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Call It A Comeback

March 2007

The Adults are Back In Charge

Make it Stop

ArchPundit 7 Comments

Kyle Sampson considered sacking Fitzgerald.  Why didn’t he?  Because of the Plame investigation is the insinuation.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/mZmJsLCzVIU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Of course, the demonstrates the problem the Administration has more than alleviating concerns.  Why in the hell would anyone think of firing Patrick Fitzgerald as US Attorney?  It’s not just that he was the special prosecutor for the Plame case, he has been a remarkably successful prosecutor on public corruption, corporate corruption, terrorism foreign and domestic, and the mob.

Durbin did a great job pinning him down on it too though the point is somewhat lost in discussion.  Why was Patrick Fitzgerald’s name thrown out there?  To see what kind of reaction it got.

Now, if you are going through some sort of systemic process to determine who is doing a good job and who is doing a bad job, wouldn’t the only names thrown out there be those that have some objective measure of performance problems?

If someone wants to claim Fitzgerald fit some objective performance criteria for firing–what are those criteria?

If they cannot answer the question, the entire process is a sham.  Sampson couldn’t and so far no one else has even gotten close to addressing that question.

The irony is if you go back to the 2000 election we were given glowing stories on Bush’s great role as a manager and he’d be the MBA in chief and run the government like a good business.

As some of us pointed out at the time, Bush failed at every business venture other than the one that depended upon public subsidy.   We got exactly what we should have expected.

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Why the GRT is a Dumb Idea

ArchPundit 2 Comments

Kristin McQueary writes a pretty good column on the Gross Receipts Tax today.

What has been surprising is the lack of outrage over the tax breaks, loopholes and stunts big businesses have employed for years to avoid paying corporate income taxes — not to mention the tax burden they avoid through the growing use of economic incentives extended by municipal governments (sales tax rebates and tax increment financing districts) as well as property tax reductions through a county and state appeals process navigated by their well-schooled attorneys.

It’s easy to be swayed by the television commercials and apocalyptic bravado about how a gross receipts tax will trickle down to you and me. Maybe it will. What tax doesn’t?

She also discusses that Blagojevich’s administration tried to cut down on loopholes, but it didn’t work.

Reasonable enough, but the problem with the GRT is that it isn’t progressive as a tax and is not neutral as to the businesses hurt most and hurt least.   Hi margin low volume businesses get a pretty good deal under the tax because their profit is obtained by relatively low sales.  High volume low margin businesses do very poorly because they have to sell a lot to make much of a profit and this kind of across the board tax hits them hard.

To make matters worse, the stores poorer and lower middle class folks tend to shop at are high volume relatively low margin stores from grocery stores to drug stores to many big box stores.  In contrast, the high margin low volume types of sales tend to be items that are more in the luxury category.

I’m all for closing tax breaks that aren’t necessary and even an increase in taxes to put the state on reasonable financial footing, but this tax is exactly the wrong way to do it.  Already the flat tax on incomes hurts the poor in this state more than the rich, this will simply exacerbate that effect.

Focusing a tax upon profit would be a far more fair way to tax businesses and it has the benefit of treating businesses fairly because it isn’t based upon sales, but on the profit and ability to pay and still have a marginal impact upon the business’s bottom line other than on those that are above operating costs.

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ArchPundit Fantasy Baseball

ArchPundit 3 Comments

Oh, what the hell. I’ve set up a league to live draft on Saturday at 1:30 CDT (you can autopick if you prefer). It’s a 5X5 league with 10 teams. C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, 1B/3B, 2B/SS, 5 OF, 2 Util, 9 P, 4 Bench, 2 DL–so lots of slots.

It’ll be relatively casual, but I’d hope people plan on keeping up their teams daily or close to daily and a fair amount of trading will take place. Nothing intense though as this will be a secondary team for me.

Drop me an e-mail or reply in comments and I’ll send you an invitation. It’ll need 10 people to sign up so if that isn’t reached, I’ll let it die.  It’s through ESPN and is a free league and only bragging rights for winning.
Back to regular postings in a bit.

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How Uncomfortable

ArchPundit 2 Comments

Gonzalez and Fitzgerald at the same event

Given Fitzgerald’s status in Chicago, I’m betting the press turns Gonzalez into pinata at 11.

Or as the Trib says today:

A further mystery is that some of the prosecutors were given poor evaluations, but others had gotten high scores. One of those fired, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, was on the mark in complaining “there is no evidence of a credible performance-review process.” That was obvious from the fact that standout prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of Illinois got a mediocre rating — which is like Albert Pujols being left off the All-Star roster.

Obama

Frank James on Pickler

ArchPundit 1 Comment

I think Frank James does a very good analysis on the Pickler piece that won Daily Dolt below:

Again, it strikes me that this is what politicians do, or allow to have done in their names, even first-class ones. Abraham Lincoln did a stint of rail splitting before becoming an affluent railroad lawyer but he probably could have been accused today of allowing supporters to exaggerate that part of his biography in calling him the “rail splitter.”

But the larger point is that after being charged with creating the Obama phenomenon, the Washington press corps is now doing stories that I guarantee the Obama campaign will be hoping most people ignore. These stories are inescapably negative.

Whether Obama is the MSM’s Frankenstein monster is arguable. Millions of people voted for him in Illinois. The man certainly has the larger-than-life charisma needed to occupy the White House successfully. The John F. Kennedy is definitely not-far fetched in this regaed.

Obama really seems comfortable with the media glare and adoring crowds, making him a kind of anti-Nixon. Part of his success, so far, I believe is that people tend to like other people who are comfortable in their presence.

Americans also like politicians who speak to the better angels of their nature, which Obama certainly does with all of that Lincolnesque, high-toned language of his that, yes, at times comes across as platitudes. Come to think of it, Lincoln’s better-angel line is really a platitude, isn’t it?

My take is even more cynical in that I don’t think it matters what Obama does in terms of receiving criticism like this because the press is going to do it anyway. The measure of the campaign is can they take the criticism and react to it creating a net positive.

What’s most interesting about the Tribune and the Swamp is that despite being a part of the DC corps and being an influential paper, since it’s not East Coast or West Coast, they are somewhat distinct from the herd (Sun Times has a similar nature with Lynn Sweet).  No news organization is perfect, but I often find the Trib and Sun-Times reporters to be far better than most of the beltway crowd.  An interesting test case will be to analyze Jeff Zeleny’s work for the Trib and how he’s doing one year from now at the NY Times.

Obama

And Bill Clinton didn’t really Confront his Abusive Step Father

ArchPundit 2 Comments

The worst thing that has happened to news coverage is probably the rise of the pundit class, but with them came the psychological profiling of candidates and the navel gazing about whether they have a story about their youth correct. I remember when Bill Clinton told the story of confronting his abusive stepfather when he was still a boy and the press tried desperately to knock down the story saying it wasn’t clear he was accurate and so it must be a sign of a major character flaw.

Of course, most of us have memories of our youth that are far more dramatic than reality was for sure.  The crushing disappointment of being turned down for a date, really wasn’t that great.  The fight with parents that seems like daily occurrences with four year olds, seems like a life changing event.  The deep intellectual conversations with friends were,well silly.
All teenagers are drama queens and in our more objective moments we realize that. However, are memories make those very vivid and as such relevant to how we are formed as human beings.  Bill Clinton standing up to his abusive father-in-law even if it was through tears and not nearly as dramatic as he might remember it is one of those events a young man learns from and recounting it in his mind is certainly vivid.

It’s not some great character flaw to recount those events as you remember them as people know that one’s memories as a kid are not entirely accurate. In Obama’s case, he even told you that in the introduction to the book admitting it and even changing characters to make the narrative easier to follow.  IOW, trying to make it out as a big deal is silly hack journalism.
Finally, I hated high school and that’s not an exaggeration–I too laughed and posed for photos the day of my graduation even through a horrible hangover.

Daily Dolt Obama

Daily Dolt

ArchPundit 1 Comment

Nedra Pickler  of the AP

WASHINGTON – The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) all style and little substance? The freshman Illinois senator began his campaign facing the perception that he lacks the experience to be president, especially compared to rivals with decades of work on foreign and domestic policy. So far, he’s done little to challenge it. He’s delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country.

No policy speeches.

Are you kidding me?

 Just from a quick look at his Senate web site.
Iraq War Speeches

March 21st

March 13th

January 30th

January 19th

November 20th
Africa

Aids December 1

Zimbabwe March 15th

Kenya August 28th (In Kenya)

Latin America March 8th

Foreign Policy/Israel–March 2nd

Veterans March 22nd

January 8th Ethics Legislation

Bills/Actions Introduced:

Health Insurance Tax Breaks for Better Fuel Economy

Housing Summit on Foreclosures

Reform Troop Care–something he’s worked with Durbin on since entering the Senate

The entire article seems to be because Obama doesn’t have a detailed health care plan.  It’s legitimate to say Edwards is ahead of him on the issue, but to say it signifies a lack of policy positions when he has a ton of substantive positions and has given a number of speeches on foreign policy in the just the last few months is ridiculous and could only happen in the DC press corps that cannot help itself, but to fit every candidate into their particular view–facts be damned.

Uncategorized

It’s the crime

Daniel Biss 2 Comments

Josh Marshall really hits the nail on the head:

There’s this old line the wise folks in Washington have that ‘it’s not the crime, but the cover-up.’

But only fools believe that. It’s always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable. Let me repeat that, the whole point of the cover-up is a recognition that a full revelation of the underlying bad act is not survivable.

Don’t ever forget that. When talking heads tell us that it’s about the cover-up, they’re trying to make us believe that the problem here is that the administration was flummoxed by an awkward question, gave a bad answer, and subsequently found itself boxed into an embarrassing cover-up. You know, the sort of thing that could happen to anyone.

But that’s not what’s at issue. At issue is the alleged takeover of the Justice Department by the political arm of the White House. You know, the sort of thing that pretty much could only happen to an unusually corrupt administration.

It isn’t the cover-up. It’s the crime.

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