Democrat mega-donors gathered in Washington, DC, for inaugural weekend and heard former Pres. Bill Clinton caution them about stressing an agenda of gun control. He managed to blend his caution with a condescending dismissal of America outside the big cities, saying, "All they've got is their hunting and their fishing." The gun control agenda may be popular in New York, LA, and many places that have ballets, symphonies and $1,000-a-night hotels, but it can be downright toxic in rural America.
“Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them,” Clinton said to a gathering of the Obama National Finance Committee plus business leaders:
“A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things; I know because I come from this world.
“A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing. Or they’re living in a place where they don’t have much police presence. Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all.”
Other issues can be pursued, Clinton warned, such as immigration, health care, and economic legislation. But going after guns sets off a powerful opposition with greater built-in intensity. The 1994 assault weapons ban, he said, “devastated” more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers in the 1994 midterms. One who lost his race was then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-Wash).
Gun issues also proved decisive in 2000, costing Al Gore West Virginia, Arkansas, Colorado and Tennessee. Had he carried any one of those, he would have beaten George W. Bush for the Presidency.
Federal Reserve Would Probably Go Along With $1-Trillion Platinum Coin Plan, Says Former Director of U.S. Mint
The Federal Reserve System would likely accept a $1-trillion platinum coin at face value, even though the Chinese and other creditors probably would not, according to the former director of the U.S. Mint who helped craft the now-controversial 1996 law.
Phil Diehl was director of the Mint from 1994 to 2000, and worked with former Congressman Mike Castle (R, DE) to write the law that is now being touted as a way to bypass the legal limit on federal borrowing. Diehl’s first broadcast interview was Friday morning on “Istook Live!” with host and former Congressman Ernest Istook.
Proponents, mostly on the political Left, have touted the coin as a way to evade Republican demands that federal spending be cut before any new borrowing authority is allowed. The Treasury has already reached its $16.4-trillion debt ceiling. Extraordinary measures are being used to keep operating, but likely will be exhausted by mid-February.
Istook pressed Diehl on why the Fed would treat a coin as worth a trillion dollars and allow government to draw against those funds, when creditors such as China or Japan obviously would not accept it to pay off what the U.S. owes them (which is over a trillion dollars with each of those countries).
Diehl said, “The way this works is exactly the way it works with a quarter.”
The Mint takes a piece of metal and stamps it with a value, then sells it to the Fed for that amount, he said, and added, “The only difference here is a bunch more zeroes on the face value. The principle is exactly the same, the accounting procedures, the production procedures, everything is the same as a quarter.” He said he believes the Fed would see this as “quite similar to the quantatative easing policies of the Fed, and some wags have called this platinum easing.”
Diehl defended the potential use of the special coinage law, although admitting, “We obviously never anticipated that the law would be used as a way of dealing with the debt ceiling.” The intent was to provide a means for investors to invest in American precious metal coins. The law authorized platinum coins in whatever face value the Secretary of Treasury desires.
That was one of the two unusual wrinkles in the law, he says: That the Secretary was given discretion to issue such coins or not, and was given discretion on the face value.
Istook made it abundantly clear to Diehl that he was not convinced, but thought it important that the public hear more details about this speculative proposal.
Republicans in the U.S. House missed a golden opportunity when they put the unchanged “fiscal cliff” tax bill up for a vote.
If the Senate-passed bill was to be considered (a mighty big “if”), the House first should have scrubbed it like they did the Hurricane Sandy relief bill. Both were laden with pork. That was too much dirt for the Sandy measure, but the lard in the tax bill got a free pass from the House GOP.
Requiring a “clean” tax bill would have publicly exposed the hysterical hypocrisy we’ve heard from the Left and from big media (the twins!).
A liposuction of the pork would have forced the Senate to return to session to approve the amended and cleaned-up bill. Had they been willing, Senators could have acted quickly, as they had just proven they could do.
Middle class Americans were used as pawns to create a headlong rush for tax relief. As they drove this runaway train, the Left snuck aboard their agenda of bigger government and crony capitalism.
Only if the pork was first stripped out should the House GOP have permitted the bill to be enacted with mostly Democrat votes. That would not make it good legislation, but at least it would have been better.
Not even Gov. Chris Christie would have dared defend that fattening-up of the all-important middle class tax relief. And if they tried, President Obama and the Senate would have been stammering like Lindsay Lohan in front of a probation officer.
Imagine their claim: “We refuse to approve tax relief for the middle class until the House Republicans approve our handouts to Hollywood, our toast to liquor distillers, and our windfalls for windpower.”
For the next two years, conservative Republicans will be taunted as toadies of the richest 0.3% of Americans who earn $1-million or more a year. That's because they killed House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" to let taxes rise on that group, as the political price to avoid higher taxes for everybody else. But the opposition to Plan B was not knee-jerk anti-tax-hike ideology. A Tax Foundation report (Read it here) shows that the whole country would have suffered as the millionaire tax rippled through our economy. The average taxpayer's income would drop by 1.3% and the national economy would lose $145-billion a year of GDP.
Rather than raising $40-billion for the Treasury, the report concludes the suppressed economy would lower the net tax revenue to $7-billion.
Losing $145-billion in GDP to gain $7-billion in revenue is a lousy trade-off. It kills $20 in the economy for every $1 of increased taxes. Report co-author William McBride, PhD (the Foundation's chief economist) told Istook Live! that the revenue gained could actually drop to zero, as the wealthy would adopt tax strategies to adjust to the new rates.
The report also details the negative consequences on business stocks, on wages and by hours worked.
In short, the impact aimed at the rich would actually be felt by the whole country.So by opposing higher taxes for anyone, the opponents of Plan B sought to protect everyone--not just the rich.
When media reported that President Obama might consider raising Medicare's eligibility age, liberal Democrats hurriedly denounced the idea. So Obama has now backed off.
Obama's quick retreat reminds me of the story of Brave Sir Robin in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." (Watch it below)
But that very idea of adjusting the age was #1 of 6 recently proposed by The Heritage Foundation to restore Medicare to a sound financial footing. As the Heritage report describes this:
Raise the Social Security eligibility age to match increases in longevity. Originally set at 65, the normal eligibility age is rising two months every year until 2022, when it will reach 67. According to the Social Security actuaries, continuing to increase the eligibility age to 69 by the year 2034 and allowing it to rise more slowly thereafter to reflect gains in longevity could go a long way toward reducing Social Security's funding shortfall. While this would not reduce today's budget deficit, it would strengthen Social Security's finances and dissipate far more important long-term budget pressures.
You can read that full Heritage report here: Now enjoy Monty Python:
More than 4 million people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 did not vote this year. But by applying new voter science, Obama nudged enough replacements in key states ? many who were rare or first-time voters ? to give him his margin of victory (leveraged even larger by the Electoral College).
Years of stealthy multimillion-dollar efforts paid off forAmerica's left in the 2008 and 2012 victories by President Barack Obama. Using new voter science to get rare and first-time voters to go to the polls, the races have changedAmerica's electorate ? those who make the country's decisions by showing up and voting.
Aided by $5 million minimum from George Soros, plus millions more from others, at least two secretive institutions were created to enable this effort by focused research on behavioral science. Their results are made available only to liberals and their causes.
The AI has been quietly stacked with behavioral scientists, mostly PhDs or PhD candidates from Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale,Princeton, andDartmouth(with Notre Dame andUniversityofChicagothrown in for good measure). They coordinate with market researchers for various commercial products. AI materials brag that the Institute supports "a community of 400 data analysts and related professionals in collaborating and sharing their findings through monthly Analyst Group meetings and retreats."
As Issenberg told me, "The big leap in the last five or six years has come from Democrats looking to commercial markets. Campaigns are able to see in the real world what is pushing voters to change their behavior." He says this has reversed the advantage that Republicans had enjoyed after 2004 when they began using micro-targeting to categorize voters.
The progressive cause's analysts look for "sweet spots in the electorate," gathering as many as 1,000 points of data on each voter, far more than in most surveys.
Although not made public, the findings are shared with the other special organization that Issenberg explains was created to apply the research. This is Catalist, headed by longtime Democrat operative Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff in the Bill Clinton White House.
Catalist's website describes its mission: "To provide progressive organizations with the data and services needed to better identify, understand, and communicate with the people they need to persuade and mobilize."
Their website, www.catalist.us, identifies 237 clients, including more than 50 Members of Congress, Planned Parenthood, Rock the Vote, the Democratic Governors Association, AFL-CIO, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Human Rights Campaign, ACLU, Emily's List, Sierra Club, Families USA?basically the entire inner circle of the Left.
Catalist helps its clients to apply the research done by the Analyst Institute. For example, one basic finding was that door-to-door contact far exceeds the success from any other form of communicating with voters. That led to the Obama campaign's intensive focus on that approach. But there was plenty more to apply.
Issenberg told the radio audience:
The Obama campaign wrote a $22,000 check every month to the Analyst Institute; it looked like a consulting contract the same way they would pay a media consultant to make their ads. The Analyst Institute was consulting with them on how to run experiments and had a full-time staff member stationed in Chicago…So it serves all the sort of functions and the intellectual culture of the left of a think tank but has all the secrecy that a consulting firm would…They don't have to actually show who their investors are or any sort of audit.
AI also makes available to progressive groups what its documents describe as "memos summarizing hundreds of experiments on topics including GOTV [Get Out the Vote],…persuasion, identifying persuadable voters, and preventing long lines on Election Day."
In 2008, AI reported it had "partnered with dozens of organizations to execute 44 large-scale field experiments. Topics included which voters are 'persuadable,' [and] how behavioral science insights can be translated into voter contact tactics."
AI listed its 2009 and 2010 priorities as research that included:
What Are The Predictors Of Persuadability?
Increase The Use Of Impact?Based Communications.
Which Advocacy Tactics Are Most Effective?
How Can We Best Use Social Networking Technology?
How Can We Effectively Engage Surge Voters?
Can We Experimentally, And Quickly, Test The Impact Of Television Ads?
Enhance Skills Of The Progressive Data Community.
According to Issenberg, the funding to develop this research capability came from liberal donors unhappy with the money they "wasted" in 2004 in efforts to defeat George W. Bush by funneling a fortune through 527 groups.
Issenberg told the audience that these donors included the deep-pocketed billionaire George Soros, "and they felt?how Crossroads and Restore Our Future donors may be feeling now?that their money was wasted; and they started focusing not on making big contributions to win a single election but to institution-building. And so they've spent years of investing; it's hard to put a price on what it adds up to but now those institutions are basically paying for themselves…They want to make Democrats better at winning elections."
Those multimillion-dollar investments have provided an edge to the Obama campaign in how to persuade and turn out voters. Since 2008, according to Issenberg, the GOP has marked time rather than catching up, in part because "the chairmanship of the RNC changed three times in the last four years."
While Democrats enjoined four years of unity and a known incumbent candidate, "Mitt Romney had to fight a primary. The best-case scenario is that he would have only six or nine months to sort of rev up. I'm not convinced that they took great advantage of those six or nine months."
As Issenberg writes in The Victory Lab, the work of Analyst Institute has "upended much of what the political world thought it knew about how voters' minds work, and dramatically changed the way that campaigns approach, cajole, and manipulate them."
Applying that research is no guarantee of winning, "but experimental insights could decide close races?by nudging turnout up two points here, six points there."
Those nudges added up to give Obama his margin of victory.
More than 4 million people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 did not vote this year. But by applying new voter science, Obama nudged enough replacements in key states ? many who were rare or first-time voters ? to give him his margin of victory (leveraged even larger by the Electoral College).
Years of stealthy multimillion-dollar efforts paid off forAmerica's left in the 2008 and 2012 victories by President Barack Obama. Using new voter science to get rare and first-time voters to go to the polls, the races have changedAmerica's electorate ? those who make the country's decisions by showing up and voting.
Aided by $5 million minimum from George Soros, plus millions more from others, at least two secretive institutions were created to enable this effort by focused research on behavioral science. Their results are made available only to liberals and their causes.
The AI has been quietly stacked with behavioral scientists, mostly PhDs or PhD candidates from Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale,Princeton, andDartmouth(with Notre Dame andUniversityofChicagothrown in for good measure). They coordinate with market researchers for various commercial products. AI materials brag that the Institute supports "a community of 400 data analysts and related professionals in collaborating and sharing their findings through monthly Analyst Group meetings and retreats."
As Issenberg told me, "The big leap in the last five or six years has come from Democrats looking to commercial markets. Campaigns are able to see in the real world what is pushing voters to change their behavior." He says this has reversed the advantage that Republicans had enjoyed after 2004 when they began using micro-targeting to categorize voters.
The progressive cause's analysts look for "sweet spots in the electorate," gathering as many as 1,000 points of data on each voter, far more than in most surveys.
Although not made public, the findings are shared with the other special organization that Issenberg explains was created to apply the research. This is Catalist, headed by longtime Democrat operative Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff in the Bill Clinton White House.
Catalist's website describes its mission: "To provide progressive organizations with the data and services needed to better identify, understand, and communicate with the people they need to persuade and mobilize."
Their website, www.catalist.us, identifies 237 clients, including more than 50 Members of Congress, Planned Parenthood, Rock the Vote, the Democratic Governors Association, AFL-CIO, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Human Rights Campaign, ACLU, Emily's List, Sierra Club, Families USA?basically the entire inner circle of the Left.
Catalist helps its clients to apply the research done by the Analyst Institute. For example, one basic finding was that door-to-door contact far exceeds the success from any other form of communicating with voters. That led to the Obama campaign's intensive focus on that approach. But there was plenty more to apply.
Issenberg told the radio audience:
The Obama campaign wrote a $22,000 check every month to the Analyst Institute; it looked like a consulting contract the same way they would pay a media consultant to make their ads. The Analyst Institute was consulting with them on how to run experiments and had a full-time staff member stationed in Chicago…So it serves all the sort of functions and the intellectual culture of the left of a think tank but has all the secrecy that a consulting firm would…They don't have to actually show who their investors are or any sort of audit.
AI also makes available to progressive groups what its documents describe as "memos summarizing hundreds of experiments on topics including GOTV [Get Out the Vote],…persuasion, identifying persuadable voters, and preventing long lines on Election Day."
In 2008, AI reported it had "partnered with dozens of organizations to execute 44 large-scale field experiments. Topics included which voters are 'persuadable,' [and] how behavioral science insights can be translated into voter contact tactics."
AI listed its 2009 and 2010 priorities as research that included:
What Are The Predictors Of Persuadability?
Increase The Use Of Impact?Based Communications.
Which Advocacy Tactics Are Most Effective?
How Can We Best Use Social Networking Technology?
How Can We Effectively Engage Surge Voters?
Can We Experimentally, And Quickly, Test The Impact Of Television Ads?
Enhance Skills Of The Progressive Data Community.
According to Issenberg, the funding to develop this research capability came from liberal donors unhappy with the money they "wasted" in 2004 in efforts to defeat George W. Bush by funneling a fortune through 527 groups.
Issenberg told the audience that these donors included the deep-pocketed billionaire George Soros, "and they felt?how Crossroads and Restore Our Future donors may be feeling now?that their money was wasted; and they started focusing not on making big contributions to win a single election but to institution-building. And so they've spent years of investing; it's hard to put a price on what it adds up to but now those institutions are basically paying for themselves…They want to make Democrats better at winning elections."
Those multimillion-dollar investments have provided an edge to the Obama campaign in how to persuade and turn out voters. Since 2008, according to Issenberg, the GOP has marked time rather than catching up, in part because "the chairmanship of the RNC changed three times in the last four years."
While Democrats enjoined four years of unity and a known incumbent candidate, "Mitt Romney had to fight a primary. The best-case scenario is that he would have only six or nine months to sort of rev up. I'm not convinced that they took great advantage of those six or nine months."
As Issenberg writes in The Victory Lab, the work of Analyst Institute has "upended much of what the political world thought it knew about how voters' minds work, and dramatically changed the way that campaigns approach, cajole, and manipulate them."
Applying that research is no guarantee of winning, "but experimental insights could decide close races?by nudging turnout up two points here, six points there."
Those nudges added up to give Obama his margin of victory.
To LISTEN to the interview -- http://www.istook.com/pg/jsp/charts/audioMaster.jsp?dispid=301&pid=56626">click here
They discuss:
Obama’s lack of credibility
"Fiscal Cliff" never should have happened
True motive behind Obama’s tax strategy
Whether Republicans will keep or break no-tax-hike pledge
Media hype about schisms among Republicans
Istook: Joining us now--Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina. I served with him in Congress. Jim, welcome to Istook Live!
DeMint: Ernest, it’s an honor to be with you.
Istook: Well, it’s always great to be with you and I cannot say enough of how I’m proud of how you have been a model of courage. It is the type of courage that means something--standing up to your friends who may be some of your fellow Senators; sometimes some of your fellow Republican Senators. And yet you stand up for principles. And I and a great many people are proud of you for that.
DeMint: Well thank you, it’s been a difficult place to work in and if it wasn’t for people like you on the air and all over the country who keep telling me to keep fighting it would be a lonely life but it hasn’t been in fact it’s very encouraging to go around the country and people just to say, “keep fighting, we’re praying for you.”
Istook: Absolutely. And you’ve got an opportunity. This is one of those gut check times in this lame-duck session of the Congress. All the conversation about the so-called fiscal cliff. Questions of who is going to pay how much taxes. And those that already pay the lion’s share, they say they want them to pay even more and they are willing to let taxes go up on the middle class if they don’t get their way in punishing the high income earners. But it’s not just something about the country, there’s also the chatter about: this will tell us whether the Republican Party can be salvaged in the eyes of the Conservative movement.
DeMint: Well there’s a lot of questions here but Republicans are willing and ready to work with the President on dealing with these issues, but it’s hard to work with a leader who has no plan. And you can’t compromise with someone who hasn’t but a plan on the table and told Americans what he really stands for. Saying he wants to tax the rich is not a plan and it certainly doesn’t solve many of the problems, really any of the problems we’re faced with right now. So the President has got what he wants, Ernest, he wants to raise taxes, and wants to cut the military, and this is the result of a very bad deal that the Republicans were willing to make, over a year ago and we’re paying for that now. Certainly if we make taxes go up it’s not good for the economy. Cutting the military is not good for our defense and the security of our nation, but I think Republicans need to not make a long-term bad deal that hurts our country. We need to insist that this is a time that we need to reform our tax code and get rid of the loop holes and the subsidies and lower the rate. And Ernest, the key thing to remember here: the government is not short of revenue. In fact, last year we were near historic highs as far as tax revenue. We’ll probably have all-time high revenues coming in from taxpayers this year. So the country doesn’t need more money; they need less government. And as Republicans we can’t concede that point by saying, “Oh, ok we need to raise some taxes or raise revenue.” The government has doubled spending in the last ten years and the problem is not tax revenues and all we have to do is get the economy growing a little bit faster and the revenues will effectively double. So I can’t get into this argument, ok? that we need to tax the top 2% more. It doesn’t come close to solving the problems. And you’re right, it is a gut check for Republicans. Are they going to carry the conservative message and be principled about it? Or are they going to try to weasel out of this by capitulating and the President gets what he wants in tax increases and cutting the military? The only thing else he wants is for Republicans to completely discredit themselves with their base.
Istook: They do. And Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina is our guest. A couple of things that tie into this: One, even though it’s only I think at most maybe 3 or 4 Republicans in either the House or Senate that have made public pronouncements about they might do something that may be seen as violating their pledge not to raise taxes, the one involving Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform. To look at the headlines and listen to the media you would think there is a whole, huge lineup of Republicans that would like to reverse course. That’s one image the media is trying to portray and at the same time that seems to be an effort by the White House to take its victory in the election and make it larger than it was and steamroller over the opposition--to crush the opposition right now so that they can be sure to get their way on more and more issues in the next four years.
DeMint: Yes, they smell blood in the water and they’ll keep pushing. So it’s hardly, they’re not coming our way or coming to the middle to try and govern, they actually want to steamroll what’s left of the Republican Party here in Washington.But the truth of the matter is, I don’t think any of those who have been portrayed as breaking their tax pledge will actually vote for anything the President will support because there are conditions. Tthose who are talking about increasing revenue are saying only in return for real tax reform or real entitlement reform. The President isn’t going there, particularly [not] in the next couple of weeks. So I think the President and a number of Democratic Senators have said they want us to go over this so called “Cliff” because it gives them a chance to get what they want in terms of higher taxes and they believe the mainstream media will blame Republicans and it will hurt us more than it will hurt them.
Istook: Well I certainly concur in that and I also believe that the administration feels that the administration will either achieve that result--taxes go up on everybody and Republicans get the blame--or they will succeed in splitting the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement by having some people go along with them while others don’t. Then they will have fractured the opposition and have used this whole divide-and-conquer approach that this President seems to favor.
DeMint: You’re right and I think there are a number of Republicans saying they are willing to work with the President and as you said there are a few of them and the media is highlighting it as a real spilt in our party, I frankly don’t think there is, unless the President is willing to work reasonably with us to fix the real fiscal issues I don’t think you’re going to see Republicans to raise taxes. I mean there may be a few, there always are who probably aren’t real Republicans, but I don’t think you’re going to see very many Republicans go along.
Istook: What does it tell us that the media makes it want to seem like their numbers are larger. They take them they clone them they make numbers look bigger than they are. What does that tell us that the media is giving that portrayal?
DeMint: Well what we’ve known all along, they generally believe in a collectivist, big government society, and they see the government as a key player in our economy, and our culture, and anything we suggest otherwise is alien to them. So their paradigm is big government.
Ernest: You’re talking about the paradigm of the liberal democrats or the media?
DeMint: It’s the same thing.
Istook: OK, got it. So where do we go from here? We have an administration that’s going to take advantage of the gridlock, the fact that the House and Senate cannot agree on things, which means when they take an action through the bureaucracy that requires a united Congress to block, how are we going to deal with that in these next few years?
DeMint: Ernest, we need to do everything we can do as conservatives here in Washington to minimize the damage of a second Obama administration. At the same time I hope to be a part of working with states all over the country, there are 25 states with Republican Governors and Legislators, a lot of them are trying to implement conservative polices, lower taxes, better regulatory structure, tort reform, things we know that work. And that’s what we need to do as Republicans is pull together states and other, whether they be schools or other organizations to demonstrate that conservative principles work better. And last night on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Bill O’Reilly talked about the difference between California and Texas. Those are the kind of things we need to demonstrate to people. The theory of good policy is not going to work; we can tell Americans all they want but they’re not going to listen. But if we show them how conservative principles are working better in states like Texas and what’s happening in states like California, they’ll begin to see how we need to change our national policy so our country can work better for everyone. It’s a challenge but we have to admit at least temporarily we’ve lost the battle in Washington and the best we can do here at the federal level is to keep the federal government from stopping those states from doing the right thing!
Istook: We’ll pay attention to that. And I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of our time, but I’ll look forward to having you back on again.
DeMint: Thanks a lot, Ernest!
Istook: U.S. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. A stalwart, keeping the faith here in Washington.
There is no requirement that voters must be well-informed. This year, turnout climbed significantly among "low information voters."
Now is a good time to remember this message from former President John F. Kennedy:
"Low information voters" may vote by emotion. Or to go along with their friends and peers. Or be swept away by a movement. They may know nothing about issues except from watching The Daily Show, The View, or The Tonight Show.
Simply put, their votes will be controlled by Hollywood, pop culture, and the media.
Years ago, an infamous article claimed that Christian voters were mostly "poor, uneducated and easily led." Now we should ask whether the description fits many who liberals rely upon for votes.
And let's ask what can we do to fix this. That's what "The Kitchen Table Agenda" is all about.
