BeldarBlog

Palin's public call on Stevens to "do the right thing" may mean "publicly commit to resign if the trial judge upholds the jury's verdict"

My latest guest-post at HughHewitt.com hazards a guess as to what Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is saying privately to just-convicted U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. It involves a resignation letter.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

I was amazed earlier this year, in trying to educate a friend about the record of Gov. Sarah Palin as a reformer who'd taken on her own party's most powerful politicians in Alaska, when he poked a finger in my chest and said, "Yeah, but what about Don Young and Ted Stevens?" He was referring to the remaining two senior and powerful members of the "Alaska GOP Troika" that had dominated Alaskan politics for many years before 2006. "They're still representing Alaska in Congress!"

I calmly pointed out to my friend that Gov. Palin had already defeated the third member of the Troika, former Gov. Frank Murkowski, in the 2006 GOP gubernatorial primary, and that she then went on to win the general election and take over the Governor's Mansion in Juneau. "She can only defeat them at the polls one at a time," I said, "because even as terrific and courageous a reformer as Sarah Palin is, they just won't let her run for Governor, Congressman, and both Senate seats all at once!"

Over a year ago, in September 2007 — long before he was indicted, or before she was on anyone's mind as a vice presidential nominee — Gov. Palin publicly called upon Sen. Stevens to come clean and explain for Alaskans in much more detail the series of transactions between him and an Alaska energy company, VECO, that had come into serious question. Relations between them have been cool and distant since then. And Gov. Palin has been very circumspect and scrupulously appropriate in declining comment on the charges against Stevens since his indictment.

In response to Sen. Stevens' conviction today on seven counts of making false statements on ethical disclosure forms, however, Gov. Palin has issued the following statement on the Alaska gubernatorial website:

October 27, 2008, Anchorage, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin today released the following statement on the felony convictions of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens:

“This is a sad day for Alaska and for Senator Stevens and his family. The verdict shines a light on the corrupting influence of the big oil service company that was allowed to control too much of our state. That control was part of the culture of corruption I was elected to fight. And that fight must always move forward regardless of party or seniority or even past service.

“As Governor of the State of Alaska, I will carefully monitor this situation and take any appropriate action as needed. In the meantime, I ask the people of Alaska to join me in respecting the workings of our judicial system. I'm confident Senator Stevens will do what is right for the people of Alaska.”

Several points ought to be noted on this.

First, even though the jury has found Stevens guilty on all seven counts, that verdict has not yet been reflected in a formal judgment of conviction. (To answer the silly question posed by ABC News' Jake Tapper on his blog, that means that yes, Stevens can still vote for himself next week, but I don't think one vote is going to decide the election.) The trial has been anything but smooth, however, with prosecutors having to admit to repeated blunders throughout. So there are obvious and non-trivial grounds for Stevens' very capable legal team to urge in seeking a new trial rather than the entry of a judgment of conviction. (Please don't mis-read me here: I think it's more likely than not that the jury verdict will indeed be upheld, both by the trial judge and on appeal. And I'm personally unpersuaded by Stevens' defense and impressed by the evidence, at least as summarized by the press, which the prosecution presented. But I do believe in due process, and Stevens hasn't yet had all the legal process that's due to him under the Rule of Law.)

Second, keep in mind that these were convictions in federal court for violations of federal laws, but the Double Jeopardy Clause does not prevent Stevens from also being prosecuted for violations of Alaska state law based on the same or similar conduct. As such, it would still be inappropriate for Gov. Palin to be commenting in depth on the merits of Sen. Stevens' guilt or innocence under either state or federal laws: Doing so could jeopardize any future state prosecution of Sen. Stevens under Alaska state law.

Third, it's reasonable to assume that what Gov. Palin is saying to Sen. Stevens in private is more pointed than anything she's permitted to say for public consumption. And indeed, the last sentence in Gov. Palin's public press release today — "I'm confident that Senator Stevens will do what is right for the people of Alaska" — is what we might call "pregnant with implication." Here's my guess as to what Gov. Palin saying privately, because it's what I would say to him if I were in her position:

"Ted, for now, I'm going to continue to be restrained and appropriate in what I say in public. But you owe it to your party, and to the people who've voted for you in years past, not to take everything down with you in flames.

"Accordingly, now — before Election Day — you need to hand to me, as the Governor of Alaska, a formal, irrevocable letter of resignation which is automatically effective as of the instant that your post-verdict (pre-appellate) motion for new trial in the federal district court is denied (even though you may still have appellate avenues open at that point to challenge that judgment).

"Having made that commitment and signed that binding letter, Ted, then you can again ask the voters of Alaska to give you their votes — and they, in turn, can vote for you secure in the knowledge that one of either two things will happen: (a) The jury's verdict will be overturned, your presumption of innocence will be restored, and you'll have another day in court. Or else: (b) As Governor of Alaska, either I or perhaps Sean Parnell (as my successor) will appoint a qualified, honest Republican who will carry forward the Republican Party's best policies and ideals in the U.S. Senate seat you have occupied for so long."

With due respect to my friends at RedState.com, the response of principled conservatives to corruption in our own party ought to be to work to replace the corrupt actors with honest Republicans — not to endorse Democrats! Character is critical, but party policies are too, and we ought not throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater. Or to use a different metaphor: There are more ways to skin this cat, which I agree needs skinning, and there are better ways for Sen. Stevens and the voters of Alaska to "do the right thing" without handing the Democrats a larger legislative majority in 2009.

— Beldar

Bill Ayers claims he and other former radicals are "good guys" who are being "demonized"

We all think we're "good guys," I suppose, but some of us — in particular, those among us who are unrepentant, unrehabilitated domestic terrorists and radical "educators" — are actually twisted dollops of evil scum. So I say in another guest-post at HughHewitt.com.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

According to ABC News:

... Bill Ayers is staying mum, and working hard to duck reporters and the campaign spotlight in the final week before the election.

He told a journalism student attending a education justice symposium in New York Sunday he and other former radicals were being "demonized" by Fox News. "We're nice guys, right?"

Asked by the student, if he repudiated the actions of the Weather Underground, which carried out a series of 1960's robberies and bombings that killed at least six people, Ayers walked away without answering.

Good for the journalism student! He's already shown himself to be better suited for his profession than at least 90% of the so-called 'professional journalists" working for the mainstream media during most of this campaign year, who ought to have been pressing Ayers and his friend Barack Obama on their associations at least since the Democratic primaries.

As for Ayers' claim that he and "other former radicals" are "good guys" who are "being 'demonized,'" I will be precise: Ayers is indeed a demon, or as close to one as any human being has ever become. He's a twisted dollop of evil scum. He is, by his own boast, guilty as hell but free as a bird, and he ought to still be in prison. The notion that he's been "rehabilitated" is an utter joke; and the notion that respectable people can maintain their own honor or integrity while collaborating with him on his radical education projects is a travesty.

— Beldar

Former editor-in-chief of "Ms." magazine reports on her first-hand exposure to Sarah Palin

In a guest-post at HughHewitt.com this evening, I linked to a pro-Palin analysis from a surprising source.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

I did not much expect to be linking to Tina Brown's new hybrid, The Daily Beast, in this election season. But then again, former Ms. magazine editor in chief Elaine Lafferty — a pro-choice Democrat — probably didn't anticipate that after spending time with Sarah Palin on the campaign trail, she'd be writing the post I'm linking to: Sarah Palin's a Brainiac.

An excerpt (emphasis by Ms. Lafferty):

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

Follow the link; it's short, and I assure you that it's worth your time to read the whole thing.

Bravo to Ms. Lafferty — bravo to her for having the intellectual flexibility and honesty to recognize that one can be simultaneously a feminist and pro-life, and bravo to her for speaking out on what she's perceived based on first-hand exposure (instead of merely repeating the tired, nasty, and fantasy-based ranting of closed-minded anti-Palin bigots on the left).

— Beldar

Conversations with Molly

My Monday afternoon guest-post at HughHewitt.com is about a conversation I had with my youngest daughter this afternoon regarding spreading the wealth.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

"Grades come out tomorrow," said my daughter Molly, an eighth grader, when I picked her up at school this afternoon.

"Great," I answered, "How d'ya think you're gonna do?"

"Pretty well," Molly said confidently.

"What will probably be your best grade?" I asked.

"Guitar," she said, "That will probably be a 97 or a 98."

"Cool," I said. "You really have been successful. But I think you should tell your Guitar teacher that you want to give six or seven of those points to some of your classmates who haven't practiced so hard or don't have the talent you have."

She looked up at me, startled. "What?"

"That class is easy for you, and you have lots more points than you need for an A. They need those points more than you do," I explained.

"Then they should have worked harder!" she protested. "Yeah, I'm sort of talented, but I worked hard to get those grades! I earned them!"

"So you're telling me that you think it's fair for you to get to keep all of those good grades, both the part that comes from your having worked harder than your classmates, and the part that comes from the musical talent you inherited from me and your mom. Is that what you're saying?"

"Well, yeah!"

 

"Show me your lunchbox," I said. She looked at me strangely again, but found it on the floorboard and held it up.

I pointed at the "Barack Obama" sticker on its side, which she got from my ex. "That guy," I said, "wants to use the tax laws to take away more of the money that wealthy people have, whether they got it by working harder or because their parents worked harder to be able to give it to them. He says other people need that money more. He thinks we need to spread the wealth around.

"What I was saying when you first got in the car," I continued, "is just that we should spread your grade wealth around. You disagreed. Good for you. I don't really think your Guitar teacher should do that anyway. But let me ask you another question."

"Okay," she said, listening thoughtfully.

"Let's say even though you object, your Guitar teacher decides to spread your grades around to the other students in your class. Do you think you'll work as hard to get top grades during the next nine weeks?"

"No way!" she said.

I just pointed at the sticker on her lunchbox again. We spent the rest of the short drive to her mom's house in contemplative silence.

— Beldar

Obama's 2001 appearance on a Chicago PBS radio program shows him focused on building a "coalition of power" to bring about redistribution of wealth which even the Warren Court couldn't achieve

I don't have any doubt that Barack Obama wants to redistribute America's wealth. Unfortunately, I can't agree with National Review's Katheryn Jean Lopez that this excerpt from a 2001 PBS radio broadcast proves that. Ultimately, the broadcast is still pretty scary, though, which is the distinction I try to maintain in my latest guest-post at HughHewitt.com.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Since Sen. Barack Obama's comment in a rope-line interview with Joe the Plumber about his belief that it's good to "spread the wealth," Republicans have been looking for more examples of such comments.

 

At the beginning of the Bush-43 Administration, while John Ashcroft's nomination as Attorney General was a hot topic in the news and among legal pundits in particular, Gretchen Helfrich of Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ-FM, hosted an hour-long panel program on January 18, 2001, as part of her "Odyssey" series. The title of this particular program was The Court and Civil Rights, and the participants were law professors Susan Bandes from DePaul and Dennis Hutchinson from Chicago, along with senior instructor Barack Obama from Chicago.

Kathyrn Jean Lopez at The Corner has linked an audio excerpt of just over four minutes which appears on YouTube, featuring the now-familiar voice of Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, I think K-Lo has in some ways made more of this audio than can actually be supported. It is not the kind of clear and unambiguous slip-up that Obama made when talking to Joe the Plumber in the rope-line. Fairly considered in context, this radio program demonstrates Obama's recognition that the Warren Court failed to redistribute America's wealth. It should, however, be deeply troubling to conservatives on a more fundamental level: Even back in 2001, Barack Obama was already focused on building a "coalition of power" in the executive and legislative branches that could indeed bring about a national redistribution of wealth which even the most activist courts couldn't achieve on their own.

Here's my transcription of the edited excerpt that K-Lo linked, interspersed with my comments about the context: [# More #]

OBAMA: You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the courts, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and, as long as I coud pay for it, I would be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, uh, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in the society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, uh, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed, uh, uh, by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and [the] Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that — that generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. [It] says what the states can't do to you. It says what the federal government can't do to you.

But it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

Uh, and that hasn't shifted, and one of the, uh, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and, and — activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And uh, in some ways we still suffer from that.

This discussion came up in the context of a comment by Prof. Hutchison to the effect that 1970s attempts to use federal due process rights to force face-to-face hearings before cutting off welfare benefits — instead of their intended effect of forcing the payment of more welfare benefits — had ended up forcing more money to be spent on face-to-face administrative hearings. Then state-senator and con-law lecturer Obama was agreeing with Prof. Hutchinson that the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause had largely failed as a potential instrument of wealth redistribution through federal court litigation.

But K-Lo is stretching too far to say that Obama was "also lament[ing] that the Warren Court was not liberal enough." He did say that it was not as liberal as some people have claimed, which is true. And his only explicit point —a correct one, I think — was simply that even during the Warren Court's most activist civil rights decisions, it was still generally refusing to get into the subject of redistribution of wealth. Nevertheless, he also seemed very sympathetic — as with the "we still suffer from that" remark — to the idea that redistribution of wealth is a fine goal, even if it wasn't one that the Warren Court itself had pursued. And there's no other way to read his statement that the failure of courts to achieve that goal during the days of blockbuster civil rights lawsuits was a "tragedy."

Continuing on with the audio excerpt:

HELFRICH: Let's talk with Karen. Good morning, Karen, you're on Chicago Public Radio.

KAREN: Hi, um, the gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn't, uh, terribly radical. My question is — um, with economic changes. My question is: Is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place?

HELFRICH: You mean the Court?

KAREN: The courts, or would it be legislation at this point?

OBAMA: You know, maybe I'm showing my bias here as a legislator here as well as a law professor, but you know, I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change, uh, through the courts. You know, the institution just isn't structured that way.

You know, just, um, look-it, with very rare examples, during the desegregation era, the Court was willing, for example, to order, you know, changes that cost money to a local school district. And the Court was very uncomfortable with it. It was hard to manage. It was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the Court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and — and takes a lot of time.

Um, you know, the Court's just not very good at it. And politically, it's just, it's very hard to legitimize opinions from the, uh, the Court in that regard.

And so I think that, athough you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, and I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts ....

My first concern, upon listening to the five-minute excerpt, was that it might have taken Obama's statements out of context. But I've listened to the entire hour. It's the sort of thing that probably bored 99% of even a PBS audience, including a large number of lawyers. But whoever edited down the excerpt didn't take anything directly out of context except, arguably, for the concluding sentence, which cuts off in the middle. The conclusion is:

... I think that as a practical matter our courts are just poorly equipped to do it.

There's one additional short passage, from earlier in the broadcast, that's arguably on the same topic:

OBAMA: There's one other interesting level in which the results of the civil rights movement have changed what's happened, at that is at the state level. I.e, you now have state supreme courts and state constitutions and state laws that in some ways have adopted the ethos of the Warren Court. So, uh, uh, uh, a classic example would be something like public education, where after Brown versus Board of Education, a major issue ends up being redistribution — how do we get more into the schools. And how do we actually create equal schools and equal educational opportunity. Well, the Court in a case called San Antonio Schools versus Rodriquez in the early seventies basically slaps those kind of claims down and says, You know what? We as a court basically have no power to reexamine issues of redistribution and wealth inequality with respect to schools. That's not a race issue, that's a wealth issue, and we can't get into this.

HUTCHINSON: The federal Constitution doesn't provide any warrant for intervention.

OBAMA: Exactly. So but what's interesting is that suddenly, a whole bunch of folks start bringing these claims in state courts, under state constitutions that call for equal educational opportunity. And you see state courts with mixed results, being more responsive to it. The reason I think that's relevant is not to say that I'm not worried about the lack of protections coming from the Supreme Court, but it is to say though that you've got a cultural transformation that changes how states think about the protection of individual rights in ways that didn't exist prior to the Warren Court, and that, I think, is an important legacy to keep in mind.

This, again, is an indisputably correct observation about trends in the law — a trend that one might infer Obama agrees with. But in fairness, that's an another inference rather than something he's stated in so many words.

So what, if anything, to make about all of this?

First: Obama is a bright and clever fellow, articulate and well-spoken, and familiar with both the broad outlines and a fair amount of detail on the subject of constitutional law. In this respect, he is a vastly more impressive legal scholar than, for example, Joe Biden, who in countless Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and most recently in the vice presidential debates has proved himself to be entirely worthy of his law school class rank (76th out of 85). That is not at all inconsistent, however, with Sen. Obama being a hard-core leftist: Among the smartest and most genial law professors I had was Mark Tushnet, then an avowed Marxist and still among the most radical members of America's legal academy.

Second: As with the examinations he wrote for his Chicago Law School classes, Obama usually displays a good educator's gift of flagging controversial issues for discussion without necessarily committing as to his own views on those issues. I wish that I could agree with K-Lo that in this program, Obama "unequivocally embraced 'redistribution' of wealth several times." But that's a bit too strong a statement. Indeed, in fairness, he clearly expressed skepticism — "as a legislator here as well as a law professor" — for the notion that it ought to be the courts which accomplish that redistribution of wealth. Still: Obama seemed very receptive to the notion that redistribution of America's wealth would be a good idea, and his use of the word "tragedy" is strong evidence that he supports that goal, even if it's not practical for it to be accomplished by the courts.

Third: That he does not see the federal courts as the preferred means of redistributing wealth does not at all mean that he's a judicial conservative or anything like that. To the contrary, the SCOTUS Justices who he's pointed to as models, in the mold of whom he'd choose additional federal judges, are those who are most activist, in the tradition of the Warren Court at its most politically and judicially liberal. The precise danger of appointing more federal judges and, particularly, Supreme Court Justices like Justice Ginsburg is that they'll take the huge issues on which there is the most fierce political debate among the electorate and in the legislative and executive branches — issues like abortion rights and gay marriage — and stake out positions there which (a) can't be undone without constitutional amendments or massive changes in the courts, and which (b) will then force the legislatures and state agencies to come in behind them and do the "administrative fill-in" to thoroughly implement those newly decreed "constitutional rights."

Fourth: This entire broadcast is entirely consistent with my worst fears about Obama. He understands precisely how to advance a hard-line liberal agenda in each brach of government. Redistribution of wealth is something best suited to a hard-left president and Congress to accomplish, working hand-in-glove. And for the giant leaps — the things which not even a left-of-center executive and legislature can accomplish — the president gets to appoint activist judges.

The reason for conservatives and moderates to be concerned about Barack Obama is not simply that he's a hard-left liberal — it's that he's an ambitious and talented hard-left liberal. He's seen where the Warren Court fell short. Barack Obama is now literally only days away from, in his words from this radio program, possibly "put[ting] together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change." Of that, we ought to all be duly terrified.

— Beldar

On this 41st anniversary of John McCain being shot down over Hanoi

My last guest-post of Sunday evening at HughHewitt.com marks the 41st anniversary of John McCain's last mission over Hanoi.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Today marks the 41st anniversary of the day John McCain was shot down over Hanoi. He'll be the first to tell you that he got shot down because he screwed up on that day — he committed the human mistake of losing situational awareness because he was so concentrating on his target — and then he had a long, uncomfortable time to reflect on and learn from that mistake.

During the Democratic primary season, Joe Biden's funniest line, a barb directed at former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, was to the effect that in every sentence then-candidate Guiliani delivered, you could be sure to find three things: a noun, a verb, and 9/11. Sen. John McCain's opponents have tried to use a variation of that line about him, but with "POW" in place of "9/11." And there was a time earlier this year when I thought that the McCain campaign was in danger of living up to that stereotype.

But both Sen. McCain and his campaign aids reined in that particular rhetoric. Did you notice that no direct reference whatsoever was made to Sen. McCain's time as a prisoner of war in either the first, second, or third presidential debates? Would you ever have predicted that in, say, June of this year or last year?

While being very much a 21st century politician, however, Gov. Sarah Palin is old-school when it comes to respecting our military and its heroes. It's with obvious reverence and appreciation that she has made one of her own campaign stump-speech lines, from the Republican National Convention onward, that "Of the four candidates on top of the two tickets, John McCain is the only one who has ever actually fought for you." This line has the elegance and power that comes from brutal, literal truth combined with simplicity. I'm glad she repeats it.

I too am old-school, and my inclination is to honor and glorify Sen. McCain on this anniversary for his bravery, his toughness, his steadfastness, and his selfless refusal to accept the early release offered because he was the son and grandson of admirals. Old-school or not, corn-ball or not, these demonstrated qualities are not unimportant factors, I would submit, in evaluating his character to become commander in chief.

But John McCain himself actually has a very different take on the significance of his time as a POW. And I'm reasonably sure that he'd rather that you or I note this anniversary, if we choose to note it at all, in a markedly different way than what first occurred to me. Consider what John McCain wrote in his memoir of his early life (including his time as a POW), "Faith of My Fathers":

In prison, I fell in love with my country. I had loved her before then, but like most young people, my affection was little more than a simple appreciation for the comforts and privileges most Americans enjoyed and took for granted. It wasn't until I had lost America for a time that I realized how much I had loved her.

I loved what I missed most from my life at home: my family and friends; the signs and sounds of my country; the hustle and purposefulness of Americans; their fervid independence; sports; music; information — all the attractive qualities of American life. But though I longed for things at home I cherished most, I still shared the ideals of America. And since those ideals were all that I possessed of my country, they became all the more important to me.

It was what freedom conferred on America that I loved the most — the distinction of being the last, best hope of humanity; the advocate for all who believed in the Rights of Man. Freedom is America's honor, and all honor comes with obligations. We have the obligation to use our freedom wisely, to select well from all the choices freedom offers. We can accept or reject the obligation, but if we are to preserve our freedom, our honor, we must choose well.

I was no longer the boy to whom liberty meant simply that I could do as I pleased, and who, in my vanity, used my freedom to polish my image as an I-don't-give-a-damn nonconformist. That's not to say that I had shed myself entirely of that attribute. I had not, and have not yet. But I no longer located my self-respect in that distinction. In prison, where my cherished independence was mocked and assaulted, I found my self-respect in a shared fidelity to my country. All honor comes with obligations. I and the men with whom I served had accepted ours, and we were grateful for the privilege.

McCain explains how what came to matter most to him was how his fellow prisoners measured his character. "My self-regard became indivisible," he writes, "from their regard for me. And it will remain so for the rest of my life." And the realization changed him:

This is the truth of war, of honor and courage, that my father and grandfather had passed on to me. But before my war, its meaning was obscure to me, hidden in the peculiar language of men who had gone to war and been changed forever by the experience. So, too, had the [Naval] Academy, with its inanimate and living memorials to fidelity and valor, tried to reveal this truth to me. But I had interpreted the lesson, as I had interpreted my father's lesson, within the limits of my vanity. I thought glory was the object of war, and that all glory was self-glory.

No more. For I have learned the truth: there are greater pursuits than self-seaking. Glory is not a conceit. It is not a decoration for valor. It is not a prize for being the most clever, the strongest, or the boldest. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no humiliation can destroy it.

This is the faith that my commanders affirmed, that my brothers-in-arms encouraged my allegiance to. It was the faith I had unknowingly embraced at the Naval Academy. It was my father's and grandfather's faith. A filthy, crippled, broken man, all I had left of my dignity was the faith of my fathers. It was enough.

Now, I don't doubt that Barack Obama loves America, nor that his own very different experiences and such challenges as he's faced have shaped his character. But gentle friends, I have also read Barack Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father." And in it, you will search in vain for any chapters containing feelings or epiphanies about America that are remotely comparable to what I've just quoted here.

— Beldar

Even the higher marginal tax rate that you don't pay directly can still push you, and everyone, into poverty

My lastest guest-post tonight at HughHewitt.com is about taxes and spreading the wealth. I argue that "those higher taxes cannot possibly be crafted so that they just affect rich old Peter over there — not by a smart Harvard economics professor, and not even by Barack Obama."

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Wealth grows out of work done at the margin. New jobs are created out of work done at the margin and the investment dollars that work generates.

Someone living paycheck to paycheck is contributing to the economy, but he or she isn't going to be the guy or gal who's actually helping to grow the economy in a significant way. But when you have someone who's making it okay — who's getting by — and he's considering whether to do the additional work needed to generate that marginal dollar, his decision whether to do the work or not is going to relate in a very big way to what happens to that dollar.

Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw looks carefully at how the candidates' respective tax plans will affect that marginal dollar, and his analysis is clear enough that I'll forgive him for speaking of himself in the third person (h/t InstaPundit):

Let's suppose Greg Mankiw takes on an incremental job today and earns a dollar. How much, as a result, will he leave his kids in T years?

The answer depends on four tax rates. First, I pay the combined income and payroll tax on the dollar earned. Second, I pay the corporate tax rate while the money is invested in a firm. Third, I pay the dividend and capital gains rate as I receive that return. And fourth, I pay the estate tax when I leave what has accumulated to my kids.

Mankiw makes a couple of reasonable assumptions about pre-tax return rates and the length of time for his investment before his kids get it, and then he runs the math, which returns these conclusions (emphasis mine):

If there were no taxes, so t1=t2=t3=t4=0, then $1 earned today would yield my kids $28. That is simply the miracle of compounding.

Under the McCain plan, t1=.35, t2=.25, t3=.15, and t4=.15. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $4.81. That is, even under the low-tax McCain plan, my incentive to work is cut by 83 percent compared to the situation without taxes.

Under the Obama plan, t1=.43, t2=.35, t3=.2, and t4=.45. In this case, a dollar earned today yields my kids $1.85. That is, Obama's proposed tax hikes reduce my incentive to work by 62 percent compared to the McCain plan and by 93 percent compared to the no-tax scenario....

From this, Prof. Mankiw concludes that if Obama's tax plan becomes law, he's unlikely to do the extra work to earn that extra dollar. He'll spend the time trying to make good memories with his kids instead of trying to make money for them to inherit.

When you rob Peter to pay Paul, it's not some zero-sum game. Peter's been the guy working harder. When you systematically rob him to pay Paul — when you "redistribute the wealth" — then Peter figures it out, and he stops working harder. He stops creating more wealth at the margins. And eventually, you've guaranteed that Peter and Paul will both slip into destitution.

Democrats stare at me perplexedly. "Dyer!" they say, "You don't make a quarter million a year! The Obama tax increases won't hit you! And what kind of idiot are you, that you don't want the hand-out from Barack Obama's tax cuts and the give-aways from Obama's new social programs?"

I'm the kind of idiot who (a) would still like to make a quarter-million some day, who (b) doesn't think Peter should be penalized with a higher tax rate for his success, and who (c) wants his kids to have a chance to land the jobs where they can make that much or more in the businesses created by Peter after he decided to keep working a little harder to make the extra dollars to invest (i.e., risk) in starting those businesses. I won't take his damn bribes — even if I trusted Obama to deliver them, which I don't — because it hurts all our futures to have high taxes. Even when you're not taxing me directly with those higher rates, those higher taxes will still affect me. "Spreading the wealth" ultimately makes us all poorer. Those higher taxes cannot possibly be crafted so that they just affect rich old Peter over there — not by a smart Harvard economics professor, and not even by Barack Obama.

Most of us want to become Peter; most of us realize it's unfair to penalize Peter for being successful; but regardless, we all need Peter.

— Beldar

Actually, I am Bill too, but not THAT Bill

My latest guest-post at HughHewitt.com links a funny ha-ha piece from Iowahawk that's also funny-sad (when you drill down through the links). And yes, Bill Ayers is still a twisted dollop of evil scum.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

To counterbalance all of the "I am Joe" hoopla given to Joe the Plumber, Iowahawk has posted a stirring, link-filled defense of Bill Ayers that's not to be missed. (H/t DRJ at Patterico.NET, where Patterico.COM is still in exile.) Sample paragraph about the twisted dollop of evil scum:

• I AM BILL. I grew up in a simple little gated community just like yours, with white picket fences and where all the aux pairs and gardeners know your name. When my dad came home from a hard day's work as a CEO, he was never too tired to help me with my homework or tousle my hair for winning the Lake Forest Academy essay contest on Hegelian Dialectics. Yes, he was a simpleminded bourgeois technocrat of the capitalist war machine, but he made sure I got the tuition and tutors and sailing lessons and allowance I needed to make it on my own. I wish he was still alive so I could tell him how much I really planned to kill him last.

Good stuff — wicked satire that's close to the bone.

— Beldar

The Rezko-Obama payoff reduced to one sentence

I just don't understand how anyone can't grasp this: Tony Rezko did a six-figure favor for Barack Obama in connection with Obama's house purchase. The only other explanation requires one to believe that Obama is a brilliant real estate pro and that Tony Rezko is stupid enough to pay full asking price at exactly the same time. But I go over this all again in a guest-post today at HughHewitt.com.

And now I'm caught up in my cross-posting.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But, until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.

— Don Vito Corleone to townsman Bonasera in The Godfather (1972)

I last wrote about this subject at length on June 4, 2008, when Tony Rezko was convicted on 16 counts of financial corruption, many of which had to do with buying off politicians via sham real estate transactions. But let me reduce the Rezko-Obama house transaction into a one-sentence question which ought to make it clear to you:

If not to bestow a six-figure financial payoff to Barack Obama — who was getting a $300k discount on the same day in June 2005 from the very same seller — why would Tony Rezko ever agree to pay the full asking price of $625k for the adjoining property, instead of insisting upon at least sharing proportionately in that $300k discount?

Ignore the later sale by Rezko of a strip of the property he purchased to the Obamas after they had some more book revenues coming in and were more flush with cash. We can argue until the cows come home about whether that was a delayed partial pay-back of the original favor to Obama or not. It's a red herring, and requires you to make judgments about property values.

Instead, put your trust in the much easier judgment you can make about who, as between Obama and Rezko, was a shark in the real estate market. No one can explain how real estate neophyte Obama supposedly managed to out-negotiate real estate "professional" Rezko — who's not so coincidentally also a professional politician buyer through fraudulent real estate deals, which is exactly what Rezko has since been convicted of — by fully $300k.

While admitting that this was a package deal that had to be closed on the same day, the seller denies any explicit agreement to link the two sale prices — i.e., to grant a bigger discount to Obama in exchange for Rezko paying the full asking price. The seller effectively has to say that, because to make any contrary admission might subject him to potential criminal liability as a co-conspirator, along with Rezko and his wife, to the making of false statements on the federally guaranteed loan application paperwork in which Rezko's wife had to deny the existence of any side deals. (That would be an excellent reason for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to be subpoenaing those loan documents, as the new Isakoff article linked below by Hugh reveals.)

Now, let me be perfectly clear: I'm certainly not accusing the seller of having actually violated any law, and neither do I have any specific reason to believe that the seller was necessarily a party to any discussions between Obama and Rezko about what Rezko expected in return for the favor he was doing Obama by facilitating the transaction by paying the full asking price. Indeed, even between Obama and Rezko there may not have been anything more than a wink and a nod. But surely the seller at least had to hold his nose and avert his eyes to keep from perceiving the strangeness of this transaction, and even his retrospection about the transaction ought to be circumscribed by his potential criminal liability, if he's been getting any decent legal advice.

You, gentle readers, need not be so willfully imperceptive. When something stinks, you can and should say: "That stinks!"

This was a political payoff, friends and neighbors, from Day 1, and it was in the age-old tradition of mobsters doing favors for rising but ethically challenged young politicians whose influence the mobsters may someday need. If you cannot see this, then you ought to climb back on the pumpkin truck, and please don't ever try to purchase real estate yourself.

— Beldar

Politico-sports metaphor for the day

Sarah Barracuda to Barack Obama, re basketball nets, in one of my guest-posts today at HughHewitt.com.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

"Barack Obama and I both have spent quite some time on the basketball court," Palin told a raucous crowd of more than 5,000 at the convention center. "But where I come from, you have to win the game before you start cutting down the net."

GOP Veep nominee Sarah Palin, campaigning today in Tampa, Florida.

— Beldar