Tag: Newt Gingrich

Categories
judiciary U.S. Constitution

Liar in Chief

When you hear the word “unprecedented,” reach for your … dictionary.

As I’ve noted before, the word no longer sports its traditional meaning.

On Monday, President Barack Obama commented on the possibility that the Supreme Court would strike down the 111th Congress’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by saying that such a move would constitute “an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Yesterday, a three-​judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Justice Department to clarify the president’s statement. By Thursday.

Does the president — who happens to have taught constitutional law — really think the courts do not have the power to review and disqualify law on the basis of constitutionality?

As reported on CBS News’s Crossroads site, “Overturning a law of course would not be unprecedented — since the Supreme Court since 1803 has asserted the power to strike down laws it interprets as unconstitutional.”

I’d like to take a moment and thank the president … for help making the Constitution a live topic of conversation these days. But there’s something worrisome here. The president knows better. This is even worse than, say, Newt Gingrich totally messing up his comments on “activist judges,” making hash of law and interpretation. This is a president with a Harvard-​established reputation on the subject saying something patently untrue.

He could only have been “fibbing.” And hoping to get away with it … apparently on the supposition that Americans are so miseducated we wouldn’t even notice.

We noticed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

The Forgotten Scandal

Newt Gingrich is taking a pounding over his personal life — ABC’s Nightline broadcast a lengthy interview with one of his ex-​wives yesterday. Before that, Newt was pilloried for his work for Freddie Mac, the government-​created mortgage malefactor, and pummeled with ethics charges from his days as Speaker.Newt Gingrich

Yet, nary a word has been uttered about what I consider his biggest scandal — and one that involves Democrats coming to Newt’s aid to ensure his triumph over their own party’s challenger to retain his Washington perch.

Back in 1989, as the new House GOP Whip, Gingrich helped push through a massive pay raise, hiking congressional salaries by 40 percent. Gingrich and GOP leaders assured Democrats that Republicans would not attack them for voting to grab the extra dough. Democratic leaders returned the favor.

In a bipartisan love-​fest, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown and Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater went so far as to sign a written agreement foreswearing criticism of the hike “in the coming campaigns.”

“The gag rule,” as Utah’s Deseret News dubbed it, “was accompanied by notice from the party officials that any breach could result in censure from a candidate’s own party and a cutoff of party campaign aid for non-incumbents.”

When Democrat challenger David Worley began to hit Gingrich “morning, noon and night” over the pay raise, the Democratic Party committees — in what the Orlando Sentinel called “a breathtaking move that would make you wonder if this is a free country” — cut Worley’s campaign off.

Gingrich prevailed by a mere 974 votes … and went on to collect his pay increase.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

Firing People for Fun & Profit

After winning the New Hampshire primary last night, Mitt Romney charged that “some desperate Republicans” have joined forces with President Obama “to put free enterprise on trial.”

Newt Gingrich calls Romney a “vulture capitalist” and blasted his work as CEO of Bain Capital as “bankrupting companies and laying off employees.” Rick Perry snidely attacked Mitt for “all the jobs that he killed,” adding “I’m sure he was worried he would run out of pink slips.”
Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney
A Wall Street Journal report quoted Jon Huntsman: “What is clear is [Mr. Romney] likes firing people.”

So, did Romney say “I like being able to fire people”? What he said was, “I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

I, too, like being able to fire companies who don’t adequately supply the services I demand.

Yet, what about Romney’s work at Bain Capital?

Bain Capital took firms having trouble making a profit and attempted to make them more profitable. Sometimes that meant cutting back the work force to avoid bankruptcy, where everyone would lose their jobs. Sometimes it meant cutting up a company and its assets and selling them to entrepreneurs who could do better.

Not all businesses succeed. No surprise, then, that politicians used to spending a seemingly unlimited supply of other people’s money regardless of performance fail to understand this simple reality.

To his credit, Ron Paul defended Romney, saying of Gingrich, Huntsman and Perry, “I think they’re wrong. They are either just demagoguing or they don’t have the vaguest idea how the market works.”

Or both.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access

Easy to Be Hard

Politicians often try to pass laws making it more difficult for citizens to petition issues onto the ballot, claiming that it’s too easy to gather all those signatures.

Speaking of easy, that’s awfully easy for politicians to say.

If they’re major party candidates, Democrats or Republicans, they usually don’t have to come up with any voter signatures at all to place themselves on the ballot. Even in the few states that require major party candidates to gather signatures, the numbers are nominal, a few hundred at most.

Funny, we certainly don’t hear former House Speaker Newt Gingrich or Texas Governor Rick Perry prattling on about how simple and carefree it is to gather thousands of signatures. That’s because presidential ballot access is sometimes much more difficult and both candidates just failed to collect the required 10,000 valid signatures to gain a spot on the Virginia ballot as Republican presidential candidates.

To place a statutory issue on the 2010 ballot in Nevada, a state sporting about a quarter of Virginia’s population, required 97,000 signatures. That’s ten times more than demanded of Gingrich and Perry. To place a statutory measure on the Arizona ballot requires 172,809 signatures; a constitutional amendment needs 259,213.

Governor Perry is challenging Virginia’s unconstitutional law banning non-​residents from helping collect signatures. I hope he wins. But maybe the best way to prevent legislators from passing laws that make petitioning too difficult is to make those laws apply to them and how they get on the ballot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture incumbents

Frankly Speaking

Representative Barney Frank’s recently announced retirement is not exactly a shock. His sense of timing may be better than most of his incumbent colleagues. Perhaps he smells something repellent slouching towards Washington: a secondary bust, another kick in the economy’s collective pants.

Funny, his timing had been a little slow soon after the Crash of 2008, when he protested that it hadn’t been he who had been pushing cheap mortgages and a policy of lax mortgage standards — oh no! — or he who had just recently proclaimed Fannie and Freddie to be doing just fine, thank you.

The New York Times, dubbing him a “top liberal,” cited redistricting as the major spark for his decision. Then it went on to quote Rep. Frank as blaming Newt Gingrich and the “conservative news media” for uglying up the tone in Washington, calling the present ideological climate a “bitter divide.”

Of course, before the Internet and Fox News, a near-​monolithic liberal slant dominated major media. Adding an offsetting bias might have made it tougher for Frank, but surely the new toughness reflects actual American opinion better than the previous left-​leaning cultural hegemony ever did.

Frank amusingly claims he has, now, but “one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.” I bet he tweets soon.

Summarizing the advantages of not running for re-​election, he explained that he would no longer “have to try to pretend to be nice to people” he doesn’t like.

No more Mr. Nice Guy? No more Mr. Clean?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.