Warning: Undefined array key "rbname" in /data/rantburg.com/www/pgrecentorg.php on line 14
Hello !
Recent Appearances... Rantburg

Home Front: Politix
Yes, President Trump Should Replace Jeff Sessions With Janice Rogers Brown
2018-11-08
[The Federalist] The Wall Street Journal has reported that President Trump is considering former D.C. circuit judge and former California Supreme Court justice Janice Rogers Brown to succeed Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Assuming that becomes necessary at some point, it is important that the president pick someone who will continue the important work Sessions has already undertaken during his tenure at the Department of Justice in matters such as criminal justice reform and illegal immigration.

It will also be important, in this time of great partisan crisis, that the president pick someone with deep principle and courage, someone like Ed Meese, who held the post during the Ronald Reagan years. Brown meets both of those qualifications and would be an inspired choice.

I have had the pleasure of knowing Brown for years and witnessing, up close, her distinguished career in California. From her more than ten years of service on the California Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, to her service as legal affairs secretary to Gov. Pete Wilson, to her outstanding leadership as a deputy attorney general in California, it’s clear that Brown is an incredible public servant.
Janice Rogers Brown is a former United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She was an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court from May 2, 1996, until her appointment to the D.C. Circuit. She retired from the federal bench on August 31, 2017. Wikipedia
Link


-Election 2012
Sen. Feinstein explains decision not to debate
2012-11-01
[OC Register] U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Wednesday that she hasn't faced off in a debate against her Republican opponent because she's heard nothing from her challenger, Elizabeth Emken, that she needed to debate.

"There's just nothing constructive coming out of their campaign," said the four-term Democratic senator following a meeting with the Register's editorial board. She added that she's been accessible to the public and the media.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., sits down with the Orange County Register editorial board at the Register's Santa Ana headquarters Wednesday. Discussion ranged from the Iranian nuclear program response to the attacks in Benghazi and the state of the US economy.

"We've been on the road five days last week, two days this week," she said. "I do regular constituent breakfasts, a couple hundred people a week."

Emken front man Mark Standriff scoffed at the explanation and continued to criticize the incumbent's failure to debate.

"That's unworthy of the office she's been holding for two decades and disrespectful of the people she claims to represent," Standriff said.

Feinstein noted that she has debated in the past – John van de Kamp and Pete Wilson when she ran for governor in 1990, and Tom Campbell and Gray Davis in two of her Senate races.

Polls show Emken posing less of a challenge than those four. A September Field Poll put Feinstein at 57 percent and Emken at 31 percent, a 26-point margin that grew from a 19-point advantage in July.

Feinstein has a huge financial advantage as well, having spent $12.4 million through Oct. 17 while Emken has spent $745,000, according to federal disclosures.
Link


Home Front: Politix
Is California Irredeemably Blue?
2010-07-19
Newport Beach, Calif.—Carly Fiorina, 55, has been contending with chemotherapy and radiation treatments and reconstructive surgery because of breast cancer, so she is understandably undaunted by the relatively minor challenge of winning a U.S. Senate seat in this state that last elected a freshman Republican senator in 1982, that has not supported a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and that has not elected a right-to-life candidate in statewide voting since 1998. This race will test the power of the rising Republican wave.

Fiorina might surf it from here to Capitol Hill because her opponent, Barbara Boxer, 69, is the Senate’s fiercest liberal, and California is an intensely unhappy laboratory for liberalism—high taxes, opulent entitlements, thick regulations, and subservience to government employees’ unions.

During 10 years in Congress, Boxer represented San Francisco suburbs where many residents consider the city’s liberalism too tepid. She is used to having the wind at her back. In 1992, California’s “year of the woman,” she ran for the Senate in tandem with Dianne Feinstein, who won the final two years of the Senate term Pete Wilson left when he became governor. Boxer was reelected in 1998 when California was luxuriating in the tech boom. In 2004 she won when John Kerry was trouncing George W. Bush in the state by 10 points. Now the 28-year Washington veteran seeking a fourth term is running into headwinds.

Three years ago, global warming was one of the top issues for Californians. Now it has dropped off the radar in a state with actual, rather than hypothetical, problems. Unemployment is at least 15 percent in 21 of the state’s 58 counties. Of the 13 U.S. metropolitan areas with unemployment that high, 11 are in California, which has lost more than 400,000 jobs since passage of the $862 billion stimulus. Like Barack Obama as he campaigns in what he calls Recovery Summer for more stimulus (because the first did not ignite recovery), Boxer is vexed by the fact that California’s unemployment rate is 2.2 points higher than when stimulus was passed. When she said the stimulus was responsible for 100 jobs at a Los Angeles lithium-battery factory, the owner demurred, saying the stimulus had nothing to do with the jobs.

Boxer is stressing Fiorina’s tempestuous tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the computer company, during which Fiorina sent some jobs abroad. Fiorina’s response is that having coped with the basic fact of globalization—“any job can go anywhere”—she has the experience to create and protect California jobs.

Boxer voters may be energized by a November ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana. Fiorina favors and Boxer opposes another ballot measure that would suspend California’s new anti-global-warming taxation and regulation regime until the state’s unemployment rate—currently 12.3 percent—has been no higher than 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters.

California has 308 plants and animals—including a fly—on the endangered-species list. Government-ordered solicitude for one, the delta smelt, has caused water supplies to be curtailed in the Central Valley—the pumping of water somehow menaces this fish. The costs of its safety include dead orchards, fallow acres, and high unemployment, particularly among Latino farm workers.

Fiorina’s right-to-life stance may not matter much this year because economic anxieties have largely eclipsed other issues. Besides, it is theoretically impossible to fashion an abortion position significantly more extreme than Boxer’s, which is slightly modified infanticide. She supports “partial birth” abortion—the baby, delivered feet first, is pulled out as far as the neck, then is killed. And when asked during a Senate debate whether the baby has a right to life if it slips entirely out of the birth canal before being killed, she replied that the baby acquires that right when it leaves the hospital: “When you bring your baby home.” Fiorina believes that science—the astonishing clarity of sonograms showing the moving fingers and beating hearts of fetuses; neonatal medicine improving the viability of very premature infants; the increasing abilities of medicine to treat ailing fetuses in utero—is changing Americans’ sensibilities and enlarging the portion of the public that describes itself as pro-life.

Polls show the race is quite close. If Fiorina can capture this seat, in 2012 Democrats might, for a change, at least have to spend precious resources to keep its 55 electoral votes. If, however, a candidate like Boxer can survive in a year like this, California really is irredeemably blue.

Link


Home Front: Politix
Calif. GOP primary winners look headed for defeat
2010-06-10
The good news for Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina here in California was that they won their Republican primaries. The bad news was that they had to run in Republican primaries.

Whitman, now the GOP nominee for governor, and Fiorina, the GOP nominee for senator, dispatched their nearest primary rivals by margins of better than 2 to 1. Each spent a queen's ransom to do so -- in Whitman's case, close to $80 million of her own money -- but both former CEOs have plenty left over to take on their Democratic opponents this fall: in Whitman's case, Jerry Brown, the once and, he hopes, future governor; in Fiorina's case, incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer.

But California Republican primaries have a nasty habit of rendering their winners unelectable in November, and this year's contest looks like it will be no exception. To win, Whitman and Fiorina -- conventional conservative business Republicans both -- had to take positions so far to the right that their chances of winning a state in which Barack Obama commands a 59 percent approval rating are slim. During one debate with her Republican opponents, Fiorina affirmed the right of suspected terrorists on no-fly lists to buy guns, presumably lest the gods of the National Rifle Association strike her dead on the spot. At a campaign event at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday, Boxer, never one to let a hanging curveball go unswatted, contrasted Fiorina's guns-to-terrorists stance with her own co-authorship of a law allowing pilots to carry guns in cockpits.

But the issue most damaging for Whitman and Fiorina is immigration. Pressed by their GOP primary opponents and the Republican electorate to endorse Arizona's draconian new law, Fiorina proclaimed her support for it while Whitman countered the charges from her right that she was soft on immigration by affirming that she was "100 percent against amnesty" and demanding a huge increase in border enforcement. To bolster her credibility, her ads featured former Republican governor Pete Wilson -- champion of 1994's Proposition 187, which would have denied all public services, including the right to attend primary and secondary schools, to illegal immigrants.

Wilson won reelection in 1994 by backing 187, which the courts subsequently struck down. But his victory was probably the most pyrrhic in modern American politics. Threatened and enraged by 187, California's Latino immigrants began naturalizing, registering and voting in record numbers. Southern California's Latino-led labor movement -- the most energized and strategically savvy labor movement in the nation -- became particularly adept at turning out Latino voters for Democratic candidates and causes.

In the process, the California electorate has been transformed -- moving the state decisively into the Democratic column. In the 1994 election, according to the nonprofit William C. Velasquez Institute, which seeks to raise minorities' political and economic participation, Latinos counted for 11.4 percent of California voters. By 2008, they comprised 21.4 percent. And particularly when immigration is an issue, theirs is a heavily Democratic vote. "There's a whole generation of Latino voters who don't believe the Republicans look out for them," Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO, told me on Election Day. "We ran against Pete Wilson for years after he was out of office. And, voilà! He's back -- he's vouching for Whitman!" Labor will make sure the Latino community knows it. Already, the California Nurses Association is running an ad on Spanish-language radio that splices in a clip from a Whitman primary commercial in which she and Wilson discuss cracking down on immigration.

When your own primary ad is directed against you by your opponents in the general election, you have a fundamental problem. It's not just that Republican nativism pushes perhaps a fifth of the electorate into the Democratic column. It's that the state's Republicans are simply far to the right of the majority of Californians -- so much so that they do not have a majority of registered voters in any one of the state's 53 congressional districts.

There's a reason Arnold Schwarzenegger is the only Republican elected to a major statewide office in California since 1994 -- and it's not his celebrity status. It's because, when he was first elected governor, he did not have to run in and win a Republican primary: He was elected in a special recall election open to candidates and voters from all parties.

Whitman and Fiorina had no such luck. In winning their nominations, they said things deeply offensive to a fatally large swath of California voters. Their campaigns may be gold-plated, but they have ears of purest tin.
Link


Home Front: Politix
Mickey Kaus is running for the Senate
2010-03-03
Slate blogger Mickey Kaus makes it official: he's taken out papers to run in the Democratic primary against California Senator Barbara Boxer. I've known Mickey since he wrote for The Washington Monthly and The New Republic in the 1980s and have always enjoyed his idiosyncratic take on issues and candidates. In his Kausfiles blog he writes the way he talks when he's making an argument: a prime example of how a blogging format can communicate almost like conversation (ed: though it's a pretty one-sided conversation, no? No, he presents alternative views). Mickey insists he is a strong Democrat, but he's an idiosyncratic one: he supports current Democratic health care legislation, but opposes comprehensive immigration legislation that includes legalization of illegal immigrants, and he strongly supported welfare reform in the 1990s. The Boxer campaign oppo research folks, after they've finished perusing Kausfiles for material that will strike Democratic primary voters as damning (they will have an embarrassment of riches) might want to check out his book The End of Equality.

I knew that Mickey was the son of the late California Supreme Court Justice Otto Kaus, but I didn't know till I started googling that he is of Viennese origin: his father was born in Vienna and his paternal grandmother novelist and screenwriter Gina Kaus was well connected in Viennesse literary and intellectual circles and fortunately moved to Paris in 1938 and the United States in 1939 and settled in Los Angeles. I think it's likely that she knew some of the Viennese natives who became Hollywood greats, like Otto Preminger and Billy Wilder. Did Mickey mingle with some of these people when we was growing up? I'd love to know.

I don't suppose the Boxer campaign is too worried about Mickey's candidacy. But there's a precedent that suggests that a decent showing for an unlikely candidate could cause trouble for the Democratic nominee for Senate in California. In 1982 the novelist Gore Vidal ran for the open Senate seat being vacated by Republican S. I. Hayakawa. The overwhelming favorite in the primary was incumbent Governor Jerry Brown (then 44; now at 72 running for governor again). Two relatively conventional politicians were also running: Orange County state Senator Paul Carpenter and Fresno Mayor Daniel Whitehurst. Brown won the primary by a wide margin, but with only 51% of the vote. Vidal finished second with 15.11%, just ahead of Carpenter (15.10%) and well ahead of Whitehurst (6%). Brown's percentage, relatively low for an eight-year governor with universal name and substantive recognition, and Vidal's second place finish suggested that Brown was not a strong general election candidate, and in November he lost to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson by a 52%-45% margin. Vidal got 415,366 votes. A similar showing for Mickey in the June primary might be a sign of weakness for Boxer.
Link


Economy
It's time California got over itself
2009-08-10
Way to go, California. While the Golden State stumbled its way through the opposite of the "Summer of Love" (Californians were anything but turned on when they tuned in to Sacramento), their misery didn't go unnoticed. "California's budget woes a cautionary tale," surmised "CBS Evening News." "From the tarnished Golden State, lessons for Washington," intoned the Washington Post. And this, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "California's problems emblematic of nation's."

Indeed, in the aftermath of a protracted budget stalemate and ugly spending cuts - and the likely prospect of more such bad political theater - the rest of America should consider itself warned. That begins with the concept of a government whose eyes are too big for its stomach.

Lesson one: For decades now, California governors and legislators of all political stripes have thrown caution - and fiscal sanity - to the wind. Even under Gov. Ronald Reagan, patron saint of conservative spendthrifts, California's state budget grew by more than 120 percent, and 130 percent under Gov. Pat Brown in the eight years before Reagan. The bill finally came due on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's watch. Will his successor be any different?

Lesson two: Experience counts. Back in 1991, the last time Sacramento encountered a budget crisis of similar proportion, then-Gov. Pete Wilson and then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown could bank on a combined half-century of officeholding wisdom. Their budget fix was smart and sensible. The key players in this year's budget mess - Schwarzenegger, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg - together don't have a decade's worth of leadership experience. No wonder the budget negotiations had so many fits and starts.

Lesson three: Given a chance to drive, gas-and-brake voters eventually will send a state into a ditch. At various time in recent years, thanks to the initiative process, California's electorate has approved higher taxes, rejected higher taxes, refused to reward lawmakers by easing term limits, yet rarely, if ever, tossed incumbents out of office even though the Legislature wallows in record disapproval. It's the sort of mixed signals - wide interpretations of mandates and little fear of accountability - that give extremists on both sides an excuse to be selfishly ultrapartisan.

There's one other moral to California's story, but it's for our eyes only.

The message: If California wants to get out of the woods, maybe it's time California got over itself.

For too long, the Golden State - and by this I'd include both its elected officials and the people who put them in office - has failed to cope with the present, hasn't adequately planned for the future, and has obsessed far too much over its gilded past. Because we're a nation-state, with one-eighth the nation's population and a world-class economy, the assumption is California is "special."

Granted, we have qualities many other states lack: Silicon Valley's instant wealth, Hollywood's instant celebrity. But in many other respects, we're no different than the rest of America. At least 38 other states have imposed budget cuts that severely impact vulnerable citizens, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Nationwide, 14 states are facing 2010 budget gaps that exceed 20 percent of their gross domestic product. California was one of eight states that had an unemployment rate of more than 11 percent in June.

As for California's famously failed political system, there are worse places to live. Try the banana republic that is New York, where Republicans seized the state Senate in a bloodless coup - and the governor, comptroller and junior U.S. senator all weren't elected to their current jobs. Or you can cross over into New Jersey, where three mayors and two state lawmakers were arrested in an FBI sting that began with an investigation into the black-market sale of fake Gucci handbags and human kidneys.

Still, this won't stop politicians, especially those seeking office in 2010, from evoking the concept of a "California Dream" and returning the Golden State to its past glory. There's nothing wrong with optimism - it's what brought most Californians here in the first place. But there's a fine line between the politics of hope and hopeless pipe dreams.

And that's what the talk of reinventing the California of 50 years ago is: a pipe dream. In 1960 - Pat Brown's second year as governor and the same year the state's Master Plan for Higher Education was introduced and the California Aqueduct begun - the Golden State consisted of a mere 15.7 million residents.

Fifty years later, we have twice the population and an even greater exponential of problems. In Washington, President John F. Kennedy spoke of a "New Frontier." But in California, Brown referred to California as a "last frontier." That concept - the Golden State as a land still to be settled - as well as the feasibility of free college tuition and spanking new highways and frontiers, is about as outdated in this day and age as PT-109 tie clips and touch football on the White House lawn.

From the eternal optimist who governs this state to the true believers determined to once again reinvent our economy, California is a state buoyed by hopeful determination. But in building the better tomorrow, maybe it's time we put our ego in check - and, at long last, let go of the past.
Link


Home Front Economy
Calif. Taxpayers Due Refunds May Get IOUs
2009-01-02
If you expect you'll be getting a refund from California when you file your 2008 state income tax return, be prepared: you may instead receive a "registered warrant." Translation: an IOU.

California is rapidly running out of money. Blame it on the state budget deficit that continues to bleed billions of dollars from California's reserves. Facing inadequate credit to make up the difference, California's Controller John Chiang warns that by the end of February, the nation's most populous state may not be able to pay some of its debts, and instead be reduced to issuing those creditors IOUs.

"My office has projected that, in approximately 60 days, there will be insufficient cash available to meet all expenditures reflected in the 2008-09 Budget Act," stated a Tuesday letter from Controller Chiang to the directors of all state agencies. "To ensure that the State can meet its obligations to schools, debt service, and others entitled to payment under the State Constitution, federal law, or court order. California may begin, as early as February 1, 2009, issuing registered warrants...commonly referred to as IOUs...to individuals and entities in lieu of regular payments."

California has not resorted to IOUs since the 1992 budget crisis when Pete Wilson was governor. Back then, some 100,000 state employees got IOUs instead of paychecks for two months until the state approved a budget. The 1992 crisis came during summer, well past the tax season, but at least 12,000 tax refunds were also issued as IOUs, according to a contemporaneous report in the Los Angeles Times.

State workers filed a lawsuit, arguing the IOUs violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. They were awarded damages. In this current cash crisis, The Controller's office expects that hourly state employees would continue to receive paychecks. But IOUs could be issued to elected state officials, including legislators and judges, and their appointed staff, some 1700 in all, "as well as tax refunds owed to individuals and businesses," according to Chaing aide Hallye Jordan.
Link


Home Front: Politix
Tom Bradley Didn't Lose Because of Race
2008-10-20
If John McCain manages to overtake Barack Obama, the media will have a ready answer for the result: racism. Over the past generation, every time a black liberal candidate runs for public office, pundits are quick to assert that the so-called Bradley Effect will rear its ugly head and deny justice in America for another African-American.

The Bradley Effect refers to the proposition that white voters lie to pollsters when they claim to support a black candidate, because of prejudice. Every time Barack Obama lost a primary to Hillary Clinton, someone offered race as an explanation.

It's a comforting narrative for liberals. But it defies the reality of the campaign that gave birth to it. In 1982, California's Republican Attorney General George Deukmejian was trailing badly in the campaign for governor against African-American Democrat Tom Bradley, the popular mayor of Los Angeles. But he won the election by 93,345 votes out of nearly eight million cast.

Public pollsters and others were stunned; they'd already proclaimed Bradley the victor and turned their attention to the U.S. Senate race between Republican San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown. Pollsters also predicted a Jerry Brown victory. Mr. Wilson won handily.

The explanation for both Republican wins was simple. Voters rejected two liberal candidates. While political insiders and the Bradley people were shocked at the election results, the Deukmejian campaign was confident of victory -- thanks to the information it was getting from private pollster Gary Lawrence.

With less than a month to go, Mr. Bradley did enjoy a double-digit lead. Then the Deukmejian campaign focused on the increasing crime rate in Los Angeles under Mayor Bradley's watch. A major effort was made to turn out disaffected Democrats in the rural interior of the state. People there were incensed at a confiscatory handgun initiative on the ballot supported by Bradley liberals but vigorously opposed by Mr. Deukmejian.

New campaign commercials shifted attention to the solid and steady hand of the then Attorney General Deukmejian, a welcome change from the quixotic and chaotic reign of Gov. Brown. The campaign also stoked concern that, as mayor of a big city, a Gov. Bradley might make Los Angeles, not California, a priority.

Private, daily tracking polls showed that, with a retooled campaign, Mr. Deukmejian methodically closed the gap. On the Sunday night before the day of the election -- usually the last day of tracking polls the campaign will pay for -- Mr. Deukmejian had closed to less than two percentage points. The campaign polled Monday night, too. It showed Mr. Deukmejian less than 1% behind. Private pollster Lawrence Research predicted to the campaign a razor-thin victory -- exactly what happened.

The public polls stopped polling too soon, missing the Deukmejian surge. Most important, they ignored the absentee ballot. Mr. Deukmejian's polling asked if people had voted absentee; other polls, including the exit polls, did not.

Tom Bradley enjoyed the same type of love affair from the media that Barack Obama does today. Both candidates have appeared larger than life and hardly fallible. Indeed, both have compelling stories and project as decent, well-intentioned public servants. That is part of their appeal. But when the lights of the campaign shined brightly on the candidates, their flaws became more apparent.

In short, Mr. Bradley was defeated because he was too liberal, not too black. Mr. Obama was struggling in the polls until the economic news distracted voters from becoming more aware of how liberal he really is. If John McCain wins, the Bradley Effect will be trotted out to explain it. Nevertheless, it will be Mr. Obama's political views, not his skin color, that voters reject.
Link


Home Front: Politix
The Tancredo Republicans
2006-06-23
Novel strategy: Run on their lack of accomplishment.

Most Congressional majorities campaign for re-election by touting their legislative achievements. Not this year. House Republicans have decided that the key to saving their majority is not to solve the immigration problem they've spent the last year building into a "crisis." Give them credit for novelty, if not for wisdom.

This is the only way to read House Speaker Denny Hastert's decision this week to delay a House-Senate conference on immigration reform, and instead to stage a summer anti-immigration road show. Republicans plan to use the events to further raise the false alarm of "amnesty," which means further attacking their own President's immigration policy. We realize this year's immigration debate long ago left the rational world and is now driven entirely by political fear. But even as political strategy, this is the equivalent of snake-handling; it will be diverting to watch, unless the snake bites back.

Republicans came to this strategic epiphany after concluding that Representative Brian Bilbray won his special election victory in California this month by demagoguing immigration. But all that election really proved is that a GOP Beltway lobbyist could keep a seat in a 60% Republican district so long as he outspent an opponent who committed the final-week gaffe of encouraging immigrants to vote illegally. Replicate that trifecta around the country this November, and Republicans wouldn't need to campaign.

Looking at House Republicans who are vulnerable this year, we can't find a single one who will lose because of support for President Bush's comprehensive immigration reform. That isn't Heather Wilson's problem in New Mexico; she always has a tough race and favors both border security and a guest worker program. Chris Shays also won't save his seat by rallying the bluebloods in Greenwich, Connecticut, against their Mexican maids and construction workers. On the other hand, J.D. Hayworth could lose his seat in Arizona despite taking his anti-immigration riff to any radio or TV show that will have him.

What might well cost all of them their seats is the growing perception that this Congress hasn't achieved much of anything. If Republicans want a precedent, they might recall what happened to Democrats who failed to pass a crime bill in the summer of 1994. Already in trouble on taxes at the time, Democrats looked feckless on crime and health care and went down to crashing defeat. Immigration could do the same for Republicans, who have been flogging the issue for months as a grave national problem. Doing nothing about it now risks alienating even those conservatives who merely want more border police.

House Republicans insist they can't vote for any bill that can be called an "amnesty" for illegals, and that that's what the Senate and Mr. Bush want. But this is a box canyon of their own making. No serious person believes that the 11 million or so illegals already in America will be deported. Nor will these illegals come out of the shadows unless there is some kind of process that allows them to become legal and keep their jobs, even if it falls short of a path to citizenship. And immigrants will keep coming illegally in search of a better life unless there is some legal way they can apply for and find work.

Yet by denouncing any such compromise as "amnesty," the restrictionists have poisoned their own voters against accepting the only policy with a chance to solve the problem. When Indiana's Mike Pence, a stalwart conservative, offered a compromise that included a guest worker program, the Tancredo brigades savaged even him as endorsing "amnesty." Rather than see the Pence plan as a way out of their political mess, Mr. Hastert failed to defend him. On immigration, Mr. Tancredo is now the real speaker of the House.

Even if all of this somehow works this election year, the long term damage to the GOP could be considerable. Pete Wilson demonized illegal aliens to win re-election as California Governor in 1994, but at the price of alienating Latino voters for a decade. The smarter Republicans--President Bush, Karl Rove, Senator John McCain, Colorado Governor Bill Owens and Florida Governor Jeb Bush--understand that the GOP can't sustain its majority without a larger share of the Hispanic vote. Making Mr. Tancredo the spokesman on this issue is a surefire way to make Hispanics into permanent Democrats.

Every poll we've seen says that the public favors an immigration reform of the kind that President Bush does. That's because, whatever their concerns about border security, Americans are smart enough to know that immigrants will keep coming as long as they have the economic incentive to do so. They also don't want the social disruption favored by the deport-'em-all Tancredo Republicans.

On policy, the country could do worse than pass nothing this year on immigration. We've muddled through for years, and at 4.6% unemployment the U.S. economy is easily absorbing the illegal workforce. But having turned the immigration issue into a rallying cry, Republicans have put themselves at political risk if they do nothing. If the GOP finds itself in the minority next year, we trust its restrictionists will stand up and take a bow.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Israeli advice on the Mexico fence: be ruthless
2006-05-25
New York Notes: I guess this time it's really going to happen, says an Israeli expert. "It," meaning the separation fence between the U.S. and Mexico. He has been following the debate surrounding this fence with curiosity, and some amusement. So, he asks, "what should we call it? A fence or a wall?"

The Washington Post had a long story last weekend about American and Mexican communities along the Texas border. These communities will be influenced by the new fence - if it is built - and by any force trying to interrupt the daily flow of people and goods from one side of the border to the other. It's a story reminiscent of the one of Palestinian workers and commuters and farmers finding it difficult to adjust to the reality of an actual, not imaginary, border.

Two weeks ago, I attended a panel discussion during which a New York Times editor explained why the paper chose "barrier" as the word to best describe the Israeli fence and wall along the West Bank. The word's not perfect, but it's somewhat more neutral. The anonymous Israeli expert is eagerly waiting to see what kind of barrier the Americans will be building. And he is more than ready to offer some advice (free of charge, but also of commitment). And he is not the first or only one to do so. American officials, and even more so, politicians, sought some advice from Israel on this matter in the past ? and according to some knowledgeable people, are expected to do so even more in the near future. Former California Governor Pete Wilson cited the Israeli fence as a model for the U.S. in an article he wrote for the Investor's Business Daily. So here is some of what our Israeli expert has to say about it:

Money: It will probably cost more than you think. Why? Because that's always the way it is with such projects. Americans, the Israeli says, tend to be very structured in their work, in a way that has many benefits but also some limitations. It means that they waste a lot of money on "process" and "management" and "studies" before they really act. They make no short-cuts, thus save no money. In the last issue of The National Journal, the Israeli fence is mentioned as the example to use when calculating the cost of such a fence (2000 mile fence = $6.4 billion dollars). The Israeli expert thinks the Americans will end up paying more.

Efficiency: It can work, the expert says ? and other Israeli know-hows agree. Don't buy the argument of liberal opponents who say "no fence can stop people from coming." If done in a proper way, the fence can work. It can achieve whatever goal the U.S. wants it to, "100 percent, 90 percent, 80 percent prevention. Just make the right commitment and you?ll get results."

Tactics: Don't just rely on sophisticated machinery and equipment. You need people on the ground using the equipment to pursue the invaders. They need to react fast, they need intelligence, and they need to be tireless. It will only take a couple of months before the flow of immigrants will become much weaker.

Intelligence: Recruit people on the Mexican side to be your eyes and ears and to tell you what the smugglers are up to. Make sure you can communicate fast, and react even faster. Good intelligence can be the key factor for success.

Routine: The smugglers will be inventive and will look for ways around you. If you stick to some regulated routine, you'll end up wasting your time and your money. Surprise them where they don't expect you, make them understand that no place is safe, no route out of reach. "Don't police them, fight them."

Ruthlessness: Is it really important for the Americans? If it is, they should be prepared to show it. "Make the other side understand that this is no game - that life can be in danger," says the expert. "I know this is the toughest advice of all, but short of doing it the Americans will end up pretending to stop illegal immigrants rather than really doing it. At the end of the day, it is very simple: America is more powerful than the smugglers - meaning, it can deter them from doing what they do." But there's one condition necessary to keep this preponderance of power working: "It should be as important for America to stop the illegal new comers as it is for them to come."

Danger: You mean they have to shoot the smugglers? "No, they have to stop them. But if they run away they have to chase them, and if they resist they need to use force. Eventually, they'll end up doing things you don't want people to watch on television. I'm not sure if they have the resolve and the stomach to do it. Maybe it's not as important for them as they claim it is."

Conduct: Corruption can be a serious problem on the sealed border. As it gets tougher to enter the U.S, people will be ready to pay a high price for it, and the temptation to help those people in something one shouldn't underestimate. Take it into account while devising the system.
Link


Terror Networks
Carr sez Western cities must be prepared for nuclear al-Qaeda attack
2006-01-22
AUSTRALIA and the United States must be prepared for the likelihood that al-Qaeda will one day get its hands on a nuclear weapon, former NSW premier Bob Carr says.
Mr Carr has told the Australia-America Leadership Dialogue in Los Angeles that the terror group had been trying for five years to get hold of a nuclear weapon and it was likely it would succeed.

"In 2001 al-Qaeda chatter tracked by US intelligence was about one of their primary goals...to produce what they called an American Hiroshima," Mr Carr said.

"Western cities must have comprehensive evacuation plans drawn up and there have to be detailed plans for communicating with the people about what they should do."

Former Californian governor Pete Wilson, also speaking at the forum, said the US Department of Homeland Security was focused on prevention rather than a response to a nuclear attack.

"The consequences in terms of communications breakdowns and pressure on medical facilities would be unimaginable," Mr Wilson said.

"So concentrating on prevention makes sense, but we still have to consider and plan for what we would do if it did happen."
Link


Home Front: Economy
Reconstruction Redux
2005-09-19
Now that Dubya has written a blank check for the Second Reconstruction of the South, we have to determine who will manage the most expensive federal program in history. In the interest of efficiency, why not turn the project over to a Manhattan grand jury and cut out the middle men? There are middle men (and women) aplenty lining up to make this project not only the most expensive, but the most corrupt in U.S. history. Not, surely, throughout the South. But certainly in the state that could qualify as a banana republic if only it grew some bananas. Louisiana's state and city governments are preparing to let the good times roll again.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin -- he who sent people to the Superdome and Convention Center without provisioning them with food, water and security -- is at it again. Nagin is inviting French Quarter businesses to reopen, and residents of the chic Garden District and the less-than-chic Algiers neighborhood (about 180,000 people all told) to return. The city to which they may return is without a water supply that's fit for anything other than putting out fires or flushing toilets. It is without levees that can withstand another storm, even one much weaker than Katrina. It is without emergency telephone service and an evacuation plan that could work if the levees fail again. Nagin is having a panic attack. He's looking at a city from which his voting base has decamped to higher ground. He has to get those voters back, even if it means some will die from floods, cholera, or amoebic dysentery.

Coast Guard VAdm. Thad Allen, who took over as senior FEMA man on site when hapless Michael Brown was sent packing, is not happy with Nagin. Allen -- scheduled to meet with Nagin today -- said that he planned to bring his concerns to the mayor's attention, which is all he can do. Louisiana continues to suffer from the constitutional right of self-determination, by which it has chosen to be governed by a collection of clowns unequalled outside the U.N. General Assembly. We mustn't tinker with the Constitution. But that doesn't mean we should leave the Louisiana banana republicans in charge of spending all that dough.

At the time proceedings were delayed by Katrina, several senior officials of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness were awaiting trial on federal indictments regarding missing funds and improper expenditures. FEMA had demanded the return of $30 million given LOHSEP whilst federal bean counters continue to search for another $60 million which no one at LOHSEP can seem to find. (One FEMA report said the LOHSEP couldn't account for more than 90% of $15 million in FEMA funds it had awarded to Louisiana contractors.) Are we crazy enough to trust this crew with billions of federal construction dollars?

THE PRESIDENT ASSURED US THAT the enormous federal expenditures will be overseen by a collection of tough inspectors general. That's a good idea, but it's not nearly enough. Those such as Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Sen. Mary Landrieu are already lining up to demand that all the Louisiana reconstruction work be given to Louisiana companies. Blanco -- a real life female version of Mel Brooks's Gov. LePetomaine -- is anxious that no one outside her circle of cronies be allowed to partake in the coming flood of federal funding. Letting them make the decisions on how these billions of dollars will be spent is tantamount to turning the whole thing over to Benon Sevan and the UN diplomutts. We can do better.

First, the president has to create a system of offsets to begin restoring some sanity to the federal budget. For every dollar or two we spend on the South, another dollar should be cut elsewhere. The wonderful people of Bozeman, Montana, asked their congressman to give back the couple of millions they were to receive but didn't need under the recently passed highway bill porkfest. Every American should do the same. That won't pay for the reconstruction, but it will get us off on the right foot. When House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said there was no more fat to cut from the federal budget, he proved that Republicans are as drunk on federal budget booze as the Dems ever were. (Dear Mr. DeLay: You gotta be kidding me, fella. Haven't you heard of NPR, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the United Nations? Call me, and I'll give you a long list of federal and globaloney pestilences that could be cut to save many billions.)

Second, if we're going to pay for this, let's make sure we don't have to pay for it again in 20 or 50 years when the next Category 4 or 5 storm blows in. After the 1900 hurricane that destroyed the island city of Galveston, practical Texans decided to raise the level of ground above sea level before rebuilding. They piped in millions of tons of dredge spoil -- the stuff you drag up from the bottom of the river -- to raise the city above sea level. If Texas could do that a century ago, is it too much to expect from New Orleans today? Bulldoze the destroyed areas of the "soup bowl" in which New Orleans sits, pile a few billion cubic yards of dredge spoil on top, and then rebuild. It's one of those twofers that the laws of physics grant. If the dredging is done in the right places, it'll help strengthen the levee system by reducing the pressure on it.

Third, put someone in charge we can trust. That's obviously not LOHSEP, at least as it stands. Part of the price of federal aid should be a requirement that LOHSEP be re-staffed at the top two or three levels with people who haven't spent their careers in Louisiana government and who have proven expertise in administering huge construction contracts. If Gov. Blanco resists, FEMA should simply cut LOHSEP out of the loop and do the contracting itself. And no, we can't yet have that much confidence in FEMA. The FEMA side should be put in the hands of someone with expertise and experience in huge construction projects, and that person should be supported by some of the hundreds of certified procurement contract managers in industry and government who could be drafted to work for FEMA and run this right.

Last, and not at all least, the feds should impose time and performance limits on every contractor. Gov. Pete Wilson got a lot of California earthquake-damaged highways rebuilt years before anyone thought they could be. He did it by imposing a system of financial big rewards and harsh penalties that made sure contractors got things done in the minimum amount of time without sacrificing the quality of the work. There are a lot of contractors based in other states (such as -- brace yourself -- Halliburton) that can do massive jobs such as this very well. Let 'em all bid against each other and drive the costs down.

The object of the reconstruction is not to rebuild what was destroyed on a new foundation of old defects. The object must be to help our fellow Americans rebuild their lives in a way that makes them less vulnerable to a repeat of the catastrophe they've suffered. We're going to have to do this more than once. The next natural disaster or terrorist attack may take out another American city that will have to be rebuilt. In rebuilding New Orleans we can learn how not to build one disaster on the ruins of another. Let's get it right the first time.
Link



Warning: Undefined property: stdClass::$T in /data/rantburg.com/www/pgrecentorg.php on line 132
-12 More