Quote of the week: “This is what the bloated arrogance of entitled incumbency looks like.” — Michelle Malkin, referring to California Democrat Rep. Pete Stark’s sarcastic responses to the calm and reasonable questions on border security as posed by his constituents.

Wow, what a jerk. There’s a lot of great lines in that 10-minute video that underscore Pete Stark’s arrogance, but my favorite is where Stark belittles the minuteman asking what the government should be able to do and the minuteman never loses his cool, instead simply reiterates to Stark that border security is certainly one of the things the U.S. Constitution specifically reserves as a power — for which Stark, apparently, abrogates his duty to enforce!

The reason I like this is because it truly emphasizes how  today’s liberal Democrats have a total disregard and disrespect for the very legal do0cument that bestows them representative power in the first place. They simply have no use for the document that lays the foundation of the country.

Coming on the heel’s of North Carolina’s Rep. Bob Etheridge’s (D-N.C.) manhandling of a college student it’s not been a great month for the Democrats in office (let alone global warming posterboy Al “crazed sex poodle” Gore). Should make for some great political commercial material come October or so.

[WSJ] President Obama hailed the financial bill that House-Senate negotiators finally vouchsafed at 5:40 a.m. Friday, and no wonder. The bill represents the triumph of the very regulators and Congressmen who did so much to foment the financial panic, giving them vast new discretion over every corner of American financial markets.

Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, those Fannie Mae cheerleaders, played the largest role in writing the bill. Congressman Paul Kanjorski even offered a motion to memorialize it as the Dodd-Frank Act. It’s as if Tony Hayward of BP were allowed to write new rules on deep water drilling.

The Federal Reserve, which promoted the housing mania and failed utterly in its core mission of monitoring Citigroup, will now have more power to regulate more financial institutions and more ability to dictate the allocation of credit.

The Treasury, which bailed out institutions willy-nilly without consistent rules, will now lead the Financial Stability Oversight Council that will have the arbitrary power to define which financial companies pose a “systemic risk” and which can be shut down without recourse to bankruptcy. Willy-nilly will now be the law.

And the SEC, which created the credit-ratings oligopoly and missed Bernie Madoff, will get new powers to decide how easy it should be for union pension funds to get their candidates on corporate proxy ballots.

Oh, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? They aren’t touched at all, even as they continue to lose billions of taxpayer dollars each quarter.

In other words, our Washington rulers have taken 2,000 or so pages to double and triple down on the old system that failed.

It gets worse. Not only did the bill not address bank regulations, something our not so watchdog media failed to recognize, it actually added a $19 billion tax to pay for all this new “regulation.” Question for the Obama camp: When you’ve already got 10% unemployment how will raising taxes create incentive for companies to hire more workers? Good luck with that election come November’s stagnant 10% unemployment rate.

And if you think our hyper-regulations already made no sense, check out how the EPA considers spilt milk an “oil spill.” (Thanks to John Stossel for pointing this out):

Here’s Steve Forbes highlighting a major but unreported economic gaffe by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared recently at the Brookings Institution, “The rich are not paying their fair share.”

She then went on to praise Brazil as the tax holy grail for the rest of the world: “Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what—it’s growing like crazy.” At first blush those kinds of words must make her neosocialist boss, President Obama, jump for joy. But is the secretary of state actually a supply-side subversive?

Take a look at Brazil’s income tax rates—they are lower than ours. The highest rate is a mere 27.5%, far below our top federal rate of 35%, which, given the complexity of our tax code, is actually closer to 38%. Moreover, that exaction will climb to almost 43% come January.

Isn’t Brazil’s success an example of what Ronald Reagan and other tax cutters have always claimed: Lower rates generate more economic activity, which, in turn, generates more government revenue?

Sadly, for our beleaguered economy, Hillary Clinton and her staff had no idea that Brazil’s income tax rate on the rich is slightly lower than that levied even in Ronald Reagan’s heyday (28%), a rate Bill Clinton railed against when he was running for the White House.

Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and the rest of the administration don’t grasp that the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. already pay about 40% of federal income tax receipts, and the top 5% pay some 60%. When President Reagan took office the top tax rate was 70%, with the highest income earners paying a mere 18% of federal income tax receipts. By the time Reagan had whacked the top rate down to 28%, the proportion paid by the rich had soared to well over 30%.
More

Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and their friends also have no conception of capital creation. Low tax rates encourage people to take risks on new businesses, products and services. While most of these fail, the handful that succeed generate vast amounts in new assets.

If only George Will were in Congress he could ask Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan these questions:

– It would be naughty to ask you about litigation heading for the Supreme Court concerning this: Does Congress have the right, under its enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce, to punish the inactivity of not purchasing health insurance? So, instead answer this harmless hypothetical: If Congress decides that interstate commerce is substantially affected by the costs of obesity, may Congress require obese people to purchase participation in programs such as Weight Watchers? If not, why not?

– The government having decided that Chrysler’s survival is an urgent national necessity, could it decide that “Cash for Clunkers” is too indirect a subsidy and instead mandate that people buy Chrysler products?

– If Congress concludes that ignorance has a substantial impact on interstate commerce, can it constitutionally require students to do three hours of homework nightly? If not, why not?

– Can you name a human endeavor that Congress cannot regulate on the pretense that the endeavor affects interstate commerce? If courts reflexively defer to that congressional pretense, in what sense do we have limited government?

– In Federalist 45, James Madison said: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.” What did the Father of the Constitution not understand about the Constitution? Are you a Madisonian? Does the doctrine of enumerated powers impose any limits on the federal government? Can you cite some things that, because of that doctrine, the federal government has no constitutional power to do?

– Is it constitutional for Arizona to devote state resources to enforcing federal immigration laws?

– Is there anything novel about the Arizona law empowering police officers to act on a “reasonable suspicion” that someone encountered in the performance of the officers’ duties might be in the country illegally?

– The Fifth Amendment mandates “just compensation” when government uses its eminent domain power to take private property for “public use.” In its 2005 Kelo decision, the court said government can seize property for the “public use” of transferring it to wealthier private interests who will pay more taxes to the government. Do you agree?

– Should proper respect for precedent prevent the court from reversing Kelo? If so, was the court wrong to undo the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregating the races with “separate but equal” facilities is constitutional?

– In 1963, President John Kennedy said Congress should “make a commitment . . . to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law.” Was he right?

– In 1964, Sen. Hubert Humphrey, a principal sponsor of that year’s Civil Rights Act, denounced the “nightmarish propaganda” that the law would permit preferential treatment of an individual or group because of race or racial “imbalance” in employment. What happened?

– William Voegeli, contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books, writes: “The astonishingly quick and complete transformation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, from a law requiring all citizens be treated equally to a policy requiring that they be treated unequally, is one of the most audacious bait-and-switch operations in American political history.” Discuss.

– In a 2003 case affirming the constitutionality of racial preferences in law school admissions, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said: “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” If you are a sitting justice in 2028, do you expect to conclude that such preferences can no longer survive constitutional scrutiny because they no longer serve a compelling public interest?

– The president is morose about the court’s Citizens United decision holding that the First Amendment, which says Congress shall make “no law” abridging freedom of speech, means no laws abridging a corporation’s freedom to speak, including nonprofit advocacy corporations such as the National Rifle Association and the Sierra Club. The court called it “censorship” for government “to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear.” Do you agree?

– You have noted that the court often considers legislative motives when deciding First Amendment cases. Should the court consider legislators’ motives if, in response to Citizens United, they impose new burdens on corporate speech?

– When incumbent legislators write laws restricting the quantity, content and timing of speech about legislative campaigns, are not their motives presumptively suspect?

– Regarding campaign finance “reforms”: If allowing the political class to write laws regulating the quantity, content and timing of speech about the political class is the solution, what is the problem?

– If the problem is corruption, do we not already have abundant laws proscribing that?

– If the problem is the “appearance” of corruption, how do you square the First Amendment with Congress restricting speech to regulate how things “appear” to unspecified people?

– Incumbent legislators are constantly tinkering with the rules regulating campaigns that could cost them their jobs. Does this present an appearance of corruption?

– Some persons argue that our nation has a “living” Constitution; the court has spoken of “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” But Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking against “changeability” and stressing “the whole antievolutionary purpose of a constitution,” says “its whole purpose is to prevent change — to embed certain rights in such a manner that future generations cannot readily take them away. A society that adopts a bill of rights is skeptical that ‘evolving standards of decency’ always ‘mark progress,’ and that societies always ‘mature,’ as opposed to rot.” Is he wrong?

– The Ninth Amendment says: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The 14th Amendment says no state may abridge “the privileges or immunities” of U.S. citizens. How should the court determine what are the “retained” rights and the “privileges or immunities”?

– The 10th Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”) is, as former Delaware governor Pete du Pont has said, “to the Constitution what the Chicago Cubs are to the World Series: of only occasional appearance and little consequence.” Were the authors of the Bill of Rights silly to include this amendment?

– Should decisions of foreign courts, or laws enacted by foreign legislatures, have any bearing on U.S. courts’ interpretations of the Constitution or federal laws (other than directly binding treaties)?

– The Fifth Amendment says private property shall not be taken by government for public use without just compensation. But what about “regulatory takings”? To confer a supposed benefit on the public, government often restricts how persons can use their property, sometimes substantially reducing the property’s value. But government offers no compensation because the property is not “taken.” But when much of a property’s value is taken away by government action, should owners be compensated?

– In Bush v. Gore, which settled the 2000 election, seven justices ruled that Florida vote recounts that were being conducted in different jurisdictions under subjective and contradictory standards were incompatible with the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws.” Were they right?

– In Bush v. Gore, five justices held that Article II of the Constitution gives state legislatures plenary power to set the rules for presidential elections. The Florida legislature fashioned election rules to produce presidential electors immune from challenge by Congress. But the legislature said that immunity depended on electors being chosen by a certain date, which could not be met if further recounts were to ensue. The court held that allowing more recounts would have contravened the intent of Florida’s legislature. So the recounts were halted. Was the court’s majority correct?

– Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom you clerked, said: “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.” Can you defend this approach to judging?

– You have said: “There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.” But that depends on what the meaning of “is” is. There was no constitutional right to abortion until the court discovered one 185 years after the Constitution was ratified, when the right was spotted lurking in emanations of penumbras of other rights. What is to prevent the court from similarly discovering a right to same-sex marriage?

– Bonus question: In Roe v. Wade, the court held that the abortion right is different in each of the three trimesters of pregnancy. Is it odd that the meaning of the Constitution’s text would be different if the number of months in the gestation of a human infant were a prime number?

Have you ever noticed how Democrats brag that renewable energy — i.e., Green Jobs — will create more jobs than traditional — i.e., petroleum — energy jobs? If so, have you extrapolated the next question: “Why is that?” Simple, because green energy is so inefficient it will take more workers to produce the same kilowatt of energy than that created from oil and gas! Thus the Democrats curious definition of progress becomes taking up energy sources — wind, solar, water — that we had already progressed past a couple hundred years ago.

Driving this point home are a pair of articles, the first from a Heritage Foundation study on wind power:

The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis projects that an RES (renewable electricity standard) would:

• Raise electricity prices by 36 percent for households and 60 percent for industry;
• Cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
• Cut national income by $2,400 per year for a family of four;
• Reduce employment by more than 1,000,000 jobs; and
• Add more than $10,000 to a family of four’s share of the national debt by 2035.

The reality is if electricity created by wind and other renewables were cost competitive, consumers would use more of it without a federal law to force consumption.

Call this the “A-Ha” moment!

Recent experience with the mandate for renewable fuels like corn ethanol also suggests significant cost increases as well as technical shortcomings. Proponents for wind and solar argue that the two energy sources are still in the infant industry phase and that more reliable sources of energy such as coal and natural receive preferential treatment. But solar and wind have been around for decades and receive subsidies of over $23/Mwh compared with the $0.44/Mwh for conventional coal and $0.25/Mwh for natural gas. The Energy Information Administration crunched these numbers before the passage of the stimulus bill that allocated billions more for clean energy production. At any rate, we believe we should peel back the subsidies for all energy sources (including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear) so the government does not give preferential treatment to any one over another.

So, in other words, without the backing of government subsidy — that is, without the underwriting of your tax dollars where the federal government, and not the 300 million American consumers, get to pick what’s a good product and what isn’t a good product — renewable energy doesn’t stand a chance.

But with that backing, does it stand a chance? Well, let’s look to a country that already uses it for just a small portion of their electricity:

Wow, when you’re a former media-darling Democratic president and the Associated Press starts to turn on you, you must have bad ratings. Here’s how the AP describes Barack Obama’s panel to investigate the Gulf oil leak:

Only one of the seven commissioners, the dean of Harvard’s engineering and applied sciences school, has a prominent engineering background — but it’s in optics and physics. Another is an environmental scientist with expertise in coastal areas and the after-effects of oil spills. Both are praised by other scientists.

The five other commissioners are experts in policy and management.

The White House said the commission will focus on the government’s “too cozy” relationship with the oil industry. A presidential spokesman said panel members will “consult the best minds and subject matter experts” as they do their work.

The commission has yet to meet, yet some panel members had made their views known.

Environmental activist Frances Beinecke on May 27 blogged: “We can blame BP for the disaster and we should. We can blame lack of adequate government oversight for the disaster and we should. But in the end, we also must place the blame where it originated: America’s addiction to oil.” And on June 3, May 27, May 22, May 18, May 4, she called for bans on drilling offshore and the Arctic.

“Even as questions persist, there is one thing I know for certain: the Gulf oil spill isn’t just an accident. It’s the result of a failed energy policy,” Beinecke wrote on May 20.

Two other commissioners also have gone public to urge bans on drilling.

Co-chairman Bob Graham, a Democrat who was Florida governor and later a senator, led efforts to prevent drilling off his state’s coast. Commissioner Donald Boesch of the University of Maryland wrote in a Washington Post blog that the federal government had planned to allow oil drilling off the Virginia coast and “that probably will and should be delayed.”

Boesch, who has made scientific assessments of oil spills’ effects on the ecosystem, said usually oil spills are small. But he added, “The impacts of the oil and gas extraction industry (both coastal and offshore) on Gulf Coast wetlands represent an environmental catastrophe of massive and underappreciated proportions.”

An expert not on the commission, Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University and an Obama campaign contributor, said the panel should have included more technical expertise and “folks who aren’t sort of already staked out” on oil issues.

Here’s John Stossel:

In The Washington Times Richard W. Rahn points out that the U.S. government’s “regulatory budget” is growing faster than the overall federal budget. According to a 2011 regulatory budget report ,

“the growth in dollar terms over the last ten years is more than double that of any previous decade.”

Rahn worries that the U.S. will become

“one vast regulatory state and, eventually, the economy will become strangled by its own regulations…”

Maybe it’s already happened.  The budget of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC):

“grew tenfold (to more than $1 billion) in the past 25 years, but there is no evidence it has made us any safer from financial fraud. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. The Madoff Ponzi scheme was the biggest financial fraud ever. Yet when knowledgeable people presented evidence of the Madoff scheme to the SEC, they were just blown off. Now the SEC wants a bigger budget as a reward for its failure, and the agency and members of Congress are demanding more power for the SEC. The United States has many laws against financial fraud, so that is not the problem. The problem may be – in addition to SEC incompetence – that the public assumes the SEC is looking out for it and consequently fails to do proper due diligence. In other words, the existence of the SEC may be increasing rather than diminishing risk.”

Private enterprise has an incentive to keep lawyers from strangling the enterprise.

I have to admit, I never thought there’d come a day when I embed a Rachael Maddow video in this blog…

There’s a lot of good points in that MSNBC video, but there’s also a healthy heaping of MSNBC lamestream media slant, and a typical Left wing ignorance of economics.

Two quick points: (1) the oil companies aren’t drilling deeper out of choice but because federal and state governments and environmental groups (lawsuits) make it impossible to drill in either shallower water or on land (ANWR, for example, or in the Dakotas).

(2) It doesn’t surprise me that Rachel Maddow is lacking economics 101 education — while petroleum may be the highest in terms of total profit its tax bill and expenses are also sky high. Thus in terms of profit margin, petroleum is more in line or quite behind other industries. IT Networking, for example, and software both enjoy much higher profit margin (20%+ versus about 11-12% for petrol). US petro-giant Exxon-Mobile, for example, ranks 60th.

“Laffer Curve” inventor Arthur Laffer predicts there will be a double-dip recession in 2011 if nothing is done to extend the 2001 Bush tax cuts:

On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.

Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there’s always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.

Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.

Also, the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010. In my view, this shift of income and demand is a major reason that the economy in 2010 has appeared as strong as it has. When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe “double dip” recession.

Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds with some reminders:

* Obama hand picked McChrystal!
* During the 2008 election cycle the Far Left called Gen. Petraeus “General Betrayus.” But now MoveOn has, well, moved on. I guess Obama gets a pass from them on that. (Flashback of this great parody of MoveOn — General LiesandPower.)
* Hillary Clinton questioned Petraeus’ character.