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Jennifer Rubin wonders if Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who voted for Obamacare, will have an explanation to go along with his backpedaling.
My home-state senator, Jim Webb (D.-Va.), made a remarkable statement yesterday. The Virginian-Pilot reported on his appearance in Norfolk:
The Obama administration “did a really terrible job handling health care reform,” he said, because the president relied on Congress to draft a plan.
“You can’t turn something that complicated loose on the United States Congress,” he said, adding that the resulting debate led to great public confusion. …
Wait a second. Didn’t he vote for the monstrous bill? Well, sure. He was the 60th Senator — each Democrat was — on the critical cloture vote. So is he saying he didn’t know how bad the bill was, or is he saying he cast a bad vote? Neither answer is a winner.
It’s not clear that he is going to seek re-election, but if so, he better be able to answer those questions.
John Stossel asks if our Congress will have the guts to make the tough fiscal decisions that Canada has made.
…Economist David R. Henderson points out that our neighbors to the north faced a similar crisis. In 1994, the debt that Canada owed to investors was 67 percent of GDP. Today, it’s less than 30 percent.
What did Canada do? It cut spending from 17.5 percent of GDP to 11.3 percent.
This wasn’t merely a cut in the growth of spending, a favorite trick of congressional committees. These were actual reductions in absolute spending.
…All but one of Canada’s 22 federal departments experienced real cuts in spending. While Canada raised taxes slightly, spending was cut six to seven times more.
These supposedly painful cuts didn’t cause terrible pain. In fact, there was much more gain than pain. Unemployment dropped, the economy boomed, and the Canadian dollar — then worth about 71 cents U.S. — today is about equal to the American dollar. …
In the Corner, Rory Cooper has an well-written article on how Obama’s green agenda, specifically on oil drilling, circumvents the Constitution and hurts the economy. Soon people are going to start noticing the rise in gas prices and the president will own them.
…Nobody denies that important safety reforms are necessary in the wake of the tragic Deepwater Horizon accident and oil spill. In fact, the Heritage Foundation introduced a plan for reform in August 2010 that increased liability caps; created an insurance pool for claims over $1 billion; and installed safeguards against industry risk-taking. The Heritage model would’ve promoted safety; assigned full liability; protected taxpayers; and allowed oil and gas exploration to continue.
But the Obama commission apparently failed to consider the impact of reforms on taxpayers and on our energy industry. While the commission correctly included a focus on risk-based assessment for all individual offshore activities and operations, they spent entirely too much time appeasing environmental activists with proposals for ways to slow the industry down, like expanding the time it takes for a lease application to be reviewed and recommending a vast amount of new industry-wide regulations.
This is exactly what President Obama aims to do: slow down or stop entirely the drilling of fossil fuels in the U.S., raise the price of existing and new supply wherever it comes from, and use unilateral executive-branch action to make gas so expensive that alternative energy sources will become viable dollar-to-dollar.
Obama started down this track with his reckless across-the-board drilling moratorium, which was declared illegal by two federal courts. President Obama persisted anyway, and even after announcing he was lifting the moratorium, continued with a de facto moratorium. In fact, since Obama “lifted” the moratorium, deepwater permit issuance is down 88 percent, with only two new permits in that time.
…Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in 2008, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Outside the drilling moratorium, President Obama directed his Interior secretary, Ken Salazar, to ban offshore drilling in over 85 percent of American waters (even while he spends billions subsidizing Brazil’s offshore industry) and directed EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to impose new global-warming regulations on oil refineries.
The Hill reports that, in response to the commission’s report, President Obama asked the commission what else he can do unilaterally, without congressional approval…
…Federal government revenue is also suffering. For the first time since 1959, the U.S. could go an entire year without a lease sale. According to Heritage, as a result, the government will “lose more than $1 billion in bonus bids, less revenue from rental payments and significantly fewer royalties.” And state governments will also suffer forfeiting upwards of $100 million in tax revenue. …
David Warren shares his thoughts on the consequences of the current political debate.
…The advantage of insinuations over hard arguments is that they bypass critical thought. No one can respond precisely to a charge that is utterly vague or to accusers who will envelope any reply in a poisonous fog of further insinuations. The best that can be said is that the accusations in question here were fatuous. Yet they were also entirely predictable, given the extraordinarily low standards in contemporary political debate.
…The motive behind it is obvious: to tar political opponents. And there is no excuse for this. For every “incendiary” or “vitriolic” remark made on the right of the U.S. political spectrum, a matching remark may be found on the left. The tarring is hypocritically selective.
And it is consequential. The further intention behind these smears is to advance “hate speech” legislation for the very purpose of silencing opponents in debate.
Words are not deeds. The distinction between them is written deeply into the history of our common law. It is a distinction that is crucial to a free society. If words can be prosecuted as if they were deeds (except in the most extreme situations), we cannot discuss anything openly. …
David Harsanyi thinks that the Right should walk away from the debate on the political climate. Engaging in a discussion with an opponent that doesn’t use logic or facts does seem like a waste of time, at the very least.
No doubt some of you are upset by the hysterical politicization of the murders in Tucson. Be heartened that a new CBS poll found that 57 percent of respondents believed the political tone in the nation had nothing to do with this particular madman’s rampage.
…But this impending conversation about civility and our climate of hate is not only a useless one, it also is meant to discourage dissent. It is a rigged talk, because not only do we — by any standard and context available — reside in a highly civil and peaceful political system, violence is almost non-existent. The Tea Party didn’t pick up pitchforks and storm the White House; they knocked off Republicans in primaries. …
In Slate, Annie Lowrey reports on new advertising phenomenons – Groupon and what is supposed to come next.
…In the past few years, millions of Americans—more than 50 million, in fact—have signed up for a “daily deal” or “group coupon” site. It works like this: You give the online company your ZIP code. Once a day, it sends you an e-mail with a deal from a local business, whether a salon or a sushi joint. The discount is usually steep—generally, 50 percent to 90 percent—and the offer generally expires after a day or two. If you decide you want that $20 massage for $10, you pay up, then print your coupon.
The two dominant players in the field are LivingSocial and Groupon—and both are highly successful. Washington-based LivingSocial has more than 16 million members, and Chicago-based Groupon more than 44 million. …
…Advertising analysts also expect the daily deal/group buying/social discount sites to become a lot more sophisticated. For one, that means that some will start asking for more than your ZIP code. (The more an advertising company knows about you, of course, the more valuable you are to it and to advertisers.) Some curated sites might request your profession, salary, hobbies—even your favorite restaurants or brands, or your exact block—to better tailor deals to you.
Finally, expect more big businesses to get in the game—with chain stores and social networking sites starting to send out deeply discounted, tailored, and location-based offers. In November, for instance, Facebook announced a new function inspired by the success of Groupon: “Deals.” Users can check in at malls and coffee bars, and businesses near them can offer them discounts. …
In the WaPo, Donna St. George tells how one parent turned the tables on the local school board.
…Awakened at 4:33 a.m. Wednesday by a ringing phone, Aaron Titus jumped out of bed in a panic. Maybe something terrible had happened, he thought. Even if nothing was wrong, his heart raced with other considerations: His five children, ages 5 and under, including his week-old daughter, were mercifully still asleep, and he wanted to keep it that way.
In a blurry rush, Titus answered the phone halfway into the second ring, listening in disbelief to an automated caller tell him what he already knew: It was a snow day. School would open two hours late. In other words, he and his family could sleep.
But now he couldn’t.
…Sometime later in the day, the 31-year-old father from Fort Washington, a lawyer who knows a thing or two about technology, made a decision that might well bring amused satisfaction to like-minded parents everywhere.
Titus arranged for an automated message of his own. …
Just before the cartoons we have links to some stunning time-lapse video of the Northern Lights. That’s to make up for taking tomorrow off.