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IBD editors on LightSquared.
The Air Force’s Space Command chief was pressured to alter testimony about the danger of a wireless project developed by a Democratic donor’s company. Are lives as well as money being put at risk?
Crony capitalism, which has been rampant in President Obama’s push for green energy, is one thing. Rewarding donors with stimulus dollars is merely the “Chicago Way” brought to Washington, D.C.
But when ideology combines with cronyism to place American lives and the nation’s security at risk, it’s quite another thing.
At issue is a plan by Reston, Va.-based satellite broadcast communications company LightSquared to build a next-generation 4G wireless phone network. Many at the Pentagon, including Space Command chief Gen. William Shelton, think the system would seriously hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems on which the military and many others depend.
The general’s public testimony last Thursday before the members of the House subcommittee on strategic forces came a week after a classified briefing where the same subcommittee had been told, according to chairman Michael Turner, R-Ohio, that the impact of LightSquared’s 4G network of some 40,000 broadcast towers would be “unacceptable.”
Gen. Shelton dropped a precision-guided bombshell of his own when he walked into the highly secured room on Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers on Pentagon concerns that the project was harmful, if not outright dangerous, to national security. He said he was pressured to alter his prepared testimony to say the project’s effects could be mitigated. …
Jennifer Rubin says John Boehner gave a speech on Israel she wishes the president would make.
In the nearly three years of the Obama administration — certainly the dreariest time in the history of U.S.-Israel relations — we’ve learned that presidents come and go (some quicker than others, we fervently hope), but the relationship between Congress and the American people, on one hand, and the government and people of Israel, on the other, is enduring. A high point in President Obama’s term was Prime Minister Benjamin’s Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress. It was, ironically and tragically, a repudiation of the U.S. president’s approach to Israel and exuberantly applauded by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
On Sunday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in direct, straightforward language confirmed the U.S.’s commitment to Israel in a speech at the Jewish National Fund’s 2011 National Convention in Cincinnati. In using simple, but not simplistic, language, Boehner’s speech (the handiwork of his excellent speechwriter Mike Ricci) eloquently conveyed that, in essence, this stuff is not hard to figure out: …
Bill McGurn says when it comes to trade deals, the president is owned by unions.
… Maybe that helps explain why—three years into his first term—Mr. Obama’s trade policy consists almost entirely of three trade deals his predecessor had already negotiated, and three weeks before Mr. Lee’s arrival the White House has still not sent the appropriate legislation on Korea up to Capitol Hill. Ironically, this presidential dithering comes at a time when these trade deals should be more attractive, given that the growing economies they represent would be healthy markets for our exports.
Korea’s economy, for example, is growing at an annual rate of more than 4%. Colombia’s is growing at more than 5%, and Panama’s is growing at more than 6%. Like the rest of the world, moreover, these nations are not standing still for Mr. Obama: Last week, for example, the Koreans and Colombians announced a bilateral free-trade agreement they expect to be done by year’s end.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When candidate Barack Obama went to Berlin in July 2008, his promise to the “people of the world” was that he would restore wisdom and sophistication to American leadership. When Mr. Lee shows up in Washington, it might be worth asking how he thinks it has turned out.
David Brooks says he was a “sap” for believing Obama.
I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.
When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.
I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.
It recycles ideas that couldn’t get passed even when Democrats controlled Congress. In his remarks Monday the president didn’t try to win Republicans to even some parts of his measures.
We have a hat trick of Contentions posts by Peter Wehner.
In re-reading Monday’s speech by President Obama, several things stand out.
The first is its crass distortions. In his remarks in the Rose Garden, the president said, “If we’re not willing to ask those who’ve done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit … then the logic, the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more: We’ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor.” As others have pointed out, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes and the richest one percent pay more than 30 percent of their income to the federal government, while the average worker pays less than 14 percent. In addition, almost half of the public do not pay any income taxes at all. This is known as a progressive tax system. Now, one may argue the wealthy should pay even more than they do in taxes – but to pretend not embracing Obama’s plan would place the “entire” burden on the middle class and the poor isn’t “math”; it’s a massive distortion.
The second notable thing about Obama’s speech is its insight into the president’s state of mind. Obama has a deep, almost desperate, need to portray himself as the opposite of what he is. This appears to involve more than simple political considerations. Obama has an unusual capacity to conceive of himself in a way that is at odds with reality. And so the most profligate spender in history warns the rest of us about profligacy and not placing a debt burden “on our children’s shoulders.” The man on whose watch America amassed more than $4 trillion in debt says, “Washington has to live within its means.” The president whose stimulus package was among the most wasteful and ineffective in history insists we have to “go through the budget line-by-line looking for waste.” The same individual who ridiculed Speaker Boehner for his “my way or the highway” approach then threatened, in the very same speech, to issue a veto unless he got his way. And the man who professes solidarity with the poor has seen poverty increase each year of his presidency, with a record number of people (46 million) now living in poverty. If that weren’t enough, Obama also wants to reduce the tax benefit for charitable giving.
Then there’s the fellow who lectured us yesterday about fighting for the middle class “as hard as the lobbyists and some lawmakers have fought to protect special treatment for billionaires and big corporations.” This admonition comes from the same fellow who presides over a White House that inappropriately pressured the Office of Management and Budget to approve half-billion dollars to a company, Solyndra, which wasn’t deserving of the money and has now gone belly up. The reason the money was fast-tracked and funneled to Solyndra was because its chief investor, George Kaiser, is a significant fundraiser for Obama. Kaiser, by the way, is a billionaire. …
Andrew Malcolm has late night humor.
Leno: Good news for Obama. His approval overseas is very high, higher than at home. But then he’s created more jobs overseas than at home.
A little more late night humor from The Corner which leads to this.
As I have mentioned on countless occasions, I didn’t vote for Obama in 2008, but I did not dislike him personally. For all I knew, there could have been something to the imposing façade of leadership he put forward, and even an empty suit has a possibility of getting filled with something worthwhile; that was my hope; and, in any case, we would find out soon enough.
Well, we’ve found out. It’s a vindication both for those of us who voted for John McCain in the general and those of us who voted for Hillary in the primary. (I qualify on both counts). …
… I can guess what you must be thinking: another anti-Obama rant at NRO, basically a case of a minnow joining the dolphins at Sea World; leave it to the professionals, Mike. But I just want to be on record as a non-Obama-hater who deeply resents how this president has wasted America’s time and good will.