitted to attend. But I got my revenge. I was the only person in her entire class who passed the entrance examination!

But that is a digression. The point is that my refusal to sing Christmas carols jeopardized my graduation. And so my sympathies automatically lie with those who would challenge Christian domination of the rest of us. I hope this explains my stance on this issue.

David Frum's interesting ideas

I often read David Frum's FrumForum blog. AS lot (not all, mind you) of his ideas, I share, and so I have marked his blog on this one as one warranting your reading. But the latest posting by Frum is not on his blog. It is on the New York magazine website.

The article is too long to quote, so I suggest you read it via the link I put here. I certainly no more agree with everything he says than I do with everything he posts on his blog (or everything posted on his blog, since he uses a number of guest writers as well as himself to post there). But I think it is certainly a worthwhile read, and very thought-provoking, and I really think all who read this blog should read his posting.

Another “front runner”?

Well, now there are polls that say that the #1 contender for the 2012 GOP nomination, at least in Iowa and some other States, is Newt Gingrich. Will he bite the dust, now that Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain have, each in his/her turn, crashed?

Gingrich is rather too conservative for me — but so were Ronald Reagan and the younger President Bush. And yet, both of those Presidents had pretty good presidencies, I have to admit. So Gingrich might fill the bill.

I've already posted some comments on Gingrich, so you know how I feel. I would say, however, that of all the candidates, he ranks #2 to Mitt Romney. But four years ago, I considered John McCain as ranking #2 to Rudy Giuliani. And yet there's a difference. Yes, I rated Giuliani higher than McCain, but I liked a lot about McCain, so he was a close #2. Gingrich is currently #2 on my list behind Romney, but far, far back behind him in my estimation. I would happily vote for Gingrich over Barack Obama a year from now, if it came to that. But that is not because Gingrich is so good — rather, it is because Obama is so bad. I don't like Bachmann at all, for example, but I'd probably even vote for her over Obama.

The supercommittee fails

It looks as though the debt-reduction supercommittee has failed to reach an agreement. And the reason is clearly this: Nobody is willing to compromise. The Democrats insist on a “soak-the-rich” policy. They cannot realize that in a recession, raising taxes is not going to help. And the Republicans, not surprisingly, are not going to accept a Democratic insistence that new taxes are a sine qua non of the deal.

The Republicans, of course, have the better of the argument. But with a Democratic President in a position to veto any pure Republican bill, they probably needed to accept some revenue enhancements.

I don't know how this will end. The automatic across-the-board budget cuts which will follow this are sure to get some negative responses from those whose pet areas are going to be cut. The question is, will the across-the-board cuts trigger some real efforts to look at where money is needed and where it is just somebody's pet project? The answer to this question is the key.

One county's war against rich pre-teen kids?

This summer, I saw a story about an unbelievable action taken by the county in which I live. The United States Open golf tournament was held in this county. A group of pre-teen kids operated a lemonade stand near the tournament grounds. Because the kids had not gotten a permit from the county, their parents were fined $500!

I just received some more unbelievable information about this case. (Though, I suppose, one might say that it means that money can't buy special treatment.) It turns out that these kids were the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the CEO's of Marriott and Lockheed Martin, the largest private employers in the county! So the Marriott and Augustine families had kids who wanted to open a lemonade stand to raise money for charity, and the county would not let them. Strange!

And obviously, the county didn't care who they offended. Can you imagine what these families must think of this county's government?

An interesting coincidence

After posting yesterday's post, I read a post on Dennis Sanders' “Big Tent Revue” blog entitled, “Losing Our Way.” And, though he posted it before I posted mine, I hadn't yet read it until afterward. So it is interesting to see the overlaps between our posts.

I think that both of us are concerned that, in the name of conservatism, the Republican Party is in danger of moving so far rightward that it jeopardizes its hopes of winning the votes of the majority of the American people. It's even interesting that we both (although, in Sanders' case, he was quoting another writer, Ramesh Ponnuru) cited the same issue, the Medicare prescription drug plan!

It might be noted that Ponnuru, as described on the Bloomberg News site where his post occurs, is a senior editor at National Review, which should eminently qualify him as a conservative. So the fact that a moderate like me should find a Ponnuru column (even if quoted by an ideological ally of mine like Dennis Sanders) striking a responsive chord makes it seem like there is something there.

Conservatism: what is it?

Recently I saw another column in the Washington Examiner that I thought a bit puzzling. This one was written by Gene Healy and entitled “Newt Gingrich is no conservative.” Among the things that Healy uses to characterize Gingrich as “no conservative” include his support for the Medicare drug plan. I suppose Healy favors a cruel, extreme-libertarian kind of conservatism that decrees that if you can't afford to pay for your prescription drugs, you should just die and leave the world to the next generation! For to my way of thinking, the way the Medicare drug plan is structured, it's a good way of introducing conservative ideas into a Medicare-type program.

Rather than a one-size-fits-all sort of “insurance” plan, it fosters competition. Different private insurers (and I emphasize private) compete for the senior citizen's premium. When I got my booklet, it gave me choices between insurers who had lower monthly premiums and higher co-payments and others who had higher monthly premiums and lower co-payments. And various in-between combinations as well. I think this is a good idea. The government helps the insurers provide their plans at an affordable rate, but it doesn't, as “Obamacare” does with basic health care costs, force identical coverage by all companies. It seems to me this is exactly what a conservative wants. But I wonder what Gene Healy would require of someone to be called a “conservative.”

It is now official! The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the health care law

The Supreme Court has finally agreed to something that most of us have known for some time: The “Obamacare” health care law raises serious constitutional questions, important enough for the Court to decide. Yesterday,
the Court agreed to take up three cases challenging the Constitutionality of the law.

The Court has allocated five and one-half hours for discussion, far more than usual; in recent years the Court has limited arguments to one hour on most occasions, and never more than four (on the campaign finance law in 2003) in quite a long time.

There is a blog post by Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, entitled “How ‘Obamacare’ Could Lose in the Supreme Court.” And this makes it clear that the big issue is Does Congress have any limits on what the Commerce Clause of the Constitution empowers it to do? And Winkler feels that the Court may well find that these limits exclude such things as the “individual mandate,” which would invalidate ‘Obamacare.’

The Court will take up these arguments in March, and probably issue its ruling in June, right in the middle of the Presidential election campaign. It will be very interesting to see what they decide, and how the candidates respond.

The most annoying time of the year

Two songwriters, Edward Pola and George Wyle, once wrote a song entitled "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," about the Xmas season. To me it is better described as "the Most Annoying Time of the Year." As I've actually said in a number of posts, I hate it.

Normally I would wait to post this until it got closer to that day. (Although one of my earlier postings was also in early November.) But as it happened, over this past night, I had a dream. Now I don't usually put out my dreams on this blog for the whole world to see, but in the dream I was telling a friend (and, strangely, this friend was one who, in real life, passed away over 10 years ago!) that I wished that Christmas were treated, in this country, like Purim, a Jewish holiday that usually is celebrated in late February or March. And that's about how I feel for real.

Nobody who wants to celebrate Purim has any difficulty. There are stores where you can buy noisemakers and the other things one uses to celebrate the holiday. And it probably gets a mention in the newspapers a day or so before the actual date. But we are hardly bombarded with Purim songs, Purim cards, Purim decorations, and the like for the entire months of January and February! Anyone who wanted to ignore Purim would find it as easy to do so as anyone who wanted to celebrate it.

Contrast this with Christmas. It is impossible, beginning in late October or early November, to get away from Christmas decorations, Christmas music on the overhead speakers in department stores, and the like, and on the day itself, everything is closed. (Except, in the more urbanized areas, a few Chinese restaurants!) The Smithsonian museums (one of the few places one can go for an enjoyable time that don't cost a lot of money) are open every day of the year — except Christmas. One year I was in graduate school in a relatively small city — Charlottesville, Virginia. I could not find a single open restaurant — the only way I could get anything to eat (I was living in a single room without kitchen facilities) was by getting candy bars out of vending machines. I would gladly ignore the fact that December 25^th is a holiday for many people — but I simply can't. There is simply no way to lead a normal day's existence on that day.

Now, this will put me at odds with such as Rush Limbaugh, who believe this country should be a Christian theocracy. But so be it!

Musical chairs for second place?

First there was Michele Bachmann. Next came Rick Perry. Then Herman Cain. Then, briefly, Perry seized the headlines again, but mostly because of a negative incident, his not being able to remember his own plan to eliminate the Energy Department! Most recently, the name of Newt Gingrich has surfaced — and, as I posted earlier, in a sense he's the best of the choices of those who would nominate “anyone but Mitt Romney.” It looks like a game of musical chairs for the 2012 nomination — or rather, for second place, because most people are pretty certain that Romney will be the nominee.

One of the interesting things that happened recently is that Gingrich, invited to criticize Romney in a recent debate, refused to do so. I think that this is a sign that he, the most intelligent of the anti-Romney candidates, realizes that Romney will be the nominee, and the best that anyone else can do is use his second place to get the Vice-Presidential nomination. This actually worked well for George H. W. Bush, who finished second to Ronald Reagan, became Reagan's VP, and moved into the Presidency after Reagan was term-limited!

Meanwhile, of course, the Democrats are stuck with President Barack Obama. Nobody wants to challenge a sitting President in his own party. And unless the economy improves, particularly the unemployment situation, in slightly less than a year from today, we may yet see Mitt Romney elected President. But who as Vice-President? Perhaps Gingrich. And I think that at least Gingrich is looking for that slot!

You have to understand the rules!

As I mentioned yesterday, the centrist blogger Solomon Kleinsmith is starting a new website called “Uniters.org,”. One of the things that I saw when I looked at that site Tuesday is a plug for the hopeless organization called Americans Elect, a group of centrists who are following in the footsteps of the Unity '08 group who tried to produce a centrist ticket for the last Presidential election. And the fact is, people who want to advance the centrist cause and try to do it in that way do not understand how our system works.

Over two hundred years ago, in 1800, Anthony Lispenard was a Presidential elector from New York State. In those days, the electors did not, as they do today, cast a differentiated vote for President and Vice-President. Instead they simply cast two votes, ostensibly for the Presidency; the candidate with the largest number, if it was at least a majority of the number of electors, got the Presidency, while the candidate with the second-largest number got the Vice-Presidency. So supporters of the Democratic-Republican ticket of Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr simply voted for both. In previous elections, and among the rival Federalist Party even in 1800, a small number of electors (even just one!) would vote for the party's Presidential candidate, but vote for someone else, who was not a real candidate, with their second vote, so as to assure that their Presidential candidate got more electoral votes than their Vice-Presidential candidate. (In 1796, however, too many Federalist electors did this, so that Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican candidate for the Presidency, outpolled the Federalists' Vice-Presidential candidate and became the Vice-President!)

Lispenard, in fact, preferred Aaron Burr, the Democratic-Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency, to Thomas Jefferson, who was again the Democratic-Republican candidate for the Presidency, and tried to accomplish this by voting for Burr but not for Jefferson. But he didn't understand the system! He cast two votes for Burr. Now if he had voted for Burr and someone else as long as that someone else was not a New York State resident (the rules stated that an elector's two votes had to include one who was not a resident of his own State), Lispenard could have elected Burr President, with 73 votes to Jefferson's 72. Anthony Lispenard was one of the few people in history who could have, by one act, changed the course of history! But he didn't understand what he needed to do, and voted twice for Burr. Now this would not work. An elector could not vote for one person twice. And certainly if he was a resident of your own State, as Burr was in Lispenard's case, even if an elector could vote for one person twice, he could not vote for that person twice because one of the votes had to be for a candidate from a different State! So Lispenard's vote was changed to a vote for Jefferson and Burr, and he did not get his wish simply because he didn't realize how simply he could have assured Burr the Presidency!

What does this have to do with Americans Elect? Simply, in the system we have, which is Plurality Voting, any candidate other than the top two simply hurts the candidate who is closer to him. If a “centrist” candidate appeals to more Republicans than Democrats, he is likely to cause the Democrat to be elected. And if he appeals to more Democrats than Republicans, he is likely to cause the Republican to be elected. So unless he is truly dead center, which is pretty unlikely, he's going to have the effect that the people who voted for him will feel they've shot themselves in the foot. (Probably the reason that Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992 was that more Republicans were impressed with Ross Perot than Democrats were.)

As I have previously said, the way to get centrists and moderates elected, which is what Uniters.org ostensibly wishes to accomplish, is to change the voting system, not start a quixotic third candidacy.

Uniters.org

There is a blogger named Solomon Kleinsmith who hosts a "centrist" blog and is starting a new site called “Uniters.org,” intended as a forum for “centrists and moderates,” to which I recently received an invitation. Now I suppose that the fact that I received this invitation qualifies me as one of those “centrists and moderates.” Yet I am not so sure. A moderate I think I am, but I can't really consider myself a centrist, as I think Kleinsmith defines it. As I've stated it, my positions include some that are generally considered “left” and others that are generally considered “right”: my position is that it is not whether a position is “right” or “left,” but rather whether it furthers the best interest of all of us (meaning maximal freedom, subject to not infringing on others' freedoms), that governs my attitude toward the idea. When I read Kleinsmith's blog, or Rick Bayan's (another “centrist” blog) I don't always find myself agreeing with them; yes, sometimes I do, but sometimes I agree with people like Rush Limbaugh! I certainly will look at Uniters.org, and when I find myself in agreement I will applaud, but I don't guarantee that I will agree with most of the positions it takes.

What about Gingrich?

Readers of this blog know that I get a lot of my material from columns I read in the Washington Examiner. This post is no exception.

Yesterday's Examiner had a column by Byron York entitled “Gingrich's wonkish, unconventional campaign.” The main burden of York's column is that “If either of the current frontrunners, Herman Cain or Mitt Romney, were to falter, Gingrich is in a position to benefit greatly.” And I think this really means that York is saying that, with all the missteps made by first Michele Bachmann, then Rick Perry, and more lately Herman Cain, Gingrich may well be the one for Republicans who cannot reconcile themselves to Mitt Romney.

Well, I have to say this about Gingrich: He is, I believe, a lot more intelligent than Bachmann or Perry, and he certainly has Government experience, unlike Cain. So he makes a lot more sense as a candidate than any of those three. (Disclaimer: I still think Romney is a better choice!)

One point that could be made against Gingrich is that he has been rejected by his own party in the past. But after the 1962 California Gubernatorial election, everyone thought Richard M. Nixon was finished. Even Nixon did — after all, he said on that occasion, “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore…” But this was not so. Six years later, Nixon was elected President. (Another disclaimer: As far as I am concerned, despite a lot of negative opinion by others, Nixon was still the best President, in my opinion, in the past fifty years!)

So maybe Gingrich deserves looking at. As I said, Romney is still my #1 choice among those actually running. But Gingrich isn't a bad alternative, in my opinion.

Herman Cain's defects

Yesterday's Washington Examiner contains an interesting column by Ken Klukowski entitled, “Four 'Cs' of why Cain is unelectable”:

Catchy alliterations — starting with the same letter or number — are popular in politics. Herman Cain's “9-9-9” is a perfect example. Republicans need to consider another alliteration involving Herman Cain, however. One that could give Barack Obama a second term.

Many men learn the four “Cs” when they buy a diamond ring to propose marriage: carat, color, cut, clarity. Another four “Cs” could mean a short marriage between Republicans and Cain: competency, consistency, character, crisis management.

First, competency. We already elected one president with a scant record of public service, allowing him to base his candidacy on rhetoric. Once elected, his rhetoric was miles removed from his policies.

Instead of a short record, Cain has no public record. Although he's a very successful businessman, you can expect Obama to point out that this nation has never elected a president without any record of serving as a government officer (since Army generals are officers of the United States, and we've only elected commanding generals who saved this nation in war).

Cain's unawareness that China has had nuclear weapons for decades makes easy attack ads. Millions of Americans who don't know much about foreign policy know China has nukes.

The fact that Cain didn't will worry “security moms” and veterans. While jobs are important, any president's highest responsibility is as commander in chief.

A Palestinian right of return would destroy Israel as a Jewish nation. Cain voiced support, then later reversed, explaining that he knew nothing about this basic Middle-East issue and instead supports Israel. In other words, he bluffed his way through the interview to hide his lack of knowledge.

This is also an example of the second “C,” consistency.

His 180-reversal on abortion raises eyebrows. Last month he said it was a woman's choice, which is what pro-choice politicians say. John Kerry said he was personally pro-life, but didn't think government should impose his view on others.

To undo this damage, Cain made passionate pro-life statements, with no exceptions for rape and incest. Expect those video clips in Obama attack ads next fall targeted at suburban and single women.

Cain's 9-9-9 plan was supposed to be simple. Now he says for some people it would be 9-0-9, that there will be economic development zones with different tax structures, and that all this is a transition to a 30 percent national sales tax.

Third, character. Even baseless sex-harassment allegations can sink candidates. Cain's accusers are now free to speak, but eschewing public attention for the moment.

Don't speculate on nameless, faceless allegations. Cain deserves the presumption of innocence. No facts have been publicly revealed to suggest otherwise.

But if these women support Obama, they could drop a bomb on Cain before the general election if he wins the nomination. Assuming the accusations are false, with enough money and press attention they could cost Cain millions of moderate votes by raising serious doubts about his character right before Election Day, capitalizing on the fact that Cain hasn't been vetted through years of public service.

Fourth, crisis management. Presidents are beset with crises, one after another. Effectively responding in a disciplined manner is critical to maintaining public confidence and marshaling support to respond.

Cain's unfocused and now flailing response to the sex-harassment scandal is painful to watch, especially since he knew this was coming. His whipsaw reversal on abortion confuses people. And his unawareness on basic issues like China and Israel could slow and muddle situations requiring quick and decisive action. He's failed the test of deftly handling bad news.

Cain might beat back all these issues in the primaries. But each of them costs him votes with swing voters, making him less electable. Is Cain becoming the candidate President Obama wants to face next year?

Many of Klukowski's comments are points I share. And I worry that too many people, because they have problems with Mitt Romney, may push the party into nominating Cain, which, for the reasons Klukowski gives, would be a disaster for the party. Let us remember that the goal is to defeat President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012, not to nominate the purest conservative. And this is why we need to unite behind Romney

Change who can believe in?

My wife and I do not live together any more, but we are still on friendly terms. Politically, she and I are quite distinct: she is at least nominally a Democrat, though she has, on a few occasions, voted for Republicans, including the 2008 Presidential election, when she felt that John McCain's experience was helpful, and thought he was far more honorable than Barack Obama. (The information about Obama's treatment of Alice Palmer, which I had read and posted in this blog, had helped her make this decision, and the experience of 1996, when she had thought that Bob Dole was too far to the political right and had voted for Bill Clinton, only to be treated to the spectacle of an embarrassing President, has convinced her that character counts even more than political orientation.) Anyway, the shambles that the economy has turned into (she had worked for Borders, and when her store closed in April had to start looking for work; she still has not found it) makes her very critical of Pres. Obama's “changes,” and she'd been remarking about his “change you can believe in” slogan. In fact, she said to me yesterday that if Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee next year, he could use that slogan! (Though, of course, he's not likely to.)

It looks as though Romney could possibly get her vote, though she's not sure — she wants to look more closely at him. But none of the other GOP hopefuls has a chance at it: she sees Perry (much as I do) as a medieval anti-science type, and we agree that Cain's total lack of political experience ill equips him for the Presidency; though either of the two might get my vote against Obama, it looks as though they would drive her to vote for Obama.

This is why we need to nominate a Mitt Romney type. Romney can get the moderate independents' vote; none of the others can.

What is right, is right, even if Obama does it

Ever since Barack Obama became President, I've been saying that whenever he does something right, I'll accept it. I can't condemn something just because Obama does it. And so, I have to differ with Gregory Kane, who wrote a column that appeared in Wednesday's Washington Examiner entitled “Obama becomes 'Silent Cal' on Libya, sharia.”

President Obama has been backing (I think not forcefully enough!) the rebels who deposed Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. And now that they have won, they want to put forth a constitution that recognizes Sharia (Islamic law) as the “basic source of Libyan legislation.” Now, there are certain aspects of Sharia that I don't like — cutting off the hand of a thief, for example. But Libya is a majority-Moslem country, and if the majority wants their laws to be compatible with Sharia, that is only democracy. The question is, will the rights of non-Moslems be respected? So far, we don't know. Until we do, we cannot condemn Libya, or Obama's support for the Libyan rebels.

This stance is particularly galling coming from Gregory Kane. He has sometimes written things that seem, in my eyes, to favor a Christian theocracy in this country. Certainly, he wants to make the Catholic Church's teachings on abortion into law. And he ridicules the concept of separation of church and state regularly. Apparently, it's ok for the majority religion to impose its views on the minority if that group is Christian, but not if it is Moslem. As a member of a non-Christian, non-Moslem religious group, I can say that neither is anything different from the other. Both Christians and Moslems have, at different times, had horrible human rights records regarding nonmembers of their own religious groups.

So don't trash Obama for this position. This time he is right. Getting rid of Qaddafi was a service to the world.

Why should anyone care about the "birthers"?

Recently Rick Perry made some statements that seemed to put him in the camp of the “birthers” (people who don't believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States). There's been enough evidence that he was born in Honolulu that one would think nobody could doubt it, but suppose he really were not? What difference do you think this would make? Does anyone believe that the Supreme Court would invalidate the laws that Obama signed in his capacity of the Presidency? Perhaps Joe Biden might serve out the last few months of the term Obama was elected to. But would this in any way change the current dynamic of a Republican House of Representatives and a Senate which has a narrow Democratic plurality, with enough Republican votes to prevent action on anything they unanimously oppose?

Those who feel President Obama has been a bad President, and I count myself among them, need to concentrate all efforts on nominating a Republican who can defeat him November next year. Trying to attack him on the “legitimacy” issue won't really accomplish a thing.

Why there is no credible "social conservative" Presidential candidate

I've been getting some amusement from the machinations of “social conservatives” trying to come up with a candidate this year. They've had a really hard time, because it's just not possible to find a credible Presidential candidate who is also a “social conservative.”

First, there was Michele Bachmann. A member of Congress, a former state treasurer, and certainly a “social conservative.” But when she began to campaign for the Presidency, it became obvious that she was only a slightly more intelligent version of last year's Christine O'Donnell. She had never given much thought to some of the major issues confronting the country, and was positively crazy when it came to some matters. The “social conservatives” abandoned her in droves as this came out.

So next, they turned to Rick Perry. The problem with Rick Perry is that he isn't really a traditional Republican, but rather an unreconstructed Dixiecrat. The Dixiecrats, for over a century, stayed in the Democratic Party, not because they agreed with the rest of the Democrats on any important issues, but because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and they had never conceded that the Civil War was won by the North under his leadership. When the Supreme Court decisions of the 1950s and 1960s made it clear that the Dixiecrats would never prevail, they looked at the fact that, on many economic issues, they had more in common with the Republicans than the Democrats and gradually moved into the Republican Party — Perry did so only in the 1990s! But Perry got tripped up on the “Niggerhead” issue — to him (as I said, really a Dixiecrat), a camp with a name like that was not particularly offensive, so he never considered that, once he put his political ambitions on a national stage, there are people out there who would find it so.

Now, the current “flavor of the month” is Herman Cain, who would obviously never be caught up on the “Niggerhead” issue. But while Cain has certainly been a competent executive (with a substantial record in the pizza business) he is not a politician. He got himself tripped up on the issue of the “Palestinian ‘right to return’” because he never understood that this really meant the extermination of Israel — he'd never been concerned with issues like that. And his credentials with the “social conservatives” have been seriously compromised by his waffling stand on abortion, the issue that “social conservatives” live and die for. He has proclaimed himself “pro-life,” but basically he is a “laissez-faire” businessman and opposed to government intervention in people's private lives, and this is exactly what the “pro-lifers” want. And so he's finding himself forced to contradict himself.

I believe it is truly impossible for an intelligent person to believe in the premises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States and also be a “social conservative.” They are simply incompatible. And it is in this that the “social conservatives” have their problems. How can one believe in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and interfere with others' liberty to live as they choose, in the pursuit of what makes them happy? And imposing one's own religious beliefs on others is certainly incompatible with the First Amendment to the Constitution. This is why anyone intelligent enough to be a credible Presidential candidate is bound to reject the “social conservative” doctrine. And it is why the “social conservatives” have found it such tough going to find their candidate.

The myth of “medical marijuana”

I should note that this post was inspired by reading a column by Joseph Summerill in yesterday's Washington Examiner, but it is not simply a repost of his column, because I have been thinking along similar lines for a long time. Some of the facts, however, are taken directly from the column, since I do not want to have to spend the effort digging up the primary sources.

Marijuana is a dangerous drug. It has been classified as a Schedule I drug inder the Controlled Substances Act, a classification which applies to substances that “exhibit a high potential for abuse or dependency, have no accepted medical value, and are unsafe to use, even under medical supervision.” Note the last two of these. They imply that there is really no such thing as “medical marijuana,” despite the propaganda by drugheads who have succeeded in getting sixteen states and the District of Columbia to pass laws purporting to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. It might additionally be noted that the Food and Drug Administration has definitively stated that there has not been a single scientifically valid study that has supported the medicinal value of marijuana, and FDA's statement confirms the ridiculousness of the term “medical marijuana.”

Some people point to the fact that the FDA has approved a drug called dronabinol (sold under the proprietary name Marinol), which contains synthetic tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive substance found in the cannabis plant. Dronabinol is prescribed for the relief of the adverse side effects of chemotherapy and as an appetite stimulant for AIDS sufferers. It is available legally in pill form, and accepted by the medical community. But marijuana, as smoked, contains more than four hundred chemicals, including some of the same carcinogens found in tobacco smoke. It is not a pure substance, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (a unit of the National Institutes of Health) has stated that marijuana in smoked or vaporized form is unlikely to be used as a medicine because of its lack of purity and often unpredictable side effects, pointing out that it may cause cognitive defects that reduce its usefulness.

Years ago, people used to point out that marijuana is a “gateway drug,” opening the way to more dangerous drugs. A lot of pro-marijuana people have propagandized extensively to the point that you do not hear this much now. And yet, scientific studies show this to be true. The Harm Reduction Journal has published a study of 3000 “medical marijuana” users and found that, of the Caucasian subjects in the study, nearly 75% have used cocaine and over 50% have used methamphetamine. Another study, of teenagers who smoke marijuana, done at Columbia University, found that teen-age marijuana smokers are 85 times as likely to use cocaine than non-marijuana smokers.

And the psychoactive properties of marijuana are known. Washington state has legalized “medical marijuana,” and a study in that state showed that about one in every eight fatally injured drivers tested positive for marijuana. There is more evidence, but this is the most prominent study.

So, clearly, “medical marijuana” is a myth.

An example of unions' extortion of the public

This posting, on the FrumForum blog, by Howard Foster, caught my eye. It's another example of contemptible behavior by the labor unions of this country.:

Last year I moved my law firm from one high-rise building in downtown Chicago to another one a few blocks away. Because the move was a short one, I shopped around for a mover who could get the job done for under $500. And there were small movers in the suburbs willing to do the job at that cost.

Yet I discovered a problem when I attempted to obtain permission from my new landlord for the suburban mover to use the loading dock. The mover was non-union, and the building would not allow any non-union contractor or subcontractor into the building.

I checked my lease to see if there was any such restriction on my ability to hire independent contractors of my choosing. And sure enough, there was. The lease requires tenants to obtain permission from management for any independent contractor.

It does not expressly provide that such permission shall only be given to unionized contractors, but the building manager made it quite clear to me that indeed was the unwritten policy. If someone tries to bring in a non-union electrician, the building owner will order the electrician to leave, and if that doesn’t work, the building staff will walk off their jobs, effectively shutting the 40 story structure down.

So the building is colluding with the union to keep out non-union workers even though the result of that conspiracy is to jack up the price of labor for the building’s tenants. Why would the building agree to enforce this rule? At first blush, it would seem not to be in the building’s interests. It wants to keep its tenants happy.

The reason is big cities operate under union control. Union members tend to live in these cities. They are rewarded with vastly supra-competitive (overpriced) wages in exchange for which they pay hefty union dues. These dues flow to politicians who pressure big businesses to pay extortionate wage rates in exchange for barriers to competition. So a big employer in Chicago’s Loop will have to pay enormous labor costs, $30-70/hour for contractors plus generous benefits, but the City will steer contracts to that company. Additionally, sky-high labor costs keep out competitors. So big landlords and big construction firms and big hotel chains and big restaurant chains tend to dominate the downtown market. We consumers lose at every turn.

So I was compelled to hire a union mover on the “approved list” maintained by my new building at a cost of $1200, an act of extortion. In labor law terms I was the victim of a “secondary boycott,” the threat of a work stoppage by the building employees. Labor law allows employees to boycott or strike their own employer but not anyone else. They can’t take action against me in order to coerce me to keep non-union contractors out of the building. This is an “unfair labor practice” under the National Labor Relations Act (and it’s also an antitrust violation if done with the approval of the employer, here the building, which it was).

But the only remedy Congress provided for such a violation is a federal suit for money damages. So I could sue the union for $700 in federal court. But no rational litigant would sue for such a small sum even if the prospect of an award of attorney’s fees is promised to the winner, which the law provides to the victims of unfair labor practices. A more appropriate remedy would be a quick action for an injunction prohibiting the union and my building from excluding the non-union mover before my move so the damages could have been avoided. But the law does not provide for injunctions in such cases.

What happened to me is not unique to Chicago. Unions dominate virtually every construction job in every major city in the North and the West. (The South, which has historically been anti-union, is more competitive.) Union labor is significantly more expensive than non-union labor. Non-union workers would do the same jobs just as well (although the unions dispute this), for at least 30% less. One unintended consequence is that the unionized contractors will by necessity hire fewer workers, thereby increasing unemployment.

Let’s hope Mitt Romney will become president and propose long-needed labor law reform. Quicker relief from secondary boycotts by unions and their management collaborators (like my building) is long overdue. Ideally, the National Labor Relations Board should be able to hear such cases and issue injunctions against such boycotts, which are already illegal, before the damage is done, in a matter of a few weeks.

And in the case of a someone with a big construction job, the damages, the difference between union and non-union wages, can be enormous. Secondly, we need to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the federal government to pay union wages for construction projects. The result is that federal highway and construction jobs always go to unionized employers. This costs the taxpayers billions of dollars per year. If our high level of unemployment and low growth persist into 2013, and a Republican is elected president (presumably Romney), then there will be propitious time for labor law reform.

This is why we need laws to take out these greedy unions. Once upon a time, they served a useful purpose. Now, they don't.

The trouble with Herman Cain

There are two groups whose allegiance to the Democratic Party has been overwhelming: my own group (American Jews) and, in the last few decades, and even more monolithically, African-Americans. So it is heartening to see a few Jewish Republicans coming into prominence (like Eric Cantor, the #2 Republican in the House of Representatives), and the same can be said of African-Americans like Herman Cain. But Cain poses one big problem.

Yes, it would be nice to have an African-American candidate opposing President Barack Obama to take the "racism" accusations off the table. And unlike President Obama, Mr. Cain has excellent credentials as a businessman in the real world, having been the CEO of a well-known corporation making pizzas for the public. Being a businessman is something that teaches you a lot about economics, which will be a major issue, perhaps the major issue, in next year's Presidential election.

But Mr. Cain has one major problem. He has never held any political office. And this means he has never had to engage in the give and take that a President (or any politician) needs to immerse himself in. No President, no Governor, no mayor, ever gets his way 100% — he has political opposition to work with (even the Mayor of Chicago has some, though it's pretty weak!) and this matters. We have just seen how practical politics is making Herman Cain rethink his catchy-slogan "9-9-9" taxation plan. One of his talking points has been the simplicity of his plan. No exemptions — all people are treated alike and all income is treated alike. Well, when he sees the real world, he sees you can't do that. All of a sudden, his plan has grown exemptions.

Had he some political experience, he probably could have seen from the beginning that his original 9-9-9 plan would never fly.

One of the problems we've had with President Obama is his need for "on-the-job training." He has had some political experience, but not enough (before becoming President, he had a couple of years in the Senate and a few more as an Illinois State Senator). Can we really afford to have a President with none at all? (Even if he has the business experience that President Obama lacks!) I don't think so.

We need a President with both experience running a business and experience in a high political office. That is why Mitt Romney is such an attractive candidate.

A good idea, which is unfortunately not likely to come about right away

Although the bill was introduced back in August, it was only yesterday (as a result of an editorial in the Washington Examiner) that I found out that Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative Tim Scott introduced a bill, under the name of the Employee Rights Act, to make fairer the process of determining whether workers are represented by unions or not.

If enacted, the bill would:

• Mandate a secret-ballot vote in every union representation election, regardless of whether an employer opts to voluntarily recognize the union.

• Require union representation to be recertified via a secret ballot election every three years following initial certification.

• Allow employees to collect any lost wages or unlawfully collected union dues resulting from a union’s interference with their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, including the right to petition for union decertification.

• Impose a procedural penalty on unions that unlawfully interfere with an employee’s filing of a decertification petition.

• Prevent the National Labor Relations Board from implementing its proposed “quickie elections” rule change in order to ensure that employees are able to have full and complete information before deciding whether to join a union.

• Conform and make equal the definition of an unfair labor practice on the part of union with that of an employer under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

• Prevent a union from ordering a strike unless they first obtain the consent of a majority of the workforce via a secret ballot election.

• Allow all applicable employees — union members and non-members alike — to have the same rights as union members to vote to ratify a collective bargaining agreement or to engage in a work stoppage.

• Prevent an employee’s union dues or fees from being used for purposes unrelated to the union’s collective bargaining functions — including political contributions and expenditures — without that employee’s written consent.

• Strengthen prohibitions against extortion and the use of force or violence or threat thereof for achieving objectives relating to union representation, compensation, or conditions of employment.

Right now, the playing field is tilted in favor of organized labor — if the employees vote once to certify a union, it remains certified for all time; the workers have no chance to reconsider this decision, ever! This bill would create a more level playing field.

Unfortunately, it has little chance of passing the Senate — because the Democrats control that body and most Democrats are the stooges of organized labor — and would certainly be vetoed by President Obama even if it passed, again because the Democratic Party is totally beholden to organized labor and Obama has never shown any desire to offend those union bosses. Right now, all we can hope for is a debate that will bring out the issues, but perhaps after the 2012 election, the political balance will have changed so as to make passage more likely. As should be clear, this blog is 100% behind the Hatch-Scott bill. Too bad there is no hope of passing it right now, but let us work to get a bill like this in the future.

Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and church-state separation

I have not been watching the debates among the GOP hopefuls, mainly because my mind is pretty much made up already, but also because there are too many candidates that haven't got a chance included in the field to be able to concentrate on the significant ones, because I don't have the time, and because I'll find out if anything important came out of them from newspaper or blog articles anyway. And the last point was borne out by my seeing a post by David Frum in his FrumForum blog:

On the Las Vegas stage, Anderson Cooper asked the candidates about the role of faith generally and then specifically to the disparaging comments about Romney’s Mormonism by the pastor who introduced Rick Perry at the Values Voters Summit.

Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich used the opportunity to describe religious faith as a bona fide job qualification for the presidency.

Gingrich: “And how can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?”

Perry unpleasantly tried to play it both ways, both edging away from the disparaging remarks while refusing to criticize the pastor for making them.

I have said I didn’t agree with that individual’s statement. And our founding fathers truly understood and had an understanding of — of freedom of religion.

And this country is based on, as — as Newt talked about, these values that are so important as we go forward. And the idea that we should not have our freedom of — of religion to be taken away by any means, but we also are a country that is free to express our opinions. That individual expressed an opinion. I didn’t agree with it, Mitt, and I said so. But the fact is, Americans understand faith. And what they’ve lost faith in is the current resident of the White House…I have. I said I did not agree with the — Pastor Jeffress’s remarks. I don’t agree with them. I — I can’t apologize any more than that.

Now Romney:

What I actually found was most troubling in what the reverend said in the introduction was he said, in choosing our nominee, we should inspect his religion. And someone who is a good moral person is not someone who we should select; instead, we should choose someone who subscribes to our religious belief.

That — that idea that we should choose people based upon their religion for public office is what I find to be most troubling, because the founders of this country went to great length to make sure — and even put it in the Constitution — that we would not choose people who represent us in government based upon their religion, that this would be a nation that recognized and respected other faiths, where there’s a plurality of faiths, where there was tolerance for other people and faiths. That’s a bedrock principle.

And it was that principle, Governor, that I wanted you to be able to [say], “no, no, that’s wrong, Reverend Jeffress.” Instead of saying as you did, “Boy, that introduction knocked the ball out of the park,” I’d have said, “Reverend Jeffress, you got that wrong. We should select people not based upon their faith.” Even though — and I don’t suggest you distance yourself from your faith any more than I would. But the concept that we select people based on the church or the synagogue they go to, I think, is a very dangerous and — and enormous departure from the principles of our — of our Constitution.

That may have been the most full-throated defense of religious separation on a Republican platform these past 30 years – and we owe it to Rick Perry’s weasely attempt to “disagree” with Rev. Jeffress’ anti-Mormon animus while still profiting politically from that animus.

More reason to support Mitt Romney. He actually knows the content of the portion of Article VI, ¶ 3 of the Constitution that says:

no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Is Pres. Obama already a lame duck?

Sometimes, as I look around the blogosphere, by following links I come to some relatively old posts that I think deserve reading. In particular, the FrumForum blog has a number of people besides David Frum who post there, and usually when you look at a post, there are links to other posts by the same person, some of which may be months old. With that by way of explanation, I saw this posting by Zac Morgan, dated this past August 4. It makes fascinating reading.

Romney a "Rockefeller Republican"?

Newt Gingrich recently called Mitt Romney a “Rockefeller Republican.” And I suppose, to Gingrich, this is bad. To me, this is a good reason to support Romney. For, I'm proud to say, I'm also a Rockefeller Republican. Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller was one of the two people whose handling of an executive position inspired me to become a Republican — I was too young to vote, of course, but as soon as I turned 21 (the minimum voting age back in those days) I registered as a Republican, coming from a strong Democratic family. (The other person, besides Rockefeller, was President Dwight D. Eisenhower.)

Of course, I think what Gingrich was trying to say is that Romney could not be nominated because he is too moderate. This may have hurt Rockefeller, but it will not hurt Romney. The fact is that most Republicans are more interested in defeating Barack Obama than in ideological purity this year. And a moderate is exactly what the GOP needs to do this.

Can we do something to advance the moderate cause? Yes!

Regular readers of this blog know that I generally take positions that can basically be described as right-of-center, and many of my posts have been in advocacy of moderate Republican candidates. But I think that the cause I am about to put forth in this post is one that moderates of both parties and independent centrists should embrace, however we might differ on individual candidates. The thing is: we need to change the way we elect people to office.


The system we use for nearly all elections is called plurality. You can vote for only one candidate, and the one with the most votes wins. If there are three acceptable candidates, you need to pick one, and if some of your allies pick a different one, the vote for the good candidates is split, so that a candidate that you really don’t want gets elected. Because of the results of such a split, we need primary elections to pick one candidate of each party, and it is in these primaries that moderates are getting crushed by extremists of both the left (in the Democratic party) and the right (in the Republican party).


We have seen this over and over. Arlen Specter, who had served with distinction in the Senate as a moderate Republican representing the state of Pennsylvania for many years, figured he could not win a Republican primary – the last time he had run, he came perilously close to defeat at the hands of Pat Toomey, who was going to run in the primary again. So he switched to the Democratic party, where he thought his chances might be better. That did not help; he was beaten by a left-wing Democrat, Joseph Sestak, in that party’s primary. Polls showed that Specter might have won an election in which all Pennsylvanians could vote, but at the primary level, Toomey would beat him among Republicans and Sestak among Democrats. So the Senate was deprived of a voice for moderation.


Last year, at least two Democrats, Chris Coons in Delaware and Harry Reid in Nevada, were elected although the polls showed that both could be defeated if the Republicans had put forth moderate candidates. And there were available candidates: Mike Castle in Delaware, a very popular member of the House of Representatives, who had had to run statewide since Delaware had only one Representative, and Sue Lowden in Nevada, a State Senator and former state Republican chairwoman. But Tea Party extremists in the Republican primaries forced the nomination of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada, both of whom were guilty of such political gaffes as to make them objects of ridicule by the time of the November election.


Some have said that the solution to this is opening up primaries to voters who are not members of the party in question. But that would be a case where the cure might be worse than the disease. Democrats might vote in a Republican primary to pick the candidate who would most easily lose to a Democrat. So a better solution is needed. And that is to have a better voting system. There are two broad types of solution. One is to have proportional representation, where a party that gets 25% of the votes in an election gets 25% of the seats in the body being elected. This is, of course, not possible in an election for an office like a mayor, governor, or president, so for such offices it is necessary to have a system where vote splitting cannot hurt a candidate as it does in plurality voting.


Some people say that proportional representation leads to instability, because it leads the way to the representation of lots of third parties that cannot form majorities; it has in such cases as France and Italy shortly after World War II and Israel more recently. But there are ways of setting up proportional representation that do not lead to this instability; in Germany and, in recent years, New Zealand, a system has been adopted that works and allows third parties to exist without the unstable governments that were seen in those other countries.


But as stated before, there are offices like mayor, governor, or president, which cannot be divided proportionally. So single winner methods need to be devised where a voter can vote his conscience without worrying that splitting the vote would elect his worst choice. There are systems that will do this. A site, which I created, that compares voting systems is available at http://important-information.net78.net/vote/. There is an excellent book by William Poundstone called Gaming the Vote, which also discusses this problem. And Poundstone, as well as I, has concluded that the best system to use is one called “range” or “score” voting, in which you rate all the candidates, so you can (in one version) give a 10 to the candidate(s) you like best, a 1 to the one(s) you like least, and intermediate values to others. So conservatives might give 10s to the most conservative candidates, 1s to the most liberal, and 4s, 5s, or 6s to moderates. Liberals would do the reverse, and moderates might give 1s to the extremists and 9s and 10s to moderate candidates. You would not need primaries, because if there were five Republicans in an election, they would not split the Republican vote, but Republicans could give high ratings to all of them. And the winning candidates would be the ones who got the most support all along the spectrum, leading to many more moderate victories.


An alternative system, known as Instant Runoff Voting, has been proposed by a group known as FairVote. It is essentially the system that has been used in Australia for many years, and proponents of this system have actually gotten it adopted in places like San Francisco; Aspen, Colorado; and Burlington, Vermont. In a few of those places, it was adopted, and has since been rejected, because it can lead to such bizarre results as in the Burlington, Vt. mayoralty election of 2009, where the candidate who might have been a good compromise, receiving support from nearly all the voters, was actually eliminated in the course of the counting, because he was the first choice of comparatively few. In such an election, some candidates who might be the most acceptable to the voters at large get eliminated, and usually the result is as much polarization between extreme candidates as the worst cases we have seen in plurality voting, so moderates, particularly, should resist the propaganda for instant-runoff voting.


You can read more about range/score voting at http://rangevoting.org – a very useful site.