Boo! Ron Paul scares Fox News

Perhaps the best evidence yet that Ron Paul has a serious chance to win, place or show in New Hampshire is this: Fox News has decided to exclude Congressman Paul from a GOP candidates forum to be telecast two days before the New Hampshire primary.

The New Hampshire Republican Party has asked Fox News to reconsider that decision, but so far, no word from the flag-waving network.

“Dr. Paul has consistently polled higher in New Hampshire than some of the other candidates who have been invited,” said Paul campaign chairman Kent Snyder.

Ron Paul has been climbing in the polls and his recent fund-raising has surpassed all other GOP candidates, but Fox News stands firmly in favor of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq as part of an endless war on terror and they'd rather talk to candidates who don't call that viewpoint into question.

This was plainly visible back in May, during a GOP presidential debate in South Carolina (described in the America Wants To Know post, "Ron Paul's good question"). Brit Hume and Wendell Goler, who were questioning the candidates, cut off the discussion of whether it was a good idea for the U.S. to be building fourteen permanent bases and a Vatican-sized embassy in Iraq.

Fox would probably defend its decision to exclude Rep. Paul and other candidates by arguing that time is short and voters deserve to hear from the candidates with a real chance of winning.

That would be disingenuous.

New Hampshire has more independent voters than either Republicans or Democrats, and independent voters may choose to vote in either primary. It is entirely possible that polling understates Ron Paul's support substantially by focusing too tightly on voters who are registered Republicans.

But there is a more important reason to include Ron Paul in the candidates forum. More than 3,900 U.S. troops have lost their lives in Iraq, and 2007 was the worst year yet for U.S. casualties there. There is one GOP candidate who believes U.S. troops should be withdrawn promptly from that country, and the exclusion of that viewpoint from the forum amounts to an editorial statement that the idea is not to be taken seriously.

No news organization should be in the business of censoring the information voters receive about critically important issues, especially when the election is imminent and many voters are paying attention for the first time.

The Ron Paul campaign increasingly resembles an underground dissident movement in the Soviet Union -- people gathering in their living rooms, plotting to get their message out despite a state-controlled media that is staffed by government lackeys.

A week ago I would have thought that was a wild exaggeration. I would have defended Brit Hume's journalistic integrity and argued with anyone who said he was anything other than a serious professional deserving of the utmost respect.

Live and learn.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the 2005 America Wants To Know post, "Why the Iraq policy isn't working."

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Chelsea Clinton does Garbo

Today in Vinton, Iowa, Chelsea Clinton refused to answer questions from a nine-year-old reporter for Scholastic News.

"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately," Ms. Clinton said, "Even though I think you're cute."

AP political reporter Beth Fouhy noted that "an aide follows the former first daughter as she works the crowd, shushing reporters who approach her and try to ask any questions." The Clintons are "famously protective of their daughter's privacy," the AP reports, and "have taken pains to shield Chelsea from the harsh glare and rough edges of presidential politics."

She's twenty-seven years old.

She's a graduate of Stanford and Oxford.

She can't answer cream-puff little questions from political reporters in Iowa? From nine-year-olds?

She's a ditz, isn't she.

That's what they're hiding.

How would it look to the voters if Chelsea Clinton's head turned out to be emptier than a fifth of Jack Daniel's after a Sinatra concert? What would people say? "Well, we know she didn't inherit that brain from Bill, so...."

What would happen to Hillary Clinton's campaign if people stopped chanting about her intelligence and started listening to what she's saying?

On the assumption that the Clinton campaign only does what's best for the Clinton campaign, we can assume that it's best for the Clinton campaign to have a hard-and-fast rule that Chelsea Clinton does not talk to the press.

And that's not their only rule. "Onstage, Chelsea never speaks," the AP reports, "she stands next to her mother and applauds but utters not a single sentence and doesn't even say hello."

You know, Harpo Marx never spoke on stage again after a critic wrote that his performance was brilliant until he opened his mouth.

And Greta Garbo stopped talking to reporters after some early experiences with bad write-ups.

Is Chelsea Clinton the next Greta Garbo?

She might be.

The New York Times magazine published an obituary of Garbo in 1990 and quoted her biographer, John Bainbridge, who assessed her luminous quality this way:

"She may never have possessed a particle of intellectual power, but she had genius before the camera because she was guided by a secret, sublime, infallible instinct to do the right thing in the right way. So unerring was her instinct that it produced the illusion of a most subtle intelligence."

Hey, it's a compliment. Don't slash my tires.


Copyright 2007

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The strange case of Rachel Mellon

How creepy is this:

Ninety-seven-year-old Rachel Mellon, the widow of Paul Mellon and daughter-in-law of industrialist Andrew Mellon, donated the maximum $4,600 to John Edwards' campaign earlier this year.

So did the lawyer who holds Rachel Mellon's power of attorney, Alexander Forger.

Mr. Forger (we're not being sarcastic, that's really his name) also arranged for Mrs. Mellon to donate $495,000 to the Alliance for a New America, an independent "527" group recently set up by a former adviser to John Edwards named Nick Baldick. The Alliance is currently spending three-quarters of a million dollars running TV ads in Iowa in support of the Edwards campaign.

About a month ago, John Edwards' stump speech included a passage denouncing the capitalists of the Gilded Age, referring to "the Rockefellers and the Mellons and the Carnegies, all these people" who "used their money and power to dominate what was happening in the government and to dominate what was happening in the economy." Last Saturday, the Associated Press reports, the Mellons' name had been dropped from the speech, though Edwards insisted to reporters that there was no connection.

Creepy.

Someone who cares for Mrs. Mellon should explain to her that these nice young men are not her friends. Somebody should also check to see if she's been sold a reverse mortgage.


Copyright 2007

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Tackling the NFL

Tonight, the NFL game between the undefeated New England Patriots and the New York Giants, originally scheduled for national telecast only on the NFL Network, will be simulcast on CBS and NBC.

"We have taken this extraordinary step because it is in the best interest of our fans," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.

That's not quite the whole story.

The NFL has taken this extraordinary step because the United States government threatened to withdraw the league's antitrust exemption.

Last week, Senators Pat Leahy and Arlen Specter, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent the NFL a threatening letter. The senators warned the NFL that if it didn't agree to a free national telecast of the Patriots-Giants game, they might introduce legislation to withdraw the NFL's exemption to the nation's antitrust laws.

The senators also had their staff members "talking with" league officials over the Christmas holiday to change their minds.

"After weeks of insisting they wouldn't cave in," AP sports writer Rachel Cohen reported on Wednesday, "NFL officials did just that."

You might remember that Major League Baseball's heavyweights showed up for a Capitol Hill dog-and-pony show on steroids after lawmakers made noises about withdrawing baseball's antitrust exemption.

What exactly is antitrust, and why is everyone so anxious to be exempt from it?

"The antitrust laws give the government the power to prosecute and convict any business concern in the country any time it chooses," Ayn Rand wrote in 1962. She described antitrust as "a haphazard accumulation of non-objective laws so vague, complex, contradictory and inconsistent that any business practice can now be construed as illegal, and by complying with one law a businessman opens himself to prosecution under several others."

The folks at Microsoft might agree with that.

Ayn Rand saw the antitrust laws as a means for the "random little powerlusters of the moment" to seize and hold control over somebody else's productive enterprises. "The threat of sudden destruction, of unpredictable retaliation for unnamed offenses, is a much more potent means of enslavement than explicit dictatorial laws," she wrote. "It demands more than mere obedience; it leaves men no policy save one: to please the authorities; to please--in any issue, matter, or circumstance, for fear of an unknowable, unprovable vengeance."

Tonight, the NFL will give away its product on two broadcast networks because the "random little powerlusters" of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee threatened to withdraw the league's exemption from the laws Ayn Rand described.

"I think it was a smart move on their part," Senator Patrick Leahy told the Associated Press.

Is this a problem for the rest of us, or is it just a football game?

It's a problem. It's an abuse of power.

The NFL is a privately-owned business, and it is being coerced by the U.S. government to give away a product which it was trying to sell to Time Warner and Comcast. The government has no authority to interfere in the league's negotiations with cable companies. There's no law that prevents a private business from packaging its product and selling it to the highest bidder.

But under laws that are "vague, complex, contradictory and inconsistent," the NFL has reason to fear prosecution for something that it's doing somewhere.

Under the antitrust laws, virtually any successful business can be prosecuted for doing something somewhere.

That's really handy for any politician who wants to raise money for his or her re-election campaign, political action committee, or national party campaign committees.

"He does not have to exercise his power too frequently or too openly," Ayn Rand wrote, "he merely has to have it and let his victims know that he has it; fear will do the rest."

"We're happy to accommodate the NFL's request for a joint national simulcast of this potentially historic game to make it available to the widest possible audience," said Dick Ebersol of NBC Universal, another company that wants to keep members of the Senate Judiciary Committee happy.

That's the best thing about an abuse of government power. Its victims are always happy to accommodate it. They're very, very happy to avoid the alternative.


Copyright 2007

Source note: Ayn Rand, "Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason"; The Objectivist Newsletter; February, 1962. Reprinted in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought by Ayn Rand, available from Amazon.com, the Ayn Rand Institute's bookstore, and many other booksellers.

Editor's note: You might be interested in the 2005 post, "Barry Bonds' big asterisk."

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New York's workhouse program for seniors

What is wrong with the people of Greenburgh, New York? Has everybody lost their minds?

The Associated Press reported on Christmas, on Christmas, for God's sake, that the town of Greenburgh, New York, "is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes."

Greenburgh is in Westchester County, which has the nation's third-highest property taxes for homeowners. Audrey Davison, who is 76 years old, pays $12,000 a year in property taxes for the four-bedroom house where she has lived for 43 years. About $2,000 of that goes to the town of Greenburgh.

This is a picture of Audrey Davison and the walker she sometimes uses to get around when her arthritis and sciatica are bothering her:



That character on the left is Town Supervisor Paul Feiner, who says he'd like to have the discounted services of retired doctors, lawyers and accountants to help out with things that need doing around town. He'd also like the services of less-skilled people, and he promises he won't make anybody's grandma drive a snowplow.

What a guy, huh?

Feiner also mentioned that he'd like to get older people involved in the schools, to create "a more intergenerational feeling." To give the students the benefits of someone else's life experience? No, because if seniors were involved in the schools, "it might be easier to pass the school budgets."

Oh, pal, you haven't begun to see what can happen to your budgets.

Good people of Greenburgh, do not adjust your television sets. This message is coming to you from your friends in California.

You do not have to live like this.

You do not have to be slaves to your property tax assessor.

You do not have to stand by as the senior citizens in your community are forced to choose between selling their homes and working off their tax bills like serfs.

In 1978, California had this problem, and that's when the ballot initiative known as Proposition 13 was passed overwhelmingly by the voters. It stopped the annual reassessment of property and fixed the assessed values at 1975 levels, allowing just a 2 percent increase every year. The tax rate was cut sharply, down to 1 percent of assessed value. No matter how much property values appreciated, property could not be reassessed until it was sold.

Some people will tell you that the world came to an end in this state as a result of Prop 13. Generally they are people who work on the government's payroll.

People who don't work on the government's payroll appreciated Prop 13 because they weren't forced by skyrocketing property taxes to sell their homes. And they weren't forced into indentured servitude arrangements with the likes of Paul Feiner in order to keep them.

The argument can probably be made that $12,000 a year in property taxes for a four-bedroom house is a violation of the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. But don't waste your time in court.

Go right to your state legislature and explain to them what happened in California in 1978.

Tell them you want something like that before all the senior citizens in Greenburgh are forced to spend their summers trimming the trees on Paul Feiner's street.

We don't mean to pick on Paul Feiner personally. He probably feels that this plan to offer seniors the chance to work off their tax bills is a lot better than the alternative.

Nobody liked his Soylent Green plan at all.



Copyright 2007


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Ron Paul's incorporation problem

What is the incorporation doctrine, and will the Ron Paul campaign have a problem if journalists like Tim Russert (this Sunday on Meet the Press) ask Rep. Paul why he called it "the phony 'incorporation' doctrine, dreamed up by activist judges to pervert the plain meaning of the Constitution"?

The incorporation doctrine is the interpretation of the Constitution that says your rights under the Bill of Rights are guaranteed against infringement by the state governments the same way they're protected from the federal government.

"Huh?" you may be asking, "Wasn't it always that way?"

No. Before 1925, the Supreme Court said the Bill of Rights -- the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution -- did not apply to the states and did not limit the powers of the states in any way.

You probably find that hard to believe.

I certainly did.

That's why, in the course of writing the novel The 37th Amendment -- a thriller set in 2056, forty years after the due process clause is removed from the Constitution -- I did six years of research into the history of the incorporation doctrine.

And it's true:

-- In 1789, Rep. James Madison told the First Congress that a constitutional amendment was needed to guarantee that "No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or trial by jury in criminal cases," but that amendment was defeated in the Senate and never became part of the Constitution.

-- In 1804, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Abigail Adams, "While we deny that Congress have a right to controul the freedom of the press, we have ever asserted the rights of the states, and their exclusive right, to do so."

-- In 1900, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Maxwell v. Dow that the first ten amendments to the Constitution "were not intended to and did not have any effect upon the powers of the respective states," adding, "This has been many times decided."

Beginning in 1925 with the case of Gitlow v. New York, the justices of the Supreme Court began to rule that some parts of the Bill of Rights were so fundamental to the idea of due process of law that they were "incorporated" into the Fourteenth Amendment, which says the states cannot deny due process of law to any person.

The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, so everyone who voted on it was long gone when the Supreme Court developed its view that the Amendment's due process clause made selected parts of the Bill of Rights binding on the states. As time went on, the Court drifted further and further from the original understanding, and today hardly anyone knows that the Bill of Rights was intended to limit the powers of the federal government but not the states.

So does that mean Dr. Paul is correct and the incorporation doctrine is just flat wrong?

Beware. Making this argument in politics could land you on the cover of Career Suicide magazine.

That's because for the last eighty years, the American people have relied on Supreme Court decisions, and the incorporation doctrine, as a substitute for constitutional amendments.

For example, there never was a constitutional amendment prohibiting race or gender discrimination, or establishing a right of privacy, or banning the states from abridging freedom of speech. There never was a constitutional amendment guaranteeing all the rights you hear about on TV shows like "Law and Order." It's the incorporation doctrine that forces the states to respect the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury in criminal cases.

Without the incorporation doctrine, all those federal constitutional rights would vanish from our state courts.

On the other hand, the incorporation doctrine has become the Supreme Court's license to second-guess local and state governments on everything from nude dancing to the death penalty, from prayer in the schools to the pledge of allegiance.

Here's how it works: The Supreme Court decides that some rights are so fundamental to the concept of due process of law that they cannot be abridged by any state unless there is a compelling reason. A rational reason isn't good enough.

The justices pick and choose which rights are fundamental and which are not, which reasons are compelling and which are only rational.

Justice Felix Frankfurter complained in 1947 that this was "a merely subjective test."

Not only is it subjective, it is paralyzing to state and local governments.

Because of the incorporation doctrine, virtually any state law can be challenged in federal court. Virtually any police procedure can be shut down by the threat of a federal lawsuit. Virtually anything enacted by state voters through a ballot initiative can be delayed for years while the federal courts weigh claims of fundamental rights and compelling reasons.

That's certainly not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind. It's a flat contradiction of the Tenth Amendment, which says the powers not delegated to the national government by the Constitution are reserved to the states.

But we'll never get rid of the incorporation doctrine, and the judicial governance that goes with it, unless we amend the Constitution to secure all the rights we think we already have. We'll have to ban race and gender discrimination. We'll have to fight it out over privacy rights. We'll have to decide which of the rights in the Bill of Rights should never be abridged by any state, and which ones should be left to local discretion.

Until that happens, criticism of the incorporation doctrine could be answered by campaign ads showing governors shutting down newspapers and police breaking down doors. That's unlikely to help Ron Paul get elected president.


Copyright 2007

For more information:

The 37th Amendment is a thriller about murder and justice set in the year 2056, forty years after the U.S. Constitution has been amended to remove the guarantee of due process of law (and the incorporation doctrine with it).

Following the novel is an essay titled "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing: A History of the Incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment, Why It's a Problem, and How to Fix It." Complete source notes and a bibliography are included.

You can read the complete essay, and the first half of the novel, free online at www.The37thAmendment.com. Or pick up a copy of the book at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, other online booksellers, or by special order at any bookstore. Ask for ISBN 0595230830 or ISBN-13 9780595230839.

If you're reading this post at Ron Paul campaign headquarters, drop me a note at Susan@ExtremeInk.com. Copies of the book are on me. Save your money for radio ads in California.

You might also be interested in reading "The cat, the bag and Justice Scalia," "The Secret Life of the Bill of Rights," "A Retirement Plan for Sandra Day O'Connor," "Why There is No Constitutional Right to Privacy, and How to Get One," and "Cornered: The Supreme Court's Ten Commandments Problem."

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History catches up with Hillary Clinton

ABC News reports today that Hillary Clinton's campaign is setting up a new web site to attack Barack Obama.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

You can spend weeks and months analyzing what event or remark or personal quality is responsible for Senator Clinton's drop in the early-primary state polls and Senator Obama's corresponding rise.

But the answer might be more fundamental than that.

Did you know that black men got the vote in America fifty years before white women did?

Did you know that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony refused to support black male suffrage if the right to vote was not also guaranteed to women?

Back in 1870, when many states still banned African-Americans from serving on juries and marrying whites and holding public office -- this is after the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment -- the states passed a constitutional amendment that said they could not deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

But it was fifty years later, in 1920, before the states would agree to a constitutional amendment that said they could not deny or abridge the right to vote on account of sex.

It's possible that even if Hillary Clinton was an honest, trustworthy, experienced national leader with an actual record of accomplishment (instead of a "thirty-five year record" of "fighting" and "caring" and "working"), she would not be able to overcome the deep historical currents in America that favor men over women.

The Washington Post's Lois Romano has a story in today's paper about this gender gap in New Hampshire and Iowa. She reports the comments of men who say they would never -- no way -- vote for Hillary Clinton. One man said he disagreed with her policy on Iraq and also disliked her personality. He said she "wears the pants in that family," is "pushy," and should have left her husband after he was caught cheating on her. Then the man was asked which candidate he was planning to support.

The man turned away from the phone and asked his wife, "What's the colored fella's name? Obama. Yeah, Obama, I like him."

It's enough to drive Susan B. Anthony to drink.


Copyright 2007

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Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded file cabinet

Lieutenant Columbo burst into the offices of America Wants to Know today.

"I'm going to need back-up," he said. "There's been a fire in Dick Cheney's office."

Sigh. Actors.

America Wants To Know put Lieutenant Columbo on retainer some time ago to find out who leaked the story of the plot to blow up tunnels in New York. Ever since then, the lieutenant has been following Vice President Cheney the way New Year's follows Christmas.

"Look at this," Columbo said, tossing a folded newspaper on the desk.

It was the Denver Post from December 14, 2007. Circled in black Sharpie was a story about the sentencing of a pretty blonde named Italia Federici. The paper said she provided an entree to the Interior Department for lobbyist Jack Abramoff through her boyfriend, former deputy Interior Department secretary J. Steven Griles.

Her lawyer told the court that "each man used her for their own pleasure and gain."

The paper said J. Steven Griles is currently serving a ten-month prison sentence in connection with Jack Abramoff's Capitol Hill influence-peddling, while Abramoff himself is serving time on an unrelated fraud charge. The lobbyist's sentencing for influence peddling has been delayed several times while he helps prosecutors go after bigger fish.

Italia Federici was sentenced to two months in a halfway house for crimes including lying to the Senate committee investigating Abramoff's dealings with the Interior Department, but prosecutors recommended house arrest.

"The blonde is cooperating," Columbo said, pointing his cigar at the newsprint, "she's testifying against somebody." He picked up the paper. "'People close to the case have said Federici may be able to provide information about Norton, other Bush administration officials and members of Congress,'" he read, "That would be Gale Norton, the former Interior Secretary. And look at this."

He tossed another newspaper on the desk. It was the Washington Post from December 18, 2007.

"U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has come through for us again," he said. "He just ruled that the White House can't keep its visitor logs secret from the public."

The paper said the Bush administration had declared the Secret Service records of visitors to the White House and the vice president's residence to be presidential records, exempt from Freedom of Information requests. That decision came to light when the Washington Post won a court order in 2006 requiring Vice President Cheney's office to turn over visitor logs. Cheney refused, appealed, and the appellate court blocked enforcement of the order. Then the Washington Post dropped the case, and a group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed its own lawsuit for the records.

"Judge Lamberth said the visitor logs are not presidential records, they're agency records," Columbo said. "He also rejected the White House argument that releasing the logs would reveal the confidential deliberations of the executive branch."

The lieutenant flipped the pages of his notebook backwards.

"Before the visitor logs were locked up," Columbo said, "the Associated Press reported that on April 20, 2001, Jack Abramoff visited Cesar Conda at the White House. Cesar Conda was Vice President Dick Cheney's assistant for domestic policy. Five days after that meeting, one of Abramoff's lobbyist associates was appointed to the job of assistant secretary of labor. Patrick Pizzella is his name. He's still in that job, as a matter of fact. Cesar Conda is the lobbyist now, he's with a firm called Navigators, LLC."

Columbo closed the notebook and put it into the pocket of his trench coat. "I don't know how many times Jack Abramoff and his associates visited the vice president," he said. "I don't know how those visits line up with campaign donations or favorable rulings from government agencies. I don't know who met with Dick Cheney, or whether anybody wrote any memos about what was said. I don't know which government officials are the subject of the influence-peddling investigation, or what Jack Abramoff and the blonde are saying to federal prosecutors, or whether any search warrants are being drawn up based on their testimony. I just know one thing. There was a fire today in Dick Cheney's office."

We reminded the lieutenant that news reports said the fire was in the vice president's ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and that his working office is in the White House.

"This is why you pay me," Columbo said. "Dick Cheney's staff has its offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The fire did the heaviest damage to the office next to the ceremonial office, which is occupied by a woman named Amy Whitelaw. She's the vice president's political director."

At this point, America Wants to Know took the checkbook out of the desk drawer and gave the lieutenant everything he wanted for his investigation.

We'll let you know what we find out.



Copyright 2007


Source notes:

Associated Press, December 19, 2007; "Cheney's Office Damaged In Fire" by Terence Hunt

The Washington Post, December 18, 2007; "Secret Service Logs of White House Visitors Are Public Records, Judge Rules" by Michael Abramowitz

The Denver Post, December 14, 2007; "Go-between in Abramoff scandal sentenced" by Christa Marshall

Associated Press, July 8, 2006; "More White House Visits Disclosed"

The Washington Post, July 8, 2006; "New Links Between Abramoff, White House Logs Show 6 Appointments There" by Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi

Salon.com, November 18, 2005; "The greening of Italia Federici" by Michael Scherer

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Ron Paul's tea party

Don't be afraid to support Ron Paul for president.

He's not a kook.

Ron Paul wants to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq because what we are doing in Iraq isn't working, and it's long past time to recognize that and start doing something else.

Ron Paul wants to make Social Security and Medicare solvent by reducing what we spend on overseas military operations in more than a hundred countries around the globe and using that money to fund our own safety-net programs. Other politicians say our only options are tax increases and benefit cuts. Ron Paul has a different idea.

Ron Paul wants to reduce the size of the federal government, not just to save money, but because the more power the federal government has over every little detail of life, the less freedom we all have.

Ron Paul wants to enact fiscal and monetary policies to stop the creeping inflation that makes the cost of living go up faster than your salary does.

Ron Paul wants to abolish the IRS. As you scrape together your year-end statements and receipts to bring to your tax preparer, ask yourself if you'd like to hear more about that.

If you care about freedom and individual rights, you should vote for Ron Paul.

If you think George W. Bush has made the federal government too big and too powerful without making it more competent, you should vote for Ron Paul.

If you'd like to hear some fresh ideas for solving problems, you should vote for Ron Paul.

Don't let anybody scare you off.

Don't fall for the argument that a vote for Ron Paul is a wasted vote. If you agree with Ron Paul and you vote for somebody else, no one will know you exist, and you'll never get the policies you want. Cast your vote for the candidate you honestly support. Even if he doesn't win, the other candidates will know that you're alive, that you vote, and that you support those views.

Today, in honor of the anniversary of the Boston tea party, supporters of Ron Paul are trying to raise an attention-getting chunk of money, the kind of money that makes consultant-shaped candidates put their fists through drywall.

Get in on the fun at https://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate/.


Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Ron Paul's good question" and "Ron Paul's military secret."

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Who's afraid of the DGA?

Wednesday's Los Angeles Times had a front-page story reporting what you've already heard if you read America Wants To Know (see "The painful politics of the Writers Guild"): working writers are angry at Writers Guild of America, West, president Patric Verrone and chief negotiator David Young over their decision to allow negotiations to "drift into less important issues" like WGA jurisdiction over reality TV shows.

"There is a growing group of writers who are burning up over this," said one writer who asked not to be identified.

The Times also reports that writers are very worried the Directors Guild of America will begin negotiations on its own contract and strike a deal on new-media revenue, a deal that will undercut the WGA's position.

The directors "are expected to be more flexible on terms and more sympathetic to studio arguments," the Times said. "In contrast to the writers, directors and studios have historically enjoyed a more cordial relationship and far less contentious labor negotiations."

Cordiality is nice, but it's not the reason the DGA is more flexible.

The DGA is more flexible because the directors are never going to walk out on strike and shut down Hollywood the way writers and actors do.

Why not, you ask?

Well, it's like this.

How many people can take a stack of blank white paper and turn it into an entertaining script?

Not too many.

How many people can stand in front of a camera and deliver an audience that will pay ten dollars a ticket, or sit through commercials, to watch them on a screen?

Very, very few.

How many people can direct?

Millions of people.

Cinematographers can do it. Editors can do it. Actors can do it. Producers and producers' girlfriends and financiers and financiers' girlfriends and studio executives and their college-age children and countless other people can do it, or think they're doing it while the cinematographers and editors and actors quietly carry them.

Only once, in the 71-year history of the DGA, did the directors go on strike.

They were on strike exactly five minutes before settling.

The Writers Guild is pleading with the DGA not to cut a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers until after the writers have a new contract, but the WGA is dreaming. The directors like to have their contract negotiations finished up early, before anyone starts making contingency plans to replace them.

You saw "All About Eve," right?


Copyright 2007

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George Mitchell: "We're all human"

It was a long time ago, and we're moving forward.

That's a summary of former Senator George Mitchell's report on steroid use in baseball.

"We're all human, we all make mistakes," the senator told a journalist at his press conference today.

Senator Mitchell said it's his recommendation that everyone look to the future and not at the past.

As we said in May of 2006: "The former Senate Majority Leader is not the guy you call if you want to know what happened. He's the guy you call if you know what happened and you don't want anybody else to find out."

Reporters who glanced quickly at the report said it appeared to be very critical of the players' union but not of the commissioner or team executives. That might have something to do with who signed the senator's check, but maybe we're just cynical.

Unfortunately for Major League Baseball and Commissioner Bud Selig, the Mitchell Report is years too late to contain the steroid scandal to a New York City press conference. Barry Bonds is in the record books and under indictment, two San Francisco Chronicle reporters just sold the film rights to their book about steroids in baseball, and Mark McGwire was rejected by baseball writers when he tried to jab his way into the Hall of Fame.

There are federal crimes and constitutional rights and collective bargaining agreements all standing in the way of confessions and investigations, so the truth will never be known beyond a reasonable doubt.

But the statistics and the videotapes stand silently in front of all of us.

If the fans care, the players will pay a price in reputation and endorsement deals.

If the fans don't care, then everybody made a clean getaway with the cash.

We'll all find out together.

By the way, Alex Rodriguez finally signed a $275-million contract with the Yankees today, the same day the Mitchell report came out (and didn't have his name in it). Judge for yourself whether we were right in the earlier post, "Alex Rodriguez and the big hurry."


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Barry Bonds' big asterisk" and "Barry Bonds and the Constitution."

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The painful politics of the Writers Guild

It's a lot easier to be a leftist when you're not on strike.

Contract talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke off Friday night in a furious argument over alleged future profits from the Internet and proposed union jurisdiction over reality show writers.

You have to feel for the writers who slogged for years through the morass of the television business and then, against all odds, were finally able to get a show on the air -- only to be asked to walk out on strike, with no guarantee that their series will go back into production when the strike finally ends.

Show business is so hard.

It doesn't make it any easier that these writers are being asked to stay on strike until the AMPTP grants the WGA jurisdiction over the writers of reality shows. Solidarity is nice in theory, but it's hard to lose your house for the sake of people you will never bump into in a restaurant. I mean, never.

Then there's this myth that the Internet is spitting gold coins into the pockets of everybody but the talent.

"I'm not going to be the chairman of the negotiating committee that gives away the Internet," the WGA's John F. Bowman told the Los Angeles Times, "There's an enormous burden of history here."

Fair enough, let's talk about history.

Back in the early 1990s, the Los Angeles Times thought it could set up a closed online network that would make the paper's content available only to paid subscribers who dialed in and provided a password. It wasn't long before the paper shut down the service and surrendered to the market, which expressed no interest in the content unless it was free on the open Internet.

In September, the New York Times ended the two-year experiment known as Times Select. It turned out that Internet users would rather skip Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman than pay a subscription fee to read them.

The Wall Street Journal still charges for full access to its web site, but parent company Dow Jones has been sold and you can expect that to change before too long, if it hasn't already.

Where is all this money everybody thinks the Internet is generating?

It's not in the newspaper business, which just had what Washington Post Company CEO Donald Graham called "not a good year for anybody." Industry executives continue to profess optimism about Internet profits in the future, but the numbers support a different interpretation: McClatchy's head of online operations reports year-to-date growth in ad revenue of just 0.8 percent, despite a 23 percent jump in unique visitors.

How often do you click on one of those ads?

Apparently not often enough to keep AOL's revenue from declining 38 percent and dragging Time Warner's third-quarter profits underwater. The company told Wall Street analysts that online ad growth was slowing and would continue to slow through the first quarter of next year.

And how's that Internet gold mine working out for the music industry? Is everybody getting rich off those peer-to-peer downloads? Have you stopped by Tower Records on Sunset lately? Plenty of free parking. No store, though.

There's certainly nothing wrong with the Writers Guild trying to establish a framework for paying writers when their work is used in new media. The question is, at what cost to members, and at what cost to the Guild itself?

How long will working writers sacrifice themselves on the altar of solidarity?

Maybe forever.

That's too bad.

Even Mikhail Gorbachev knew when it was time to sign with Louis Vuitton.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: The Los Angeles Times' excellent coverage of the WGA strike can be found here. You might also want to bookmark this link for the L.A. Times blog of strike news. Here are links to Friday night's statements from the AMPTP and from the WGA. Here's the story from the Wall Street Journal. All free of charge, of course.

Garden of Eden: First in the Nation Primary

Mitt Romney gave a speech on Thursday about religion. He discussed the importance of religion in American life, but he didn't discuss his Mormon faith.

He wants us to know that he's a person of faith, but he doesn't want to tell us if he believes the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.

Mike Huckabee told reporters Thursday that it's healthy for people to discuss religion in the public square, but he refused to answer specific questions about his beliefs.

He wants us to know that he's a Baptist minister, but he doesn't want to tell us if he thinks women should be excluded from serving in a church's pastoral leadership, or whether it is appropriate to teach creationism in public schools.

It's a dicey business, courting the evangelical Christian vote. Last month, Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher lost his re-election bid despite a last-minute order to display the Ten Commandments in the state Capitol, or maybe because of it.

You can blame the U.S. Supreme Court for all of this. Evangelical Christians might never have coalesced into a political force if the justices hadn't invented the idea that the First Amendment applies to state governments the same way it applies to the federal government. If not for those rulings incorporating the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment, which began in 1925 and continue to the present day, there would never have been any federal court rulings taking prayer out of the public schools, or banning religious displays at public courthouses, or -- here's the big one -- telling the states that they no longer have the power to ban abortion.

People who agreed with those decisions didn't mind that the justices stretched the interpretation of the Constitution. But other people were incensed that the longstanding powers of their state governments, guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment, were usurped by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That's why for roughly thirty years now Americans have been fighting like pit bulls over nominations to the federal bench. Religious conservatives stand ready to deliver money and votes to a presidential candidate who shares their religious views and will appoint judges who see things their way.

Hence, the Garden of Eden primary.

Happy?

No?

Read "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing" and find out what to do about it.


Copyright 2007


Editor's note: "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing" is a lengthy and carefully documented essay (because if you're going to say the Supreme Court has been wrong for eighty years, you had better have your ducks in a row). Click here for a much shorter version. You might also be interested in reading "A Retirement Plan for Sandra Day O'Connor", "Cornered: The Supreme Court's Ten Commandments Problem," and "The Cat, the Bag, and Justice Scalia."

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Bush to Little Red Hen: "Pay up."

Here's the only thing you need to know in order to understand President Bush's plan to help "homeowners in need":

Five years.

The president wants to freeze the low, teaser interest rates on adjustable-rate loans for another five years.

That would move the unpleasantness past the re-election of Rudy Giuliani, or if we're lucky, Ron Paul.

Did you take out a fixed-rate mortgage a few years ago? Did you pay higher fees and make higher payments than you would have if you'd signed up for one of the heavily promoted adjustable rate loans? Did you say to yourself or your spouse, "This is the smart move because in three years, those teaser rates expire and you get hit with much higher payments"?

Did you throw out the daily mailings from the Hipsy Pipsy Loan Company, the ones that offered to cut your payments in half and give you a great big check that you could use to remodel your kitchen?

Well, sucker, President Bush has a message for you.

It's not printable here, but he has a message for you.

Are you a first-time home buyer? Have you spent the last three years watching the prices of ordinary tract houses skyrocket while people in line at the supermarket chatted about last night's episode of "Flip This House" on the Home and Garden Television network?

Maybe you thought the market would come back to earth when the interest rates went up and all those homes with new Viking ranges and granite showers went into foreclosure.

Well, sucker, President Bush has a message for you, too.

Maybe you bought a house you couldn't afford a few years ago, signing up for a loan with a giant balloon payment or interest rate hike waiting three years down the road. Maybe you opened all those letters from the Hipsy Pipsy Loan Company and sucked the equity out of the property as fast as you could get the papers signed. Maybe, while other people wondered how you were paying for a new car or an expensive vacation, you wrote checks on your home equity line of credit and made your artificially low monthly mortgage payments while the clock ticked toward the day the piper would demand to be paid.

President Bush has a message for you, too: Congratulations, you're our winner!

If he's a Republican, I am a green tree frog.


Copyright 2007

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Mike Huckabee: Creationist

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's run of glowing press coverage ended abruptly in Iowa on Tuesday when somebody asked him if his belief in creationism extended to requiring the teaching of creationism in public schools.

The former Arkansas governor got a little testy. He said he has advocated that creative arts and math and science should be taught in schools, and no one ever asks about that. He said he doesn't understand why everyone keeps asking him about teaching creationism.

Maybe it's because creative arts and math and science train young minds to think, and creationism trains them not to.

That might be it.

Creationism, the belief that the biblical story of creation is literally true, is an attack on rational thought and on education itself.

Read "Why 'intelligent design' isn't just another theory" and see if you don't agree.

Mike Huckabee told reporters Tuesday that he believes God created the heavens and the Earth. "I wasn't there when he did it," the candidate said, "so how he did it, I don't know."

It's no joke to tell children in a public school that what they learn in science class may be wrong if it conflicts with the literal text of the Bible. It's not cute to present a religious version of events and the accumulated knowledge of human civilization as equally valid, or to teach that no one can really know because none of us were personally there.

Here's a mystery of the universe to ponder: Why do people keep saying Mike Huckabee is funny?


Copyright 2007

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