Mitt's 'Morning in America' Ad

The original can never be matched, but this is a pretty good shot at it.

Top 10 Reads of the Week - June 1, 2012

Facebook Also A Loser In Egypt - Mark Steyn [Orange County Register]

So how's that old Arab Spring going? You remember – the "Facebook Revolution." As I write, they're counting the votes in Egypt's presidential election, so by the time you read this the pecking order may have changed somewhat. But currently in first place is the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi, who in an inspiring stump speech before the students of Cairo University the other night told them, "Death in the name of Allah is our goal."

Like!... Read the Rest

Is It Within Bounds To Ask: Is Obama A Socialist? - Paul Roderick Gregory [Forbes]

Democrat strategists know that the American electorate reacts strongly negative to “socialism” and are doing their best to discredit any and all who call Obama a socialist. There can be no doubt that Obama is a socialist in the European reform-Marxism tradition. In France, Obama would be the candidate of the French socialist party. In Spain, he would be at home in the Socialist Worker’s Party. In Germany, Obama would be torn between the Social Democrats and Die Linke. In “Old Europe,” the welfare state is well entrenched. Elections are about tinkering at the margin. The United States has still to decide whether it wants the European welfare state or not. Obama does. Romney does not.

Democrat strategists discredit Obama-is-a-socialist claims by equating them with the ludicrous charge that Obama is a card-carrying communist of the cold war tradition. That is not what is being said. European socialists are proud of their rich tradition and heritage that date back to the split with revolutionary Marxism at the turn of the last century. In the United States, however, candidates must conceal rather than openly proclaim their socialist beliefs... Read the Rest

It's Time To Drop The College-For-All Crusade - Robert Samuelson [Washington Post]

...We overdid it. The obsessive faith in college has backfired.

For starters, we’ve dumbed down college. The easiest way to enroll and retain more students is to lower requirements. Even so, dropout rates are high; at four-year schools, fewer than 60 percent of freshmen graduate within six years. Many others aren’t learning much.

In a recent book, “Academically Adrift,” sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that 45 percent of college students hadn’t significantly improved their critical thinking and writing skills after two years; after four years, the proportion was still 36 percent. Their study was based on a test taken by 2,400 students at 24 schools requiring them to synthesize and evaluate a block of facts. The authors blame the poor results on lax academic standards. Surveyed, one-third of the same students said that they studied alone five or fewer hours a week; half said they had no course the prior semester requiring 20 pages of writing.... Read the Rest

Hope: The Sequel - John Heilemann [New York]

...But if the Obama 2012 strategy in this regard is all about the amplification of 2008, in terms of message it will represent a striking deviation. Though the Obamans certainly hit John McCain hard four years ago—running more negative ads than any campaign in history—what they intend to do to Romney is more savage. They will pummel him for being a vulture-vampire capitalist at Bain Capital. They will pound him for being a miserable failure as the governor of Massachusetts. They will mash him for being a water-carrier for Paul Ryan’s Social Darwinist fiscal program. They will maul him for being a combination of Jerry Falwell, Joe Arpaio, and John Galt on a range of issues that strike deep chords with the Obama coalition. “We’re gonna say, ‘Let’s be clear what he would do as president,’ ” Plouffe explains. “Potentially abortion will be criminalized. Women will be denied contraceptive services. He’s far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.”

The Obama effort at disqualifying Romney will go beyond painting him as excessively conservative, however. It will aim to cast him as an avatar of revanchism. “He’s the fifties, he is retro, he is backward, and we are forward—that’s the basic construct,” says a top Obama strategist. “If you’re a woman, you’re Hispanic, you’re young, or you’ve gotten left out, you look at Romney and say, ‘This fucking guy is gonna take us back to the way it always was, and guess what? I’ve never been part of that.’ ”... Read the Rest

Four More Years? - Pete DuPont [Wall Street Journal]

Before being elected in 2008, Barack Obama said: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." That belief has turned out to be wholly accurate. America has been greatly transformed by all areas of this administration's policy goals and actions.

The most significant policy change during President Obama's first term was his health-care "reform," the movement of 17% of our economy from the marketplace of ideas and physician-patient decision-making to control and management by the federal government. The Supreme Court is now considering ObamaCare are constitutional, and is expected to decide by the end of June... Read the Rest

Memorial Day Tribute

Happy Memorial Day, from Senator Scott Brown

Top 10 Reads of the Week - May 25, 2012

Why they Serve: 'If Not Me, Then Who?' - Tom Manion [Wall Street Journal]

I served in the military for 30 years. But it was impossible to fully understand the sacrifices of our troops and their families until April 29, 2007, the day my son, First Lt. Travis Manion, was killed in Iraq.

Travis was just 26 years old when an enemy sniper's bullet pierced his heart after he had just helped save two wounded comrades. Even though our family knew the risks of Travis fighting on the violent streets of Fallujah, being notified of his death on a warm Sunday afternoon in Doylestown, Pa., was the worst moment of our lives.

While my son's life was relatively short, I spend every day marveling at his courage and wisdom. Before his second and final combat deployment, Travis said he wanted to go back to Iraq in order to spare a less-experienced Marine from going in his place. His words—"If not me, then who . . . "—continue to inspire me... Read the Rest

Obama Pursues Higher Tax Rates, Growth Be Damned - Michael Barone [Real Clear Politics]

In the run-up to this weekend's G-8 summit at Camp David, journalists have unfavorably compared European "austerity" with Barack Obama's economic policies.

European spending cuts, the argument goes, have hurt people and are arousing political opposition, while Obama's proposals to keep federal spending at 24 percent of gross domestic product indefinitely are likely to succeed.

Evil Republican spending cuts, in contrast, would deny the economy needed stimulus and wreak havoc on ordinary people.

But the facts undermine the storyline. Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University took a look at what "austerity" in Europe actually means... Read the Rest

No More Mister Nice Guy - Fred Barnes [Weekly Standard]

By the time he took office in 2009, President Obama had fashioned a reputation as an idealist committed to reforming the way business is done in Washington. But as president, he’s allowed this reputation to fritter away. And what’s left of it is now being destroyed by his harsh and misguided campaign for reelection.

Obama has become his own worst political enemy. Even when his job approval first began to fade, his poll numbers for being well-liked personally remained high. Now those are fading too. He’s on the road to defeat... Read the Rest

The Worst Union In America - Troy Senik [City Journal]

In 1962, as tensions ran high between school districts and unions across the country, members of the National Education Association gathered in Denver for the organization’s 100th annual convention. Among the speakers was Arthur F. Corey, executive director of the California Teachers Association (CTA). “The strike as a weapon for teachers is inappropriate, unprofessional, illegal, outmoded, and ineffective,” Corey told the crowd. “You can’t go out on an illegal strike one day and expect to go back to your classroom and teach good citizenship the next.”

Fast-forward nearly 50 years to May 2011, when the CTA—now the single most powerful special interest in California—organized a “State of Emergency” week to agitate for higher taxes in one of the most overtaxed states in the nation. A CTA document suggested dozens of ways for teachers to protest, including following state legislators incessantly, attempting to close major transportation arteries, and boycotting companies, such as Microsoft, that backed education reform. The week’s centerpiece was an occupation of the state capitol by hundreds of teachers and student sympathizers from the Cal State University system, who clogged the building’s hallways and refused to leave. Police arrested nearly 100 demonstrators for trespassing, including then–CTA president David Sanchez. The protesting teachers had left their jobs behind, even though their students were undergoing important statewide tests that week. With the passage of 50 years, the CTA’s notions of “good citizenship” had vanished... Read the Rest

The Beltway Establishment Still Doesn't Get It - Jay Cost [Weekly Standard Blog]

...The American political process is starting to break down because of major changes to the political economy of this country. For half a century after World War II, the economy grew at such an incredible pace that we could have low taxes, high social welfare benefits, and a low deficit. This was one of the major reasons why there could be bipartisanship. Economic growth bankrolled these “great” compromises. It had very little to do with the foresight, courage, or moderation of the pols in Washington. They were just riding the wave generated by the private sector.

But all that seems to be over now. For more than a decade (not just the Great Recession but going back to 2000), economic growth has been far below its postwar average, and too low to keep the old regime afloat. You can’t have low taxes, high spending, and low deficits when the economy can’t break 3 percent growth... Read the Rest

How the Recovery Went Wrong - Harvey Golub [Wall Street Journal]

...Fiscal policy, under the control of the president and his party, increased expenditures by about $700 billion per year since 2008 and launched a spending package of about $800 billion (along with various "targeted" temporary tax reductions), all of which resulted in an increase in national debt of over $5 trillion. In other words, we borrowed $5 trillion, for which we will pay interest for who knows how long, in order to stimulate the economy now.

There's little doubt that this level of spending—$5 trillion in an economy with an annual GDP of about $15 trillion—has a temporary stimulative effect. The question is, was it a good investment? For the most part the money was spent poorly and we will get very little future value from it. Billions were spent to reward favored constituencies like government employees and the auto industry. Billions more were spent on training programs that don't work and unemployment insurance that reduces incentives to actually find work. Little went toward building infrastructure or other assets that will help the nation create wealth over time... Read the Rest

Uncomfortable, Cringe-Inducing Video Of The Week


The East Is Crimson - William J. Dobson [Slate]

Harvard and China have one thing in common: They both consider themselves to be the center of the world. So, it was always inevitable that when the scandal that brought down Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai broke, the repercussions would be felt, somehow, in Cambridge. The connection, it turned out, was Bo Guagua, the son of the disgraced Communist official. The younger Bo was a graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In April, he stopped attending classes and was seen leaving his off-campus apartment with what appeared to be a security detail.

The fact that Bo Guagua was a couple months from his Harvard degree has sparked interest in the number of so-called princelings—the offspring of powerful Chinese Communist Party officials—attending elite U.S. universities. It’s actually not very rare. Xi Jinping, China’s vice president, is expected to become China’s top leader this fall. His daughter is a Harvard undergrad. Two recent top party leaders—Zhao Ziyang and Jiang Zemin—had grandchildren who attended Harvard. Jia Qinglin , one of China’s most senior officials, has a granddaughter at Stanford. In fact, according to Andrew Higgins and Maureen Fan, at least five of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body, have children or grandchildren who have studied in the United States... Read the Rest

Info-Graphic Of The Week

It's worth visiting the original, here, for some additional explanation and sourcing.

Senate Dems Betray Lilly - Andrew Stiles [Washington Free Beacon]

A group of Democratic female senators on Wednesday declared war on the so-called “gender pay gap,” urging their colleagues to pass the aptly named Paycheck Fairness Act when Congress returns from recess next month. However, a substantial gender pay gap exists in their own offices, a Washington Free Beacon analysis of Senate salary data reveals.

Of the five senators who participated in Wednesday’s press conference—Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), Patty Murray (D., Wash.), Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.)—three pay their female staff members significantly less than male staffers.

Murray, who has repeatedly accused Republicans of waging a “war a women,” is one of the worst offenders. Female members of Murray’s staff made about $21,000 less per year than male staffers in 2011, a difference of 35.2 percent... Read the Rest

Mitt Romney's Moment - Peggy Noonan [Wall Street Journal]

It's been a good week for Mitt Romney. The polls are up, he's just off a two-day swing through Connecticut and New York, where he hauled in big donors and hard money, and he swept the GOP primaries in Kentucky and Arkansas. On Tuesday Texas will put him over the top and make him, formally and officially, the Republican nominee for president.

Not everything worked—his big education speech Wednesday was wan and pallid—but he's having a moment. In a telephone interview, he reflected on the campaign, tracing his candidacy's upward momentum to an increased sense among voters that the country is on the wrong path and, perhaps, a growing sense that he's proved himself: "I can tell you that we went through those 37 or 38 contests and won the must-win states, and in some cases we started off 10 points behind. And we hustled, worked hard, and convinced the voters." This produced "the kind of track record that people say, 'You know, I think if Mitt can keep that up, in November we're going to see a new president.'"... Read the Rest

Big-Spending Obama Frames Himself As Scrooge - Editors [Washington Examiner]

"Do not buy into the B.S. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday. Carney went on to cite a MarketWatch column by Rex Nutting, purporting to show that "under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s."

Is this true? Is Obama, contrary to all conventional wisdom, actually the most fiscally restrained president since the 1950s? No. It is Nutting's analysis, which, in Carney's words, is "B.S."... Read the Rest

The Funniest Thing I Saw This Week

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

"Stories from the Obama Economy"

Mitt's latest web ad is killer.

Massachusetts Casinos: Another Reality Check

The first few paragraphs of an article in today's Globe are pregnant with implications for the Commonwealth's gaming future:

The worldwide casino company run by billionaire Boston native Sheldon Adelson will bypass the chance to build a casino in Massachusetts, saying the state’s plan to license up to three casinos and a slot parlor is going to dilute the market, according to a spokesman.

Adelson, who had spent nearly $500,000 lobbying lawmakers on the casino bill approved last November, is known for building lavish gambling resorts, some costing several billion dollars.

“With multiple facilities being proposed, it didn’t synch with our business model,’’ Ron Reese, a spokesman for Adelson’s company, Las Vegas Sands Corp., said Monday.

Let that sink in. This man spent half a million dollars lobbying for passage of a casino bill in Massachusetts, and now he has decided not to bother even trying to reap the fruits of those labors because the market is too crowded to make the effort worth his while. Golly. Who ever would have thunk it? (See here and here and here  for starters).

Plan your next vacation to... this place?

Mr. Adelson's calculus here is quite simple. Connecticut has a couple of mega-casinos ("destination resort casinos," as our Governor is wont to call them) that are both struggling to stay afloat, as are Rhode Island's less ambitious gaming establishments closer to our border. Un-vexed by that bit of unfortunate reality, we're about to throw up three of our own. New Hampshire is moving to grab a slice of the shrinking casino pie. As is New York State. The already-anemic market for "destination resort casinos," in other words, is already stretched so thin as to make one of the world's most successful (and aggressive) developers of "destination resort casinos" throw up his hands and seek opportunity elsewhere.

It's the same all over, which is why states that have gone down the casino road before us are populated not with glimmering "destination resort casinos," but with seedy strip-mall slots parlors and ramshackle mini-casinos looming over highway rest stops. Our own race to that particular bottom started the instant Governor Patrick touched pen to casino bill paper.

But never fear. The newly-minted Massachusetts Gaming Commission is aware of the problem. A bit further down in that same Globe article we find this:

Stephen Crosby, chairman of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, said the panel is thinking carefully about how much casino gambling the Massachusetts market can handle. The commission will tackle the question at a forum it is hosting in June.

“One of the things we have to do is re-look at what the market could bear, and see what is the economic prognosis for the model in the legislation [three resorts and a slot parlor] in today’s environment,’’ said Crosby. “We’re going to reconvene all of the people who have done projections and we’re going to say, ‘What do you think of your projections now?’ I think the casino legislation gives us the room to think carefully about the competitive environment and the size of the market and to act accordingly.’’

Now flash back to September 14 of last year, as the casino bill worked its way through the House of Representatives, and find this headline in the State House News: "House Rejects Cost-Benefit Analysis, Speeds Through Casino Bill Amendments."

It isn't hard to understand why the casino caucus in the legislature refused to hit pause long enough to conduct the cost-benefit analysis that the chair of the gaming commission now deems necessary fewer than nine months later. Such an analysis last year would have shown precisely the same things that the analysis will show this year: the New England gaming market is already saturated.

This truth - obvious even without a new analysis - has a number of serious implications: Developers are not going to be willing to pay the licensing fees our legislature predicted we'd collect.  The establishments that eventually do go up will fall far short of the "destination resort" standard. And most importantly, both jobs and revenues will come in woefully short of the pie-in-the-sky promises made by Governor Patrick and his allies in the legislature.

None of this is news. Mr. Adelson's decision this week only underscores what plenty of people have known all along. "Economic development" based on casinos is a fool's game.

Pioneer Event Tonight

A quick plug:

The invaluable Pioneer Institute is hosting a very affordable ($35) event tonight at the Hyatt Regency Boston, as part of its new "New Leaders" program. The speaker is David Paleologos of Suffolk polling. David, you may recall, was among the first to catch the scent of the Scott Brown upset over Martha Coakley, and (much to my personal consternation) his 2010 polls most accurately predicted the outcome of the Massachusetts gubernatorial election. David's thoughts on the state of the 2012 campaign will be interesting. If you are in the area this evening at 6:00, the event will be worth your time.

It goes without saying that the cause - supporting Pioneer in its work as the absolute fact-based reality check of last resort in Massachusetts and beyond, on issues from health care to education to transportation to state budgeting - is well worth $35 out of your wallet.

Here's the info from Pioneer:

Pioneer Institute New Leaders Event
Please join us for networking and cocktails on the patio, followed by an inside look at the polling process and a presentation on the latest polling numbers in the Presidential and Massachusetts Senate Races by David Paleologos.
David Paleologos is the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, where in partnership with WHDH-TV Boston (NBC News) and WSVN-TV Miami (FOX News), he conducts statewide polls and bellwether survey analyses in Massachusetts and elsewhere.

Tickets: $35; Free for Pioneer Members

To RSVP you must purchase tickets in advance here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=HWBRCTNNX3MYW. Questions to: bpatterson@pioneerinstitute.org.

Pioneer's New Leaders group is a network of individuals in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who are committed to ensuring that Massachusetts has world-class schools and health care, effective and limited government, and a business climate conducive to innovation and prosperity.
Tickets: $35; Free for Pioneer Members 
To RSVP you must purchase tickets in advance here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=HWBRCTNNX3MYW. Questions to: bpatterson@pioneerinstitute.org. 
Pioneer's New Leaders group is a network of individuals in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who are committed to ensuring that Massachusetts has world-class schools and health care, effective and limited government, and a business climate conducive to innovation and prosperity.

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