Conn Carroll's blog

[Promoted - Jon Henke]

As Patrick noted earlier, the Lefty Noise Machine is "already trying to soften up" Bobby Jindal. Late last week Think Progress threw up a post, hitting Jindal for being "unaware" that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused "major" offshore oil spills. Debating offshore oil drilling on Fox News, Jindal accurately said, "You know, that’s one of the great unwritten success stories, after Katrina and Rita, these awful storms, no major spills." To rebut Jindal's claims CAP linked to a Minerals Management Service study that they claim reports "that 113 oil platforms were “totally destroyed” — a total of 124 offshore spills." And it is true. The cited MMS study does report that 113 oil platforms were destroyed and that there were 124 offshore spills.

But here is what else the report says:

Promoted - Paul Krugman says Obama's tax policy would push some tax rates "back to the levels of the 1970s."  I do hope Obama runs on that message. - Jon Henke

John McCain may not be the world's best communicator, but his decision to portray Barack Obama's campaign as "Jimmy Carter's second term" is dead on. Tax policy is just one of the areas where Obama is a dead ringer for the peanut farmer from Georgia.

Combining Obama’s promise to end the Bush tax cuts with his promise to uncap the Social Security payroll tax for those making more than $250,000, the Tax Policy Center notes that Obama would create a top marginal rate of almost 60%. The top rate would exceed two-thirds and could even approach seventy percent for citizens who work in high tax state and localities like New York City or some parts of California.

Commenting on Obama’s tax raising plans, Paul Krugman writes: “it would push tax rates on some high-income Americans back to the levels of the 1970s.” For those of you unfamiliar with Krugman, he meant that as a compliment.

[Promoted - Conn Carroll shows just how wasteful and perverse goverment health care spending is; the eventual fiscal crisis from this will dwarf anything we've seen before - Jon Henke]

The exploding costs of Medicare are already killing the future of this country. If current trends continue, Social Security and Medicare spending will jump from 7.5% of GDP today to 13% by 2030. The Democrats solution to this problem: Medicare for all. The left actually believes they can control sky rocketing medical costs through government control of the health care industry. They are truly blinded by their love for big government.

Just look at the battle on Capitol Hill this week over Medicare. In 2003, conservatives passed a law requiring HHS to use completive bidding when purchasing medical equipment instead of using the price controlled fee schedule they do now. Under the current system, in some parts of the country taxpayers are paying $1,825 for a hospital bed anyone else can buy online for $754. If HHS went to competitive bidding they could save $1 billion a year annually.

So who could be against such a common sense move? Democrats. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) introduced a bill that would delay the implementation of competitive bidding for another 18 months. The reason? He doesn't want to hurt the businesses that currently make profits by overcharging US taxpayers.

And that is why government will never be able to reduce health care costs. Politicians are incapable of turning off the federal spending spigot when their constituents could be harmed. The better solution for controlling health care costs is a conservative pro-market  approach like consumer-driven health care.

Following the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress, CATO's Brink Lindsey wrote an article for The New Republic titles "Liberaltarians" mapping out his ideal outline for a fushionist liberal-libertarian alliance. Lindsey's calls for compromise were widely rebuffed by the left at the time, but recently Lindsey has come roaring back, winning a pat on the head from Eric Alterman at TPM Cafe and an open embrace from Jane Hamsher at Bloggingheads.tv.

Lindsey tells Hamsher he used to consider himseld a conservative sympathizer but no longer does and adds: "My values are a better fit these days with the center left than with the right." At TPM Lindsey writes: "the fact is that, until recently at least, most libertarians like me have rooted for conservatives and Republicans in the political arena. ... We sided with the political right because of its libertarian-inspired support for reduced government spending, lower taxes, and less heavy-handed regulation of economic activity.  ... Things have been changing in recent years, though, and old ideological identities and loyalties are now in flux."

Specifically, Lindsey says liberals and libertarians have similar policies on immigration, same sex marriage, drug control, crime, civil liberties, and, of course Iraq. Meanwhile Lindsey claims the shared conservative-libertarian issues have become less urgent: "America's political economy has shifted in a decidedly libertarian direction over the past few decades. Nobody believes in socialism anymore. Although there's a fair amount of nostalgia on the left for the good old days of the Big Government-Big Labor-Big Business triumvirate, nobody really thinks the Galbraithian "technostructure" can be reassembled."

Lindey adds: "And the larger conservative movement has changed in character as well. Small government and free markets are no longer the priorities they once were. Instead, most of the energy on the right these days is generated by immigrant-bashing and dangerous fantasies of a new Cold War with Islam. Such xenophobic impulses are repugnant to anyone with any kind of liberal temperament."

I greatly respect Lindsey and recomend his book Against the Dead Hand to everyone, but it is clear Lindsey is willfuly ignoring the left's own harsh turn to xenophobia. It was the left who demagogued against foreigners on the Dubai Ports deals, and it is the Democrats who have gutted thirty years of American Leadership on free trade. Barack Obama wants to create "Patriot Employers" to punish U.S. businesses that higher workers overseas with higher taxes. Oh and he wants to raise capital gains taxes and institute Hugo Chavez style windfall profits taxes on oil companies.

Lindsey also hopes liberals will abandon their dependenc on unions, but as Hamsher promised him, he'll get a "steel caged death match" on that front. Here too, Obama is tacking his party far to the left supporting card check, exclusive bargaining for first responders, and decreased transparency for unions. On health care, Obama wants to route billions more spending through Washington, while McCain has clearly moved in a more competition friendly direction.

Closing his latest TPM contribution, Lindsey writes of Alterman: "I applaud Eric's project of liberal renewal. ... But, as developed thus far, it lacks sufficient appreciation for the deep connection between the liberal institutions of the market order and the liberal values that Eric and I both prize. I don't mean that to be a good liberal, you have to be a libertarian -- not at all. But I do believe that liberal principles impose real constraints on the structure and role of government, and I don't think Eric has fully come to terms with that fact."

But you know who has already come to terms with the fact that "liberal principles impose real constraints on the structure and role of government"? Conservatives have. Especially after the Bush presidency. Lindsey may never get conservatives to agree with him on immigration and same sex marriage, but the National review has been in favor of reforming our drug laws for years. And Obama's not that great on civil liberties either. He is not going to change the actual surveilance program at the heart of the FISA debate, and he supports the creation of a national finger print registry.

While reading and listenting to Lindsey's latest I kept thinking of that saying: "If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were." If immigration and same sex marriage are that important to Lindsey, then I hope he enjoys hanging out with Hamsher at the next SEIU rally in favor of a "Patriot Employer" trying to win a favorable ruling from the Climate Change Credit Corp. If he feels comfrotable there, then the Democratic Party is the right place for him. Otherwise, we as conservatives should be willing to welcome Lindesy, and thos libertarians like him, back any time.

Promoted. -Patrick

I don't want to call Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby a liar, so after reading his op-ed today comparing Barack Obama and John McCain on economic growth I'll just assume he is ignorant. Mallaby correctly identifies four policy areas that directly affect the economy, but on each issue he is dead wrong about who has the better policies.

Promoted and bumped. -P

Patrick is half-right in his post Beyond Bush: "President Bush is a lame duck"... no doubt about it. But that does not mean that "the post-Bush era is already upon us." I agree that Republican candidates should act as if Bush does not even exist for this election cycle, but I hope this community does not act in a similar way.

A whole generation of Americans, the very generation we hope to engage online, has known nothing but Bush as president. They've been raised on regular Bush thrashing by the Daily Show and David Letterman's "Great Moments in Presidential Speech Making." The verdict from this generation is in: Bush is a colossal failure.

We need to have our own well developed narrative as to why Bush failed. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) touched on many of those failures today, starting with Karl Rove and the K Street Project leading right through to the record growth in domestic spending. Coburn writes: "If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority. ... The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009."

We also need to be ready to document the policy failures of the current Democratic Congress and the very possible Democratic control of the White House. Already Americans are feeling the pain of Democrat policies on energy. And Heath is right: we also need to be documenting the failures of liberal policies in the states. Texas' economy is booming and their state budget is in surplus. California's economy is stagnate and is facing record budget deficits. Barack Obama's America looks a lot like California and, nothing like Texas. The nation needs to know what it is getting into.