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Home Front: Politix

20 things that went right on Election Day

2012-11-08

Excerpting the top 10: 1. Republicans retained control of the U.S. House of Representatives. 2. Voters in Alabama, Montana, and Wyoming all passed measures limiting Obamacare. 3. Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz, one of the conservative movement's brightest rising stars, overcame establishment GOP opposition to clinch a U.S. Senate victory in Texas. 4. Corruptocrat Beltway barnacle Rep. Pete Stark was finally kicked out of office in California. 5. Despite entrenched teachers' union opposition, a charter school initiative in Washington state triumphed. 6. Despite entrenched Big Labor support, a radical collective bargaining power grab in Michigan failed. 7. Oklahoma voters said no to government race-based preferences in college admissions, public contracting, and government hiring. 8. Montana voters said no to boundless benefits for illegal aliens. 9. Washington state approved taxpayer-empowering limitations on its state legislature's ability to raise taxes. 10. For the first time since Reconstruction, the GOP won control of the Arkansas state house.

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Home Front: Culture Wars

Health Care Obamamation Under Challenge on Many Fronts

2010-08-04

Last November, Nancy Pelosi was asked if ObamaCare was Constitutional and she replied: "Are you serious?" Two salient points are implicit in Pelosis' statement. Those are: 1. Failed lawyers go into politics and 2. "We don need no steenking Constitution." Pete Stark was making that exact point that just the other day ... The State of Virginia passed a law which had broad bipartisan support in the State legislature. The law prohibits its citizens from being forced to purchase health care insurance at risk of being fined if they don't. U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson got serious and ruled against Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' motion to dismiss Virginia's lawsuit. Judge Hudson's ruling paved the way for a trial beginning October 18th (Just in time for the November elections) which is certain to end up in the Supreme Court of the United States. Twenty-one states and several individuals are already suing to overturn ObamaCare. Missouri took another avenue similar to Virginia's except Missouri chose to use a referendum to turn aside the ObamaCare. At the heart of these arguments are individual and States' rights versus the rights of the Federal government. If individuals can be compelled to buy health care insurance then they can be compelled to buy anything at the direction of the Federal government depending upon the perceived needs of the government. If ObamaCare stands, individuals could be compelled to buy cars from GM or Chrysler, buy certain kinds of food that are deemed healthy, buy appliances or other products which are determined to impact health, buy stocks from Wall Street firms to keep them solvent, and on and on. The individual basically becomes a servant/slave of the state the purpose of that slave to be determined by central planners in Washington. At that point individual liberties defined by the Constitution cease to exist. The ends justifies the means and social justice have replaced a sacred document which has guided this country for more than two centuries; the U.S. Constitution.

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Home Front: Politix

'The Federal Government Can Do Most Anything In This Country'

2010-08-03

The despicable Pete Stark on vid...

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Home Front: Politix

Pete Stark's latest rant

2010-07-08

While Washington incumbents are trembling at the prospect of losing their seats and Democrats fear losing their majority in Congress, Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, is a man apart. As a gone-viral videotape of a June 26 Fremont town hall meeting shows, Stark, 79, is the rare D.C. pol so secure that he feels little need to be civil to folks who show up at his town hall meetings. Is there anything more pernicious than a safe congressional seat? First elected in 1972, Stark has called various colleagues in the House "a whore for the insurance industry," a "fruitcake" and a "fascist." In 2008, he made Esquire's list of the 10 worst lawmakers on Capitol Hill. "Stark gives bumbling, dyspeptic old fools who say stupid things a bad name," Esquire explained. When the Office of Congressional Ethics investigated charges that Stark wrongly claimed a homestead tax exemption for his Maryland home, committee staff found that Stark "was extremely belligerent" and insulted them. Stark is so problematic that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could not name him as the new House Ways and Means Committee chairman in March, even though he was first in line. Apparently Stark's Blue Dog Democrat friends did not appreciate being called "brain dead." Stark ranks third among the House's top vote-missers. Back in Fremont, however, Stark is king, if a cranky king. At the town hall meeting, Stark went out of his way to insult Steve Kemp, who identified himself as a member of the Minuteman movement, which supports tougher border enforcement. "Who are you gonna kill today?" Stark asked. He then told Kemp he would "try to get you some more arms and get you" to the border "to shoot people." The really amazing part: Kemp, who was taping the meeting, had caught Stark on tape before. Remember? A man told Stark, "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining," and the Beltway big shot responded, "I wouldn't dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn't be worth wasting the urine." Chris Pareja, who is gathering signatures to challenge Stark as an independent in November, observed that Stark went for the bone against "a dog that's already bitten him." GOP challenger Forest Baker isn't a fan of Kemp's tactics. Yet he noted, Stark "rose to the bait just exactly the way they wanted him to. He disgraced himself. He whipped himself into a lather. He really lost control." Liberal blogger Robert Cruikshank, however, lauded Stark's performance as "one of the best responses I've seen by anyone to these immigrant-bashers: Mock them relentlessly."

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Home Front: Politix

Rangel's replacement: Pete Stark

2010-03-04

California Rep. Pete Stark -- a controversial lawmaker who has a history of volatile comments about Republicans -- is now chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, automatically moving up from the second slot after New York Democrat Charles Rangel relinquished his gavel Wednesday morning. It would take an affirmative action of the House to remove Stark and replace him with another member of the Ways and Means Committee, according to aides familiar with House operations. Stark -- one of the chamber's most liberal, partisan and pugnacious members -- has had his own recent run-in with the ethics committee, exhibiting bizarre behavior during an investigation that ultimately cleared him of wrongdoing. POLITICO reported earlier this week that officials found Stark "extremely belligerent" toward investigators from the Office of Congressional Ethics and used a semi-hidden video camera to tape his interview during a probe of whether he improperly applied for a homestead tax exemption in Maryland even though his official residence is in California. The incident is just one in a series of stranger-than-fiction episodes featuring the tart-tongued Stark. He once accused a former Republican Ways and Means colleague, Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, of getting her information from "pillow talk," and called another, Scott McInnis of Colorado, a "fruitcake." In 2007, he accused Republicans of sending soldiers to Iraq "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

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Home Front: Politix

Rangel Replacement is Pelosi in Drag - Bring Back Rangel Campaign Starts Soon.

2010-03-03

California Rep. Pete Stark will temporarily seize the gavel of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, succeeding Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., who stepped aside because of an ethics probe, Fox News learned Wednesday. House and Democratic caucus rules assert that when a chairman steps aside, the next senior lawmaker on that committee should assume the chairmanship. Senior House sources familiar with the situation signal that Stark will take the gavel in Rangel's absence, but the House Democratic caucus could alter that decision and trump the traditional line-of-succession. Rangel stepped aside Wednesday morning until the ethics committee finishes investigating him on a slate of probes, ranging from his failure to pay taxes to his use of rent-controlled apartments in Harlem for political purposes. Known for a sometimes-volcanic temper, many Democrats fretted privately that Stark is too volatile to lead such an important committee. In a famous 2007 incident on the House floor, Stark accused President Bush of sending troops to Iraq"to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement." He also once called former Colorado Republican Rep. Scott McInnis a "fruitcake." Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., represents a district that borders Stark's in northern California. Honda described his California colleague as "passionate." "He doesn't back off from a verbal fight," said Honda. "He's a man of his word." Even as Rangel resigns temporarily because of the ethics probe, the same panel just exonerated Stark in a smaller-scale investigation it conducted into a tax exemption he received for a piece of property in Maryland. The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct cleared Stark of any wrongdoing in January. Some insiders speculated that appointing Stark could pose a problem for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Not only is Pelosi from California, but four other Californians already chair major House committees. Rep. Howard Berman leads the Foreign Affairs Committee. Rep. Henry Waxman heads the Energy and Commerce Committee. Rep. George Miller chairs the Education and Labor Committee. And Rep. Zoe Lofgren sits atop the ethics committee. With the installation of Stark on a temporary basis, Pelosi now has three Californians chairing the three committees with jurisdiction over health care reform: Waxman, Miller and Stark. Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus were lobbying for Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a senior Ways and Means member and a civil rights era legend, to succeed Rangel. It's unclear if the temporary appointment of Stark in lieu of Lewis could be the source of tension between Democratic leaders and the CBC. But Lewis downplayed those concerns. "We have seniority," Lewis said. "I don't think it's right for people to be jumping over one another." Another named mentioned privately for the job was Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass. Many lawmakers say that Neal is the one of the best-qualified members to lead the panel, with a granular understanding of the tax code.

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Home Front: Politix

Congressional Black Caucus Bitches About Rangel's Removal

2010-03-03

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is facing a new conundrum as the swell of voices calling for the removal of House Ways & Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) begins to build. Sources on the Hill tell HUMAN EVENTS that the latest problem involves the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and their objection to Rangel's ouster as the first member of their caucus to hold the chairmanship of the very powerful tax writing committee. To complicate matters, one source says the CBC is pressuring Pelosi to give the slot to another CBC member, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). The main problem with that scenario is she'd have to "reach down five people," passing over three other committee members in line to do so: Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). Stark is a 78-year-old bombastic Californian notorious for his lack of decorum. One source told me, "Pelosi really doesn't want to see Stark in the chairmanship." At a town hall meeting over the summer a constituent told Stark, "Don't pee on my leg and then tell me it's raining." Stark replied to the senior citizen, "I wouldn't dignify you by peeing on your leg. I wouldn't waste the urine." According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, "Stark once called the American Medical Association a bunch of 'greedy troglodytes.' He's got a point there ... He assailed one Republican colleague as 'a whore for the insurance industry,' called another a 'fascist' and a third a 'fruitcake.' Recently, when a pesky journalist asked the same question too many times, Stark threatened to throw him out the window." Another Hill staffer close to the arena told me on condition of anonymity, "Pelosi's choice is between unethical and crazy. It's tough to decide which is better." Pelosi could likely justify stepping over Stark and his behavior, yet the next two in line, Levin and McDermott, don't have the issues their colleague has. It will be interesting to note which Democrat members of the committee support an affirmative action policy when it's the committee chairmanship at stake. One thing is certain: Rangel's corruption issues are causing severe damage to the Democrat Party in the election year. This initial ethics finding was only the first shoe to drop. Rangel remains under investigation for more serious charges including income tax violations.

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Home Front: Politix

Harry Reid's Medicare gambit.: Worse Than the Public Option

2009-12-11

It's hard to imagine a better illustration of the panic and recklessness stringing ObamaCare along in the Senate than the putative deal that Harry Reid announced this week. The Majority Leader is claiming that a Medicare "buy-in" for people from ages 55 to 64 has overcome the liberal-moderate impasse over the "public option." But if anything, this gambit is an even faster road to government-run health care. The public option—an insurance program open to everyone, financed by taxpayers and run like Medicare—is intended as a veiled substitute for "single-payer" Canada-style insurance. Under the cover of "choice" and "competition," the entitlement would quickly squeeze out private insurance as people gravitated to "free" coverage and the government held down costs via price controls the way Medicare does now. Mr. Reid's buy-in simply cuts out the middle man. Why go to the trouble of creating a new plan like Medicare when Medicare itself is already handy? A buy-in is an old chestnut of single-payer advocate Pete Stark, and it's the political strategy liberals have tried since the Great Society: Ratchet down the enrollment age for Medicare, boost the income limits to qualify for Medicaid, and soon health care for the entire middle class becomes a taxpayer commitment. In the case of Medicare, this means expanding a program that is already going broke. Medicare reimburses doctors and hospitals at rates 70% to 80% below those of private insurers, which means below the actual treatment costs in many cities and regions. Providers either eat these losses—about half of U.S. hospitals are running a deficit or close to it—or they raise prices for private payers. This cost-shifting isn't dollar for dollar, but all empirical research shows that it adds tens of billions of dollars to consumer health bills, and this will accelerate if several million new patients are added to Medicare. That means higher prices for health insurance. Adverse selection will also be a big problem, as the people who choose to join will inevitably be higher risk or in poorer health. Mr. Reid hasn't released any details on his plan, if they even exist, but would the sub-65 uninsured who join Medicare be subsidized? If so, in what sense is this one-hand-subsidizes-the-other taxpayer self-dealing a "buy-in"? It sounds simply like a huge Medicare expansion, especially if employers decide to drop coverage for anyone older than 55. As for costs, how does adding new beneficiaries square with Democratic promises that they will cut Medicare spending on paper by two percentage points a year for the next two decades—just as the baby boomers retire and health costs continue to climb? This last-minute, back-room ploy shows again that Democrats are simply winging it as they rush to pass something—anything—that can get 60 votes by Christmas. President Obama praised the proposal as "a creative new framework," while Finance Chairman Max Baucus told the Washington Post, "If there's 60 Senators who can reach agreement, I'm for it." Now there's a model standard to use for reordering 17% of the U.S. economy. The latest polls show public support for the Senate plan falling into the mid-30%-range. The remaining supporters must not be paying attention.

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Home Front: Politix

Why Democrats Should Start to Sweat

2009-10-30

If you're an elected Democrat anywhere to the right of Barney Frank, and trying to defend a competitive seat next November, you've got to be starting to sweat. But don't get too fired up. I don't think the populace is fond of Publicans. Their primary advantage is not being Dems... You wake up in the morning and just like every other morning as far as the eye can see the only thing in the news is the president's health-care reform. It's starting to look like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are leading the Donner Party, the snowbound emigrants who bogged down in the Sierra Nevada winter in the 1840s and resorted to cannibalism to survive. The betting is that with raw political muscle and procedural magic, the Congressional Democrats will pass something, call it reform and hand Barack Obama a "victory." Maybe, but I think what we are seeing with this massive legislation is that the Democrats in Washington have a bigger problem: Their party is looking so yesterday. In a world defined by nearly 100,000 iPhone apps, a world of seemingly limitless, self-defined choice, the Democrats are pushing the biggest, fattest, one-size-fits all legislation since 1965. And they brag this will complete the dream Franklin D. Roosevelt had in 1939. The culture still believes the U.S. has a hipster for president. But the Obama health-care bill, and maybe this whole administration, is starting to look totally out of sync with the new zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. Everything about the health-care exercise is looking very old hat, starting with the old guys working on it. Max Baucus, Patrick Leahy, Pete Stark-all were elected to Congress in the 1970s, and live on as the immortals in Washington's Forever Land. But it's more than the fact that Congress looks old. The health-care bill is big, complex, incomprehensible and coercive-all the things people hate nowadays. It's easy to make jokes about how insubstantial the millions of people seem to be who are constantly using technologies like Twitter. But these new digital and Web-based technologies, which have decentralized virtually everything, now occupy most of the average person's waking hours at work or at home. Mass media is struggling to stay massive in a world whose people want to break up into many discrete markets. The one lump that won't change is government. Government in our time is looking out of it. It'd be one thing if government were almost cool in an old-fashioned way, but it's not. When everyone else's job gets measured by performance, its hallmark is malperformance--whether in Congress, California or New York. We define the past 25 years in terms of entrepreneurs and visionaries in places like Silicon Valley who took a small idea and ran with it. Congress does the opposite. It takes something already big . . . and makes it bigger. We've got Medicare for the elderly, with spending claims out to Mars, so let's create Medicare for All! One of the least noticed parts of the health-care legislation is its intention to make Medicaid even bigger, when Medicaid's cost is arguably the main thing destroying California. There was a time when contributing to the common good meant joining something relatively small like the Peace Corps or Teach for America. Now it means being willing to just fall into line behind some huge piece of legislation. Read Mr. Obama's speech last week at MIT on climate change: "The folks who pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized." This, ironically, sounds a lot like the 2007 antiHillary "Big Brother" TV commercial. Its message was that Hillary represented something big and ominously coercive. Boot up that ad now and put Obama's face where Hillary's is. The larger point here isn't necessarily partisan. It's a description of the way people live their lives in a 21st century world, and how disconnected politics has become from that world. If we were really living in the world of leading-edge politics that many people thought they were getting with Barack Obama, he would have proposed an iPhone for health care-a flexible system for which all sorts of users could create or choose health-care apps that suited their needs. Over time, with trial and error, a better system would emerge. No chance of that. Our outdated political software can't recognize trial and error. What ObamaCare is doing with health care-the "public option"-may be fine with the activist left, but I suspect it's starting to strike many younger Americans as at odds with their lives, as not somewhere they want to go. Wait until EPA's ghost busters start enforcing cap-and-trade. People thought something small, agile and smart was coming to government, but so far it's turning out to be just big-box politics. None of this is to suggest the Republicans are any better. They do, however, have a better chance of breaking out of the ancient political castle. So long as the Democratic Party is the party of the Old Hat People, dependent on public-sector unions with Orwellian names like the Service Employees International Union, it will remain yoked to a pre-iPhone political model that will increasingly strike average everyday American voters as weird and alien to their world.

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Home Front: Politix

Why hasn't Chawlie Wangel stepped down?

2009-09-29

After documented reports of his sweetheart deals, influence peddling, unreported assets, and untaxed income, Charlie Rangel is still chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. Can't anyone tell him to move aside? Glenn Beck launched an attack against the Obama administration's "green jobs" director Van Jones in the last week of August. By Labor Day, Jones was FOX-kill. Compare that to the results achieved by The New York Times and The Washington Post, both of which have called for New York Rep. Charles Rangel to step down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The newspapers began urging Rangel to step aside back in 2008; it's now close to 2010 and Rangel hasn't budged. Unlike Jones, Rangel doesn't have a colorful past as a leftist and signer of a conspiracy statement suggesting that President Bush knew the planes were headed for the towers. And when it comes to causing a ruckus, the Times and the Post are disadvantaged by their adherence to standards of decorum and fair play that Beck subverts for a living. No, they were handicapped because they won't criticize a Dhimmicrat if they can possibly help it. But Rangel's transgressions appear so plentiful and severe that it's a wonder he still has a job, let alone the chairmanship of the tax-writing committee that the Times calls "one of the most powerful bodies in American government." The trouble started in July, 2008, when the Times exposed Rangel's possession of four rent-stabilized apartments in a building owned by a major real estate developer. (In New York City, real estate is one part location, two parts politics). The Times calculated that this improbably sweet deal was saving Rangel $30,000 a year in rent. Four days later, the Post pitched in with a report on another Rangel scandal. For an academic center Rangel had launched with a $1.9 million earmark, and which would be named in his honor, he was soliciting donations from corporate interests that had business before his committee. He even used his congressional letterhead. As if that wasn't unseemly enough, Rangel won a superlative character reference from none other than Donald Trump, who told the Post, "Charlie Rangel is the most honorable, honest politician in Washington." Yikes. The close timing of the articles was likely pure coincidence--not unlike a bullet coincidentally finding the back of a mobster's head at point-blank range. Rangel had displeased some people in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, perhaps not so much by his endorsement of fellow New Yorker Hillary Clinton for president, which was politics, but by running interference for the Clintons when they began playing the racial angle against Obama after the New Hampshire primary. That was politics, too, but of a sort that some in Rangel's Harlem district and elsewhere didn't much appreciate. A short time later, both the Times and the Post had interesting scoops. It didn't end there. The Times later reported that Rangel owned a vacation property in the Dominican Republic, acquired on favorable terms, for which he had long failed to pay taxes on rental income. More recently, Rangel altered his congressional financial disclosure form to reveal an additional $500,000 in assets--at a minimum, one-fifth of his total reported wealth--that had somehow slipped his mind. While the House ethics committee investigates, Rangel has wisely opted for the what-a-dunce-I-am! explanation of his conduct. The alternative, of course, is the what-a-sleazeball-I-am! rationale, which spin doctors generally advise against. Meantime, the gregarious, good-time Charlie is still chairman of Ways and Means. Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn't pushed him out and it looks like the combined force of the Post and the Times isn't up to the task, either. The Buffalo News last month became the first paper in New York State to call for Rangel's resignation, which might be a sign of momentum, but is more likely just another lament from the north about the habits of politicians downstate. Perhaps Democrats in Washington are afraid to sacrifice Rangel. The next ranking Democrat on the committee is Pete Stark of California, the only professed atheist in Congress. (You can hear the shrieks of hysteria rising in the distance.) So who knows? Despite all his foul-ups, maybe Rangel will remain chairman of "one of the most powerful bodies in American government." Or maybe his removal will have to wait until someone with real influence and stature in American politics insists that Rangel step down. Someone, that is, like Glenn Beck.

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Home Front: Politix

House passes resolution of disapproval

2009-09-16

House Democrats dealt South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson a formal rebuke Wednesday, taking the rare step of passing a resolution of disapproval for his famous "you lie!" outburst last week in the House chamber. Did they include Pete Stark? The vote was 240-179, falling almost exclusively along party lines. While Democrats said they were defending the rules of the House and enforcing the traditional decorum of the chamber, Republicans mounted a fierce attack on the resolution, saying it was a waste of time after Wilson had duly apologized to President Barack Obama for his outburst during a joint address to Congress. While a resolution of disapproval is little more than a slap on the wrist, a formal roll call vote like this -- permanently entered into the Congressional Record -- is extremely rare. "What's at issue here is of importance to the House and of importance to the country," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer proclaimed during the hour-long debate preceding the vote. "This House cannot stay silent." Wilson himself was defiant to the end, calling the action unnecessary and a waste of time. He also used his floor speech to criticize the Democratic health care plans and government spending in general. "The challenges this country faces are greater than any member of this House," Wilson told a packed chamber. "...When we are done here today, we will not have taken any steps to improve the country." According to a C-SPAN count, 11 Democrats voted no on the resolution, and seven Republicans voted yes.

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Home Front: Politix

National Health Preview

2009-03-27

The Massachusetts debacle, coming soon to your neighborhood Praise Mitt Romney. Three years ago, the former Massachusetts Governor had the inadvertent good sense to create the "universal" health-care program that the White House and Congress now want to inflict on the entire country. It is proving to be instructive, as Mr. Romney's foresight previews what President Obama, Max Baucus, Ted Kennedy and Pete Stark are cooking up for everyone else. In Massachusetts's latest crisis, Governor Deval Patrick and his Democratic colleagues are starting to move down the path that government health plans always follow when spending collides with reality -- i.e., price controls. As costs continue to rise, the inevitable results are coverage restrictions and waiting periods. It was only a matter of time.

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