It will be signed into law and I am pretty sure it will not be repealed, even if the GOP gets a majority in both chambers in November. The reason is simple, and one that I have alluded to in this blog in the past: powers once given to the bureaucracy can never be taken away; they are self perpetuating and build their own defense mechanisms. The bill creates 16000 new IRS agent jobs (in my last post I mentioned 12000 but new CBO numbers correct that), 500 different boards and commissions, and a whole lot of perpetually adolescent 26 year olds. That is a mighty tough combination to beat, no matter who is in the majority. And given that most GOP members really do not believe in the principle of smaller government, I am confident that there will be no repeal.

Welcome to the full employment act for federal bureaucrats, insurance industry lawyers, and healthcare executives.

Those are two lesser known but yet vitally important numbers to keep in mind in this ongoing healthcare debate as those two figures underscore a centrality that runs through any ‘reforms’ that come from the intellectual Left:: expansion of bureaucracy.

The latest version of the national healthcare plan allocates and additional ten billion dollars to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for the purpose of enforcing the individual mandates in the law. This money will be used for hiring twelve thousand additional  highly paid IRS enforcers, extra audits, surveillance tools, office space, and junkets to bureaucratic conferences. It is all for a good cause, I am sure; after all, why shouldn’t the government want to make sure that I have health insurance, and of the proper kind? If all that important sounding paternalism involves hiring more civil servants, so what, right? I mean only the wrong doers need to fear big government…as successive bevy of control freaks of both parties keep telling us.

Euphoria, hope, or anger aside, there is very little chance that the healthcare overhaul will be repealed even if the GOP returns to strong majorities in both chambers this November. It is an axiom of democratic politics-and of human nature-that power and purse once voted to the government are never taken back. If anything, the powers given to the IRS in this bill will soon be used by other federal agencies to meddle more into private lives on the pretext of some form of security or another. Liberals who champion the healthcare bill will soon thus rue the unintended consequences of their ‘reform'.

Unintended but hardly unforeseen. Moderately intelligent people well know that individual freedoms are never lost in a representative democracy unless the trade-off includes promises of social security, economic security, or national security. I use the term ‘promises’ because the reality is always different, if history is any guide: Ben Franklin said it well when he warned us that those who trade a little liberty for a little extra safety deserve neither and will end up with neither. Freedom is the surest bulwark of security while bureaucratic power is a mirage masquerading as safety.

Sadly for America, when it comes to the pursuit of security, both parties consider highly paid bureaucrats to be preferable substitutes for individual liberty.

With all due respect, the President is reaching to the that crowd in the GOP that can deliver little on immigration. At its best, his efforts to reform immigration will net no more than four or five GOP senators, and only a few more House Republicans. Were he serious about immigration reform, he would reach out to three Republicans who can truly deliver and, at the same time, provide cover for other GOPers who are too afraid to go that route in an election year. Who are these three GOP keys to immigration reform?

Rush Limbaugh, for all the liberal barbs thrown at him, has not been a dyed in the wool immigrant basher like his peer Glen Beck. He is someone who can be reasoned with on the basis of humanitarianism, business needs, and plain good national security policy. And when Rush talks-unlike when W did-Republicans listen.

For Alaska governor Sarah Palin is the brightest conservative star today…and quite noncommittal on immigration reform beyond the broad  general principles of security, economy, and humanity. The President and his advisers can persuade her of their case if they were sincere and respectful.

Then there is the legendary Grover Norquist, the one man anti-tax crusader who can often make and break national GOP candidates. A man with a Reaganesque outlook and libertarian streak, his support for the President’s immigration approach is worth more than twenty GOP senators. Of course, the President and his arrogant advisers have to approach Mr. Norquist nicely and, I suspect, he will be open to hearing their case.

It is a fundamental disregard for loyalty to friends that bespeaks so much of this Administration’s broad approaches to foreign policy. The latest salvo in that saga of disloyalty came from the Secretary Clinton’s pronouncement that the United State was ‘neutral’ in the Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute between the UK and Argentina. What a contrast to the Reagan administration that backed our British allies to the hilt in the 1982 Falklands War when Argentina invaded the South Atlantic islands.

KsReaganite has often maintained that America has three close friends in the world: Israel, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. These are countries and people who have and will give us a hand even at a great cost to themselves. Sadly, President Obama has shows scant special regard to these relationships. As a senator, he voted to please the Armenian lobby by casting a vote to unnecessarily condemn Turkey for something that happened a hundred years ago; as president he banished the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office while lecturing Israel on human rights.

This is not the way to treat friends.

I have been in and around banking long enough to know first hand that regulation is no substitute for responsibility; on the contrary it is often an excuse for irresponsibility and an explanation for poor service. Adding a sixth federal agency on top of the five already exercising jurisdiction on consumer banking activities (OCC, OTS, FRB, NCUA, and FDIC) is counter-intuitive and flies in the face of experience. Any banker who has attempted to explain a partial mortgage loan participation up or IRA prior year recharacterization to customers, for example, knows well how multiple layers of regulations written by staff bureaucrats in Washington DC can hamper good service and create a major scope for unintended errors. Adding another set of civil servants, political appointees, and lawyers is not going to help matters at all.

KsReaganite has known mega banks, community banks, and credit unions. The fact is that a vast majority of banks in America’s smaller cities and towns are strong, stable, and very responsive to customer concerns. Their frustration often is the layer upon layer of mind boggling rules imposed on them that require scarce resources to interpret, resources that can be better used in creating liquidity and jobs. Did you know that there are rules, for example, that prohibit the loan officer of a bank from uploading a loan into the bank’s computer systems? That these rules are often crafted by individuals who have never knows a real job in their lives, banking or otherwise, does not help matters. For lazy bankers, a trail of paper suggesting adopting internal policies that reflect the rules is an excuse for having to do nothing more to be worthy of their fiduciary responsibilities.

The solution, then, to the current mistrust of our commercial banking system lies in a regulatory regime that is streamlined, unified, and participatory. A single agency that regulates all commercial banking (including thrifts and credit unions) and is made up of public appointees, consumer advocates, and industry representatives should replace  the OCC, OTS, and NCUA. Such a financial oversight authority will streamline all banking regulations into plain English, develop a meaningful charter of rights for consumers, and have an ombudsman empowered to investigate substantive complaints and render sanctions as needed.

The downside? Well, it is possible that several dozen unionized civil servants and lawyers will lose their current positions and little perched of power. But, even they should be happy since they will be absorbed somewhere else in the large conglomerate that the federal government is.

I know I express the feelings of thousands in Washington and Atlanta today, and many more around the country, whose hearts are heavy as our giant Chinese friends Tai Shan and Mei Lan head homewards in a special Fedex charter as I write. Few creatures of God are as peaceful and innocently playful as these black-and-white bears. The truest gentle giants, my father aptly called them.

Like thousands of others with real and virtual eyes, I remembered the birth of these panda cubs like it was yesterday and saw them grow up through the panda cams. Their childish antics were a source of calm and amusement in times of stress and agony. On a larger level, they represented- as do their parents and cousins at the National, Memphis, and San Diego zoos- an unbroken sliver of goodwill between two great nations (God Bless Richard Milhous Nixon for that stroke of genius).

Yet, home is home I suppose; the place where you belong in an instinctive way that can only be expressed by poets far wiser than I. Tai Shan and Mei Lan may not have ever seen the mountains of Sichuan, but they’ll feel at home there at once, I am sure. Some beings don’t have a home; I don’t mean that in the physical sense of having a nice, comfortable dwelling. Rather, these unfortunate souls may have wonderful abodes and yet know deep within that they don’t have a home. These are the perpetual refugees.

Only a Massachusetts law professor who ran Michael Dukakis’ campaign  could come up with something which is so comical, condescending, and nonsensical all at once.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_susan_estrich/the_value_of_diversity

Most American women, like their male counterparts, are too busy with their jobs, families, and volunteer work to worry about who sits on the board of directors of each of the companies whose products they use in day to day life. They simply don’t have the luxury of unproductive time that, evidently, an overpaid Harvard faculty member does. 

Frankly, only a law professor from Boston could be so presumptive as to think that she/he can best determine the qualifications of those eligible to sit on the board of directors of a publicly traded company. Perhaps spending all that time in the confines of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts has made Professor Estrich forget that here in America, unlike in the former USSR, it is the shareholders who decide who sits on the board of directors of a company. If Estrich is an Apple shareholder, she is more than welcome to vote for her choice of a candidate or even run herself for that company’s board. Given her track record in running campaigns, however, I doubt she will be up to it.

Campaign rhetoric is cheap, even when disguised as conscientious outrage. It is lost on Susan Estrich and her fellow inhabitants of the towering ivy cocoons that Apple is a technology company and fewer and fewer Americans of either gender are getting into graduate level programs in computers and engineering. Amidst this dwindling supply of available talent and potential leadership, men outnumber women almost three to one.

The solution to this problem lies, of course, in the determined push for K-12 educational excellence that will help boys and girls both to come out of high school prepared to embark on college majors in the sciences, technology, and engineering. That kind of preparation requires the kind of rigorous performance driven academics that liberals like Professor Estrich have spent a lifetime resisting in the public school system. A casual look at the demographics in the computer science department in any major university will make it clear to impartial observers that the majority of students are from those supposedly backward parts of the world where homework, testing, and mastery of abstract concepts is admired, rather than derided, in public education.

I am going to break precedent by backing out of a previous endorsement and, now that a new and better candidate is in the race, endorsing another. This weekend at the party’s confab in Topeka, I had a chance to observe closely several candidates for Kansas’ very GOP first Congressional District. My tremendous respect for Dr. Huelskamp remains intact; he was first out of the door to run when the seat became open and he remains the front runner.

Nonetheless, another candidate has joined since my last post on the issue. Harvard alum Rob Wasinger, the youngish former chief of staff to Senator Sam Brownback, is also running for the seat. Earlier in the week, at a coffee, I had asked Rob some tough questions. Some of his answers (like on the desirability to gut the current monstrosity of a tax code) I liked; some I did not. What impressed me subtly was his refusal to be condescending or use clichés like ‘to put it in perspective’ and ‘I have to study this further’. Nor did he appear to be slick like a regular politico; I guess having a growing family of nine kids and one on the way does not leave you much time to have false affectations. It was a privilege to meet Rob’s wife Meghan as well; again I was impressed by the normal down to earth demeanor that is not common amongst the spouses of aspiring politicians.

Nobody but God knows what’s in the hearts of men. I cannot predict what kind of Congressman Rob will turn out to be. What I can say is that this guy seems thoughtful, down to earth, and beholden to no clique so far. Beyond that, the very outlook exuded by this candidate is one of optimism, hope, and growth which contrasts starkly with the gloom and doom of some of his peers. In the party of Reagan, we need some of that sunshine of the city on the hill!

Rob is definitely the underdog in a race with two sitting members of the state senate, both wealthy in their own right, and both strongly supported by the usual players in the state’s Republican politics. It is without hesitation that KsReaganite is backing Rob Wasinger for Congress in Kansas' Big First district. I have linked his webpage in the blogroll to the right for you to get more information and help him out. He needs the help of regular conservatives like you and me, because groups with nice offices and big staff salaries are backing his career politician opponents.

Today marks the 37^th anniversary of a Supreme Court decision that will match the infamy of both Dred Scott and Korematsu in its repugnance. Like those other two nefarious verdicts, Roe v. Wade made it okay for some people to take away the rights of others based on nothing more than the convenience of the former. Going beyond merely legalizing the taking of innocent life, Roe forbid the states and counties of America from doing much of anything to protect that very life.

Take heart my friends. While an economically distressed country elected the most anti-life Congress and President in 2008, in 2009 all major surveys are showing that, finally, a majority-yes a majority not just a plurality-of Americans identify themselves as prolife. And they are real prolife, not the bizarre ‘personally I am prolife but…’ variety. Even in the very bastion of the anti-life forces, just two days ago we elected a United States Senator who, while not fully prolife, has openly admitted that at some point, the elimination of an unborn life is, well, murder.