Congratulations, Obama

Schumer on the Fairness Doctrine: Just think of it as regulating pornography

He’s making a general point about government’s responsibility to oversee the public airwaves. If you’re willing to concede that they have the power and duty to keep one type of material off the air in the interest of the common good, then at least theoretically you’re willing to extend that principle to other types — like, say, political speech, to ensure “balance.”

This clip’s an even better turnout motivator than the Ayers clip, isn’t it?

At least he’s only talking only about the public airwaves, not cable or the Internet. I think.

Buzz up!

A sharp lurch to the left and enactment of a liberal agenda, or major parts of it, are all but inevitable. The centrist limits in earlier eras of Democratic control are gone. In the short run, Democrats may be constrained by the weak economy and a large budget deficit. Tax hikes and massive spending programs, except those billed as job creation, may have to be delayed.

But much of their agenda -- the "card check" proposal to end secret ballots in union elections, the Fairness Doctrine to stifle conservative talk radio, liberal judicial nominees, trade restrictions, retreat from Iraq, talks with Iran -- doesn't require spending. And after 14 years of Republican control of Congress, the presidency, or both, Democrats are impatient. They want to move quickly.

The most significant change is in the ideological makeup of the Democratic majorities. In the Carter and Clinton eras, there were dozens of moderate and conservative Democrats in Congress, a disproportionate number of them committee chairs. Now the Democratic majorities in both houses are composed almost uniformly of liberals. Those few who aren't, including the tiny but heralded gang of moderates elected to the House in 2006, usually knuckle under on liberal issues. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bosses them around like hired help.

There are no strong-minded liberal renegades such as Moynihan in Congress now, and few Democrats inclined, much less willing, to question liberal dogma. And most committee chairs in the Senate and House are liberals.

Another important change is the enhanced power of liberal interest groups. The influence of organized labor, environmental activists, militant pressure groups like MoveOn.org, left-wing civil libertarians, teachers, trial lawyers and feminists is stronger than it has ever been in Washington. Democrats are leery of bucking them on even the smallest issue.

There's still another change in Washington that shouldn't be overlooked: a mainstream media that's become reflexively liberal. It's true the national press corps has been monopolized by liberals for years. The difference now is that the media's liberal tendencies are unleashed and permeate reporting on national affairs.

Of course journalists point to the many times they've taken on liberal politicians, especially Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and, at times, Sen. Obama. But their criticism is of a special type. They point out political mistakes, clumsy tactics, bad decisions on timing and process failures. They don't raise doubts about liberalism itself or the liberal agenda. Conservatives aren't so fortunate. The media challenges their basic principles.

When Republicans hold power, the media routinely becomes part of the political opposition. When Democrats ruled in the past, the press was more evenhanded but rarely hostile. In the new Washington run by liberal Democrats, much of the media is likely to become a liberal claque -- or already has.

But these are long shots, and so is Democratic self-restraint. Mr. Obama has been quietly letting it be known that, if elected, he doesn't want to overreach. It's unclear what he has in mind, if anything. And Mrs. Pelosi said last week that bigger majorities in Congress will cause Democrats to be bipartisan. No one in Washington believed her, and no one should have.

Video: Matthews admits Obama tax plan is welfare

According to Matthews, Obama intends to subsidize FICA payments through refundables, making Social Security cost-free or close to it, depending on income levels. As Barbour notes, that makes Social Security something very different than the pension plan it has been since its inception. That turns it into a welfare program on a massive scale, something FDR warned against when he created the program during the Depression.

In fact, it turns Social Security into a massive wealth-redistribution system rather than a pension plan.

In the end, Matthews can only smirk and admit Barbour is right. Why the smirk? Because Matthews is pretty sure that it won’t make any difference at this point.

Buzz up

According to [1] federal election law, any presidential campaign that participates in public financing is automatically audited after an election. When [2] Barack Obama broke his promise to the American people by forgoing the public financing system, his campaign became the first since public financing became law to have a chance of not being audited. Federal law does still allow the Federal Election Commission to audit a presidential campaign that doesn’t participate in public financing, but [3] at least four of the six FEC commissioners must first vote to pursue an investigation “for cause.” No doubt there is great “cause” to be concerned about Obama’s fundraising efforts.

Late last month, the venerable and independent National Journal tested reports that the Obama campaign’s online fundraising system was built to facilitate fraud. Veteran journalist Neil Munro bought two pre-paid American Express gift cards worth $25 each to donate to the Obama and McCain campaigns online. Munro purchased the cards with cash and then accessed the Obama and McCain campaign websites from a public library in Fairfax, Va. [4] The Obama campaign’s site accepted the $25 donation, but the McCain campaign’s site rejected it. Contacted by National Journal, the McCain campaign explained its system rejected the donation because American Express could not verify that the donor lived at the address given with the online contribution.

Contacted to explain why its campaign accepted the donation despite the existence of any safeguards, the Obama campaign replied by e-mail: “[5] Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this.” But Juan Proano, whose technology firm handled online contributions for John Edwards’ presidential primary campaign, told the Washington Post it is possible to require donors’ names and addresses to match those on their credit card accounts. But some campaigns are reluctant to impose that extra layer of security. “[6] Honestly, you want to have the least amount of hurdles in processing contributions quickly,” Proano said.

Obama’s donation fraud facilitation does not end there. Pressed by National Journal to explain why the campaign failed to identify hundreds of thousands of low-dollar donors, the Obama campaign responded that it “would be a pretty hard thing for us to be able to process.” National Journal [7] responds:

But there is much widely used and inexpensive technology that allows Republican and Democratic campaigns to sort and identify millions of donors and to highlight or exclude overseas contributors. The technology is offered by companies that complete credit card transactions, by banks that provide credit cards to customers, by telecommunications companies that maintain digital networks, and by a variety of smaller firms that track Internet activity. … [A] five-minute phone call to Bank of America’s merchant-services department showed how a campaign could sort transactions to identify any credit cards that were used to make small donations under fake names and fake addresses. The campaign could download transaction data from the bank’s Web site and transfer the file into a database, such as Excel, said the Bank of America employee. “Then highlight all your transactions and click your sort button,” the employee said.

So there you have it. Instead of making a 5-minute phone call to protect the integrity of U.S. elections, the Obama campaign did nothing. This is exactly the same approach the campaign has taken toward [8] ACORN’s massive and well-established voter registration fraud campaign. Hear no evil, see no evil. ACORN takes a zero-effort approach to preventing vote fraud during its registration drives. Nate Toller, who headed an ACORN campaign against Wal-Mart in California until 2006, told John Fund: “[9] There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances.” And Anita MonCrief, another ACORN whistleblower, agrees: “It’s ludicrous to say that fake registrations can’t become fraudulent votes. I assure you that if you can get them on the rolls you can get them to vote, especially using absentee ballots.”

Already [10] Obama and [11] Democrat staffers have been forced to resign for registering and casting ballots in more than one state. If Americans are ever to trust the electoral process again, a full investigation and audit of Obama and ACORN are an absolute necessity.

URLs in this post:
[1] federal election law: http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/availfec.shtml
[2] Barack Obama broke his promise to the American people: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/06/obama-to-break.html
[3] at least four of the six FEC commissioners must first vote: http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/availfec.shtml
[4] The Obama campaign’s site accepted the $25 donation, but the McCain campaign’s site rejected it: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20081024_9865.php
[5] Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413.html
[6] Honestly, you want to have the least amount of hurdles in processing contributions quickly: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413_pf.html
[7] responds: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20081031_4109.php
[8] ACORN’s massive and well-established voter registration fraud campaign: http://blog.heritage.org/2008/10/22/morning-bell-the-lefts-fraudulent-embezzzling-illegal-vote-steal
ing-machine/

[9] There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15189.html
[10] Obama: http://www.electionjournal.org/2008/11/03/obama-staffer-registered-in-three-states-voted-in-two/
[11] Democrat: http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081029/NEWS/81029041
[12] Obama leads in 18 of the 19 states with the largest recent declines in home prices: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/11/election-fact-of-day.html
[13] launching further missile strikes in the country’s troubled tribal areas could increase tensions: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/03/AR2008110300902.html
[14] conviction at Guantanamo Bay: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/03/AR2008110302913.html
[15] rejected a joint stimulus package: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/world/europe/04euro.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
[16] save money on Medicare: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/washington/04medicare.html?ref=todayspaper

On Sept. 12, 2001, few people would have doubted that the attacks of the day before "changed everything." And for the next seven years it was so, as nearly every major event in American life was in some sense a consequence of 9/11. The list includes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Guantanamo and warrantless wiretaps; diplomatic relations with allies and international public perceptions of the U.S.; President Bush's re-election in 2004 and the Democratic comeback of 2006; Barack Obama's rise as the antiwar candidate of choice and John McCain's resurrection as the guy who was right about the surge.

Yet the past can be a tricky thing to predict. Zhou Enlai wasn't kidding when he told Henry Kissinger, in the early 1970s, that it was "too early to say" what the consequences were of the French Revolution. Take any historical event, and its significance to the present rests largely on the way we choose to remember it, if we remember it at all.

A global financial crisis has now given voters a fresh reason to turn the page on the 9/11 era and attend to a different set of fears. Electing a "transformational" president might even ease the transition. But it bears keeping in mind that America's second Pearl Harbor only took place when we were well on the road to forgetting about the first one.