Commentary

Rich Wall Street donors abandoning Democrats

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Story here in the leftist Washington Post. (H/T Wes Widner, ECM)

Excerpt:

A revolt among big donors on Wall Street is hurting fundraising for the Democrats’ two congressional campaign committees, with contributions from the world’s financial capital down 65 percent from two years ago.

[…]In reviewing the FEC records, The Post analyzed fundraising data for New York City and its suburbs in New Jersey, on Long Island and north of the city — a region that had become an outsized source of Democratic campaign cash. In the 2008 cycle, 28 percent of the two committees’ itemized individual contributions came from the region. Manhattan alone accounted for 20 percent.

In this election cycle, the percentage raised in New York is less than 10 percent of the total.

More than 600 regular donors from the New York area — whose four- and five-figure checks added up to $10 million for the DSCC and DCCC in 2006 and 2008 — have so far abandoned their effort to retain the Democratic majorities.

Take Jamie Dimon, the head of J.P. Morgan Chase, who is known for his close relationship with President Obama.

In 2006 and 2008, he donated $65,000 to the Democratic committees. This election cycle, he has not contributed at all to the DSCC or DCCC. At the end of March, however, he gave $2,000 to the campaign of Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who is seeking to claim Obama’s former Senate seat. A spokeswoman for Dimon noted that he has given to individual Democratic candidates, just not to the campaign committees.

Other prominent Democratic donors who have not given to the Democrats this year include Leon Black, a co-founder of the $53 billion New York-based Apollo Global Management a private-equity firm, and his wife, Debra Black. The couple gave more than $200,000 to Democratic congressional committees over the previous two election cycles but have not given this year, according to the latest disclosure documents. A spokesman for Apollo declined to comment.

Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive and chairman of Goldman Sachs, has not donated to the Democrats, either, after giving $50,000 in the previous two cycles. A company spokesman declined to comment.

The problem has been particularly acute for Senate Democrats, whose previous DSCC chairman, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), had strong connections to Wall Street.

Wow, bet you never knew that big Wall Street bankers were all Democrats, did you?

News

Governors Jan Brewer and Linda Lingle making news in Arizona and Hawaii

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Normally, I talk about Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn or Sarah Palin a lot. Or maybe Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman. But this week, the Republican governors of Arizona and Hawaii are in the news.

Gov. Jan Brewer
Gov. Jan Brewer

Here’s the story from the Washington Times about Jan Brewer.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration sued Tuesday to stop Arizona’s new immigration law in a move that escalates President Obama’s involvement in the thorny issue and stacks him against a majority of Americans who support the law.

The challenge, which had been expected for weeks, drew harsh rebukes from Republicans and even some Democrats who said it is “distracting” from the more serious issues of border security and could upset Mr. Obama’s call for Congress to act on a broad immigration bill that would legalize illegal immigrants and rewrite the rules for legal immigration.

In the challenge, Justice Department attorneys said Arizona’s law violates the Constitution by trying to supersede federal law and by impairing illegal immigrants’ right to travel and conduct interstate commerce. They argued that only the federal government can write immigration rules.

“Diverting federal resources away from dangerous aliens such as terrorism suspects and aliens with criminal records will impact the entire country’s safety,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in announcing the lawsuit. “Setting immigration policy and enforcing immigration laws is a national responsibility. Seeking to address the issue through a patchwork of state laws will only create more problems than it solves.”

[…]Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said that if the Obama administration was consistent in its argument over patchwork immigration laws it would sue to stop so-called sanctuary cities, which generally protect the identities of illegal immigrants.

“The truth is the Arizona law is both reasonable and constitutional,” she said. “It mirrors substantially what has been federal law in the United States for many decades. Arizona’s law is designed to complement, not supplant, enforcement of federal immigration laws.”

[…]Mrs. Brewer, a Republican who is running for election this year, has hired outside attorneys to defend the law rather than rely on Terry Goddard, Arizona’s attorney general, who had opposed the law and who is likely to be the Democratic challenger to Mrs. Brewer in November.

Illegal immigration costs 113 billion dollars per year.

Gov. Linda Lingle

And here’s the story from CNS News about Linda Lingle. (H/T Wes Widner)

Excerpt:

Hawaii’s governor ended months of speculation by vetoing contentious civil unions legislation that would have granted gay, lesbian and opposite-sex couples the same rights and benefits that the state provides to married couples.

Republican Gov. Linda Lingle’s action on Tuesday came on the final day she had to either sign or veto the bill, which was approved by the Legislature in late April.

The measure would have made Hawaii one of six states that essentially grant the rights of marriage to same-sex couples without authorizing marriage itself. Five other states and the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage.

Lingle said voters should decide the fate of civil unions, not politicians.

“The subject of this legislation has touched the hearts and minds of our citizens as no other social issue of our day,” she said. “It would be a mistake to allow a decision of this magnitude to be made by one individual or a small group of elected officials.”

Republican women making a difference.

News

Can government create jobs more efficiently than private businesses?

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Consider this story from CNS News.

Excerpt:

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government helped pay the home air conditioning bills for more than 11,000 dead people, 1,100 federal employees, and 725 convicts in fiscal year 2009.

The payments were made by a $5 billion program known as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). LIHEAP is designed to provide federal assistance, administered by the states, to help people pay the energy bills to heat their homes in the winter and cool them in the summer. The funds are disbursed by the Department of Health and Human Services and are distributed based on a formula that takes into account a state’s weather and the size of its low-income population.

The GAO examined the LIHEAP programs in seven states: Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and New Jersey.  The agency found evidence of fraud in each state.

“Our analysis of LIHEAP data revealed that the program is at risk of fraud and providing improper benefits in all seven of our selected states,” reported the GAO.  “About 260,000 applications–9 percent of households receiving benefits in the selected states–contained invalid identity information, such as Social Security numbers, names, or dates of birth.”

Think that’s an isolated event?

Consider this list of government spending projects from Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government. (H/T The Blog Prof)

Excerpt:

  • $5 million to create a geothermal energy system for a shopping mall in Tennessee. The mall is over half empty of tenants and has had falling shopper attendance for years *
  • $1.57 million to Penn State University study fossils in Argentina *
  • $100,000 to a puppet theater in Minnesota *
  • $2 million to build a replica railroad tourist trap in Carson City, Nev. *
  • A boat cruise company in Chicago got almost $1 million to “combat terrorism” *
  • $500,000 went to Ariz. State Univ. to study ant genetics *
  • Another $450,000 went to Uinv. of Arizona to study ants *
  • Almost $400,000 went to Univ. of New York to pay students to drink beer and smoke marijuana for a study there *
  • $219,000 to the Nat’l Institute of Health to study if young people “hook-up” after getting drunk *
  • $210,000 to the Univ. of Hawaii to study bees *
  • $700,000 to crab fishermen in Oregon to pay for lost crab pots *
  • $5,000 a person tax rebate if you buy a new electric golf cart (Wall Street Journal)
  • Up to $1 million went to prisoners in $250 stimulus checks (FoxNews)
  • $54 mil to a New York Indian tribe to run its casino (New York Post)
  • $1 billion for a power plant in Mattoon, Illinois that is based on speculative science and may not even work **
  • $15 million to back-road bridges that get little traffic in Wisconsin **
  • $800,000 for a practically unused airport in Pennsylvania **
  • $3.4 million for an animal walk way under a road in Florida **
  • $1.15 million to install a guard rail for a lake that doesn’t even exist in Oklahoma **
  • $10 million to renovate a rail station that has stood unused for a decade **
  • $578,000 to battle homelessness in Union, New York even though the town says they have no homeless people there **
  • $233,000 to the Univ. of Calif. to study why Africans vote… in Africa ***
  • $2 million to build a new fire house in a Nevada town that has no firemen ***
  • North Carolina schools got $4.4 million for literacy and math coaches… to teach their teachers! ***
  • $54 million for a railroad project in Napa Valley went to a minority-owned company that then hired a local construction company for half the price, pocketing the rest ***
  • A California company was given $15 million in stimulus money to monitor water quality in a stream it was under indictment for polluting previously***

I’m sure that no small business has money to waste on boondoggles like these – but they are being taxed to pay for the government to do it! And that leaves less money for them to create jobs.

Obama’s spending spree is about one thing and one thing alone – buying votes from the constituencies that voted for him so that they’ll vote for him again. That’s why public sector employment, public sector salaries and public sector benefits are all up during this massive recession, while millions of jobs have been lost in the private sector.

Economics in One Lesson

Perhaps it is time to review Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, chapter 4, entitled “Public Works Mean Taxes”.

Excerpt:

Therefore, for every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else. We can see the men employed on the bridge. We can watch them at work. The employment argument of the government spenders becomes vivid, and probably for most people convincing. But there are other things that we do not see, because, alas, they have never been permitted to come into existence. They are the jobs destroyed by the $10 million taken from the taxpayers. All that has happened, at best, is that there has been a diversion of jobs because of the project. More bridge builders; fewer automobile workers, television technicians, clothing workers, farmers.

Excerpt that the government, lacking a profit motive, is never as efficient as private business is in spending money – government wastes money that it never earned in the first place.

And consider Chapter 5 as well, entitled “Taxes Discourage Production”.

In our modern world there is never the same percentage of income tax levied on everybody. The great burden of income taxes is imposed on a minor percentage of the nation’s income; and these income taxes have to be supplemented by taxes of other kinds. These taxes inevitably affect the actions and incentives of those from whom they are taken. When a corporation loses a hundred cents of every dollar it loses, and is permitted to keep only fifty-two cents of every dollar it gains, and when it cannot adequately offset its years of losses against its years of gains, its policies are affected. It does not expand its operations, or it expands only those attended with a minimum of risk. People who recognize this situation are deterred from starting new enterprises. Thus old employers do not give more employment, or not as much more as they might have; and others decide not to become employers at all. Improved machinery and better-equipped factories come into existence much more slowly than they otherwise would. The result in the long run is that consumers are prevented from getting better and cheaper products to the extent that they otherwise would, and that real wages are held down, compared with what they might have been.

There is a similar effect when personal incomes are taxed 50, 60 or 70 percent. People begin to ask themselves why they should work six, eight or nine months of the entire year for the government, and only six, four or three months for themselves and their families. If they lose the whole dollar when they lose, but can keep only a fraction of it when they win, they decide that it is foolish to take risks with their capital. In addition, the capital available for risk-taking itself shrinks enormously. It is being taxed away before it can be accumulated. In brief, capital to provide new private jobs is first prevented from coming into existence, and the part that does come into existence is then discouraged from starting new enterprises. The government spenders create the very problem of unemployment that they profess to solve.

George W. Bush cut taxes in his first term and created 1 million NEW JOBS. Government spending is a job killer. In fact, you can even see it failing today in Japan: Did massive government spending succeed or fail in Japan?