Responding to the Oil Spill

It’s not surprising that the president’s response to the oil spill has been lacking. If you consider the way the Underwear bomber was handled, it’s not a shock that the federal response has again been a boondoggle. In a situation that demands immediate and decisive action from the president, what has Obama done thus far, besides continuing to bash Arizona and Wall Street, and telling us how much money we should make? Here’s a list:

• A week after the spill, he has sent his Interior Secretary, his Homeland Security Secretary, his Energy and Climate Change Policy Assistant, and the NOAA administrator to the Gulf Coast, and they’ll also be on talk shows.
• He has called for his Interior Secretary to issue a report within 30 days.
• He has sent in a team of Justice Department attorneys.
• He has called the governors of the Gulf Coast states.
• He has claimed to still support offshore drilling, while Axelrod suggests the administration might be more reluctant to drill now.

Other than some additional lip service, am I missing something? The Defense Department has sent C-130s for aerial spraying, but it doesn’t sound like they’ve been given a green light yet. There was some Department of the Interior SWAT team sent in, but it’s uncertain what they’re doing (did anyone know they had SWAT teams at the Interior?). It looks like the White House is mobilizing to go after BP more than it is responding to this disaster.

Then again, politics is what Obama does best. He knows how to use the media, stir up anxiety with populism, and bully. Those are abilities that help win elections, but they don’t necessarily translate well into governing.

UPDATE: Eleven days after the initial spill, the administration has appointed a Coast Guard official to coordinate response efforts. H/T John Hinderaker at Power Line.

UPDATE 2: John Hinderaker has a closer look at the response. Hugh Hewitt notes the administration continues to suggest BP will pay the damages.

Arizona’s ‘Lawful Contact’

Andy McCarthy offers some legal analysis of the most contentious part of Arizona’s new immigration law. If you want to have a serious discussion about this issue, you should read Andy’s post. He then addresses a practical concern about the law.

It’s fair to question how various scenarios of police interaction could play out in cases where there may be suspicion of illegal immigration. Many on the left, however, have been offering ignorant and dishonest descriptions. We know that reading legislation hasn’t been a Democrat specialty lately, but that’s no excuse for some of the claims that have been made about this bill.

UPDATE: Arizona’s legislature has approved some changes to the law, including changing the “lawful contact” language:

One change to the bill strengthens restrictions against using race or ethnicity as the basis for questioning and inserts those same restrictions in other parts of the law.

Changes to the bill language will actually remove the word “solely” from the sentence, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.”

Another change replaces the phrase ”lawful contact” with “lawful stop, detention or arrest” to apparently clarify that officers don’t need to question a victim or witness about their legal status.

A third change specifies that police contact over violations for local civil ordinances can trigger questioning on immigration status.

White House Wants to Weaken Sanctions on Iran?

If this is true, then it should confirm (if you don’t already believe) that the Obama administration isn’t serious about stopping Iran from going nuclear. The report suggests that the administration wants to exempt Chinese and Russian companies from being penalized for investing in Iran. Here is an explanation of the sanctions:

The legislation, aimed at companies that sell Iran gasoline or equipment to refine petroleum, would impose penalties on such companies, up to the potentially crippling act of cutting off the company entirely from the American economy. It also would close a loophole in earlier Iran sanctions by barring foreign-owned subsidiaries of U.S. companies from doing business in Iran’s energy sector.

The problem is, of course, that China and Russia need to be on board to really make sanctions against Iran effective. In this case, it looks like the Obama administration is happy to agree on cosmetic sanctions as long as China and Russia play along. We saw a similar dog and pony show deal with the arms treaty.

The downside is that our problems don’t go away or get even worse. And for what? So the president can parade around like he accomplished something and so he can line himself up for another Nobel Prize, all while Iran continues to develop nukes?

Speaking of Iran developing nukes, this post at Commentary captures a troublesome potential consequence of allowing Iran to reach “strong horse” status. The idea of a Middle Easterners flocking to a strong horse, even if tyrannical, is described well in Lee Smith’s The Strong Horse, which I am currently reading and will probably report on soon.

Arizona’s Controversial Decision To Enforce Federal Immigration Laws

The irony of the outrage over Arizona’s new immigration law is that it simply calls for enforcement of federal laws. Therefore, if federal government officials want to complain about the new law, they should look in the mirror. Voters who oppose should also focus on the federal government. Take a look at the basics of the law:

A. NO OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR
17 OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY LIMIT OR RESTRICT THE
18 ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT
19 PERMITTED BY FEDERAL LAW.
20 B. FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW
21 ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW
22 ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF
23 THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO
24 IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE
25 MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON,
26 EXCEPT IF THE DETERMINATION MAY HINDER OR OBSTRUCT AN INVESTIGATION. ANY
27 PERSON WHO IS ARRESTED SHALL HAVE THE PERSON’S IMMIGRATION STATUS DETERMINED
28 BEFORE THE PERSON IS RELEASED. THE PERSON’S IMMIGRATION STATUS SHALL BE
29 VERIFIED WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION
30 1373(c). A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY,
31 CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT SOLELY
32 CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN IMPLEMENTING THE REQUIREMENTS OF
33 THIS SUBSECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR
34 ARIZONA CONSTITUTION. A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS
35 UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW
36 ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
37 1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE.
38 2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE.
39 3. A VALID TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL
40 IDENTIFICATION.
41 4. IF THE ENTITY REQUIRES PROOF OF LEGAL PRESENCE IN THE UNITED STATES
42 BEFORE ISSUANCE, ANY VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT
43 ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.

This language has been subject to the worst of criticisms. Much of this outrage, coming particularly from the Democrats, is about politics. Again, it’s fine to disagree with the law, but it’s outrageous to blame Arizona for enforcing law the federal government created but hasn’t enforced.

UPDATE: Marco Rubio agrees with my point that the real issue here is the failure of the federal government. Rubio and some others have legitimate concerns with the language in the bill, but that is different from those who are demagoguing the bill altogether.

The Truth About ObamaCare

Medicare’s Chief Actuary has provided a report on the estimated effects of ObamaCare. While the MSM has slowly begun to report what many critics of the legislation have been saying for a while, this report exposes many of the bill’s major flaws. The estimates in this report contradict many of the promises made by Obama and the Democrats about this reform.

What the report says about total federal expenditures is that they would increase by $251 billion from 2010 through 2019. That number depends on $575 billion in Medicare cuts (or magical savings), which I’ve pointed out numerous times. Either Congress will not follow through on those cuts, driving up the deficit, or seniors will lose significant benefits. Neither scenario is good.

Senate Democrats Want Price Controls for Insurance Costs They Raised

If your Senator or Congressman voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (and you can check at the top of our site), then you should contact his/her office and ask if he/she either read the bill and lied about it making insurance more affordable, or if he/she just didn’t read the bill. You couldn’t have read the bill and not known the insurance regulations were going to raise costs, as I’ve been writing since I first read versions of the bill last year. Therefore, if you read it and claimed it would lower costs, you couldn’t have been honest.

Senate Democrats now want price controls for health insurers so the insurers cannot raise premiums for expensive new customers that Congress requires them to pay for. This makes as much sense as Congress demonizing financial executives for being paid what their contracts allow when Congress bailed them out, or Congress blaming lenders for making loans that Congress pressured them to make, or Congress bullying employers for reporting financial impact of the healthcare bill when Congress requires them to do so. At least now these Senate Democrats are admitting their “Affordable Care Act” is actually going to make insurance less affordable.

If insurance companies can’t charge a fair price for expensive customers, they might be forced to further raise costs of everyone else. Of course, Democrats could continue to squeeze the insurance industry with regulations that make it impossible to operate. The hard lefties likely intended to do this once they couldn’t get full nationalization and then couldn’t get a public option. Guy Benson points to the evidence of those who have this goal. To be fair, however, it could be that some Democrats didn’t know what they were voting for.

Military Option or Regime Change for Iran

Jen Rubin notes that the editors of the Washington Post recognize that the Obama administration is afraid of even the threat to use force in dealing with Iran. The report on the Gates memo suggested the obvious, which is that the administration has no serious plans for dealing with Iran beyond a likely to fail diplomacy.

The credible threat of force, of course, can be used to deter violence. President Obama doesn’t seem to believe this, as he is from the school that says American military might is more of an agitator than peacekeeper. It his this flawed view that leads to unilateral disarmament and limiting of our missile defense. The threat of force isn’t the only option though. The administration could support the Green Movement.

Jen Rubin offers two explanations for why the Obama administration avoids supporting regime change:

The editors say they’d prefer support for the Green Movement. “But the administration has so far shrunk from supporting sanctions such as a gasoline embargo that might heighten popular anger against the regime.” Indeed, the administration insists that the only meaningful sanctions, the aforementioned gasoline embargo, for example, are out of the question, because we’d get the Iranian people – who are pleading for our help and dying in the streets to overthrow a brutal regime – mad at us. (Equally probable is that the Obami don’t believe this hooey but instead are parroting the line for the sake of agreement with the Russians and others in the “international community” who don’t want to agree to anything effective.)

The belief that supporting regime change with a gasoline embargo would create backlash from the Green Movement at America is a plausible explanation of the Obama administration’s thinking. It follows from the notion that America’s involvement in the affairs of others is the cause of the world’s strife, and it also comes from moral equivalencies that put America on equal footing with tyrannical regimes like Iran’s. This thinking is also likely at least part of the reason why Obama refers to supporting regime change as meddling.

Of course, Reagan’s support for the Solidarity movement in Poland included tough sanctions and worked to overthrow the regime at that time. Reagan, unlike Obama, believed in promoting American principles and wasn’t afraid to exert pressure on those that denied those ideas from people who sought them. We saw how Reagan’s approach worked in the Cold War. We’ll see how Obama’s works in comparison, though history suggests it won’t work very well.

NYT Reports New Limits in Flexible Spending Accounts

Remember when Nancy Pelosi said we needed to pass the healthcare bill to find out what was in it? Well, either the New York Times is just now finding out and reporting what was in the bill, or they just didn’t report key provisions of it that might have sparked negative public reactions (I noted this proposal last year). Now, they are admitting that FSAs will be hurt by a contribution limit that starts in 2013.

The new contribution limit will be $2,500 per year. This means that if you contribute more than that now or before 2013, you’ll lose money when the limit goes into effect because the contributions are pre-tax dollars. Considering some tax rates may increase after this year if the Democrats let the Bush tax cuts expire, losses could be even greater. Combine those losses with the likely increase in premiums, and you might find the penalty for not buying insurance an attractive option. This would, of course, create the negative consequences for overall costs that I’ve already described.

Welcome to ObamaCare. Don’t like it? Then don’t elect Democrats this November.

John Bolton on the New START Treaty

John Bolton’s analysis of the new START treaty is a must-read. Bolton urges the Senate to carefully consider the treaty before ratifying it, and he examines eight key issues to consider. Perhaps the most concerning issues are the ones of tactical weapons and missile defense:

6. The Obama-Medvedev treaty does not limit tactical nuclear weapons, which Russia possesses in substantially greater numbers than the U.S. While we do not necessarily want a treaty encompassing both strategic and tactical warheads, lowering our strategic capabilities to levels not seen in half a century dangerously enhances the threat of Russia’s lead in tactical nuclear weapons to nations around its periphery. This alone is a potentially dispositive ground for Senate rejection of the treaty. Of course, Obama could propose to increase U.S. tactical nuclear capabilities to compensate, but who believes there is any chance of that?

…

8. Finally, Russia’s unilateral statement accompanying the treaty explicitly states that a qualitative or quantitative increase in U.S. missile-defense capabilities would constitute grounds for Moscow to withdraw. The Obama administration argues that this unilateral assertion does not bind the United States. Although the assertion is true at a superficial level, in a far more profound sense Russia’s position handcuffs Obama, perhaps in a way he enjoys, by preventing him from doing much, if anything, to enhance homeland missile defense. The president has proclaimed the treaty a huge victory, and it would defy reason to think he would invite Russian withdrawal in the near future. Thus, to preserve his precious treaty, he has given Russia a de facto veto over U.S. missile-defense plans. This national humiliation, because it is implicit, in some ways is worse than an express surrender in treaty language: Obama thinks he can conceal it from his countrymen. But no senator should have any illusions. Advances in missile defense are now effectively impossible if this treaty enters into and is to remain in force.

Moreover, senators should relentlessly probe the implications of the treaty’s preambular language “recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms,” and the equally vague and troubling assertion “that the interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced.” This linkage has long been Russia’s view, and the Bush administration rejected it. Including it in the treaty is thus an important advance for Russian efforts to prevent effective U.S. homeland missile defense. In fact, the treaty precludes converting ICBM launchers, such as missile silos, to use for missile-defense purposes, which certainly reads prima facie as a limitation.

Gates Memo Suggests No Plan for Iran

A secret memorandum written in January reportedly suggests that the Obama administration lacks a long-term policy on Iran. That there is no realistic plan for stopping Iran is no surprise, as we haven’t heard anything serious from President Obama on this issue and he never offered anything plausible on the campaign trail.

This section offered by General James Jones caught my attention:

In an interview on Friday, General Jones declined to speak about the memorandum. But he said: “On Iran, we are doing what we said we were going to do. The fact that we don’t announce publicly our entire strategy for the world to see doesn’t mean we don’t have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies — we do.”

This administration is happy to tell the world when we will pull our troops out of Afghanistan and when we will use nuclear weapons, but they are keeping their Iran strategy a secret? Please. If they had a viable Iran strategy, they’d announce it and use it as a marketing tool to make Obama sound competent on foreign policy.

The truth is simple: President Obama never had a solid foreign policy to deal with Iran, and he relied on President Bush’s negative image to get elected by offering little more than being the anti-Bush. That may have been good politics to get elected, but once elected, you need policy. I’ll believe this administration has a decent Iran policy when I see or hear it.