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Obamas Reconciliation Lie

By Derek Baker

Less than one week ago, President Obama stood before an assembled audience of hand- picked sympathizers on healthcare reform at the White House and called on Congress to pass his healthcare reform package into law… again.

Having spent his entire year long presidency singularly focused on passing a massive, trillion dollar, federal government takeover of the healthcare industry in America, and failed – Obama had a couple of choices going forward. With an American public now solidly against his healthcare proposal, and his Democrat margins in both houses of Congress now a wee bit slimmer, Obama was forced to choose between either a) substantially altering his healthcare proposal to make it more palatable and bipartisan as he claims is his goal, or b) forging ahead with virtually the same heavy-handed government takeover package and hope to woo skeptical Americans and Democratic lawmakers by the sheer force of his personality.

In Obama’s speech – a rather short one for him of only 21 minutes – he made it clear that he is opting for Plan B. Obama stated: “No matter which approach you favor, I believe the U.S. Congress owes the American people a final vote on healthcare reform. We have debated this issue thoroughly. Not just for the past year, but for decades. Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a super-majority of 60 votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, that was cast on the children’s health insurance program, that was used for cobra health coverage for the unemployed, and by the way for both Bush tax cuts, all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.”

In other words, he plans to utilize budget reconciliation to pass ObamaCare, which requires only a simple majority in both chambers. And Obama appealed to history, citing five specific examples of major legislation that was passed using reconciliation.

Here’s the only problem with Obama’s appeal: every bill he cited was passed with bipartisan support. This is, of course, precisely the opposite of what is occurring on ObamaCare, where the minority party is unanimously opposed to the entire package. In fact, reconciliation has been used nearly 20 times since it’s origination in 1981, but never once in a completely partisan fashion to pass major social legislation. Not once.

A quick review of the actual legislation Obama cited shows example after example of bipartisan support. Both Bush tax cuts were passed with Democrat votes in both chambers. Cobra was enacted in 1986 with a Republican controlled White House and Senate and a Democrat controlled House. Landmark welfare reform was passed by a Republican controlled Congress (with 125 Democrat votes from both chambers) and signed into law by President Clinton, as was the Children’s Health Program in 1997 within the Balanced Budget Act.

Republican claims that Obama’s intended use of reconciliation to pass his version of healthcare reform is unprecedented (what the word really means, not how Obama uses it) and hyper partisan is absolutely true. It would be complimenting Obama to say he was being merely disingenuous in his stated reason for using reconciliation.

In the same speech noted above, Obama portended to take the high road by maintaining “I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right” and saying he would “provide the leadership” the American people so desperately want on healthcare reform. Perhaps Obama is genuine in stating he does not know how this will play politically, but Americans seem to know instinctively, and they are not calling it leadership, they’re calling it a lie.

Derek Baker is a contributor to ALG News.

The Driver Veered Off to the Left

 ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.

Union Paybacks Advanced Administratively, Even As They Fail Legislatively

By Kevin Mooney

While addressing the National Press Club (NPC) in January, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka predicted The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would pass in “the first quarter of 2010,” but declined to say if his organization would support a compromised version.

That time is fast approaching and it appears that Trumka and other union bosses do not have the votes for EFCA, which includes the anti-democratic card check legislation and binding arbitration. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the lead sponsor in the upper chamber, has reportedly discussed the possibility of a repacked bill that would drop card check in exchange for maintaining the arbitration measure.

However, Katie Packer, executive director of the Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI), has said that any bill that would allow for federal mediators to impose contracts remains unacceptable to business.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) has already said that she would oppose EFCA. Other potential swing votes against the bill include Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.).

But even as they fail to secure coercive policy changes through a straight up and down vote, labor bosses are pursuing non-legislative channels for their paybacks from the Obama Administration and the Democratic congress.

In the 2008 election cycle, unions spent almost $80 million on independent broadcast advertising, mail and advocacy to either elect or defeat candidates for federal office, according to OpenSecrets.org. Federal records also show that labor union political action committees (PACs) contributed over $66 million to federal candidates in 2008, with 92 percent of this total going to Democrats.

They want some return on that investment and this is what concerns business owners. The idea now is to secure portions of the EFCA bill by way of administrative changes that do not require congressional approval. Craig Becker, an associate general counsel for The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was recently denied a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on the basis of extreme positions that he had articulated as a UCLA professor.

In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, Becker argued that traditional notions of democracy should not apply in union elections. The key phrase being, “employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives.”

He also wrote that employers should not be permitted to attend NLRB election hearings or to challenge election results in response to possible union misconduct. In addition, Becker has proposed a “new body of campaign” rules replete with new provisos that would restrict the employer’s ability to communicate with workers about the downside of unionization.

While addressing the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) annual meeting in Disney World, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis hinted that a recess appointment was still possible for Becker.

The consternation over non-legislative administrative rulemaking goes a long way toward explaining why the U.S. remains stuck in a jobless recovery. With the private sector looking ahead in anticipation of increased costs, higher taxes, federal mandates and new bureaucracies, there is a little incentive for new hiring.

Instead of putting capital to work, small business owners and entrepreneurs are retrenching in anticipation of potentially burdensome legislation set up to benefit organized labor at the expense of the larger economy.

Steve Forbes, the magazine publisher who previously ran for president as champion of the flat tax, recently warned members of congress in testimony about the parallels that exist between contemporary polices and the heavy handed government intervention of the 1930s.

"Go back to the Great Depression when the government had forced unionization," Forbes said. "The U.S. had one of the worst recovery records in the 1930s but after World War II when the government did nothing to the economy except cut spending with a few small tax cuts and the reform bill of Taft-Hartley and low and behold we experienced a post war boom."

The "culture of favoritism" is one of the main factors holding back what could otherwise be a robust recovery, Forbes explained, because the Obama policies are fueling artificial price increases that have come not in response to consumer demand but to "government diktats."
Consequently, the current "sub-par" recovery is beginning to mimic a cycle last experienced in the 1970s when the economy retracted again after a short period of jobless, economic growth, he added.

Forbes made his remarks during a special forum organized by House Republicans on the Education and Labor Committee. He was joined by former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao who said the jobless recovery now in motion is attributable at least in part to policies set up to benefit “Big Labor” at the expense of the private sector.

“While the administration focused on appeasing its organized labor allies, job creation ground to a halt,” she said. “Current job creation figures are abysmal. The dearth of job creation during this administration distinguishes this recession from other downturns.”

Kevin Mooney is the editor of TimesCheck.com.

Reason: The Clarity of False Choices

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from Reason magazine, Senior Editor Jacob Sullum exposes the lies inherent in Obama’s rhetoric.

 

 

 

The Clarity of False Choices

By Jacob Sullum

“There are those who claim we have to choose between paying down our deficits…and investing in job creation and economic growth,” President Obama said in December. “This is a false choice.” During the same speech, he asked his audience to “let me just be clear” that, having racked up the biggest budget deficits ever, he is embracing fiscal responsibility, as reflected in his vow that “health insurance reform” will not increase the deficit “by one dime.”

For connoisseurs of Obama-speak, the address featured a trifecta, combining three of his favorite rhetorical tropes: the vague reference to “those who” question his agenda, the “false choice” they use to deceive the public, and the determination to “be clear” and forthright, in contrast with those dishonest naysayers. These devices are useful as signals that the president is about to mislead us.

Obama says his opponents wrongly insist that we choose between “paying down our deficits” and “investing in job creation and economic growth.” But that is not the way his real critics, as opposed to the imaginary, nameless ones who appear in his speeches, would frame the issue.

The real critics question the premise that the spending Obama supports, which he says ultimately will boost tax revenues and curtail outlays for public assistance programs, should be considered an investment at all—and, if so, whether it is a better use of this money than the market would have found. Copying his predecessor by throwing more money at schools, for example, is a dubious strategy for spurring economic growth, or even educational growth, since there is no clear relationship between spending and student achievement.

Likewise, Obama’s promise that health insurance subsidies will not expand the deficit may be “clear,” but it’s not realistic, since it’s based on accounting tricks and wishful thinking. Legislators avoided counting a $240 billion Medicare “fix” by putting it in a separate bill and assumed reimbursement cuts that probably will never materialize.

Here are some other things Obama has asked us to let him be clear about: “Earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects”; the U.S. government “has no interest in running GM”; Medicare cuts will be made “in a way that protects our senior citizens” from changes in benefits or costs; and a “public option” for health care, which would invite businesses to offload their medical costs onto taxpayers and could drive private insurers from the market, “would not impact those of you who already have insurance.” From now on, when you hear Obama speak, replace “let me be clear” with “let me lie to you” and see if it makes more sense.

Speaking of making sense, some of the “false choices” Obama has identified in the last year are more puzzling than misleading. “I reject the false choice between securing this nation and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars,” he declared in March. So according to Obama, we can secure this nation and waste billions of taxpayer dollars. Actually, that sounds about right.

Obama’s depiction of his critics is further removed from reality. In the health care debate, he says, “there are those who simply don’t believe Washington can bring about this change”; “there are those who will say that we do not go far enough”; “there are those who would have us try what has already failed, who would defend the status quo”; “there are those who will oppose reform no matter what”; and “there are those who want to seek political advantage.”

What about those who do not like the status quo but have a different vision of reform, not because they want to go farther than Obama does but because they want to go in a different direction, toward more choice and less government involvement? In Obama’s world they do not exist. Instead we have his bold yet achievable plan, pitted against socialist utopianism and blind partisan intransigence. Let me be clear: This is a false choice.

Senior Editor Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason.com) is a syndicated columnist. © Copyright 2009 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

Washington Times: A constitutional right to welfare?

 

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured editorial from the Washington Times, Barack Obama’s nominee for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Goodwin H. Liu, in his essay, “Rethinking Constitutional Welfare Rights” views the judiciary as “a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning”:

 

Washington Times: A constitutional right to welfare?

Another day, another radical judicial nominee. President Obama once again has nominated for a federal judgeship a lawyer whose own words demonstrate unfitness for the position. In the case of Goodwin H. Liu, nominated on Feb. 24 for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the substance behind the words is even worse than the verbiage.

Mr. Liu is an assistant dean at the University of California Berkeley law school who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so he probably boasts some intellectual firepower. Yet it's the sort of firepower that fits better within the walls of academe, marked by its uniquely indecipherable mumbo-jumbo, than on a bench where clarity is essential.

Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center dug up an example of Mr. Liu's written reason so outlandish as to be unacceptable on its face, no matter what the substance of the legal theory being promoted. In a 2008 Stanford Law Review article, Mr. Liu wrote that judges should engage in "socially situated modes of reasoning that appeal ... to the culturally and historically contingent meanings of particular social goods in our own society" and to "determine, at the moment of decision, whether our collective values on a given issue have converged to a degree that they can be persuasively crystallized and credibly absorbed into legal doctrine."

To which most rational people would ask: Huh?

Mr. Liu was discussing the idea that judges be bound less by the actual language of the Constitution than by "a systematic moral theory." He agonized in print about the need to reject, for practical reasons, that idea of judge as Olympian moralist. But he did the next worst thing: He wrote instead that he "envisions the judiciary ... as a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning."

Let's translate that into plain English. Mr. Liu is saying that a judge should read between the lines of actual laws to a deeper meaning that the judge, in his wisdom, can decipher. Then the judge should apply a cultural "context" to that deeper meaning. And enforce it.

A reader can be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Liu in effect is advocating a judicial dictatorship. Liberated from the strict and limited dictates of the Constitution, Mr. Liu's vision of governance is based on no bedrock principles and thus would be held hostage to trendy intellectual whims.

Now, let's move beyond theory. For what practical purpose was Mr. Liu laying out his complicated and risky scheme of judging? Here's where things get even worse. As repeated many times in his essay, Mr. Liu's goal was to create a judicially enforceable, constitutional right to welfare. He hastened to add that such a revolution would only be pushed in an "evolutionary" way - not immediately - by "cue[ing] the policymaking process toward greater deliberation and rationality."

This agenda is dangerous. Judges have less business cueing up policy than referees would have to suggest what plays a quarterback should call.

Finally, Mr. Whelan has noted that Mr. Liu doesn't meet the ordinary standards for federal judges outlined by the American Bar Association. These standards include "at least 12 years' experience in the practice of law" and "substantial courtroom and trial experience." Mr. Whelan points out that Mr. Liu, who is only 39 years old, "hasn't even been out of law school for 12 years" and has "zero 'experience as a trial lawyer.'" This nomination should be withdrawn.

Government Spending Does Not Drive the Economy

By Josiah Schmidt

As disturbing new reports come out this month showing that American reliance on government aid is at an all-time high, economists are attempting to quell concerns that the federal spending binge has gone too far. Government spending, they say, drives the economy, and the stimulus bills have saved the economy from dipping into depression. These economists have erred tragically, and their prescription will not only fail to prevent, but will actually help ensure that this recession worsens.

It is saving, and not spending, that drives the economy. By consuming less than we produce, we can plough those savings into the production of factories, machines and technology, which will allow us to produce (and therefore consume) even more in the future.

To illustrate, imagine Robinson Crusoe, stranded on an island. In order to survive, he must scavenge for food at all times. All his free time is devoted to merely keeping himself alive. Each day, he can only consume as much as he can gather. If he wants to increase his consumption in the future, then he must restrict his consumption in the present. He may want to fashion a fishing net, whereby he may increase his daily catch of meat. However, he must set aside some of his food today, in order to sustain himself while he forages for materials and constructs his net over the course of the next few days.

Once the net is finished, he may be able to double his daily food supply, or even acquire the same daily supply of food using half the time and energy. In other words, Robinson Crusoe’s capital structure has been lengthened, and this lengthening of the capital structure was only made possible by saving.

The same holds true for participants in a complex market economy. If an automobile company wants to produce more cars (or produce the same amount of cars with less time and energy), they must not spend out all of their income. They must restrict their present consumption expenditures and invest those savings into capital, which will make the production of cars easier, allowing them to produce more cars with the same amount of time and energy, or to produce the same amount of cars with less time and energy.

However, once the capital structure is lengthened, all is not said and done. As capital is used, it wears down. It must be maintained, and eventually replaced. This too, requires a constant flow of savings. When government encourages spending and discourages saving, they are really encouraging present consumption at the expense of future consumption. Government spending stimuli ensure that there will not be enough resources saved up to maintain the current capital structure. This means that capital is being used up without being repaired or replaced.

We are actually eating into our capital, and as we do so, production will become more difficult and the economy less efficient. As savings disappear, so too does the pool of funds with which firms can hire workers. As production atrophies, our range of production possibilities becomes more and more limited, and society shrinks further back toward the conditions of mere subsistence.

At a certain point, of course, too much saving can be just as detrimental: there is no use in restricting our present consumption so severely that we starve ourselves out of existence. But, above that level of consumption necessary for survival, all savings lead to an increase in material wealth and prosperity. It is only through saving and lengthening of the capital structure that living standards may be raised and that our ability to spend and consume in the future may be increased. Understanding this fact gives the lie to the notion that the government’s “stimulus” bills (excuse me, “jobs” bills) do anything but eat away the economic foundation from right under our feet.

Josiah Schmidt is a Liberty Features Syndicate contributor.

Appointment Watch: Minow

 

Appointment Watch: Minow

The mainstream media continue to ignore President Obama’s appointment of bizarre personnel to run the government. Personnel is policy. That being the case the American people need to know about these appointments. This week we look another Obama appointee. This is not an isolated incident or an occasional bad apple. This appointment is representative of the appointments he is making with little or no push back from the Senate during the confirmation process.

Martha Minow, Board of Directors, Legal Services Corporation

• Minow doesn’t like contractors, believing that the government can do things better.
• Minow even thinks that contractors are a threat to democracy.
• Minow has advocated for more tax money to be spent on the Legal Services Corporation.
• Minow’s nomination is currently pending before the full Senate.

This is just a sample of the type of people President Obama is placing in positions of power within his Administration. If you want more information please visit: http://www.getliberty.org/content.asp?pl=187&contentid=187.

Next week we will examine one more. Those who are interested in exclusive information before it reaches the public, please contact Don@getliberty.org.

Unhinged: Obama Lose Grip on Political Dynamic

By Bill Wilson

“[N]ow they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.” That was former New York Democrat Congressman Massa’s take on his resignation in light on allegations of sexual harassment against him.

Yesterday, Washington was rocked by allegations by Massa that he may have been forced from power to help lower the threshold for passing ObamaCare in the House to 216 votes.

Acknowledging that his sexually explicit comments to a Congressional staffer were inappropriate, Massa nonetheless suggested that there was more at play: “You think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C.”

Massa claimed that the complaint had not been filed by the harassed staffer, but by somebody else.

At a bare minimum, Massa’s accusations against the House majority indicate that he could have been set up simply because he voted against the House health care takeover in November. That, desperate to enact the bill, House leaders were willing to stick their thumbs in the eyes of the American people, and use even the slightest pretense to purge unwilling accomplices from Congress.

Overall, however, the Massa episode is just one piece of a larger narrative: Barack Obama has simply lost control of the political dynamic in Washington, and in the nation at large.

For example, despite the alleged effort to purge Massa, the whip count against ObamaCare just keeps getting worse. As reported by ABCNews.com, Congressman Dan Lipinski (D-IL) who voted “Yes” the first time around, will be voting no, joining Congressman Jim Oberstar (D-MI) in objecting to the abortion-funding provisions of the Senate bill.

Factor in the loss of other “Yes” votes Cao, Murtha, Abercrombie, and Wexler, and at best, according to the extreme left-wing site Daily Kos, there are only 205 “yes” votes. That’s eleven votes short of 216 needed to simply pass the Senate bill, let alone engage in the unprecedented use of budget reconciliation to take over one-sixth of the American economy.

But, it gets worse for Obama & Co. According to the New York Times, the White House privately thinks it only has a 51 percent chance to ram this bill down the throats of the American people. Reports the Times, “[T]hat 49 percent chance of failure could devastate Obama’s presidency, weaken Democrats heading into the fall midterm elections and trigger an even fiercer, more debilitating round of finger-pointing inside the administration.”

That is all very true. The political in-fighting at the White House, and within the Democrat party, is already reaching a fevered pitch. For weeks, liberal blogs and news sites have been buzzing about the prospects of replacing or reassigning Obama’s top advisors: Emmanuel, Axelrod, Summers, etc. One report suggests replacing Rahm Emmanuel with former Senate Democrat Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

It gets worse. Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of U.S News & World Report and Publisher of the New York Daily news, Mort Zuckerman, writes of Obama, “He’s misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach” and “He’s done everything wrong.” He lays blame for Obama’s sinking poll numbers, economic stagnation, and Republicans’ new fortunes in the generic Congressional ballot polls at the feet of none other than Obama himself.

Zuckerman might as well have just said, “He’s a lightweight.”

Even without that, Zuckerman’s is a devastating line of critique from a once-ardent Obama supporter, and is merely indicative of how Obama’s own party feels about him right now. Even NBC’s Saturday Night Live brilliantly portrays just how out of touch Obama really is.

In short, Obama acts like he is in charge, as he did yesterday in a campaign speech in Glenside, Pennsylvania. But he is devoid of reality. “When is the right time? If not now, when?” Obama questioned aloud of when it might be proper for the government to take over the health care industry.

The answer, of course, is never. But yet, he wants to pretend that his plan will lower costs, when it won’t. That adding 30 million or so new individuals to government-run health care will not plunge the nation deeper into debt, when it will. That government does not engage in health care rationing, when Congress debates every year “doc-fix” bills that cope with the underpayment by Medicare to physicians. It just goes on and on.

Making matters worse for the White House, party leaders in the House and Senate are incompetent at best, and corrupt and dangerous at the worst.

Just last month, Nancy Pelosi completely lost control of the House of Representatives, as reported by Politico, when language was inserted into a bill that would have authorized the prosecution of former Bush Administration officials for war crimes. Incompetence at best.

Throw in the removal of Charlie Rangel at Ways & Means Chair as a result of corruption charges, the botched union exemption to the Cadillac Tax, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Cornhusker Kickback, and the backroom deals and pure, raw corruption of Washington has been on display for months.

Plus, don’t forget the summer town halls whose attendees were labeled “political terrorists,” “extremists,” and deemed “Un-American” by members of Congress. Zuckerman’s right. They’re doing everything wrong.

Somewhere, I have to imagine that Hillary Clinton is grating her teeth at what might have been. But I digress.

None of this should make Republicans overconfident. Democrats may be politically down at the moment, but they are still very dangerous, as is evidenced by Obama, Pelosi, and Reid’s push to abuse the budget reconciliation process to enact ObamaCare.

And, if true, Eric Massa’s allegations indicate the lengths that the majority will go through to get what it wants — even engaging in whole scale purges of its fellow travelers.

Right now, the GOP must be prepared to fight Obama and his radical policies tooth and nail. On every front. On every issue that threatens the nation’s very solvency and threatens to bankrupt future generations.

As incompetent as Democrats have been, they now seek to lock into place these policies, hoping that Republicans cannot undo them in 2011 and beyond, even if the GOP wins in 2010. They may be right, and Republicans must not proceed as if they have already won the mêlée.

For certainly, the true battle has only just begun.

Bill Wilson is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

Aponte: A Loyalty Risk for Ambassador?

By Richard McCarty

President Obama made a terrible mistake nominating Mari Del Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador. Aside from the fact that Aponte has given tens of thousands of dollars to Democrats, why would Obama waste more political capital trying to get this controversial and incompetent nominee into government?

Nearly a dozen years ago, President Clinton nominated Aponte to be ambassador to the Dominican Republic. Several months later, her nomination was withdrawn because Aponte did not wish to answer Senators’ tough questions about her past.

Aponte’s biggest problem was her eight-year relationship with Roberto Tamayo, a man who was friendly with and indisputably in regular contact with Cuban intelligence. Some have even called him a spy. Tamayo loaned Aponte money, which allegedly came from the Cuban intelligence service; and Aponte never repaid the loan.

A Cuban defector once even asserted that Cuban intelligence wished to recruit Aponte. Of course, she denied any knowledge of Cuban intelligence efforts to recruit her.

The FBI questioned Aponte about her contact with Cuban intelligence, and she gave somewhat inconsistent answers. The FBI then requested that she take a polygraph test, but she refused saying that she was not subject to a background check.

These are hardly the actions of a trustworthy public servant who has nothing to hide. Over the objections of career personnel at the State Department, she received her top-secret security clearance—after all, she was a good friend of Hillary Clinton.

Regardless of the truth about her dealings with her boyfriend and his connections to Cuban intelligence, Aponte would seem to have divided loyalties. Although she has experience serving as an ambassador, she previously represented the “country” of Puerto Rico in the United States.

That’s right, from 2001 to 2004, Aponte served as the Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration. In this cabinet-level role, she represented the governor of Puerto Rico in the United States. It appears that she viewed herself as an ambassador to the United States. At an official gathering in 2003, she referred to Puerto Rico as a “country.” And this was no slip-of-the-tongue: several days later her office issued a press release calling her office building in D.C. an “embassy.”

But even if we were to set these loyalty concerns aside, there are still plenty of troubling things about Aponte’s record. Her record conclusively shows her to be both radical and incompetent.

She has served on the boards of the National Council of La Raza, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (now LatinoJustice PRLDEF), Democracia USA, and PODER PAC. La Raza (the Race) and LatinoJustice PRLDEF both advocate for rights for illegal immigrants, among other things.

Democracia USA is a group founded by the radical People for the American Way. Like ACORN, Democracia USA has been accused of voter registration fraud. PODER PAC is a discriminatory group that only supports liberal, female, Hispanic Democrats. Fittingly, its slogan is “by Latinas, for Latinas.” This slogan is not far from the slogan of the blatantly racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), which is, “For The Race everything. Outside The Race nothing.”

Aponte is also a member of the Belizean Grove, and she recommended Justice Sonia Sotomayor for membership. Of course, Sotomayor quit the females-only club before her Senate confirmation.

But even if we set aside concerns about Aponte’s loyalty and her radicalism, she still has a disturbing record of incompetence. For example, she served on the board of the United Way of America as its president, Bill Aramony, lived a lavish lifestyle, and funneled United Way’s money to his family and cronies.

What was the board’s reaction as the problems came to light? After an internal investigation, the board unanimously offered its support for Aramony and attributed the problems to sloppiness and inattention to detail. Ultimately, Aramony went to prison, and the lackadaisical board was shaken up after local chapters withheld their dues to the national organization.

Aponte was a partner at a minority law firm that routinely changed its name partners—five times over the course of six years. At one point, the firm owed the IRS $1 million in back taxes. Eventually, the firm collapsed, and a creditor sued for $1 million claiming that the firm had filed fraudulent documents to obtain money.

The business license of Aponte & Tsaknis, another firm at which she served as partner, was revoked. Aponte was the registered agent for the firm. Furthermore, she was managing partner of KJN/DC, an advertising firm, whose business license was also revoked.

Finally, Aponte served as an unofficial advisor to the unpopular, one-term mayor of Washington, D.C., Sharon Pratt. Presumably, Aponte’s relationship with Pratt helped her land a seat on the board of the University of the District of Columbia. Throughout Aponte’s time on the board, the university was beset by problems.

There is certainly enough in Aponte’s past for Senators to justify placing holds and demanding recorded roll call votes on this controversial nominee, whose radicalism on display, loyalty concerns, and incompetence are just another example of this Administration’s astounding arrogance.

Richard McCarty is an assistant director of Research for Americans for Limited Government.

Capitol South

ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.
 
© 2008 GETLIBERTY.ORG, AMERICANS FOR LIMITED GOVERNMENT