A Huckabee Conservative

The continuing healthcare debate

Over at Realclearpolitics.com Robert Tracinski has an article up which really clarifies why the Dem's healthcare plan is a bad idea - even without abortion or the public option.  His basic points are:

-The plan requires private healthcare companies to insure sick people (ie with pre-existing conditions).

-The plan does not allow insurance companies to charge higher premium for those with chronic and expensive illnesses.

-The plan gives only a slap of the wrist to those healthy people who do not purchase an insurance plan.

So, what this means is that, if you are healthy - you have very little incentive to purchase health insurance because the penalty is much lower than the cost of any plan. 

On the other hand, if you get cancer or some other dread disease, you can go purchase a plan AT THAT POINT - which will cover your health care bill.  Furthermore, the insurance companies cannot even charge you a high premium.

Thus, in a fairly short period of time, only really sick people will buy health insurance.  This will of course destroy private health insurance.

Then we will start to get the cries from the socialists that we need a government option because these evil private insurers are destroying our health care system.

This is always how the statists work.  First they pass laws and regulations to "fix" a problem.  Then, when their legislation creates even bigger problems, they call for more regulation to "fix" the new problems.  This continues until they have control over the whole industry/area.

Socialism is like a cancer and right now it is metastisizing in America.

Noland

Huckabee and the clemency issue

Mike Huckabee has come in for some strong criticism about his decision a decade ago to give clemency to a teen-age criminal.  That is because the said criminal has now (apparently) murdered four police officers in cold blood in Washington state.  Huckabee responded this afternoon on his facebook page.  I am reproducing the whole thing because I know some of you don't have access to his page.  In an article entitle "I Take Full Responsibility" Huck writes:

"The nation was stunned by the senseless and savage cold-blooded murders of 4 young police officers in Lakewood, Washington. Whenever a police officer or soldier is killed, I feel the loss is even more profound for they are the ones who stand between our freedom and anarchy.

At the time I write these words, police are still searching for Maurice Clemmons who is believed to be the one committing these unspeakable acts. Nine years ago, that name crossed my desk. I commuted his sentence from 108 years to 47 years. Many news reports, talk show hosts, and bloggers have erroneously said that he was granted a “pardon.” Others speak of me “setting him free.” As one who now hosts a talk show and who does daily radio commentaries, I can attest to how easy commentary is compared to actually governing. I am not seeking to justify or defend my actions of nine years ago, but it’s important that I answer for my actions and give some explanation as to how and why his sentence was commuted.

I take full responsibility for my actions of nine years ago. I acted on the facts presented to me in 2000. If I could have possibly known what Clemmons would do nine years later, I obviously would have made a different decision. But if the same file was presented to me today, I would have likely made the same decision.

Each state is different, but in Arkansas, a governor doesn’t initiate a parole—the Post Prison Transfer Board does after it conducts a thorough review of an inmate’s file and request. The board then makes a recommendation to the governor, who decides to grant or deny.

If the decision is made to grant any form of clemency (the broad term for a commutation or a full pardon), the governor gives notice of intent and the file is sent to the prosecutor, judge, law enforcement officials, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of State as well as to the news media. A period of 30 days is then started for there to be public input as well as response from the above named officials. At the end of the public response period, the final decision is rendered.

Between 1,000 and 1,200 requests for some form of clemency came to my desk each and every one of the 10 ½ years I was governor. Ninety-two percent of the time, I denied the requests. When I did grant them, it was usually based on the recommendation of at least five of the members of the PPTB, with consideration given to the input from public officials.

Maurice Clemmons was 16 years old when he was charged with burglary and robbery. He was sentenced to a total of 108 years based on the way in which the sentences were stacked. For the crimes he committed and the age at which he committed the crimes, it was dramatically outside the norm for sentencing. The PPTB recommended in 2000 by a 5-0 vote for his sentence to be commuted.

He had served 11 years of his sentence. A pardon would have set him free and cleared his record. A commutation to “time served” would have set him free and released him from any parole reporting. As per the recommendation, I commuted his sentence to the term of 47 years, still a long sentence for the type of crime he had committed, but it would make him parole eligible. It would not parole him, as governors do not have that power in Arkansas. He would have to separately apply for parole and meet the criteria for that.

Despite news reports to the contrary, the only record of public response to the notice to commute was from the trial judge, who recommended the commendation in concert with the board. There were letters of support, but no record of letters of opposition.

Following the commutation, he met the criteria for parole and was paroled to supervision in late 2000. When he violated terms of his parole by participating in additional crimes, he was returned to prison and should have stayed there. For reasons only the prosecutor can explain, charges were not brought forth in a timely way and the prosecutor ended up dropping the charges, allowing him to leave prison and return to supervised parole.

He moved to Washington state and had intermittent criminal activity that increased in violence and frequency. He was allowed to post bail in Washington state and while on bail from there committed the unspeakable acts of murdering four valiant police officers. I can’t explain why he wasn’t prosecuted properly for the parole violations or why he was allowed to make bail in Washington state and not incarcerated earlier for crimes committed there.

I wish his file had never crossed my desk, but it did. The decision I made is one that I now wish were different, but I could only look backwards at his case, not forward. None of this is of any comfort to the families of these police officers nor should it be. Their loss is senseless. No words or deeds by anyone will bring them back to their loved ones. Our system is not perfect and neither are those responsible for administering it.

The system and those of us who are supposed to make sure it works sometimes fail. In this case, we clearly did."

 

It certainly sounds like there were a lot of extenuating and complicating circumstances.  No doubt Huckabee bears some level of responsibility and he certainly accepts that responsibility.  But does this disqualify him from the presidency (and I mean this in a pubic relations sense)?  I don't know, but have my doubts.  However, Jim Geraghty has no such doubts.  Now, I like Geraghty and read him almost every day, but he is part of the National Review/Club for Growth crew that hates Huckabee for some reason. Compare what Geraghty has to sayabout the situation with what Huck himself wrote:

 

Key graph:

 

It takes a particular bravado for a man in Huckabee's circumstances to contend that his critics are the ones who should hang their heads in shame; some people might find letting violent criminals go free early out of a misguided sense that they've changed their ways a clearer reflection of a sick society.

 

It seems to me that the Huckabee haters try to find the worst view of Huckabee that they can and present that as the real Huckabee.  I wish they would stop.

 

Noland

Happy Thanksgiving for how much longer?

Ruth Marcus wrote an article recently in the Washington Post which got me thinking about the past and future of America.  As I see it, American history under our current constitution can be divided up into 3 major eras.  The first era I refer to constitution minus, the second as contitutional, and the third as constitution plus.

The Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in the Summer of 1787 dramatically increased the power of the central government.  This was necessary because the Articles of Confederation allowed too much chaos and division.  For example, each state had control over its own tariff policy.  This allowed outside nations to manipulate the individual states by striking separate deals with different states.  This in turn inspired the states to erect inter-state tariff barriers and eventually engage in all-out trade wars. 

When the new Constitution was written, the northern states wanted to solve this problem by giving the tariff powers exclusively to the central government.  Southern states resisted this because they sold more agricultural products to Europe and thus (rightly, as it turned out) feared that they would be hurt the most in the event that protective tariffs were enacted.  Nevertheless, the South was "bought off" when the northern states agreed to allow the international slave trade to continue for an additional 20 years. From this point on, slavery and tariffs were intertwined in the southern mind.  And so the interstate commerce clause was put into the Constitution for the purpose of avoiding interstate tariff wars.

As the new Constitution went into effect, the South, in particular, was concerned that they had given too much power to the central government.  As a result, they worked hard to restrain the national government.  They did this in two ways; by using the Senate as a veto over the House of Representatives (which was strongly anti-slavery and pro-tariff) and by electing either southern presidents or northern "doughface" presidents (northerners sympathetic to southern views, ie Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan).  That is why the Missouri crisis was so important.  It was the first time that northerners threatened to reduce the Senate veto power, by turning Missouri into a free state through legislative fiat.  By the time Lincoln was elected in 1860, it was clear that the South had lost both of their advantages.  There were more free states than slave and an anti-slavery president had been elected.  And so the south seceded and the Civil War came.

The Civil War was a great turning point in American History.  For the first 70 years of our nation's history, the South had managed to restrain the federal government from using its full constitutional power (thus constitution minus).  After the War, the federal government was no longer constrained by the south and thus tended to implement policies and laws which were in line with the Constitution but did not exceed (or rarely exceeded) the power granted to it by the Constitution.  This was not universally true.  For example, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution were clearly about giving the federal government the right to impose rules and regulations upon the states which gave black Americans their equal rights.  In a concession to white southerners, the national government failed to live up to this ideal and the black community would be forced to wait until the 1950s and 1960s before they would be granted legal equality.  Still from 1865 until 1935 in most areas this was an era of constitutional government.

The New Deal was the next great turning point in American History.  All around the world the move toward stronger central governments was under way.  Communism in Russia, Fascism in Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Germany.  The U.S. was not immune from this tendency and when the financial crisis occurred in 1929, first Hoover and then Roosevelt moved toward using the power of the national government to solve a problem which, in the past, had been allowed to resolve itself.  FDR, in particular, seemed to want to remake America into a nation where the national government was responsible for the individual.  This was something new in America and not part of the constitution as written.  Particularly limiting was the 10th Amendment which made it clear that the Federal government only had those powers specifically granted to it and that all other powers remained with the states. 

FDR's brilliance was in realizing that this and all other limitations could be overcome by getting the "right people" on the Supreme Court.  One of the few big mistakes the framers made in writing the Constitution was in not making it clear who would get to be the referee when a dispute broke out between the state and federal governments.  Since the Marbury v. Madison case in 1804, the Supreme Court had siezed and held this power in spite of the logical inconsistancy of having a branch of the Federal government determine disputes between the Federal government and the states.  It is as if in a football game between the Cowboys and Redskins, the refs were all employees of the Redskins.  Does anyone doubt which side the calls would tend to favor?

By putting the "right people" on the Supreme Court, FDR completely changed the balance of power in favor of an overweening federal government and thus we enter into the Constitution plus era.  There are many areas that could be talked about.  But the example that inspired this treatise was cited in Ruth Marcus's Post article.  She explains how the commerce clause now allows the federal government to regulate all kinds of areas of personal choice:

In the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn, the justices ruled that even though an activity may "be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce."

How about that!  You may engage in an activity that is local (ie not interstate) and not commerce and yet it can be regulated under the power of the Intersate Commerce clause of the Constitution!!!  If that isn't Orwellian, nothing is.  If that is not an anti-Constutional ruling masquerading as a constitutional ruling, than nothing is (remember, the Interstate Commerce clause was put into the Constititution to avoid interstate tariff wars - here is was being used to tell a farmer to reduce how much grain he could grow on his farm).  Notice the year of this case:  1942.  By this time FDR had appointed 7 out of 9 of the justices on the court. 

Since then, we the people of the United States have been living out of sinc with our Constitution.  The Federal government now engages in all kinds of activities that are not sanctioned by the Constitution.  In effect we have been living a lie.  I don't know that this will lead to a dissolution of the nation.  But I do know that living out of sinc with our Constitution in the first 70 years of our nation produced a kind of structural stress that resulted in a great Civil War.  Of course, we emerged out of that war stronger than ever - but it did not have to turn out that way. 

I am thankful that God has allowed me and my family to enjoy the privileges and benefits of living in the greatest nation that the earth has ever seen.  But I worry that until we either go back to living according to our Constitution or agree to modify the Constitution to reflect current practices, the cognitive dissonance produced will result in another great national crisis.

Noland

 

Science and hypocricy at the New York Times

Most of you that pay attention know that a whole series of leaked emails have lately become public which show that some important researchers into man-made global warming have been doing a wee bit of cheating.  Powerline has been covering these emails in detail so I won't replicate their work.

What i find interesting is the response of the New York Times.  They write:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

This is the same New York Times that illegally acquired information about a top secret program in which the U.S. government intercepted calls from known terrorists into the U.S.  Not only did they publish the intormation and give the U.S. a major setback in the war on terror, but they were proud of their work. 

Thus, the nexus between "science" and liberal lies continues at the NYT.  The Walter Duranty style of journalism continues.

Noland

National Health Care?

(The follwing is an article that I wrote for our school newspaper)

 

Currently the nation is convulsed in political combat over whether or not we should adopt a system of national health care.  Those who favor national health care have many arguments in favor of instituting such a plan.  While, I find their arguments less than convincing, I do not question their good intentions.  Still, I present to you the following reasons why I don’t favor the idea:

1) The basic issue is freedom and responsibility.  In the system of slavery that existed in the U.S. before the Civil War, the slaves had little freedom.  The slave owners treated their slaves as children.  They provided jobs, shelter, clothing, food and even healthcare to their slaves.  The obvious trade-off was they were not free.  White men, on the other hand, were expected to find their own jobs, shelter, clothing, food, and health care.  But they were also free.  Somewhere over the last 200 years, many Americans have decided to accept the slave mentality.  In this view, the government (like the slave owner) should provide jobs, shelter, food, and now health care (as far as I know the govt. doesn’t subsidize clothes – but it’s probably coming).  As the government becomes responsible for each area, we lose more and more of our freedom.  In the area of health care, if the government takes over the whole system, they will choose our doctors, what tests we can have, what treatments they will pay for and many other aspects.  Furthermore, national health care opens virtually all areas of our lives to regulation because nearly everything we do can impact our health and thus the health care system.  For example, in England there are laws regulating the number of calories restaurants can serve in the main course.  You may think that this might be a good way to help reduce the problem of obesity.  You may be right, but the question remains do you want to be free to choose your own meals or do you prefer to be a slave to the government?  As high school students you are on the verge of adulthood.  You are breaking free from the control and choices of your parents to become free responsible citizens.  Do you really want to trade your parent’s control and decision-making for “daddy” government control and decision-making?

2) Quality of care is also an important issue.  Regardless of what you have heard, the U.S. healthcare system is the best in the world.  We are particularly good at handling difficult diseases like cancer and heart disease.  Nations that have national health care systems are not nearly as good.  The basic reason for this is because they ration care to control costs.  Sarah Palin recently came in for a lot of criticism when she said that national health care would lead to “death panels.”  You may find the term “death panel,” to be an inflammatory term, but the fact is in every national health care system in the world there are panels (or committees or task forces or whatever you want to call them) that determine who will get what treatment and who won’t.  If you have a deadly disease that requires a certain type of care and one of these committees has decided that you don’t qualify, then for you, that committee was a death panel. 

3) Health care reform is the wrong priority at this time.  We are fighting a war on terror.  We have troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan.  We have a national debt that is out of control and getting much much worse under this current administration (to which national health care will add several more trillions of dollars of debt).  The dollar is on the verge of becoming a second-rate currency.  We have an economic emergency that has resulted in the highest unemployment in 26 years.  At the same time, 80% of all Americans are satisfied with their health care.  This is not to say that the way we have organized health insurance does not need some tweaking but when President Obama won the election in November 2008, exit polling suggested that only about 7% of Americans thought health care was in need of critical reform.   Why then the rush to “reform” health care?  Well, as President Obama’s chief of staff famously said, “never let a good crisis go to waste.”  It appears to many of us that the Obama administration is using the economic crisis to implement fundamental and unnecessary social changes on a frightened electorate; in this case socialized medicine.

In 1944, Frederick Hayek published a book called The Road to Serfdom.  In this book he chronicles how nations who accept the idea that the government is responsible for taking care of their citizens (instead of merely creating a safe environment in which citizens can either flourish or not, based on their own choices) eventually enter into some type of tyranny.  America has not yet reached that point, but if we nationalize our health care system, we will be taking a big step in the direction of serfdom.

 

Noland

Sarah Palin

I am reluctant to say much about Sarah Palin because I am indecisive about her prospects.  When she first burst on the scene with McCain's nomination, I knew little about her.  But I was appalled at the way the media attacked her and so my sympathies were with her when she went into the "big speech."  Obviously, she did fantastic and I thought that a real star had been born.

However, her interviews with the MSM (Gibson and Couric) were really quite bad.  We can talk all day about how the McCain team mishandled her (I agree).  But that is not the point.  The point is that, the Couric interview in particular, showed that she has a problem with temperament at the least.  Perhaps, as she seems to argue, she is well-read but was just annoyed with Couric for patronizing her.  If so, her foolish decision to stonewall and not answer the question (instead, she endlessly repeated unrelated talking points) made it appear that she was pretty ignorant on issues that require in-depth reading, such as foreign policy.

The onus was now on Sarah to show that she could master foreign policy issues and major domestic policy issues as well.  Now, a bit of study shows that not only is she quite intelligent on issues that she is studied up on, but she comes across as very complex and nuanced.  This can be seen by googling interviews that she did while governor of AK on the various energy issues affecting the state. 

However, due to her defective interviews, she needs to prove her ability to handle other (besides energy) complex issues with knowlegeability, intelligence, and aplomb.  Either she has studied and knows foreign policy or she hasn't.  If she hasn't, that is not a fatal flaw, but SHE NEEDS TO BE WILLING TO DO THE HARD WORK OF STUDYING THESE ISSUES WITH EXPERTS.  This will take years of work and consultation.  She needs to be conversant with issues like (obviously) the Middle East, Serbia/Kosovo, American/Chinese relations, Korea etc. etc.  She needs to set out her positions on issues like the war on terror, nation building, illegal immigration, dealing with poverty, etc.

Only when the time comes that Palin's enemies are forced to grudgingly admit that she has really become knowledgeable in many new areas will I begin to see her as a viable presidential candidate.

Now, many will say "hold on just a moment," Barack Obama knew relatively little about these important issues.  So true and look at the hole he is digging for America today.  We cannot afford to elect another neophyte to the presidency.  Furthermore, because she is a Republican, she will always be held to a higher standard by the MSM than any Democrat.  This may not be fair, but it is a fact. 

So, while I certainly believe that Sarah is a phenomenal political talent.  And while she certainly appears to be a genuine conservative in her instincts, I am not sure whether she is the great hope that many people want and desire.

Noland

Why "A Huckabee Conservative"?

Recently, I was reading a post on the famous Powerline blog, in which the author evaluated Mike Huckabee and concluded that he was a conservative, but that he (the blog author) was simply not a Mike Huckabee Conservative.

This was a bit surprising to me because during the 2008 primaries Powerline portrayed Huckabee in such an unflattering way that it seemed they did not really consider him a conservative at all.  So, I consider it progress that they have come around to the point of view that Huck really is a conservative.

But the comment got me thinking about why I consider myself a Huckabee conservative.  Here are some of the reasons:

1) Social issues are very important to me.  They are not the only thing, but they are very important.  I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that we abort nearly a million babies a year in this country.  It is also quite stunning (though obviously less deadly) that we have come to the point where the ability to engage in homosexual behavior is considered a "civil right" by many people.  I don't support the police state intervening in private affairs in the home but the idea that the government should give acknowledgement and reward (ie Gay Marriage) to this type of behavior seems crazy.

2) The ability to articulate your positions clearly and with charisma is highly important to me.  To a significant degree this is why Obama is President today.  For some reason, Republicans seem unable to come up with leaders who have charisma - Democrats seem to find more of them.  The last charismatic Republican President was Reagan - before that you have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt.  Meanwhile, the Dems have FDR, JFk, Clinton, and now Obama. 

You frequently hear the phrase "we live in a center-right nation."  I think that is true, but if so, why don't we elect more Republican presidents?  The answer is (in part) the Democrat's ability to find charismatic candidates and the Republican's inability to do so.  Mike Huckabee is the most charismatic of the Republican candidates out there (yes, even more so than Sarah Palin - though I like her). 

3) Fiscal conservativism is important to me.  It is still a mystery to me why organizations like the Club for Growth decided that Huckabee was not a fiscal conservative while Romney was.  Huckabee raised consumption taxes and used the money for road-building while lowering income taxes.  Romney raised "government fees" which helped support the bloated Mass. bureaucracy. 

Huckabee supports the Fair Tax.  I agree with some critics that the Fair Tax will probably never pass due to the need to amend the constitution - but to argue that it is not conservative, indeed the most conservative tax reform proposal out there - is just not right.  Furthermore, he opposed the bailouts and the stimulus and supports a balanced budget.  There may be more fiscally conservative candidates (Fred Thompson?) but none that are a lot more conservative.

4) A strong foreign policy is important to me - But.  The primary reason that Powerline seemed to dislike Huckabee was because they perceived that he was weak in the area of foreign policy.  I do not know if this is true, but I doubt he is weaker than the rest.  Looking at the major Republican candidates for president, I peceive that this could be the weakest area for all of the candidates.  What has Mitt or Fred or Sarah or even Tim or Bobby said or done that would suggest that they would be foreign policy hawks?  Powerline did a kind of tea-leaf reading deconstruction of some of Huckabee's statements and suggested that he would be weak on foreign policy. 

It seems to me the only possible Republican candidates that we could count on to be hawks would be people like Dick Cheney, John Bolton, or maybe a David Petraeus.  I would support these candidates with great fervor, but it seems to me that there is little chance for any of them.

I would respectfully point out that George W. Bush could have been given a "weak on foreign policy" critique before he became President.  Teddy R. famously said something like "speak softly and carry a big stick."  My hope for Huckabee (or whomever becomes the next Pres) is that they will adopt this policy.  Frankly, I would not mind having a President who talks in a conciliatory way (like Obama, though not in quite the apologetic way that he has) but is willing to use American power to make it clear to our foes that we should not be messed with. 

I don't disagree with the idea that Huckabee might be weak in this area, but I could go through a tea-reading, deconstructionist exercise (like Powerline did with Huckabee) on all the likely Republican candidates and come to the same conclusion. 

Given the fact that I agree with his priorities and abilities in so many other areas, I am happy to pronounce myself a Huckabee Conservative.

Noland