Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows Indeed

No, that is not a picture of the cute balloon animal from my granddaughter's recent birthday party. It's an ethanol molecule. Ethanol is one of the most heavily-subsidized green weenie alternate fuels beloved by the federal government and farmers. In fact, in 2010, the bill for subsidizing ethanol (ethyl alcohol derived from corn) was $6 billion.

Like most alternatives for oil-drilling, natural gas drilling, and clean-coal development, ethanol is one of those "green" remedies that's as bad as or worse than the fuels that environmentalists hate so much. In fact, the only provable green parts of the ethanol boom are the greenbacks being used to support it and the massive algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from byproduct runoff being floated down the Mississippi River.

Every head of corn used to make ethanol is one head less which could be used as food. What has been an abundant and inexpensive food source for the poor people Barack Obama claims to love so much is now becoming scarcer and therefore more expensive. That's called "the market" principle of supply and demand--something of which the socialists are entirely unaware. Farmers who are receiving the subsidies are not at all concerned that farmers who do not receive the subsidies are paying higher prices for corn-based animal feed. That also drives up food prices.

So who are the strange bedfellows? California Senator Dianne Feinstein (liberal Democrat) and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (moderate/conservative Republican) have joined Tea Party activists attempting to end the $6 billion annual ethanol subsidies. This puts them on the side opposing the ethanol lobby, farm welfare pimps, major segments of the no-oil ecofreaks, and anti-tax bigwig Grover Norquist. Feinstein and Coburn issued a joint announcement in which they declared subsidies for ethanol and oil to be counterproductive. As for ethanol alone, they said: "Ethanol is the only industry that benefits from a triple crown of government intervention. Its use is mandated by law, it is protected by subsidies on domestic production and tariffs on foreign production, and companies are paid by the federal government to use it."

Speaking of the subsidies and tariffs on both ethanol and oil, they said "the subsidies are no longer affordable and the tariffs actually increase gasoline prices because it's cheaper to import oil than to import ethanol." That also runs counter to a recent statement by Barack Obama who praised Brazil for both its oil and ethanol production (he has actively squelched the former within the US). Said The One to the Brazilians: "You are eager to produce petroleum products, and we are eager to buy them." Speak for yourself, Mr. President. "We" want to see American drilling platforms in the Gulf that are twice the size and capability of the Brazilian platforms you are praising.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice government interference in the market. It's getting harder and harder to figure out who is on which side. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, says that Coburn is breaking his pledge to halt tax increases because ending the ethanol subsidies would amount to a tax increase for corn growers. Well, Grover, that's not only a debatable point, but it wouldn't be an increase for farmers who are growing corn for food. In fact, it would boost production and net income for them, thus resulting in increased revenue for the government (Laffer Curve, anyone?).

Feinstein is caught in another dilemma which Coburn doesn't face. California (not Iowa, not Illinois, not Kansas, not Nebraska) had long been the largest corn-producing state in the nation. But the cornfields of the Central California Valley largely produce dust these days as a result of enviro-freak protection of a useless little fish and an attendant government-created drought.

Feinstein must be living in a terrible world of self-conflict. She is opposing subsidies to an agricultural entity that her beloved EPA is killing off in California anyway. She is denying pork to an industry that used to bring immense revenue to California and to the United States at large. And speaking of pork, hog production in California is also way down because of a lack of water to slake their thirst and corn to feed them. I'm getting a headache just thinking of all those self-contradicting concepts.

Coburn did not take Norquist's claim lying down. He fired back with: "The ethanol subsidy is nothing more than corporate welfare not-so-cleverly disguised as a tax 'break' that, in the real world, has the impact of a tax increase because other taxes have to be raised to pay for it." The Tea Party subsidy opponents seem to feel that all the talk of taxes is valuable, but there is a much more basic issue involved. Said one writer on the Tea Party website: "Why should we as taxpayers pay to make our road fuel more corrosive and less energy dense? And making fuel out of food is retarded, even for politicians (emphasis added)."

You may be surprised to realize that corn, previously 100% food, is now 60% food and 40% fuel. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to figure out that this really means a substantial decrease in the availability of a cheap and abundant food source. Joining Feinstein and Coburn are Greenpeace (over the algae blooms) and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (over the food issue, obviously). 90 other large and influential organizations from every point on the political spectrum have formed a political coalition to fight the subsidies.

The one organization that isn't facing reality is, of course, the EPA. The EPA has now stepped into the unelected bureaucracy role of greenhouse gas regulator after the green weenies failed to enact "appropriate" legislation in Congress. But just how "green" is the EPA really? Says reporter Carolyn Lockhead, environmental writer for the San Francisco Chronicle (yes, that Chronicle): "Because fossil fuels are used both to grow corn and to refine it into ethanol, and because ethanol does not yield as much energy per gallon as gasoline, various studies have shown that ethanol does not save much energy overall, and may increase greenhouse gas emissions (emphasis added).
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Court Of Appeals Nomination Drones On

We're coming down to the wire on the nomination of far-left law professor Gordon Liu to the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals. I covered Liu in an earlier post (A Perfect Nominee) in case you need to get up-to-speed on Liu's background. But now I'd like to cover some of the circus that has surrounded his nomination hearing.

First, let's visit the hypocrisy of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She has spent the past few weeks damning Republicans for daring to question Liu's stand supporting extreme judicial activism. She is particularly bothered that Republicans have criticized Liu's large paper-trail of personal views supporting affirmative action absolutism, consideration of race, ethnicity and social status in deciding cases, and using regulatory agencies to skirt the Constitution.

Not fair, says Feinstein. "His personal views won't affect his judicial rulings." How she knows that when Liu has never served as a judge is a mystery. But she's quite sure of it, and doesn't think Republicans should be considering it. This is the same Feinstein who in 2006 rejected the nomination of future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito by saying: "If one is pro-choice in this day and age, in this structure, one can't vote for Judge Alito." Feinstein, her fellow California crazy, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and an unknown Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, attempted to thwart the majority in the process by suggesting that Alito's personal views were so radical that a filibuster was appropriate. They tried, but failed, to organize a filibuster.

But now the Democrats are the majority and their candidate for the Court of Appeals is far from the mainstream of American thought. Suddenly, personal criticisms of the nominee are unfair. Says DiFi: "Professor Liu's critics are all 'attack, attack, attack,' which is unfair because he is exemplary." So it's perfectly OK for the Democrats to summarily dismiss a nominee based on his legal philosophy, but unfair if Republicans attempt to do the same thing. And so far, at least, the Republicans haven't threatened a filibuster despite having sufficient votes with the election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

The Judiciary Committee hasn't completed its vetting of the nominee, but dangerous indicators are showing up that Liu has no intention of being impartial once on the bench. Though I have yet to be convinced that the Senate should do anything other than review the Committee findings and take an up or down vote, I'm beginning to smell some things that might indicate a filibuster would be in order. And the primary one would be Liu's views on the death penalty.

Liu is an anti-death penalty zealot. Liu has made it very clear that he thinks the Supreme Court's decisions on the death penalty since Roberts and Alito joined the Court have been wrongly decided. And his grounds for that belief? Liu decided that the high court upheld death penalty verdicts in such a way as to lead "to a conclusion of racism." Three of the four cases he referred to involved African-American defendants, so that automatically means the affirmation of the death penalty verdicts was, ipso facto racist.

Since Liu has never been a judge (unlike Alito), there is nothing to prove that his personal views would not be intimately intertwined with his judicial rulings in the future. Liu has been evasive in providing background material to the committee, and left out reams of his radical articles until they were produced by investigators who were not in the hip-pocket of the Democrats. And then he claimed it was just a simple error on his part. He also directly contradicted himself on several issues in his testimony that were quite different from what he had written or lectured on at UC Berkeley's Boalt School of Law. He was unable to explain the disparities.

This absolutist stand on racism and the death penalty should be thoroughly vetted and pursued by the committee before making its recommendation to the full Senate. Unlike the deaf, dumb and blind Feinstein and Boxer, many of us Californians, particularly any who practiced law in California, are aware of where a death penalty opposition purist can go when there is no judicial trail to follow. Law school professor Rose Bird was nominated and confirmed to be Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court by then-governor Jerry Brown. Both Brown and Bird were rabid opponents of the death penalty, which had recently been reinstated in California to conform to the US Supreme Court standards.

Bird swore before the state senate judiciary committee that she would never allow her personal beliefs opposing the death penalty to interfere with her judicial opinions. But of course, there was no judicial paper-trail to follow. Once she was confirmed as Chief Justice, she ruled in favor of the death penalty defendant/appellant in every single case that came before her. Her creation of all new legal roadblocks and crazed logic finally became too much to continue. Sixty-four capital cases came before her, and in all sixty-four, she reversed the death penalty.

Finally, she once again decided that a death penalty case in which the defendant had put five bullets into the back of the head of a victim who was tied to a chair required reversal of the capital punishment conviction. Her opinion stated "the prosecution had failed to prove the defendant's 'intent to kill' the victim." She and two of her fellow leftist judges were voted off the bench by the California voters (governors appoint the justices originally, but then they are subject to voter reconfirmation every twelve years).

Although Feinstein seems to be getting a bit dotty in her old age, she can't claim she doesn't know the story of the ultraliberal Rose Bird. Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco during exactly the same time Bird was Chief Justice. At Bird's confirmation hearing, Feinstein said pretty much the same things about Bird that she's now saying about Liu. Oh, what a tangled web she weaves.

But somehow, Feinstein and Boxer think the Senate Committee should just take Liu's word, as we took Bird's word, that he will not let his personal views interfere with his decisions on the bench. Pretty risky concept, in my opinion. Liu actually testified that unlike his written treatises and lectures at the law school, "I have no opposition to the death penalty. I have never written anything questioning its morality or constitutionality. I would have no problem enforcing the law as written in this area." Well, he's bold. I'll give him that. To emphasize his fairness, he admitted that his language about Justice Alito was "perhaps unnecessarily flowery." Yes, he actually said "flowery."

Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has studied Liu's work carefully, and concludes that Liu would "overrule death penalty convictions given any excuse, no matter how far-fetched." To this California retired lawyer, that sounds frighteningly familiar. Scheidegger believes that on this issue alone, the Republicans should filibuster the nomination if necessary. I'm not sure I agree yet, but I'm not willing to rule out the possibility. It could be a very close call, and it would only take one Republican defection to turn a principled stand into the appearance of foolish obstructionism.
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What Do You Mean My Premiums Are Going Up?

As I’ve pointed out before, the Democrats are going to have a hard time selling ObamaCare to the masses. Nothing about ObamaCare makes any sense, and each of the promises they made to entice people was false. Our vaunted media is now figuring this out. As usual, they are fifty days late and two trillion dollars short.

I previously discussed (HERE) how almost immediately after Obama signed the ObamaCare bill, companies began recording losses on their balance sheets, laying off their workers, and cutting their benefits, despite Obama’s assurances this would never happen.

A few days later, the first articles appeared talking about the shock received by ObamaCare supporters when they called private insurance companies and asked how to sign up for their free ObamaCare. According to various insurers, they’ve been fielding thousands of these calls, and none of Obama’s supporters are hearing what they expected. Indeed, rather than being enrolled in their new free care, they are finding out that there is no such thing, and that there won’t be. And they are learning that no matter what David Axelrod may be telling people in interviews, none of the benefits kick in until 2014 or later. People with pre-existing conditions also are finding themselves dismayed to learn that they don’t get covered until 2014, and even then, there are no price controls on what they can be charged.

But then, how could anyone have know this. . . it's not like it was in a bill for the world to see. Interestingly, these articles actually blame the Republicans for this problem because evil Republicans apparently lied. . . spreading lies like ObamaCare providing “universal coverage” and that the benefits kick in immediately. That’s right, the evil Republicans unfairly raised expectations by trying to make the bill sound better than it really is. Yeah, you read that right.

Now the L.A. Times has learned, much to its chagrin, that there are no mechanisms in ObamaCare that allow the government to set the rates that insurers can charge! Sacre bleu! Dianne Feinstein even calls this: “a very big loophole in health reform” and she wants to pass new legislation to give the government such powers. Good luck.

Seriously, how stupid do you have to be not to have noticed that the bill doesn’t allow the government to impose price controls? The bill was right there, ready to be read. And on this issue in particular, Obama himself proposed adding it to the bill, but the Democrats couldn’t do it without having to get the Senate to vote on it again, so they didn't. This was big news. There is no way Feinstein and the Times missed it.

In reality, I don’t think Feinstein is that stupid. She knew full well that there was nothing in the bill that allowed the government to control premiums, she’s just playing along now that the cat is out of the bag. To borrow from Casablanca, she’s “shocked! Shocked! That this isn’t in the bill.”

The L.A. Times, though, is being stupid. They genuinely didn’t have a clue that ObamaCare didn’t give the government this power. They took the word of the Democrats at face value and never assigned anyone to read the bill. Heck, it’s likely they don’t even have anyone on staff would could read the bill. And now they’re weeping into their printers ink that evil health insurance providers could impose massive premium hikes. They’re particularly terrified that such hikes could drive people to oppose ObamaCare. . . . hmmm, maybe they aren’t so stupid after all?

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Democrats Kill Bipartisanship

Bipartisanship means many things to many people. To some, it means trying to work together. To Obama it means the Republicans should accept the blame for his failures. To Harry Reid, it means killing any bill which the Republicans might like. So much for the new era of bipartisanship. Rest in peace dear friend, two days was too young to die.

When Obama met with the Republicans on Tuesday, his lips moved a lot and the word “bipartisan” kept falling out, but so did a lot of other nasty words. Still, we were supposed to believe that Obama wanted a new era of bipartisanship, and he particularly urged the Republicans to work with the Democrats on a jobs bill. But that was Tuesday and yesterday was Thursday, and two days is a long time in politics.

Thursday morning, Sen. Max Baucus and Sen. Chuck Grassley unveiled their long-awaited bipartisan jobs bill. But within minutes, the Democratic Party’s left flank was up in arms.

“Waaaaaah, this includes tax cuts,” sort of whined Dianne Feinstein. Actually, what she said was:

“It is my belief that tax credits only go to people who are making money, and they generally keep it. That’s the way I feel, I don’t know that anyone else agrees with me.”

Wow, that’s stupid! Note the use of the word “feel” rather than “think,” indicating the disuse of her brain -- and the lack of any research. But then, she may know what she’s talking about. . . considering that she apparently uses her Senate seat to benefit her husband financially:

1. She served on the Senate’s Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, while companies owned by her husband won extensive government contracts (worth more than $1 billion) without competitive bidding -- the same procedure Barack promised to halt until he found out he could reward his own friends using this practice; and

2. She requested $25 billion in extra federal funding for the FDIC, which three days later granted a huge contract to a real estate company on whose board her husband sits to sell foreclosed homes for the FDIC.

But DiFi wasn’t alone. No, where there is one rich socialist howling at the moon, there are more. Enter Tom Harkin, a man who "mistakenly" claimed to fly combat missions over North Vietnam when he was really in Japan. Rich farm boy doesn’t like the bill either, it doesn’t extend unemployment benefits far enough. . . here piggy piggy.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (SBD for short), who did not take campaign contributions from Jack Abramoff while his committee was investigating Abramoff. . . but did take them from Abramoff clients (that’s called a “bag man” in the criminal parlance), worries that “this has morphed into something different than just a jobs bill.” Oh no! You mean it’s become a regular Democratic bill? Liars and spenders and bagman, oh my!

And there are more: Sherrod Brown, who flosses his teeth with his underwear, and Jay Rockefeller, who flosses his tooth with Brown’s underwear, don’t like the bill either.

Thus, confronted with a wave of socialist anger, Dingy Harry Reid killed the bill. But not only did he kill it, he killed it only a couple hours after it was introduced, without even a chance to fix the bill. This was considered a major rebuke to Max Baucus for his misjudgment in trying to work with the Republicans. What were you thinking Max? Don't you know that bipartisanship doesn’t mean actually working with the Republicans!! Don't make me go all Rahm Emanuel on you!

So there you have it. We now know exactly what the Democrats mean when they say “bipartisan.” They mean they would rather do nothing than do anything the Republicans might like. . . funny, that sounds like spite? Oh well. And I guess we also know what Obama’s appeals for bipartisanship mean to his party.

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