Club For Growth: Hoffman Leading in NY-23

Washington – A poll released today by the Club for Growth shows Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman surging into the lead in the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district to replace John McHugh, the former congressman who recently became Secretary of the Army. more…..

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Nat’l Legal and Policy Center: GOP Candidate Scozzafava, Husband Have Ties to Union-Backed ACORN Front

The political blogosphere has been exploding these past couple weeks over a special congressional election in an unlikely portion of upstate New York. A key reason is the connections between the Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a virtual adjunct to the more reprehensible sectors of the Democratic Party. An ACORN front group, the Working Families Party (WFP), on October 9 formally endorsed the Democratic opponent in this tight three-person race. But the WFP has endorsed Scozzafava more than once in the past. And a major reason is that her husband, Ron McDougall, is an organizer for one of the unions that created the party back in the late Nineties. Scozzafava has yet to repudiate either ACORN or the WFP.  more…..

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The Other McCain: NY23: Newt does Dede’s dirty work

I was disgusted just now to see Newt Gingrich’s appearance on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show tonight, when he hit Doug Hoffman with a cheap shot, saying Hoffman “doesn’t live in the [23rd] District. (Hey, ask some Georgians if Newt has any room to talk about carpetbagging!)

OK, this is a non-issue, and has been explained several times. Doug Hoffman’s hometown, Saranac Lake, is in the 23rd District. Hoffman’s current residence is about a 15-minute drive away in Lake Placid, which was also in the 23rd District — until the (then) GOP-controlled New York legislature gerrymandered the district! more…..

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LA Times: New York race at epicenter of a GOP mutiny

The conservative rebellion in northern New York is showing that the anger among disaffected voters, which became prominent this summer during the “tea party” anti-spending rally in Washington and at town hall meetings on healthcare, has become a baffling political force that even Republicans are having a hard time harnessing.

The fight on the right has also made this district the epicenter of a national debate about the future of the Republican Party — leaving party leaders to ask whether they are better off emphasizing the GOP’s small-government and socially conservative values, or trying to broaden their appeal to reach independent and moderate voters. more…..

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WSJ: Political Uncertainty Puts Freeze On Small Business

The economic contraction is of course the prime force driving companies to lay off workers. But a health-care overhaul grinding through Congress could bring unknown new obligations to insure employees. Bush-era tax cuts are set to end next year, and their fate is unclear. Legislation aimed at tackling climate change might raise businesses’ energy costs. Meanwhile, a bill aimed at increasing transportation spending is stalled.

Many companies say they have responded by freezing hiring, cutting benefits and delaying expansion plans. With at least 60% of job growth historically coming out of the small-business sector, according to the government’s Small Business Administration, that kind of inertia could impede an economic recovery.

Already, 7.2 million jobs have been lost during the recession, and forecasts show little or no job growth expected for the rest of the year. more…..

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NRO: A Closer Look at the Uninsured – Why the “46 million” figure is profoundly misleading.

The American health-care debate is a blizzard of numbers, but few get tossed around as frequently as “46 million.” According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS), that’s roughly how many people (the more precise figure was 45.7 million) lacked health insurance at a given moment in 2007 — nearly one-sixth of the entire U.S. population. The latest CPS data show that 46.3 million were uninsured at a given moment in 2008. more…..

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Washington Examiner: Fraud plagues government healthcare

Two recent headlines convey a disturbing contradiction: “Medicare fraud: A $60 billion crime” (“60 Minutes”), and “Reid to announce push for public option” (Politico). The former is the latest in a long parade of similar articles about Medicare, the government’s biggest health care program. The latter updates liberal Democrats’ continued effort to expand government health care despite its long and dreary record of waste and fraud. more…..

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The Other McCain: NY23: Newt does Dede’s dirty work

I was disgusted just now to see Newt Gingrich’s appearance on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show tonight, when he hit Doug Hoffman with a cheap shot, saying Hoffman “doesn’t live in the [23rd] District. (Hey, ask some Georgians if Newt has any room to talk about carpetbagging!)

OK, this is a non-issue, and has been explained several times. Doug Hoffman’s hometown, Saranac Lake, is in the 23rd District. Hoffman’s current residence is about a 15-minute drive away in Lake Placid, which was also in the 23rd District — until the (then) GOP-controlled New York legislature gerrymandered the district! more…..

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-Cnation

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 10/26/2009

On June 26th of this year, the House of Representatives narrowly passed H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act. More commonly known as the Waxman-Markey bill (named after bill sponsors Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), the 1,427-page bill tries to control global temperatures by creating a “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions, and then hoping that greenhouse emitters would “trade” emissions permits meet the cap. Under the scheme, the government would issue fewer allowances each year, causing the cost of the permits to rise. The cost of these allowances is a tax, and under Waxman-Markey, the tax would rise each year. As with any tax, it will ultimately be passed on to consumers in the form of higher energy and product prices.

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On August 6th, the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis released a report detailing the economic costs of the Waxman-Markey. Since energy is the lifeblood of the American economy, 85 percent of which comes from CO2-emitting fossil fuels, the Waxman-Markey bill’s arbitrary and severe restrictions on the current energy supply and infrastructure will not only have direct impact on consumers’ budgets through higher electric bills and gasoline prices, but also cause unnecessary inefficiencies at virtually every stage of production. CDA estimates that Waxman-Markey legislation would cost the average family-of-four almost $3,000 per year, cause 2.5 million net job losses by 2035, and a produce a cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) loss of $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035.

Surely our study did not produce the results Waxman and Markey expected. Earlier this month Reps. Waxman and Markey sent us, and a number of other institutions, a letter asking us to answer 33 methodological questions about the analytical techniques used in our study. We were delighted by Waxman and Markey’s letter since it is just the kind of thoughtful investigative work our lawmakers should do more often. For example, they asked if our model took into account an increase in private sector investments in research and development that would be sparked by the legislation and a new carbon market. Answer: It did. Our model incorporates both short and long-run responses to higher energy prices.

Waxman also asked if our model quantified any benefits of avoided climate change. Answer: It didn’t. Because according to estimates based on IPCC data, the Waxman-Markey bill would only impact global temperatures by .044 degrees C (about .09 degrees F) by 2050. There simply are no economic benefits from such a minuscule impact.

Waxman-Markey did not send their questions to some notable organizations that have conducted analysis of their bill like the Congressional Budget Office and the Brooking Institution. After we requested they do so, we have since received word that Waxman and Markey sent the same letter to the CBO. They had previously included the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Energy Information Administration (EIA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), CRA International, the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), and the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC).

In the interests of an honest and transparent debate about the costs of cap and trade the Heritage Foundation has devoted a space on our website, www.heritage.org, where we have posted our answers in their entirety. We have formally invited the other organizations who were asked these questions to allow us to post their responses as well, in the interest of full transparency.

Let’s hope the Waxman-Markey questionnaire signals that a serious debate can now take place. American families deserve to be kept fully apprised of how Congress intends to act, and how those actions will most likely affect their pocketbooks, their jobs, and their lives.

QUICK HITS

You know how Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al have been pushing the idea of ‘obscene’ insurance industry profits?

From the AP: FACT CHECK: Health insurer profits not so fat

Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They’re all more profitable than the health insurance industry.

In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making “immoral” and “obscene” returns while “the bodies pile up.”

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That’s anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones. more…..

Lies, damn lies, and pretty much anything that comes out of Obama’s White House.

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-Cnation

Erick Erickson at Red State thinks that’s exactly what she’s doing:

RedState: Scozzafava Declares Herself Part of Abramoff Wing of GOP: Funnels Campaign Cash to Family

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-Cnation

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 10/23/2009

Yesterday the United States Department of the Treasury Special Master of Compensation Kenneth Feinberg announced a wage control scheme for the 175 executives of the seven companies that have received the most funds from the taxpayer funded Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). At first the Obama administration denied any involvement in Feinberg’s decision. Politico reports:

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In fact, sources within the administration say the decision to cap corporate pay was Kenneth Feinberg’s, and his alone. A senior administration official tells POLITICO that Obama did not sign off on the pay master’s decision. Feinberg didn’t even brief the White House on it, the official said, but he briefed Treasury officials instead.

But after yesterday’s announcement that the Federal Reserve released its own plan to control how banks compensate their employees, the New York Times reported:

The announcement was choreographed to coincide with the decision by the Obama administration this week to cut the pay of many high earners at the seven companies that received the most taxpayer help. Both decisions were announced amid growing public outrage over large pay packages at many of those companies.

So which is it? Are the new wage control schemes launched by the Pay Czar and the Fed the acts of independent experts, or are they the closely controlled policy decisions of the Obama White House?

The answer to that question goes to the core of the very real constitutional problems that the proliferation of czars in the Obama administration creates. Obama appointed Feinberg to be his Pay Czar without any input from the American people and without any approval from Congress. Heritage fellow Matthew Spalding explained the problem in his recent testimony to Congress:

The issue is not whether the proliferation of “czars” amounts to a usurpation of power by the executive branch. Rather, the fundamental issue is how the rise of modern administrative government has put us in an unsolvable dilemma: whether policy should be made by technical experts, insulated from public accountability and control, or whether policy should be made by our elected representatives in Congress and the executive branch. The rise of government by bureaucrats–due to the delegation of power from Congress to administrative agencies, combined with the removal of those agencies from the President’s control–has given rise to efforts by Presidents from both parties to get the bureaucratic state under control through various mechanisms. The rise of “czars” in the current administration is just another manifestation–albeit, an unfortunate one–of this phenomenon.

If the American people did want hold the Fed and the Pay Czar accountable for their wage control decisions, right now there is no way for them to do so.

QUICK HITS

I’m exhausted this evening, but I can’t get to sleep without at least commenting on the ever-evolving NY-23 race.

First, I think Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman is as much about her sticking a toe back in the political waters as anything else. Her disappointing resignation from the Alaska governership aside, I think she’s fantastic. A lot of people think she is, but then a lot of people can’t stand her. There’s no denying she’s about as polarizing a political figure as there is, so it’ll be interesting to see how her endorsement of Hoffman plays out. My opinion is that it probably won’t hurt considering that Hoffman’s base up to this point is primarily composed of conservatives who are in all likelihood Palin supporters anyway, so not a lot of risk there. However, as Allahpundit at hotair.com opines, there is a definite risk of Palin’s entrance into the fray galvanizing Democrat opposition to Hoffman.

What remains to be seen – and really, what is in many ways more important in a big picture sort of way – is how much more of the vote she can bring to Hoffman. If she succeeds in putting Hoffman over the top, the shockwaves through the Republican establishment will be immediate and rather brutal. They will have no choice but to reevaluate the wisdom of continuing to run liberal candidates such as Scozzafava, and will have to weigh the risk of doing so against the potential for permanently alienating the conservative base and remaining the minority party in perpetuity.

And, inasmuch as this election has now pretty much become a referendum not just on fiscal and social conservatism in general vs. the ‘big tent’ Republican, but also on Sarah Palin, the values she represents and her future viability in the political arena, a conservative win in this election holds the very real potential to set in motion either the reversal of the GOP’s staggering decline, or the acceleration of its final descent into irrelevance.

No matter how this shakes out though, the one message the GOP better be getting loud and clear is that they need us a whole lot more than we need them.

Between you and me, I’m looking forward to the day when I can once again proudly display an “R” next to my name.

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-Cnation

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Related:

CNN: Major cash haul for conservative third-party candidate in NY

This is great news. From Palin’s Facebook page:

Support Doug Hoffman
Today at 5:28pm

The people of the 23rd Congressional District of New York are ready to shake things up, and Doug Hoffman is coming on strong as Election Day approaches! He needs our help now.

The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it’s important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in upstate New York. I am very pleased to announce my support for Doug Hoffman in his fight to be the next Representative from New York’s 23rd Congressional district. It’s my honor to endorse Doug and to do what I can to help him win, including having my political action committee, SarahPAC, donate to his campaign the maximum contribution allowed by law.

Our nation is at a crossroads, and this is once again a “time for choosing.”

The federal government borrows, spends, and prints too much money, while our national debt hits a record high. Government is growing while the private sector is shrinking, and unemployment is on the rise. Doug Hoffman is committed to ending the reckless spending in Washington, D.C. and the massive increase in the size and scope of the federal government. He is also fully committed to supporting our men and women in uniform as they seek to honorably complete their missions overseas.

And best of all, Doug Hoffman has not been anointed by any political machine.

Doug Hoffman stands for the principles that all Republicans should share: smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense, and a commitment to individual liberty.

Political parties must stand for something. When Republicans were in the wilderness in the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan knew that the doctrine of “blurring the lines” between parties was not an appropriate way to win elections. Unfortunately, the Republican Party today has decided to choose a candidate who more than blurs the lines, and there is no real difference between the Democrat and the Republican in this race. This is why Doug Hoffman is running on the Conservative Party’s ticket.

Republicans and conservatives around the country are sending an important message to the Republican establishment in their outstanding grassroots support for Doug Hoffman: no more politics as usual.

You can help Doug by visiting his official website below and joining me in supporting his campaign:
https://www.doughoffmanforcongress.com/donate3.html.

- Sarah Palin

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-Cnation

If I read one more so-called journalist refer to Dede Scozzafava as a ‘moderate’… the very suggestion would be laughable but for the fact that in many cases, the clueless twits tossing the term around should know better.

If Dede Scozzafava were a moderate, she wouldn’t be in the situation she now finds herself in. A look at her record and her political history will reveal a tax-and-spend, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage liberal who twice since 2008 considered running as a Democrat (once in early 2008 for a state senate seat, and once this year for this very race in which she’s now campaigning as a Republican), who supports card check legislation and taxpayer-funded abortions, and whose campaign has been funded primarily by abortion rights groups, the NEA, and labor unions.

There’s more to disqualify her for consideration, including her inexplicably bizarre behavior this week (calling the cops on a Weekly Standard reporter and her disastrous press conference in front of Hoffman’s office), but you get the picture.

Bottom line, Dede Scozzafava is no moderate, she is a Democrat – to the left even of her Democrat opponent in this race on some issues – with an R next to her name. It is the preponderance of the unprincipled ‘big tent’ RINO that is largely responsible for the current foundering of the Republican party; supporting unprincipled politicians the likes of Scozzafava will only drag them further into irrelevance.

-Cnation

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 10/22/2009

You have to read all the way to page A-25 in today’s New York Times to learn about it, but the Senate took its first floor vote on Obamacare yesterday and the White House lost. Big. The NYT reports: “Democrats lost a big test vote on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors at a cost of $247 billion over 10 years. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, needed 60 votes to proceed. He won only 47. And he could not blame Republicans. A dozen Democrats and one independent crossed party lines and voted with Republicans on the 53 to 47 roll call.”

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As we reported on Monday and Tuesday, yesterday’s “doc fix” vote was part of a White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel strategy to smooth passage of President Barack Obama’s $1 trillion-plus health care overhaul by transferring a quarter of its cost into a separate, and completely unpaid for, bill. This transparently dishonest shell game was too much for honest Democratic Senators like Evan Bayh (D-IN), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Ron Wyden (D-OR). Wyden told the NYT: “On the eve of a historic debate on health care, it’s essential to show a commitment to real reform,” which includes fiscal responsibility.

Yesterday’s vote marks a significant failure of the Left’s special interest approach to passing Obamacare. From the beginning, the White House thought that if it bought off all of the business interests involved (the American Medical Association, the drug industry, health insurers, hospitals, etc.) opposition to the plan would whither. In one sense, the plan worked. USA Today reports PhRMA, Pfizer, America’s Health Insurance Plans, and the Federation of American Hospitals have all ponied up millions of dollars for lobbying and television ads in support of Obamacare.

But all these special interest television ads failed to rid Americans of their common sense objections to Obamacare’s government takeover of health care. Gallup reports today that Americans now more than ever believe the costs their family pays for health care will get worse if Obamacare passes. And more Americans now believe that Obamacare will lower the quality of care they receive, reduce their health care coverage, and complicate the insurance company requirements they have to meet to get certain treatments covered.

Instead of the massive overhaul being pursued by the White House, a solid majority of Americans tell Gallup they want to see Congress move in the opposite direction. By 58% to 38%, Americans would generally prefer to see Congress deal with health care reform “on a gradual basis over several years” rather than “try to pass a comprehensive health care reform plan this year.” Bipartisan, fiscally responsible, reform such as equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance purchases, freeing customers to purchase health insurance across state lines, and allowing states more flexibility on Medicaid spending are readily doable. And that is what the people want.

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