Sebelius refuses to shut down “demonstration project” criticized by GAO

Earlier this week, the New York Post warned readers that the Obama administration planned to use an $8.3 billion in HHS appropriations as a “slush fund” to hide the impact of ObamaCare on choice options for seniors that would otherwise have hit just before the election in November. That same day, the General Accounting Office blasted the Obama administration for its attempt, and called on HHS to reverse itself. Today, Rep. John Kline, chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, confronted HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius over the GAO report, but Sebelius remained defiant — and insisted that the Obama administration would proceed with its slush-fund plans:

Sebelius refuses to shut down “demonstration project” criticized by GAO
posted at 5:21 pm on April 26, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

Earlier this week, the New York Post warned readers that the Obama administration planned to use an $8.3 billion in HHS appropriations as a “slush fund” to hide the impact of ObamaCare on choice options for seniors that would otherwise have hit just before the election in November. That same day, the General Accounting Office blasted the Obama administration for its attempt, and called on HHS to reverse itself. Today, Rep. John Kline, chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, confronted HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius over the GAO report, but Sebelius remained defiant — and insisted that the Obama administration would proceed with its slush-fund plans:

U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today vowed to continue a controversial “demonstration project” that has come under fire recently by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The Democrats’ 2010 health care law cut $200 billion from Medicare Advantage, a program that currently serves 12 million seniors. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cuts will result in 5 million fewer seniors participating in the popular program. The GAO recently criticized an $8 billion national demonstration project run by the administration that may have been intended to mask the impact of these cuts until 2013. The GAO reports the design of this project “precludes a credible evaluation of its effectiveness.”

The GAO has called on HHS to cancel this unprecedented multi-billion dollar program. However, when asked by Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) if the administration would follow the GAO’s recommendation, Secretary Sebelius stated she has “no intention of canceling the project.”

Here’s a reminder of what the GAO thinks of this “demonstration project”:

GAO, the investigative agency of Congress, did not address GOP allegations that the bonuses are politically motivated. But, its report found the program highly unusual. It “dwarfs” all other Medicare pilots undertaken in nearly 20 years, the GAO said.

Most of the bonus money is going to plans that receive three to three-and-half stars out of a possible five stars on Medicare’s quality rating scale, the report said.

Available through 2014, the bonuses will soften much of the initial impact of the Medicare Advantage cuts, acting like a temporary reprieve.

This year, for example, the bonus program offset about 70 percent of the cuts in the health care law. Indeed, Medicare Advantage enrollment is up by 10 percent and premiums have gone down on average.

But GAO questioned whether the bonus program will achieve its goal of finding better incentives to promote quality. “The design of the demonstration precludes a credible evaluation of its effectiveness in achieving (the administration’s) stated research goal.”

So Sebelius wants to spend over eight billion dollars on a “demonstration project” whose design makes it impossible to evaluate, which just coincidentally provides some political cover for the White House just before seniors go to the polls in the presidential election, and which won’t actually improve care. Did anyone expect anything different from Chicago-sur-le-Potomac?

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Exciting new EPA enforcement method revealed: Single out a few offenders and crucify them

Well it’s not new exactly, just new to the intertubes, but it certainly explains a lot. From the Foundry via Weasel Zippers:

This clip actually originated from Sen. James Inhofe’s office so thankfully the GOP is already on this. A little more background from the Senator’s press release:

Not long after Administrator Armendariz made these comments in 2010, EPA targeted US natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming. In all three of these cases, EPA initially made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming outright that the use of hydraulic fracturing by American energy producers was the cause of water contamination, but in each case their comments were premature at best – and despite their most valiant efforts, they have been unable to find any sound scientific evidence to make this link.

Probably the most offensive thing about this clip, aside from the crucifixion analogy, is the implication that the EPA singles out potential offenders to make an example of on a random basis. To be sure, fostering fear through arbitrary, and unduly punitive enforcement actions can be an effective means of ensuring broad compliance. But it’s not exactly in line with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

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Video: The sadly obligatory “Biden talks about the size of Obama’s stick” clip

To cleanse the palate, via the Examiner, a reminder that size matters in foreign policy too. I saw the headline on this hours ago and glowed with pride on the thought that it’s now fair game in modern campaigns for the vice president of the United States to deploy puns about the size of the president’s schwanz. Then I watched the clip. Guys, I … don’t know if he planned the joke. I think he did — the audience obviously gets it — but when he gets to the big payoff he almost seems to pull up short, as if the double meaning is only dawning on him at that moment. Am I wrong about that? If it were anyone else in the administration I’d say there’s no doubt, but look who it is we’re talking about here. I’d prefer to believe that his childlike naivete led him to an inadvertent punchline than that he and his speechwriters are deliberately adding jokes about Obama’s junk to his foreign policy addresses to liven them up.

Incidentally, when it comes to government, superior size does not necessarily mean superior performance:

Independents’ view of the federal government is actually less favorable now at 27 percent than it was in the final year of Bush’s second term, when it was 33 percent. Interestingly, though, it rose to 39 percent in Febhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8265345694772230791ruary 2010, when Congress was on the brink of passing ObamaCare. Does that mean indies have soured on Hopenchange or have they just soured on congressional gridlock?

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EPA: Hey, sorry about that whole “crucify” thing, we’re all about being ethical

The EPA has scrambled to contain the damage from the clip highlighted by Morgen Richmond this morning, which went viral yesterday, showing an EPA administrator bragging about crucifixion as a means to impose the EPA’s will on American subjects, er, citizens. The EPA’s Richard Armendariz apologized late last night for his remarks, and the EPA rushed to assure people that they are all about “ethical enforcement”:

The Obama-appointed Environmental Protection Agency official who explained that the agency uses a “crucify them” enforcement philosophy against oil and gas companies apologized for his comments on Wednesday night.

“I apologize to those I have offended and regret my poor choice of words,” Region 6 EPA Administrator Al Armendariz said in a statement provided to The Daily Caller. “It was an offensive and inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential violations of our nation’s environmental laws. I am and have always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of those laws. …

While Armendariz apologized, EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Cynthia Giles asserted that the agency is still committed to ethical enforcement of the law.

“Strong, fair and effective enforcement of the environmental laws passed by Congress is critical to protecting public health and ensuring that all companies, regardless of industry, are playing by the same rules,” she said in comments provided to TheDC. “Enforcement is essential to the effectiveness of our environmental laws, ensuring that public health is protected and that companies that play by the rules are not at a disadvantage. The same holds true for companies involved in responsible and safe development of our nation’s domestic energy resources.”

Sure they are. Why, just ask the Sacketts about the EPA’s idea of “ethical enforcement.” They ruled that the land that the Sacketts bought were wetlands after the Sacketts starting building a house on residential-zoned land even though it had not been classified as such beforehand, and then refused to allow them to access the court system without paying tens of thousands of dollars each day that they delayed the EPA’s mandated abatement. The Supreme Court hit the EPA with a unanimous smackdown on a process which could only be called a financial crucifixion of the Sacketts, and a lesson to everyone else — just as Armendariz described in the video.

Don’t count Senator James Inhofe among the easily impressed with this apology and endorsement of the EPA’s approach to enforcement:

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe is not buying the mea culpa offered by the EPA official who bragged about the agency’s “crucify them” enforcement philosophy against oil and gas companies.

“His apology was meaningless,” Inhofe told The Daily Caller in a Thursday morning interview.

“You’re going to treat people like the Romans crucified the church? Get real,” he said.

According to Inhoffe, Obama-appointed Region 6 EPA Administrator Al Armendariz’s claim in his apology that the agency is focused on “fair and vigorous enforcement” isn’t supported by the facts.


Inhofe appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to talk about his intent to investigate the EPA, and to tie Armendariz’ comments to Barack Obama’s war on domestic oil and gas production, especially gas:

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) on Thursday blasted an Environmental Protection Agency official’s claim that the agency was using a “crucify them” strategy against oil and gas companies, calling it a part of President Barack Obama’s “war on domestic energy.”
“Let’s keep in mind, this is all a part of Obama’s war on domestic energy,” Inhofe said on “Fox & Friends.” “He’s the one who said that we have good natural gas and it’s plentiful and all of that but we’ve got to stop hydraulic fracturing. This is the war on hydraulic fracturing.”

It’s more than a war on hydraulic fracturing, or on energy production.  It’s a war on liberty, waged by bureaucrats who want to crucify people like the Sacketts in order to pacify the rest of us.  The apology won’t fool anyone.
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Quotes of the day

“House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) poured cold water Thursday on efforts by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to advance immigration reform by suggesting that such a plan would not be able to pass the GOP-led House this year.

“Asked by a reporter whether he thought the House could pass an immigration measure this year that focused on more than just border security, Boehner said: ‘There’s always hope,’

“The speaker said he has spoken to Rubio about his plan. ‘I found it of interest, but the problem with this issue is that we’re operating in a very hostile political environment. To deal with a very difficult issue like this, I think it would be difficult at best.’”

***

“Gaby Pacheco, a vocal immigrant activist, accepted a tantalizing invitation last week from an unlikely source: Republican Sen. Marco Rubio wanted her to help craft a bill that could legalize the children of some illegal immigrants.

“Two hours later, Pacheco and other activists got a different pitch from their more familiar White House allies. Be wary of Rubio and his plan, two of President Obama’s top advisers told them in a meeting. It wouldn’t go far enough and wasn’t likely to succeed…

“The plan puts Obama in a box. Democrats are reluctant to see Rubio’s efforts as anything other than a political gambit to repair his party’s tarnished image with Hispanics and boost his own profile as a potential vice-presidential pick or future White House contender.

“But if Obama does not at least try to work with Rubio, he could risk losing a centerpiece of his appeal to Hispanic voters — that he is their fiercest ally in Washington and that the GOP is to blame for lack of action on fixing the country’s immigration ills.”

***

“Despite the hype that the GOP moved to the hard right in the primary, immigration was the main issue where Romney himself did so, sounding a hard conservative line to position himself to the right of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich. If there was one issue where he would “flip-flop” back to the center, it’s likely to be immigration.

“Now Rubio is offering both Romney and the GOP a second chance to court Hispanic voters, and putting the White House in a tough spot. The freshman senator may not become Romney’s running mate, but he could be giving him a bigger political gift with his immigration advocacy.”

***

“Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has thrust himself into the raging illegal immigration debate, proposing a plan that would create a path to legal status for children of illegal immigrants — putting him at odds with an immoveable wing of the Republican Party on this issue.

“It’s a risky move for a potential vice presidential candidate, and it puts presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney in a pickle as he may have to decide whether to back an immigration plan rolled out by one of the party’s rising Hispanic stars, or stick to the strident anti-illegal immigrant positions he staked out during the Republican primary…

“Asked if Romney needed to lighten up his rhetoric, Rubio said the GOP has to better communicate it’s the pro-immigration party.

“‘Not just Gov. Romney — but in general, over the last five years that [the] Republican Party has come to be viewed as the anti-illegal immigration party.’”

***

“In an interview at his Tucson campaign office earlier this month, [Democrat Richard] Carmona, who is running in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R), had some blunt criticism for Republicans on the topic of illegal immigration.

“‘Why do you think they’re reworking their initial vitriolic, far-right, ‘deport everybody’ (message)?’ he asked. ‘Why? Do you think that all of a sudden there’s an epiphany and their hearts have opened up to people who are struggling? I don’t think so. I think it’s a political calculation – that they recognized they cannot win their races and stay in office unless they embrace the Hispanic community. So, I really feel it’s very disingenuous.’…

“‘Look, look,’ Carmona said. ‘Do you think it just popped up at this time – six, seven months before the election – and everybody goes, ‘Oh gee, let’s embrace these people now’? … So, it’s crazy. The fact of the matter is these are political calculations and the public is fed up with it.’”

***

“So to sum up-

“We’re going to grant the [premise] the Democrats have been running on that this is something we have to act on (separate from border security/enforcement)

“We’re going to do this to try and win votes of voters who will simply say, ‘Um, why should I support your half-assed measure when the other guys are offering me the whole thing?’

“We’d also offer the Democrats a new and exciting line of attack… ‘Republicans think you’re good enough to work for them and fight and die for this country but not to vote’. Some enterprising liberal will no doubt find a way to equate that with slavery. Fun times!

“And while we’re getting no credit or votes from this, we’ll also be doing the Democrats job for them by driving a wedge between members of our party.”

***

“Rubio said the White House has also been ‘actively trying to torpedo my efforts’ by calling in immigration advocates and urging them not to back Rubio’s bill.

“‘I think Speaker Boehner was acknowledging how difficult it is going to be given the highly politicized climate the president is contributing to, and I agree it’s going to be hard to pass,’ Rubio said. ‘But I am hopeful that we are going to come up with an idea [that] makes sense, that calls to Americans’ spirit of humanitarianism, that recognizes that these kids do not have legal right to be here, but that appeals to our conscience.’…

“Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), who heads the Senate Democrats’ policy and communication shop, said Boehner’s comments ‘show how far Sen. Rubio has to go in trying to gain Republican support for any proposal to help immigrant students.’”
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Hey, remember when Obama promised more aid for college students, but expected “sacrifice” from them in return?

President Obama’s 2008 campaign is remembered mostly for vague platitudes about hope and change, but in an unscripted moment in May 2008 he was put on the spot to list some sacrifices he expected Americans to make if he were elected. Oops:Obama has largely delivered on the benefits he promised to students in this clip, but funny, he doesn’t seem to be talking much about “sacrifice” on the college tour he is currently in the middle of. Since 2009 Pell grant spending has increased substantially, and while his promised tuition credit fell a little short, the stimulus bill included a $2500 tax credit which has been renewed annually ever since. And of course maintaining subsidized student loans at below market-level interest rates is the Obama campaign priority of the week. Which, take note, Obama promised to pay for in this clip by cutting private financial institutions out of the student loan business. A promise he delivered on, but alas, much of the savings realized from this maneuver went to help pay for ObamaCare instead. Really.
Although President Obama is no longer pitching the idea of mandatory national service, he is at least still “trying to lead” something: his re-election effort. Thus his team has been busy recruiting an army of unpaid volunteers from college campuses around the country to staff his campaign. Maybe this is the national service he was really talking about. Hey, nothing is free…except your time, apparently, if you want to be a soldier for more hope and change.
Update: Double-oops. Recall that the other example Obama gave of a “sacrifice” he expected Americans to make, was dealing with the impact of higher gas and electricity costs as a result of his energy policies. Count this as another promise fulfilled!

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At least that’s what the Secret Service agents under scrutiny for the Colombian hooker scandal are claiming, according to the Washington Post. Three more agents have been discharged, bringing the total to nine, but some may end up fighting to get their jobs back. First, Politico reports on the latest terminations: Three more Secret Service employees were forced out of their jobs Tuesday, bringing the total number of agency employees to lose their jobs in the Colombia prostitution scandal to nine. Two of the employees are resigning, while a third is having his security clearance revoked and will leave the agency, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the House homeland security committee, told POLITICO. Two more agency employees have been cleared of any wrongdoing. Paul Morrissey [no relation -- Ed], the Secret Service’s assistant director, confirmed the personnel changes in a statement. With the latest departures, all 12 Secret Service employees suspected of misconduct in Cartagena ahead of the president’s trip there for the Summit of the Americas have been dealt with by the agency. Six resigned or were fired last week, while another employee was cleared. “At this point, all twelve have either been cleared of serious misconduct, resigned, retired, been notified of personnel actions to permanently revoke their security clearances, or have been proposed for permanent removal for cause,” Morrissey said. “The Secret Service is committed to conducting a full, thorough and fair investigation in this matter, and will not hesitate to take appropriate action should any additional information come to light.” The additional information might come from the employees themselves, and might result in the need for a much wider investigation into Secret Service activities: Some Secret Service employees accused of misconduct in the Colombian prostitution scandal are privately contending that their conduct didn’t warrant dismissal because senior managers tolerated similar behavior during official trips, according to people familiar with the employees’ thinking. Several of the men who agreed to resign under pressure last week are also considering reversing their decisions and fighting to keep their jobs, according to the people knowledgeable about the case. … Those close to the accused employees said that in an effort to fight for their jobs they could opt to divulge details of how colleagues spent some of their downtime on presidential trips — drinking heavily, visiting strip clubs and cavorting with women for hire. “Of course it has happened before” said one agent not implicated in the matter, remarking on the Secret Service’s history of occasionally licentious partying. “This is not the first time. It really only blew up in this case because the [U.S. Embassy] was alerted.”. The first hints that this might be true come from the scorecard of the people involved. The debauchery in Cartagena didn’t just involve a couple of low-level rookies; more than one supervisor took part, one of whom offered indiscreet commentary about Sarah Palin on his Facebook page. The scope of the revelry and the inclusion of members of the military makes this look even more routine than aberrant. And perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. My good friend Paul Mirengoff has returned to Power Line this month after a lengthy hiatus, and he reminded us last night that people in high-stress jobs are often risk-takers who need to party as hard as they work: I don’t wish to put up any strong defense of the Secret Service employees in question, or to argue that they should not be sacked. But I don’t believe we should be very surprised by the misconduct of agents who put their life on the line to protect the president and his family against danger from sources that may not reveal themselves until the last second. There may be a more stressful job, but I can’t think of one. Given the stress inherent in this work, it is normal that more than a few agents blow off steam by drinking, carousing, and in some cases whoring. This doesn’t mean that those who engage in the latter activity shouldn’t be fired; a job like this should be reserved for those who can transcend “normal.” But one might still have sympathy for the agents who failed to do so. I agree — to a point. One could understand how an individual agent or two might exercise poor judgment and get caught up in the atmosphere of an exotic locale. However, they aren’t supposed to be on vacation; they were there to identify potential threats and focus on providing a secure environment for the President of the United States. Even more to the point, the involvement of supervisors shows that this was likely not an aberration, but simply one instance where it got so out of hand that they were caught in the act. Congress needs to keep looking into the Secret Service to ensure that the culture of the agency provides focus to the job at hand.

Well you know what, when [unintelligible] said at camp, you can’t get any money because one guy blocked it. That’s bollocks, that’s not f–king democracy. You can’t have one guy block a democratic f–king vote. That’s not democracy…
Or…or beat the c–t up that just said I’m not going to give the camp any money. [Evil laugh] Bash him, just bash him up…
It’s a peaceful protest…but it’s not a peaceful camp. And it’s not. And there is violence here, and I’ve had to deal with it…and I’m not enjoying having to deal with all these violent f–kers.

You know Monty Python has made a fortune here in the U.S. because just about everything sounds funnier with an English accent…but there isn’t much to laugh about here. (Except maybe the latest in occupy fashion.) These defenders of democracy are actually right about one thing though: consensus-based decision making where one objector can block an entire motion is bollocks, a recipe for anarchy in fact. But then I suppose that’s the whole point isn’t it?

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Man who’s been campaigning for three years announces first official campaign events

Yes, really. Believe it or not, those endless video clips of this guy droning on about the cheap gimmick you and I know as the Buffett Rule were technically “presidential events,” even though there’s no serious policy reason to spend more than five minutes talking about it. It’s a populist pander aimed at peeling working-class voters away from Romney by building class resentment. And yet, supposedly, it’s sufficiently important to justify using your tax dollars to fly O around the country to make the pitch.
If that’s a “presidential event,” I can’t wait to see what the campaign events look like
A telling detail from the NYT’s recent piece about presidents campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime:

Since Mr. Obama filed for re-election a year ago, he has taken 60 domestic trips, of which 26 included fund-raisers, according to Mark Knoller, a White House correspondent for CBS News who for years has compiled such data.
Mr. Knoller’s count shows that since Mr. Obama took office, his most frequent destinations besides Maryland, Virginia and Illinois, his home state, have been fund-raising centers and swing states: New York (23 visits), Ohio (20), Florida (16), Pennsylvania (15), Michigan (11), California and North Carolina (10 each), Massachusetts (9), Wisconsin (8), Iowa and Nevada (7 each), and Colorado (6).

Even reporters don’t take this phony distinction seriously anymore. The Washington Free Beacon’s been compiling tweets from journalists scoffing openly at the idea that these visits to purple states and big blue piggy banks are anything more than campaign stops in the guise of Matters of National Importance. Presumably, by the White House’s logic, last night’s slow jam of the news wasn’t a dumb goof aimed at charming young voters but a “presidential forum on current events.”
Time for the RNC to apply a little pressure by calling for a GAO investigation:

Today he will hold another similar event in Iowa. Ostensibly these campaign stops were meant to support student loan legislation (which ironically President Obama didn’t even take the time to vote on during his short tenure in the U.S. Senate). Please note that President Obama traveled to three states largely considered to be electoral battlegrounds to promote this legislation. One might imagine that if this were genuinely a government event he might have stopped in a non-battleground state like Texas or Vermont.
The same can be said of the president’s trip to Florida two weeks ago. President Obama scheduled three fundraisers in the state and added one short “official event” on his Buffett Tax to his itinerary, once again allowing his reelection campaign to save on fuel for Air Force One. This speech was high on class warfare, slogans, and divisive campaign-style rhetoric. It was low on substance that would benefit the populace at large.
One incident of this might be an error that is easily remedied. But it is a pattern of behavior that is worsening. In fact in three and a half years, President Obama has held dozens of events that benefitted OFA on the taxpayer dime.

Follow the link for the obligatory GSA reference. Question: When was the last time O spoke publicly about a policy matter and wasn’t obviously trying to score campaign points in doing so? It’s one small-ball matter after another: The Buffett Rule to position himself as the champion of blue-collar voters, regulations on oil speculators to show that he cares about gas prices, extending the student-loan interest rate to get young voters excited to volunteer for Generation O again, etc. Those are all campaign events, by and large, as of course was his speech tearing into Paul Ryan after his own phony budget went straight down the crapper in Congress. When was the last actual presidential address?

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Quotes of the day

The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped—and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.

“The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.”“In a typical year, the young men in this agricultural region of western Mexico would have made the journey north to America. But not this year or for this generation: a better future across the border is a promise they no longer trust.

“‘For years, we dreamed of America, but now that dream is no good,’ says 18-year-old Pedro Morales, sitting in the elegant Spanish colonial square of Comala under the shadow of the spectacular Volcan de Fuego. ‘There are no jobs and too many problems. We don’t want to go.’…

“‘The reason they’re coming home is because they have no options, no papers, and the laws are more aggressive,’ says Fernando Morett, a shopkeeper in the coastal town of Chiutlan. ‘It’s complicated, and people are debating it. If they don’t have friends in the US and they have to pay to cross the line, it’s not worth it.’”

***

“First of all, there’s no reason to think that pressure for illegal immigration from Mexico won’t increase again; in fact, the total illegal population has already stopped declining and may have begun to grow again. The U.S. economy is bound to pick up at some point and the newfound middle-class status of so many Mexicans, often cited as a reason for the drop in departures northward, is tenuous. As the Washington Post put it, the country’s new middle class is ‘fearful that recent gains could be lost in a financial crisis or social upheaval.’

“What’s more, the decline in Mexico’s birth rate, which is also cited as a mark of the permanence of the drop-off in emigration, isn’t necessarily connected. The change is real enough; as recently as 1970, the average Mexican woman had nearly seven children, whereas today the number is barely over two. But emigration isn’t just a matter of excess people overflowing into another country. South Korea, for instance, has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, not to mention a First World level of development, and yet emigration to the U.S. (mostly legal) continues apace. Immigration from Japan and China seems to have actually increased as fertility declined. And immigration from Russia isn’t stopping even though Russia’s total population is actually declining. Sure, if fertility is low enough for long enough, eventually you’ll just run out of people. But in the meantime, immigration is driven by networks of friends and relatives and employers rather than by population math.

“And finally, some part of the decline in new illegal immigrants, and the departure of those already here, was caused by the very enforcement measures the anti-borders crowd wants to dismantle in light of the new numbers.”

***

“Pearce is not a Romney adviser, but he is the embodiment of the law that Romney embraced — and the baggage Romney now carries for seeking far-right support in the primary. On Tuesday, Pearce sat at the witness table, shaking his head in disagreement as others spoke about how the law encourages racial profiling and hurts legal Latino residents…

“Does he support Arizona authorities using ‘dress’ as a way to identify illegal immigrants? ‘You have to respond to reasonable suspicion to do your job,’ he said.

“Why didn’t the law simply require that everybody stopped by the police would be checked for immigration status, to avoid racial profiling? ‘I don’t want a police state,’ he said.

“No, he only wants that for people who don’t look like him.”

***

“‘I think we have in Arizona an overreach where the Republicans have really overplayed their hand,’ said Luis Heredia, executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party, citing the immigration bill and Arpaio’s antics…

“One recent Saturday, Democratic state senate candidate Raquel Teran paced the streets of her strongly Hispanic Phoenix district, armed with a map, a list of registered Democratic voters and a sheaf of voter registration papers. She signed up one new voter at the first house she called at.

“Sitting out in the shady yard of her in-laws’ home, young mother Yvette Sierra, 22, shared an experience about her husband being pulled over by Arpaio’s deputies, who she said let him go only after he produced their young son’s U.S. birth certificate.

“‘He’s stopping people and I just don’t think it’s right,’ she says, filling out a voter registration form. ‘I never (voted), never thought about it . . . but I’m glad.’”

***

“‘He’s already said that immigration reform is something that he’s committed to,’ McCain told reporters, in response to a question about whether Romney should make the issue a bigger focus of his campaign…

“The Arizona senator became agitated when asked about Romney having said he supports a self-deportation policy, whereby illegal immigrants would voluntarily go back to their country of origin and then apply for U.S. citizenship.

“No he hasn’t. He’s said that’s one of the options he’s looked at,’ McCain said. ‘So don’t put words in his mouth.’

“Romney has explicitly said he supports such a policy, however.”

***

“Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), an informal adviser to the Romney campaign who co-wrote Arizona’s controversial immigration law, predicted Romney would stick with his previous positions on border control.

“‘Governor Romney and the Romney team remain firmly opposed to amnesty,’ he told The Hill earlier this week. ‘I’m not getting any sense he’s changing his positions. He’s staked them out in the [presidential] debates with considerable specificity. He said the Arizona bill should be a model. He said the concept of self-deportation should be one that’s used. I hadn’t heard at all he’s moving and I doubt he will.’…

“Tancredo expressed hope that Kobach could convince Romney to hold his position on the DREAM Act and keep up the rhetoric he used during the primary, but doubted he would.”

***

“In other words, attrition works. But if illegal immigrants are going home on their own, why do we need an amnesty? The argument for it is that the illegal immigrants are firmly rooted here and aren’t going anywhere. While that’s probably true for some illegals, it’s obviously not true for lots of them. So why not wait and see how much more the illegal population can be reduced through attrition before we surrender and declare an amnesty?”

***

Via Quinnipiac.

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DWS: Don’t ask why Senate Democrats won’t pass a budget, because that’s process

Via RCP and Twitchy, how embarrassing is it when a news anchor on any channel has to explain the conference committee process to a member of Congress?  DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) appeared on Fox News last night with Bret Baier, who asked the simple question: why haven’t Senate Democrats passed a budget?  Wasserman Schultz wanted to gripe about the House-passed Paul Ryan budget, but when Baier asked why the Senate hadn’t passed a budget resolution in 1,092 days, Wasserman Schultz scolded him for talking about “process.”  She did try to argue at one point that Democrats have proposed a budget — the White House budget from Barack Obama — but Baier forced her to change direction when he asked why the Senate hadn’t bothered to vote on it.
This is a pretty simple “process.”  Each chamber passes a version of the budget, and it goes into conference committee.  That’s simpler in the Senate than most other legislation, since filibusters cannot be used on budgets; a simple majority is all that’s needed to pass it.  In order to get a budget into conference committee, though, both chambers have to actually pass a budget in the first place, and it’s been three years and counting since the Senate bothered to comply with the law and produce an annual budget resolution.
This is a failure of leadership.  And last night, the Democrats’ leader failed miserably to defend a three-year-plus record of cowardice on budgeting.

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Carter: I’m comfortable with a Romney win

Via Greg Hengler, I’m … kind of torn on this one. On one hand, it plays into every fear among the conservative base of the GOP about Mitt Romney. On the other hand, the statement from the man formerly known as the worst American President in modern times makes it very, very difficult for Team Obama to succeed in using the advice given by the only other Democratic President in the last 40+ years to paint Romney as The Mostest Radicalist Scariest Right-Winger Since Barry Goldwater Nearly Nuked The Nation. I’d bet, under the circumstances, that Mitt Romney will be happier than Barack Obama with Jimmy Carter’s assessment of the general election in 2012, or at least less unhappy:I had to laugh out loud at Carter’s assertion that politics has gotten more polarized since his term in office. Democrats in 1980 tried using the same strategy Bill Clinton gave to Obama, only they used it against Ronald Reagan. It didn’t work, since the nation wanted a significant change from Carter’s fecklessness and economic malaise more than they feared Reagan’s commitment to conservative principles. The polarization continued all through Reagan’s two terms in office, perhaps hitting a peak in the awful Robert Bork confirmation hearings and vote in 1987. The difference was that there were fewer counterweights to liberal media outlets that fueled it.

The question that Greg asks is still a good one: If Jimmy Carter is comfortable with a Romney presidency, it’s a safe bet that a lot more Democrats will be, too.

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* * Ed Morrissey Show Finally: Obama “slow jams the news”

Via Charlie Spiering at the Washington Examiner who says Obama “jumps the shark” with this performance. You be the judge:
The President seemed just a little wooden in his delivery. We know he can sing, at least a little. I suppose he realized how ridiculous it would have sounded for him to really get his groove on crooning about student loans and interest rates. Well, mission accomplished I’d say, because this robotic performance wasn’t ridiculous at all.
Hey, any day Obama doesn’t spend “slow-jamming” the economy is at least a small improvement.

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New RNC ad: President Romney wouldn’t “slow jam the news,” you know

Matt Lewis wrote this morning that Obama vs. Romney is starting to look a bit like a “Mac vs. PC” commercial. Here’s the RNC kinda sorta embracing that framework to make the point that what America has with The One is the policy equivalent of a Sad Mac. Lewis:

Republicans, of course, will claim the contrast favors them — that last night demonstrated a serious candidate talking about serious issues — versus someone “slow-jamming” with a comedian (while the economy crumbles).
But it also reminds me that the Obama vs. Romney clash creates a PR/optics problem for Republicans: Policy aside, Obama seems cool — while Romney seems more like The Man. (This might not matter. Voters might decided they personally like Obama, but that they want a technocrat to fix the economy. Sometimes we need The Man!)
Brand images, though, often outlast political campaigns. And from a purely superficial standpoint, the GOP — especially if Romney makes a milquetoast running mate pick — risks reinforcing its image as your father’s party.

Yeah, I’m not so sure that President Romney or even candidate Romney would turn down Fallon’s invitation to do a segment like this in order to pander to young adults and soften Mitt’s image as a patrician stiff. He sees enough opportunity to peel some young voters away from Obama that he was willing to break with congressional Republicans on extending the student-loan interest rate. Supposedly, he’s already considering an appearance on SNL. The only reason he might not do it is if, per this ad, he and his team decide to try to use Obama’s likability advantage against him by portraying him as frivolous and disengaged. That’s hard to do with an incumbent, though; voters see Obama at work in one format or another virtually every day. So the SNL guest shot is a fait accompli, I’d bet, although Team Romney will likely insist on a gag more dignified than this.
Two clips here, one of the ad and the other, via Greg Hengler, of MSNBC gushing so profusely over the “slow jam” bit that they felt obliged to half-kiddingly acknowledge their bias. Exit question: Would O have agreed to do this if he was as strong among young voters this year as he was in 2008? Remember, the Fallon appearance was scheduled as part of his two-day panderfest to college students and other under-30 voters. He’s worried about his margin in that demographic this time, especially given how high unemployment is for recent graduates. If embarrassing himself by playing Abbott to Jimmy Fallon’s Costello for three minutes turns out a few extra kids in November, hey.
Update: The logic of the ad in one line: “If voters think on election day that Obama is the cool one, but Romney is the competent one, Obama will lose.”

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Gamechanger: Are you ready for the Republican “sexy frisbee” ad?

Alternate headline: “Gingrich launches bold new campaign direction at eleventh hour.”

No no, kidding. This is from Fred Karger, whose current odds at the nomination are even longer than Newt’s (I think). As you’ll see, when he calls himself a “moderate” Republican, he ain’t kidding. Either the California primary electorate’s opinion of Prop 8 has changed dramatically or else he decided that the best use of his campaign funds at this point was an attention-getting goof aimed at content-hungry media types like yours truly. Well played, Fred. It lacks the gritty charm of Mark Block taking a drag on a cigarette, but as viral political ads go, you can do worse than attractive women in hot pants.

Exit question: Romney/Karger 2012? That ticket certainly would be balanced.

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Video: Bold new critic of Obama’s “tax the rich” nonsense emerges on national scene

First Jon Lovitz, now Tony Robbins. Who’s the next minor celebrity to see the light on taxes? If anyone starts a pool in the comments, put me down for 10 bucks on the guy who plays Kevin on “The Office.” I’ve just got a feeling.
This is actually a nifty little vid, perfect viewing for a slow news night. If it looks familiar, it should: Robbins is using this post by Iowahawk — to whom he gives full credit — as a springboard for his demonstration. It’s a simple yet vivid walkthrough of why a serious deficit reduction program doesn’t start with taxing the rich. There just aren’t enough of them to go around and, for all the heavy breathing about “the one percent,” they don’t have nearly enough wealth between them to get us into the black. Which is why, of course, even Obama has taken care to acknowledge in each of his thousand speeches about the Buffett Rule that a surtax on millionaires won’t get us out of the hole. He wants low-information voters to think that it will — that’s why he devotes so much time to talking about a dumb gimmick — but the this-won’t-do-much-to-solve-any-serious-problem disclaimer is usually duly buried somewhere in the transcript, hopefully to be overlooked by the audience as they f

ocus on “fairness” instead. To see just how unserious it is, click play.
Update: I’d totally forgotten, but commenters remind me that Bill Whittle did a variation of this same video more than a year before Robbins got to it.
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Obama sidesteps recognition of Armenian genocide as president — again

Everyone understands why, and I doubt President Romney would do any different. Even so, it’s unthinkable that the U.S. would ever acquiesce in Holocaust denial simply in order to please some important ally. With the Armenian genocide, we’re willing to play an Orwellian little game with the Turks in which we acknowledge obliquely that something horrific happened in 1915 but never quite say what that horrific thing was or who might have been responsible. Watch the clip below of Bush going so far as to call on Congress to oppose a resolution recognizing the genocide in Armenia in the interest of keeping Turkey a more or less team player on Iraq. Again: Understandable from a bottom-line perspective on U.S. interests abroad. But still awful.
In keeping with the rest of his foreign policy, Obama talked a good game on this issue at Bush’s expense before he was elected and then wasted no time in following his predecessor’s lead. Jake Tapper:

“America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides,” he said. “I intend to be that president.” In a January 2008 letter to the Armenian Reporter, Mr. Obama said he shared “with Armenian Americans — so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors — a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history.”
In a statement, Ken Hachikian, the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America said, “President Obama today completed his surrender to Turkey, shamefully outsourcing U.S. human rights policy to a foreign state, and tightening Ankara’s gag on American recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The President’s capitulation to Turkey – on this, the last April 24th of his term – represents the very opposite of the principled and honest change he promised to Armenian Americans and to all the citizens of our nation. President Obama’s pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide stands today as a stark lie, a painful promise etched on the hearts of all who had hoped and worked for change, but who, today, have been betrayed by a politician who failed to live up to his own words.”…
The president in his statement today said “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915. My view of that history has not changed. A full, frank, and just acknowledgement of the facts is in all of our interests. Moving forward with the future cannot be done without reckoning with the facts of the past. …Some individuals have already taken this courageous step forward. We applaud those Armenians and Turks who have taken this path, and we hope that many more will choose it, with the support of their governments, as well as mine.”

Obama went so far as to write a letter of protest to Condi Rice in 2006 when the U.S. ambassador to Turkey dared to use the word “genocide” to describe what was in fact a genocide. Hitchens, a longtime critic of Turkish denialism about Armenia, praised him for it in a piece written in April 2009 and hoped that The One wouldn’t back down once in office. Three years later, here we are, with O willing to go no further than referencing his previously stated view of what happened in 1915 without elaborating. (Watch the first clip below from January 2008. He wasn’t always so shy about using the G-word.) As I say, though, I doubt Romney will be any different: Turkey is crucially important right now as an ally with respect to Syria and as a potentially moderating influence on the new Islamist regimes in the Middle East. If you alienate them, you’re weakening your hand in the region at a moment when things are even nuttier and less stable than usual. Orwellian semantics goes a long way in this case. Awful, but there it is.
As a little bonus, I’ve added a short take of Hitch on Armenia as a counterpoint to Bush and Obama. Exit question: If candidate Obama was supposedly such a bulwark against genocide, how do we explain this?

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NYT ombud: Trust us, we’re unbiased

With a tough presidential election on the horizon, media outlets relish the demand that the battle will bring for news and feature coverage.  In order to get those readers, though, the media outlets have to be perceived as reliable and trustworthy.  That brings us to a rather humorous column from the New York Times’ public editor — their version of an ombudsman — Arthur Brisbane, in which he addresses the disparity in scrutiny of Mitt Romney over the sitting President in recent Gray Lady coverage.  Brisbane criticized his paper four weeks ago for an over-the-top slam of an investment by the blind trust set up for Ann Romney, and apparently that’s part of his argument that the Times will provide fair coverage of the upcoming general election — despite the suck-up coverage given Barack Obama in his first term.
No … really:

According to a study by the media scholars Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter, The Times’s coverage of the president’s first year in office was significantly more favorable than its first-year coverage of three predecessors who also brought a new party to power in the White House: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.
Writing for the periodical Politics & Policy, the authors were so struck by the findings that they wondered, “Did The Times, perhaps in response to the aggressive efforts by Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal to seize market share, decide to tilt more to the left than it had in the past?”
I strongly doubt that. Based on conversations with Times reporters and editors who cover the campaign and Washington, I think they see themselves as aggressive journalists who don’t play favorites. Still, a strong current of skepticism holds that the paper skews left. Unfortunately, this is exacerbated by collateral factors — for example, political views that creep into nonpolitical coverage.
To illustrate, Faye Farrington, a reader from Hollis, N.H., wrote me earlier this year in exasperation over a Sunday magazine article about “Downton Abbey,” the public television series, in which the writer slipped in a veiled complaint about Mitt Romney’s exploitation of the American tax code.
“The constant insertion of liberal politics into even the most politically irrelevant articles has already caused us to cancel our daily subscription,” Ms. Farrington wrote, “leaving only the Sunday delivery as I confess to an addiction to the Sunday crossword.”
The warm afterglow of Mr. Obama’s election, the collateral effects of liberal-minded feature writers — these can be overcome by hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting now.

Stop it — you’re killing me, Arthur!  Seriously, I can’t quite catch my breath from laughing out loud.  Brisbane gives us two of the most obvious cases of bias and says that this editorializing can be overcome by trusting the same people not to editorialize in news stories in the next six months.  One can imagine Lucy telling Charlie Brown much the same thing right before pulling the football away for the 50th year in a row.
The story on Ann Romney’s blind trust is one good data point that shows the problem doesn’t just lie with “liberal-minded feature writers.” By definition, a blind trust keeps the owner from making or even knowing of the financial decisions made by the trustees.  Ann Romney isn’t the candidate.  How, then, is this a news story in the presidential race?  Mitt Romney cut his ties to Bain in 1999, long before the company invested in the Chinese company in question.  Ann Romney’s blind trust has a “relatively small stake” in Bain Capital Asia fund in question, and she didn’t direct the purchase.  Furthermore, the trustees bought the stake before the fund invested in Uniview.  Does this tell us anything about Ann Romney, let alone Mitt Romney?  Of course not.  But the Times certainly didn’t mind tying both of them to Chinese surveillance.  Spooky!  Who gave that story the green light?  The editors, that’s who, not “liberal-minded feature writers.”
Here’s one data point omitted by Arthur Brisbane in his “trust us” missive: Vicki Iseman.  That was just one example of the NYT’s “hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting” in the 2008 election.  The Times endorsed John McCain in the Republican primary — much as they did today for Mitt Romney — and less than a fortnight later accused him of having had an affair with a lobbyist based on innuendo provided by a couple of disgruntled former low-level staffers.  The story was absurd, and the Times later tried to backpedal furiously from their insinuations by saying that the relationship was merely inappropriate and not necessarily sexual. The paper was roundly condemned for their yellow-journalism story, but I don’t see Brisbane discussing that in yesterday’s column.
The Times also went after McCain for his medical records in May, which he released as planned anyway.  What really went on in that incident?  The McCain campaign excluded them from a media pool during the release of the records, no doubt for payback on their Iseman smear.  The NYT then threatened to write negative editorials about his medical records if they were not added to the pool, which they did when the McCain campaign refused to knuckle under to their extortion threat.  The “hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting” that followed included two separate articles whining about their exclusion from the rather large pool at the McCain event.
So forgive us for laughing at you, Arthur.  You gave it the ol’ college try, but after watching the Times at work four years ago — and before and since then, too — we’re not about to trust the Gray Lady in 2012 to behave responsibly.
Update: Vinny Gambini said it best:

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Today’s outrage: Romney looking forward to more vacations in … France

Alternate headline: “Confirmed: He’s a RINO.”
No, I kid. Romney’s fondness for France is, I think, already common knowledge among righty activists thanks to Newt running one of the dumbest attack ads of the primaries against him back in January. It’s not purely academic either: He spent two and a half years there in his early 20s on his LDS mission and evidently liked it enough that he’s willing to give this answer even now, despite the fact that “French” has always been a byword for elitism in some parts of America. Kind of nice to see him being unabashedly honest, the political consequences be damned. The lefties at HuffPo and Daily Kos have seized on the clip as evidence of hypocrisy because Romney once criticized The One for taking “elaborate vacations” as president, but watch and you’ll see that that’s a red herring. Romney never says he wants an “elaborate” vacation (unless all French getaways are inherently elaborate) and he never says he’d take vacation there during his presidency. What this is about is clear enough from this aside in ABC’s write-up:

“The best memories were with my wife on vacations from time to time in France,” said Romney, who has been criticized for being “out of touch” and has made several comments that have highlighted his wealth during his campaign.

Just the ol’ “France = elitism” charge coopted for the Democrats’ messaging about Romney’s wealth. (In the dKos post, he’s referred to at one point as “Mr. Car Elevator.”) The GOP had fun using John Kerry’s Frenchiness against him eight years ago, but anti-French sentiment was much higher then because of their opposition to the war. If Romney had to run in an age of “freedom fries,” would he have given this same answer?

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