Posts Tagged ‘Congress’

Impeachment follies

Friday, December 6th, 2019

Nancy Pelosi announced that the Democrats will proceed with impeachment. This after Jerry Nadler botched another hearing by inviting radical leftist law professors to testify about the law. What they did, instead was to rant about all the things they don’t like about Trump. The media is trying to cover for them but look at that video clip.

The last time Nadler held a hearing, he was punked by Cory Lewandoqwski.

Democrats brought former Trump Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to testify before the Judiciary Committee. The move is part of a strategy to nail Trump on the long-debunked Russian collusion and obstruction allegations that didn’t pan out for Dems during former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s lackluster testimony.

Since Lewandowski is not a government employee, Dems were hoping to pull an “end run around Trump’s executive privilege assertions,” Darren Samuelsohn and Kyle Cheney reported for Politico back in June.

Samuelsohn noted on Twitter as Lewandowski took the stand, his testimony might be something Democrats would come to regret. At least, according to Fox News contributor Joe diGenova, who was reportedly relishing the day when Lewandowski would be called to testify.

“If they want to call Corey [Lewandowski], that’d be their biggest mistake,” diGenova added. “Ooohoo! I hope they do it. They’re going to regret it.”

Lewandowski made Nadler look a fool by answering each question with a request for the location of each item. Nadler was not prepared. He spnt all his time searching for the item in the record. Every trial lawyer knows better.

Nadler continued to cite the Mueller report as Lewandowski demanded he uses the exact language from the report before answering.

“I’d like a reference sir, so I can follow along on what you’re asking,” Lewandowski demanded as banter about stopping the clock took over the hearing.

When the clock finally began again, Lewandowski kept tensions high as he “looked” for the references Nadler continued to cite in the report.

Now, if Nancy Pelosi can be believed, and I wonder if they will really go this far, impeachment will go to the Senate.

What happens there will depend on Mitch McConnell.

Most Republicans assume the Senate will vote on partisan lines and Trump will be kept in office. McConnell is a Ruling Class member and can not be wholly trusted. Still, it is hard to believe he would risk war with the Republican voters.

The first opportunity for leverage over the White House will come in the shape of the Senate “rules of impeachment”. The senate will have wide latitude in how they set-up the processes and procedures for the trial – and McConnell never misses an opportunity to leverage a “get” from his senate position.

So what will the White House need to give McConnell… or what will McConnell’s ask be, in order to protect the office of the president? Here’s where you have to remember Tom Donohue and the Wall St priorities.

McConnell (subtext Donohue) would prefer the confrontation with China be eliminated and the tariffs dropped. Is that too big an “ask”? Would the White House sell/trade McConnell a China deal for better impeachment terms?

All of these are questions worth pondering now, because there’s no doubt they are being discussed amid those in DC sitting on the comfy Corinthian wing-backs and gleefully rubbing their hands around a well polished mahogany table….

The Chamber of Commerce is no friend of Trump. Still, if they stabbed him in the back, it would probably end in civil war.

Trump and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Wednesday, May 29th, 2019

Andrew_Johnson_photo_portrait_head_and_shoulders,_c1870-1880-Edit1

I think I see some similarities between the Democrats’ apparent efforts to try to impeach President Trump and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868.

Andrew Johnson was a “war Democrat,” meaning that he was a Democrat who supported the Union. He was Governor of the border state of Tennessee. Lincoln considered the border states critical in saving the Union.


“I hope to have God on my side,” Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said early in the war, “but I must have Kentucky.” Unlike most of his contemporaries, Lincoln hesitated to invoke divine sanction of human causes, but his wry comment unerringly acknowledged the critical importance of the border states to the Union cause. Following the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops in April 1861, public opinion in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri was sharply divided and these states’ ultimate allegiance uncertain. The residents of the border were torn between their close cultural ties with the South, on the one hand, and their long tradition of Unionism and political moderation on the other.

In 1864, after Atlanta was taken by Sherman, Lincoln began to think about the situation after the war. He met with Sherman and Grant on March 28, 1865. He had two weeks to live. He talked to them about his plans for after the war ended. Sherman later described the conversation. Lincoln was ready for the post-war period and he told Sherman to assure the Confederate Governor of North Carolina that as soon as the army laid down its arms, all citizens would have their rights restored and the state government would resume civil measures de facto until Congress could make permanent arrangement.

In choosing Johnson as his VP in 1964, Lincoln was doing two things, he was supporting his argument that no state could secede from the Union. The radical Republicans like Stevens and Sumner had taken the position that states had “committed suicide” by seceding. There was even a movement at the Baltimore Convention to nominate someone else, like Fremont who had been the nominee in 1856. The other was allowing the Convention to choose the VP nominee. It did seat some delegations from states, like Tennessee, that were still the scene of fighting. Only South Carolina was excluded.

The Convention was actually assumed to be safe for a Hannibal Hamlin renomination. Instead it voted for Johnson by a large margin. The final ballot results were 494 for Johnson, 9 for Hamlin. Noah Brooks, a Lincoln intimate, later recounted a conversation in which Lincoln told him that there might be an advantage in having a War Democrat as VP. Others, including Ward Hill Lamon, later agreed that Lincoln preferred a border state nominee for VP.

An so, Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat, was elected to an office that no one ever considered as likely to become President. No one anticipated Lincoln’s assassination. However there was a significant segment of radical Republicans that wanted to punish the states that had seceded and those who had joined the Confederacy, contrary to Lincoln’s plans. He had intended to restore the local governments, pending Congressional action to restructure the state governments. The Convention was well before Atlanta fell to Sherman’s army and Lincoln was not convinced he would be re-elected. The War Democrat VP nominee would help with border states.

Johnson humiliated himself with his inauguration speech, at which he was suspected to be drunk. He may have been ill; Castel cited typhoid fever,[95] though Gordon-Reed notes that there is no independent evidence for that diagnosis

Six weeks later, Lincoln was assassinated. Johnson was not well prepared to assume the Presidency.

(more…)

Trump is winning on immigration.

Friday, December 28th, 2018

UPDATE: Another Althouse post, emphasizing a new Beto O’Rourke video ad that argues that a wall would hurt the environment and animals. Since that is what middle aged white women care about (like Ann) the ad is aimed at them.

Fence

This is what the fence/wall really looks like. Beto’s ad is showing parks nowhere near the border.

We currently have a “partial government shutdown” which no one seems to notice. Most of the appropriations bills were passed and signed. The Homeland Security budget became a Continuing Resolution and is being held hostage in the Senate where Chuck Schumer has vowed “So, President Trump, you will not get your wall,”

Trump has not vetoed anything so the responsibility for the “shutdown” is not obvious. The 40,000 federal employees who are furloughed or not getting paid are over 80% Democrats. The most recent pay period will result in checks today. Then the next pay period in two weeks will be the one where the “nonessentials” will not be paid.

Schumer: “So, President Trump, you will not get your wall,” Schumer added. “Abandon your shutdown strategy. You’re not getting the wall today, next week, or on January 3 when Democrats take control of the House.”

How is this playing in the country ? Some surprises.

Ann Althouse reads the Washington Post so I don’t have to.

She notices the comments to that article on the child that died in US custody.

I’ve excerpted the parts of the article that might make a reader want to blame the father. Was the boy exploited? Was he regarded as expendable? There’s plenty else in the article that might make you want to blame the U.S. government (mainly for not giving quicker medical treatments). I would also think many readers would mostly feel sad that a boy died and bemoan poverty generally. So I was surprised at how harsh the comments were against the father. I didn’t expect this at The Washington Post. This is the most liked comment:
This child’s siblings in Guatemala are alive and well. The child was dragged to the US using money that could have paid the father’s overdue electric bill, which is not a reason to grant asylum.

I wonder how long the Democrats will let this go on if Trump does not cave in ? He seems to have a gut instinct about what Americans think.

CNN seems to think that signing MAGA hats in Iraq is some sort of crime.

CNN Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr said “a lot of questions” have been raised following President Trump’s surprise visit to troops in Iraq where he signed ‘Make America Great Again’ hats and flags.

“There’s a lot of concern because military policy, military regulation prohibits military members in uniform from doing anything that can be construed as a political endorsement. That’s what you want from your U.S. military. They’re not a political force,” Starr reported.

“How did the red hats get there? Some people are saying, well, the troops just brought them and wanted to get them signed. But even if that is the case, the question remains, there were commanders, there were senior enlisted personnel on the scene, they know the regulation. Why did this happen?” Starr asked.

The cluelessness is almost painful. Obama signed stuff when he was president.

What will the end game look like? The new House is even farther left wing than the Senate. Could the “shutdown” go on for months ?

Look at the comments to the WaPoo article.

Thank you. I am liberal myself but I get tired of people who shut off their critical thinking when it comes to brown people. This guy made a spectacularly risky decision, and his child paid the price. It’s on his head. This is, of course, on the assumption that the U.S. wasn’t negligent in the kid’s care – which is certainly possible. Nonetheless it’s his father who endangered him.

This looks like trouble for Democrats. What if Trump stares down Democrats for months ?

What is going on with the border wall?

Sunday, December 23rd, 2018

UPDATE: Here is a pretty good argument for a very long “shutdown.”

make the Trump Filibuster as ridiculously overblown and dramatic as possible. Someone somewhere will die, and they will blame it on the shutdown. They will blame global warming on the shutdown. Freezing blizzards on the shutdown. They will blame tornadoes, hurricanes, and Kevin Hart’s tweets on the shutdown. They will blame the Trump Filibuster for Michael Moore gaining weight and for Ocasio-Cortez being unable to remember whether she was elected to Congress, the Senate, or the New York State Assembly. But it all will be stuff and nonsense. None of it matters. Every three minutes on Fox, there will be a loud clang followed by “Fox News Alert.” Even Fox aficionados long ago learned to tune those out; they never amount to anything.

Nothing has changed, and nothing is going to change. The furloughed federal workers all will get their back-pay in the mail as soon as the Government reopens.

We have a “partial shutdown” of the government over an issue that was the centerpiece of Trump’s presidential campaign. The GOP Congress has finally gotten the budget process back to “Regular Order” after decades of “Continuing Resolutions” that allowed Harry Reid to hide the votes of Democrats on spending. This present fight is over the CR that funds the remaining 10% of the government , but it includes Homeland Security and that means the wall.

Democrat Chuck Schumer has said there will “never” be a wall. Why ?

In 2006, Democrats, although not then in the majority, voted for the construction of a border wall. After the 2006 election, which put the Democrats in control of Congress, they ignored the law, which still may be on the books. It included $10.4 billion. Could Trump use that law ? I don’t know.

Why the showdown now ? Remember George HW Bush’s promise ? In 1992, as he accepted the nomination at the convention, he promised “No New Taxes. Read My Lips” Of course, he violated this promise later. My theory, which I have seen him deny, is that Rostenkowski, the House Appropriations Chair, made a deal for Democrat support for the Gulf War in return for a raise in taxes. Bush accepted this and it was fatal.

The Democrats reason that it worked once. Getting a Republican President to renege on a promise essential to his election, was enough to defeat him in the next election. Schumer is determined to force Trump to back down. The news media is hysterical but I don’t think it will work. The new budget process has funded most of the government now. What is “shut down” is about 10% and most federal employees who are not getting paid are Democrat voters who hate Trump now. 96% of DC voters voted against Trump.

The Revenge of John McCain.

Saturday, December 1st, 2018

John McCain Was elected to Congress in 1982 and elected to the Senate in 1986 taking the seat previously held by Barry Goldwater. In 1989, he was involved in the “Keating Five Scandal.

The five senators—Alan Cranston (Democrat of California), Dennis DeConcini (Democrat of Arizona), John Glenn (Democrat of Ohio), John McCain (Republican of Arizona), and Donald W. Riegle, Jr. (Democrat of Michigan)—were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., Chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln.

The late 1980s were the era of the Savings and Loan scandals.

The Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932 created the S&L system to promote homeownership for the working class. The S&Ls paid lower-than-average interest rates on deposits. In return, they offered lower-than-average mortgage rates. S&Ls couldn’t lend money for commercial real estate, business expansion, or education. They didn’t even provide checking accounts.

In 1934, Congress created the FSLIC to insure the S&L deposits. It provided the same protection that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation does for commercial banks. By 1980, the FSLIC insured 4,000 S&Ls with total assets of $604 billion. State-sponsored insurance programs insured 590 S&Ls with assets of $12.2 billion.

Inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s led to pressure on Savings and Loan institutions that had been lending money at 6% to home buyers but savers were demanding higher interest rates to compensate for inflation. The S&Ls were caught in the “Borrow high and Lend low” vise that led to their demise.

My review of Nicole Gelinas’ book on the 2008 economic crisis includes some discussion of the 1986 problems.

The story of the 2008 collapse begins in 1984 with the rescue of the Continental Illinois Bank. Here began the “too big to fail” story. Two things happened here that led to the crisis. One was the decision to bail out all depositors, including those whose deposits exceeded the FDIC maximum. Secondly, the FDIC guaranteed the bond holders, as well. Thus began the problem of moral hazard. Another feature of this story was the role of Penn Square Bank, which had gone under two years earlier in the wake of the oil price collapse, which devastated many of its poorly collateralized loans in the oil industry. Both banks had been caught seeking higher returns through risky investments. Penn Square, however, had been allowed to collapse. Continental was rescued and that began a trend that the author lays out in detail through most of the rest of the book.

The 1986 crisis and the 1989 scandal affected McCain deeply. He was a freshman Senator and was probably included in the group for two reasons. First he was the only Republican and Second, Keating, a Phoenix developer, was a constituent. McCain was humiliated and his ego was as big as all outdoors.

His reaction to his humiliation was once of the worst pieces of legislation in the 20th century, The McCain-Feingold Act.

In 1995, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) jointly published an op-ed calling for campaign finance reform, and began working on their own bill. In 1998, the Senate voted on the bill, but the bill failed to meet the 60 vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. All 45 Senate Democrats and 6 Senate Republicans voted to invoke cloture, but the remaining 49 Republicans voted against invoking cloture. This effectively killed the bill for the remainder of the 105th Congress.

McCain, still in his “Maverick mode and still running on ego, persisted.

McCain’s 2000 campaign for president and a series of scandals (including the Enron scandal) brought the issue of campaign finance to the fore of public consciousness in 2001. McCain and Feingold pushed the bill in the Senate, while Chris Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA) led the effort to pass the bill in the House. In just the second successful use of the discharge petition since the 1980s, a mixture of Democrats and Republicans defied Speaker Dennis Hastert and passed a campaign finance reform bill. The House approved the bill with a 240–189 vote, sending the bill to the Senate. The bill passed the Senate in a 60–40 vote, the bare minimum required to overcome the filibuster. Throughout the Congressional battle on the bill, President Bush declined to take a strong position, but Bush signed the law in March 2002 after it cleared both houses of Congress.

The results have been disastrous. Congressmen have spent most of their time “dialing for dollars,” as fundraising is referred to and staff members write legislation. The result is monster bills, like Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, that have devastated the economy and destroyed healthcare in this country. Now another consequence is developing. Congress members are quitting.

Only once since 1930 has the number of voluntary departures been higher than it was this cycle. Members choosing to walk away from the legislative branch include eight Republican committee chairs, as well as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who became the second speaker in a row to voluntarily give up the gavel of the most powerful position in the House.

Interviews with more than half a dozen departing members and some recently retired members revealed three major drivers behind the surge of retirements: a legislative process dominated by party leaders, the constant pressure to raise money, and political dysfunction plaguing Congress from top to bottom. The picture painted by these departing Republicans and Democrats lays bare a disturbing reality: Congress is fast becoming a place that repels, rather than attracts, public servants who want to get things done.

Committee chairs are expected to raise more money even than regular members.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who was first elected to Congress in 2012, has said that party leaders’ efforts to get him to pay his dues went so far as reminders being “stuffed in my pocket during votes” on the House floor.

Asked what happens when member don’t pay their party dues, retiring Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-TN) bluntly said “You don’t get these chairmanships.”

Outgoing Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS), likewise, acknowledged fundraising frustrations and even joked, “My mom had taught me not to talk a lot about myself and never ask strangers for money, and then, that’s all I’ve done for the last ten years.”

Many soon-to-be retirees also look forward to walking away from the hostile culture that pervades Capitol Hill.

The recent decision by the Supreme Court on “Citizens United vs FEC has brought the issue into focus.

The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) on January 21, 2010, that the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for communications by nonprofit corporations, for-profit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.

In the case, the conservative non-profit organization Citizens United sought to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton and to advertise the film during television broadcasts shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary election in which Clinton was running for U.S. President.

Outrage by Democrats followed and Obama even berated the Supreme Court majority during his State of the Union speech.

On January 27, 2010, Obama further condemned the decision during the 2010 State of the Union Address, stating that, “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.

The statement about “foreign corporations” is a lie. He should know better since his campaign in 2008 disabled credit card verification to allow foreign donations, which are illegal.

Ultimately, John McCain did what he could in person to get revenge on the voters when he killed Obamacare repeal with his vote in the Senate in spite of his promise in the 2016 campaign to vote for repeal.

The Election Results.

Tuesday, November 13th, 2018

Since I now live in Arizona, the result that most affected me was the Arizona Senate race which was won by far left loony tune, Krysten Sinema.

Sinema is a far leftist who has used the typical Democrat strategy of sounding moderate until elected.

Sinema began her political career as a Green Party activist before joining the Democratic Party and becoming a state legislator.[2]

After her election to Congress, she shifted toward the political center, joining the conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and amassing a center-left to centrist voting record.[3] Sinema worked for the adoption of the DREAM Act and campaigned against Propositions 107 and 102, two voter referendums to ban the recognition of same-sex marriage and civil unions in Arizona.

Since she is “bisexual” her support of gay marriage is understandable. I have no problem with that although Civil Unions would have accomplished all the requests of gays.

According to Elle, “her first public comment as an elected official came in 2005, after a Republican colleague’s speech insulted LGBT people. ‘We’re simply people like everyone else who want and deserve respect’, she passionately declared. Later, when reporters asked about her use of the first person, Sinema replied, ‘Duh, I’m bisexual.'”

Of course. Why did McSally lose ?

Martha got 1,059,124 votes.

Governor Ducey, running for re-election, got 1,241,028 votes.

Why the difference? Did almost 200,000 more people vote for Ducey and not for McSally ? Why ?

Here is a site that purports to be Republican that asserts Trump’s support hurt her.

It’s fine, Martha. You didn’t lose. Donald J. Trump beat you. He beat Lea Marquez Peterson’s bid to replace you. He looks like he’s electing Democrats Katie Hobbs, Sandra Kennedy and Kathy Hoffman to statewide office. A Democrat took your seat in Congress because Trump made the election all about him.

Republicans have a choice to make. Are they the party of Doug Ducey, who this Red State’s voters still embrace, or the party of MAGA, turning off everyone without a red hat? One has a bright future in the Sonoran Desert. The other does not.

That sounds like a NeverTrumper and how many are there in Arizona?

Trump exists in another dimension and he has demanded Republicans join him there. It’s a place where refugees are diseased and shithole invaders, the truth is whatever instant lie he just fell out of his mouth, and no one has ever been a better president than him. McSally had to follow him there or face the GOP wrath that kneecapped Flake. He even boasted that he, personally, “retired him” and he was “very proud.”

That sure sounds like a Democrat and Tucson has plenty of them.

Nationally, National Review is pessimistic

What a difference a week makes, huh? With Arizona’s Senate seat lost, Florida and Georgia down to the wire, and GOP House losses approaching 40 seats, it’s time to adjust Wednesday morning’s “It wasn’t that bad” assessment.”

What’s more, President Trump and his team should be nervous about 2020. There’s still a lot of road between now and the next presidential election. We don’t know what the state of the country will be in autumn of that year. What will the unemployment number be? Will Americans feel prosperous and that American has been made “great again”? Will there be a terrorist attack? Another war?

I think most people who have supported Trump as president have done so on the basis of results, not affection.

I also doubt that many will consider Hillary, or Booker, or Harris, an improvement, almost no matter the state of the country,

The Papadapoulos sting operation.

Thursday, November 1st, 2018

One of the branches of the FBI/CIA /DNC Trump operation has been to entrap and prosecute Trump associates. The first was The Michael Flynn prosecution.

General Flynn was DIA head at one time in the Obama administration. He became Trump’s National Security Assistant after the election. He was visited by FBI agent Peter Strzok on the pretext pf establishing the FBI presence in the White House, but, in fact, it was a setup to entrap him. The NSA had intercepted a telephone call between Flynn and the Russian ambassador, as part of his normal duties. The transcript of that call was used to charge Flynn with “lying to a federal officer” in spite of the fact that Strzok and the other agent reported that Flynn had not lied. Acting Deputy AG Sally Yates, an Obama holdover, decided to charge him anyway and he eventually pled guilty to avoid crushing legal fees and threats against his son.

Paul Manafort, a late hire of the Trump campaign, was similarly prosecuted by Mueller for actions taken years before he met Trump and probably at the instigation of Ukranian political figures who opposed the people Manafort worked for.

The most recent revelations concern George Papadopoulos, who was briefly a member of the Trump campaign but held no office in the Administration.

George Papadopoulos and his wife Simone Mangiante approached in Greece by a known CIA/FBI operative, Charles Tawil. Mr. Tawil enlists George as a business consultant, under the auspices of energy development interests, and hands him $10,000 in cash to take back to the U.S. Upon arrival at the Dulles airport Robert Mueller had FBI agents waiting. Papadopoulos was stopped and searched; however, he never had the cash because he smartly left it in Greece with his lawyer. Further:

[W]hen he was arrested at Dulles Airport on July 27 after coming off a flight from Munich, prosecutors had no warrant for him and no indictment or criminal complaint. The complaint would be filed the following morning and approved by Howell in Washington.

This was a setup in an attempt to “turn” a Trump associate and force him to testify about alleged Russian possession of Hillary Clinton emails.

The FBI who met Papadopoulos at the airport had no warrant, no indictment and no criminal complaint…. because they believed George would be carrying the evidence they would need to structure their legal leverage.

The FBI behavior became a scramble, and the DOJ needed their hastily constructed indictment to be sealed, because their initial leverage fell through. The $10,000 was a set up.

Unless the Democrats can take over the House and the Intelligence Committee, this will likely blow wide open the whole Mueller witch hunt.

One more question about Mueller and his operation. What, if anything, did Mueller have to do with the Whitey Bulgar hit in prison this week ?

89-year-old Boston mob boss James ‘Whitey’ Bulger was killed in prison by a ‘fellow inmate with mafia ties’ shortly after he was transferred to a West Virginia federal prison.

Bulger was reportedly wheeled away from security cameras and beaten with a lock in a sock and also had his eyes gouged out.

Sources told The Daily Mail that Whitey Bulger was about to out people in the FBI, specifically FBI officials of the informant program.

Mueller was described by Representative Gohmert as Acting US Attorney in Boston during the years that Bulgar was an FBI informant.

Gohmert’s report is here.

The Legacy of Lyndon Johnson

Friday, August 11th, 2017

I have been reading (by listening to audio book versions) Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. It is called “The Years of Lyndon Johnson, as a four book set. I am presently listening to the second volume which is titled, “Means of Ascent.” It is pretty clear that the author does not like Lyndon Johnson but respects his ability to use power. His means of attaining it is what he does not like.

The first volume goes into considerable detail on Lyndon’s father Sam Johnson.
Sam Johnson was a Texas state legislator who was scrupulously honest and refused to accept any “favors” from the lobbyists even though the Texas legislature was famously corrupt. Sam Johnson was idolized by his son, Lyndon, but Sam was an idealist and a poor businessman and went broke. Lyndon was humiliated by their poverty and was determined to acquire money and power, regardless of the ethics.

The only college he could get into was a small teachers’ college called Southwest Texas State Teachers’ College

Initially called Southwest Texas State Normal School, the final word in the name was changed to “College” in 1918. Then, “Normal” became “Teachers” in 1923.

When Johnson attended, it was small and the students mostly impoverished. His machinations to get favors from the president and to get political power to reward friends and punish enemies are described in the volume I of the biography and are an indicator of his future tactics.

The second volume spends a great amount of time on the 1948 Senate election when he opposed a former and well loved Governor named Coke Stevenson, who had a reputation as incorruptible and tough. The story of that election, and how Johnson stole it, is a major part of the book. Part of Johnson’s technique was to try to implicate Stevenson in the kind of corruption that he himself had committed. After the book came out in 1990, the author was attacked by Johnson supports as being biased in favor of Stevenson. In response, he wrote a rebuttal to the attacks on Stevenson’s character.

After Lyndon Johnson got to Washington, according to Caro, he began to boast about how he stole the election from Stevenson. Being clever and powerful was more important to Johnson’s self image than a reputation for honesty.

What has Johnson’s legacy been for this country ? I think it has been disastrous.

When Eisenhower was President, it was in Johnson’s interest to cooperate with him and some of Johnson’s liberal sympathies, which he concealed from his Texas supporters, were beneficial in the era when Civil Rights legislation was being held hostage by the southern Senators and Congressmen.

In 1955 he had a major heart attack and gave up smoking. By 1958, he was interested in the presidency and he ultimately lost out to Kennedy. He was invited onto the Democratic ticket by Kennedy and they won a very close election in 1960, which may have been, once again, stolen by Johnson in Texas and Richard J Daley in Chicago. Eisenhower Attorney General Rogers told Nixon he had enough evidence of election fraud to potentially reverse the result but Nixon declined to pursue the challenge, asserting it would not be safe to do so in a time of international challenge. This account is in Teddy White’s book, “The Making of the President 1960”

Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and Johnson succeeded. In 1964, he defeated Barry Goldwater after a vicious campaign that saw Goldwater accused of wanting to expand the special forces war in Vietnam. Of course, after the election, Johnson greatly expanded the war and probably guaranteed its loss by micromanaging the details, like he micromanaged his political campaigns. HR McMaster’s book, “Dereliction of Duty” describes in considerable detail just what was done by Johnson and McNamara without objection by the Joint Chiefs.

Johnson’s domestic agenda is often called The War on Poverty, and many cynics contend that it was lost years ago.

As a part of the Great Society, Johnson believed in expanding the federal government’s roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies.[1] These policies can also be seen as a continuation of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which ran from 1933 to 1937, and the Four Freedoms of 1941. Johnson stated “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”[2]

The legacy of the War on Poverty policy initiative remains in the continued existence of such federal programs as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), TRiO, and Job Corps.

The War on Poverty included many programs that encouraged single motherhood and is widely considered to have destroyed the black family.

The rise of the welfare state in the 1960s contributed greatly to the demise of the black family as a stable institution. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among African Americans today is 73%, three times higher than it was prior to the War on Poverty. Children raised in fatherless homes are far more likely to grow up poor and to eventually engage in criminal behavior, than their peers who are raised in two-parent homes.

Some of this has been a result of the legalization of abortion and the appearance of the birth control pill.

Still, great improvements had been the trend before Johnson took office.

Thus began an unprecedented commitment of federal funds to a wide range of measures aimed at redistributing wealth in the United States.[1] From 1965 to 2008, nearly $16 trillion of taxpayer money (in constant 2008 dollars) was spent on means-tested welfare programs for the poor.

The economic milieu in which the War on Poverty arose is noteworthy. As of 1965, the number of Americans living below the official poverty line had been declining continuously since the beginning of the decade and was only about half of what it had been fifteen years earlier. Between 1950 and 1965, the proportion of people whose earnings put them below the poverty level, had decreased by more than 30%. The black poverty rate had been cut nearly in half between 1940 and 1960.

After Johnson, things changed. One would not know it from reading the Wikipedia article which is very pro-Johnson.

Between the mid-Sixties and the mid-Seventies, the dollar value of public housing quintupled and the amount spent on food stamps rose more than tenfold. From 1965 to 1969, government-provided benefits increased by a factor of 8; by 1974 such benefits were an astounding 20 times higher than they had been in 1965. Also as of 1974, federal spending on social-welfare programs amounted to 16% of America’s Gross National Product, a far cry from the 8% figure of 1960. By 1977 the number of people receiving public assistance had more than doubled since 1960.

The Vietnam War radicalized the Baby Boomer generation, which became the decade of “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” A generation of anti-war students stayed in graduate school and became the radical faculty which has created the atmosphere that drives out faculty members who offend hypersensitive students.

The complaint at the time was that Johnson was determined to have both “Guns and Butter” to fight a war while expanding civilian spending.
The 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid began the trip to unrepayable national debt.

The trend is clear.

gross-national-debt

Just since 1974, the debt has steadily climbed and will never be repaid as the World War II debt was.

This is the legacy of Lyndon Johnson. Had he never been elected to the Senate in 1948, there would have been a president Nixon in 1960.

There would have been no Vietnam War.

Probably no destruction of the black family and the desperate inner city crime problems.

No “Days of Rage with the radical Underground” and domestic terrorism in the 1960s and 70s.

Kennedy would probably have served out his career in the Senate as a far more conservative Senator than his brother Teddy.

This would be a very different world.

The Administrative State pushes back.

Sunday, August 6th, 2017

The election of Donald Trump has created hysteria on the left. It has also met increasing resistance on the right which seems unwilling to keep election promises made when Obama was president and could veto any symbolic legislation, which he did in 2015.

By voting to nullify Obamacare — the signature domestic accomplishment of the Obama administration — GOP congressional leaders fulfilled a longtime pledge to voters and rank-and-file members to get a repeal to President Barack Obama’s desk, even though he will veto it.

It was, of course, an empty gesture but it was also a promise of what could happen if a Republican president was elected in 2016. Of course, Hillary Clinton was expected by almost everyone to win.

That remains our outlook today in our final forecast of the year. Clinton is a 71 percent favorite to win the election according to our polls-only model and a 72 percent favorite according to our polls-plus model. (The models are essentially the same at this point, so they show about the same forecast.) This reflects a meaningful improvement for Clinton in the past 48 hours as the news cycle has taken a final half-twist in her favor. Her chances have increased from about 65 percent.

But she didn’t and now we have President Trump.

What has Congress done ? It voted down an Obamacare repeal.

Now, the Deep State is pushing back and threatens to overthrow the elected President.

Since the election there has been an unprecedented attempt to unwind the election result. Events have accelerated on several fronts lately with attempts from outside and within to paralyze the Trump administration.

What started as a collective media freakout on Election Night 2016 quickly progressed to an unprecedented attempt to intimidate Electors into changing their votes. Some Democrats announced, even before Trump took office, plans to impeach him, and Democrat politicians fed media-driven Russia collusion conspiracy theories for which they knew there was no evidence.

Chuck Schumer, for example, used the alleged fact of Donald Trump being under FBI investigation as an argument against confirming Neal Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, even though Schumer (but not the public) knew from intelligence briefings that Trump was not personally under investigation.

All the while, the permanent bureaucracy, particularly in the intelligence community, started an unending and almost daily series of leaks meant to paralyze the administration.

It has not been content to complain and leak secrets. Now it is actively defying the President.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, pointed to news reports about upset employees, social media campaigns and “civil disobedience” training for staffers looking to push back against the White House.

GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak, a contributor to The Hill, attributed the blowback to a host of factors, from the political make-up of civil servants to the use of holdover officials in government offices that are still waiting for the Senate to confirm Trump political appointees.

He said there is also a “real industry now behind recruiting whistleblowers inside the resistance movement,” and creating public outcry about the administration.

The Democrats have contributed by delaying confirmation of Trump appointees. Many of the defiant government employees are Civil Service and cannot be fired. The resistance has not been limited to the left. Charles Krauthammer, an alleged stalwart of the right, is encouraging resistance, and few recall his history.

In 1978, Krauthammer moved to Washington, D.C. to direct planning in psychiatric research under the Carter administration.[1] He began contributing articles about politics to The New Republic and, in 1980, served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale.

His shift to the right came in foreign policy, not domestic affairs. He is a “neocon,” a term used for Democrats who became “hawks” on foreign policy matters but, like Bill Kristol, another neocon, he is virulently anti-Trump. Now that is OK in primary season but the election is OVER!

Kristol has long had a heated relationship with Trump. After a failed attempt to court either Sen. Ben Sasse or Mitt Romney to kamikaze Trump’s presidential campaign as a third party candidate, the conservative editor recently proposed launching a new political movement called “The New Republicans.”

Seeing as how some of these people were formerly Democrats, or like his father, supported the New Deal, they are not very conservative.

Unlike liberals, for example, neo-conservatives rejected most of the Great Society programs sponsored by Lyndon Johnson; and unlike traditional conservatives, they supported the more limited welfare state instituted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Some conservatives thought the New Deal was the beginning of the end of American democracy. A lot of us prefer Calvin Coolidge to Roosevelt.

National Review goes bananas.

Saturday, January 23rd, 2016

National Review has now gone off the deep end on Donald Trump.

This strikes me as fear and panic but about what ?

But he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.

Cue pearl clutching. What exactly has “the broad conservative ideological consensus” achieved the past 20 years ? Personally, I think Reagan began the problem by choosing Bush for his VP. Bush was antithesis to Reagan’s message and had ridiculed his economic plans.

Sam Houston State University historian, writing on the Forbes web site, has a very odd blog post this morning. He criticizes MIT economist Simon Johnson for attributing the term “voodoo economics” to George H.W. Bush. Domitrovic calls it a “myth” that the elder Bush ever uttered those words. “You’d think there’d be a scrap of evidence dating from 1980 in support of this claim. In fact there is none,” he says.

Perhaps down in Texas they don’t have access to the Los Angeles Times. If one goes to the April 14, 1980 issue and turns to page 20, one will find an articled by Times staff reporter Robert Shogan, entitled, “Bush Ends His Waiting Game, Attacks Reagan.” Following is the 4th paragraph from that news report:

“He [Bush] signaled the shift [in strategy] in a speech here [in Pittsburgh] last week when he charged that Reagan had made ‘a list of phony promises’ on defense, energy and economic policy. And he labeled Reagan’s tax cut proposal ‘voodoo economic policy’ and ‘economic madness.'”

It’s amusing to see people try to deny facts. Some argue that Bush did not oppose “Supply side” theory. Still, that is what “Voodoo Economic Policy” referred to. What else ?

Bush promised “no new taxes” in 1988 but then raised taxes in 1990 creating or deepening a recession that cost him re-electiion and gave us Bill Clinton.

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