Dave Nalle's blog

This is an ongoing fight in many states. Republicans need to figure out how to work with libertarians, rather than treating them as unwelcome outsiders. You can't ask for libertarian votes and then tell them to shut up and go away.  But on the other side of this, libertarians also need to realize that a winning coalition requires an accomodation of interests and the way to lead the coalition is by showing them how they can actually win.  Revolution! may be a lot of fun, but revolutionaries tend to get their heads cut off.  Libertarians need to play electoral democracy....and Republicans need to remember what Ronald Reagan said: "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism". - Jon Henke

On Friday — timed just right to minimize news coverage — Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer and the state party Grievance Committee notified a number of party members, many of them holding elective office, that they were effectively purged from the party and had been removed from their offices and would be ineligible to hold any other party positions for periods ranging from two to four years.

(An open letter from the Chairman of the RLC to liberty activists attending health care townhall events this month)

I’ve been studying videos of the Townhall protests which have taken place so far, have talked to participants and have been tracking the media coverage and the spin which the left is trying to put on the protests. As a result I have some suggestions for Republican Liberty Caucus activists who attend these events which I hope you will also share with others who go with you.

The line of attack against the protests is to try to discredit them as “astroturf” events sponsored by healthcare lobbyists and organized by national issue advocacy groups like FreedomWorks. They’re also calling grassroots activists “mobs” and “rioters” who are trying to silence debate by intimidation. They’re even suggesting that protesters are being bussed in from other areas in completely staged events. Because it’s what they know and what they have done themselves, they’re assuming that our authentic grassroots protests are as bogus and contrived as the paid picketers sent out by the unions and the fraudulent protest rallies by paid ACORN stooges. At least they think they can make that accusation stick.

There’s almost a month of further opportunities ahead of us as legislators go to their home districts and meet with constituents. Before the left can seize control of the debate and totally distort public perception of our legitimate protests and very real concerns, we need to take some steps to make that more difficult for them and to counter their talking points. So when you go to a townhall meeting -- and I hope every one of you will attend one or more -- keep these five suggestions in mind.

1. Go to expose the truth, not just to protest. There’s a lot more potential to advance our issues if you get to talk and ask questions and give legislators a chance to hang themselves with their answers. Ask them questions and let them know what you want, what you’re worried about and that you will hold them accountable. Just waving signs and shouting slogans will let them paint you as bullies. Some townhall meetings have already been cancelled because of protests, so you have to appear non-threatening. Be nice, but don’t let them get away with anything. Challenge their talking points and spin with the facts. Keep calm and demand answers.

2. Go with questions in mind. Have several thought out in advance so that if someone else asks one you wanted to ask you have a back-up ready. Read the Health Care bill (HR3200 on opencongress.org) and find something in it which bothers you. Preface your question by telling them that you’ve read the bill or most of the bill. Be honest about it and ask them about specifics. Ask them how they plan to pay for the massive cost of the “public option” without raising the deficit as Obama has promised. Will it mean raising taxes? Ask them if you’ll be able to stay with your current doctor or change from one private plan to another under Obamacare. Ask them how they expect private insurers to compete with a tax-subsidized government “public option.” Ask them if they’re going to enroll themselves and their faimily in the new system. Ask about the penalties for small businesses and individuals which want to opt out of the system.

3. Don’t limit your questions to healthcare. Once you have the floor you can’t be brushed off before you can get a question off, so ask about other issues which concern you. Ask about the new Food Safety act (HR2749) and whether it’s a good idea to put control of our food supply under the FDA. Ask them if they are going to support the Federal Reserve Transparency Act (HR1207). Ask them whether they think the “Cash for Clunkers” program (HR2751) is a good idea considering it encourages so many Americans to take on more debt. Ask them if they support the National Right to Carry Reciprocity Act (HR197) and the Citizens Self Defense Act (HR17) which protect the rights of gun owners. Ask them if they support the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act (HR2835). Ask about the cost of “Cap and Trade” (HR2454) and how much it will cost taxpayers and small businesses. Ask if they think that creating special classes of privileged citizens under the Hate Crimes Bill (HR1913) is a good idea. There are lots of good issues to raise and you can find all the bills on opencongress.org. Just make sure you know the issue you’re asking about and don’t let them get away with brushing off your question. If all else fails, just ask them if they’ve actually read the Health Care bill or if they read all the bills they vote on. That seems to throw all of them for a loop.

4. Don’t just hold Democrats accountable. If there are Republican Congressmen or Senators in your area who are holding townhall meetings don’t give them a break. Attend their events and ask them the same questions you would ask the Democrats and ask them clearly if they are going to support or oppose Obamacare. Ask them about other issues as well. Let them know that you don’t want them caving in to the Democrats on these issues and that you support them if they remain true to Republican principles of fiscal responsibility and individual liberty.

5. It’s a small technical point, but vitally important. When you are called on, state your name and where you are from very clearly. This will allow the media to follow up with you afterwards if they want more information and it will make very clear that you are from the congressman’s district or at least his state and have a legitimate reason to be there. Don’t let the media portray you as a shill or an outside agitator. Stand up, be counted and be clearly identified.

Remember to have confidence and not to be be intimidated. These are your representatives. You pay their salary and they should be responsive to your concerns. Be knoeledgable, be polite, make your points and ask your questions clearly and then let them respond. Ask a followup if you can. Their response is likely to do them more harm than anything you say if you can expose them as ill-prepared, ignorant or dismissive. Be informed. Be outspoken. Let them know you hold them accountable.

In Liberty,
Dave Nalle
National Chairman, Republian Liberty Caucus

The folks at ACTIVE have come up with an interesting idea. They're calling for a nationwide strike of citizens against the government, turning the international socialists' tactics against them and possibly launching a movement which will have even more impact than the Tea Parties have had.

At a time when the extreme left has become the establishment, those who support traditional American values of liberty and free enterprise are by default the radicals, just as we were in 1776 when we opposed the tyranny of British rule. I don't agree with all of the beliefs and methods which groups like ACTIVE and the Patriotic Resistence and Bureaucrash advocate, but this idea of adopting the methodology and rhetoric of the radicals of the 60s in the fight against the growing power of the leftist state in America is very appealing.

Back in the early days of the Libertarian Party this is very much the approach which we took. As editor and a columnist for Liberty magazine back in those days I was constantly writing articles which sought to capitalize on the enthusiasm of student radicalism and direct it against the terrible policies of the Carter administration. In the SLS we were borrowing ideas from the SDS which had preceded us by about a decade, and we were drawing on the hardcore anarchism coming out of the anti-government riots and the punk music coming out of England in the late 70s. At the time there was only so far we could go with the idea, because Carter's incompetence made his administration too soft a target and the entire dynamic changed when Reagan came into power and drew a lot of libertarians including myself more into the political mainstream.

The days of Reagan are long over now and the champions of liberty are the underdogs again. This time we have a statist establishment to oppose which is much more powerful and much more dangerous than Jimmy Carter ever dreamed of being. The time really is ripe for a liberty revolution, and the tactics of the revolutionaries of the past are now ours to use. The liberty movement has made a lot of strides in the last couple of years and generated a huge diversity of organizations and issue groups, both inside the Republican party and among independent voters, but it's clear that a lot of these groups are looking for opportunities to take action in more radical and dramatic ways.

The Tea Parties brought a lot of different groups together with a common goal, but their effectiveness is inherently limited and they have been successfully undermined by a media disinformation campaign to portray them as "astroturf" events because of the involvement of Republican party groups and big money advocacy groups like FreedomWorks. As an idea they have also lost momentum from being overused and have pretty much run their course as an effective protest campaign.

Whatever succeeds the Tea Parties needs to go even deeper into the grassroots and nothing could do this more effectively than a protest which is purely based on individual action. Instead of gathering together into a group and marching or rallying, every person can take action on his own, but coordinated on a nationwide basis. That's what makes something like a general strike such an appealing idea. If enough people can be involved to really represent the high level of dissatisfaction in the country, the results could be impressive and impossible to ignore.

The only problem is the timing. I assume that those who have proposed a date of November 4th picked that date because it's the one-year anniversary of the election and because it gives plenty of time to organize a nationwide protest. The problem is that by then it's likely to be too late for even a wildly successful strike to have any impact on the most serious threats from the Obama regime. If we don't stop Obama and Pelosi as quickly as possible we are going to be out of luck. Cap and Trade and ObamaCare will be done deals by November 4th and we'll be well and truly screwed as a nation. These socialist programs will never be reversed once they are implemented, so we need grassroots protest on a huge scale before the end of the Summer.

I love the irony of using classic radical tactics against this government, because the truth is that they may have started out as radicals, but they are now the establishment and we are the radicals. So grab a copy of Rules for Radicals, Steal this Book or Stir it Up and learn the tactics that used to drive our enemies, because they're ours now and it's time to turn the tables on them.

This nation was founded by radicals and it will take a new generation of radicals to reclaim our stolen liberty. Founding radical Sam Adams said: "It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." We are the new irate minority – sons and daughters of liberty like Sam Adams – and a general strike might be just the kind of brushfire we need.

This week the Congressional Budget Office projected enormous cost increases under the current congressional plan for national health care. It was promoted as saving taxpayers money, but the CBO estimates a cost over $1 trillion and it is likely to raise the tax burden for many Americans to close to 60% of their already dwindling incomes, as government bureaucrats balloon the cost of what is already the most expensive health care system in the world. The devastating financial impact of ObamaCare for the nation and every citizen is now overwhelmingly clear. But just in case you still harbor any illusions about how disastrous current proposals for national health care would be, I thought it was time to revisit the other cost — the cost in human suffering and loss of life under socialized medicine.

A key element of the cynically misnamed Affordable Health Choices Act, which is the plan currently being rushed through congress to meet deadlines and criteria set by President Obama, is rationing health care using Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) methodology where government bureaucrats would set up schedules by which treatment would be allocated based on statistics and cost to benefit ratios rather than the interests and needs of the specific patient. Decisions on care would be matters of policy based on group effectiveness rather than on a case by case basis and doctors would have to abide by these decisions without regard to the welfare of the patient.

The impact of rationing in other nations where it has been introduced as part of the national health care system has been horrendous. It attempts to reduce the financial cost of the system by a trade-off which increases the cost in lives lost and individual suffering. Two nations with many similarities to the United States which have resorted to rationing health care are Great Britain and Canada. In both nations the human cost has been high and the results are easily quantified.The failure of rationing comes down to two basic problems — denial of treatment and very long wait times. Both of these can result in suffering and death for patients, especially those with critical and chronic conditions which are treated easily and routinely in the United States today, but which often result in death in Great Britain and Canada.One telling scenario of denial of care comes with cardiac patients. In the United States if you come into a hospital with an arterial blockage you are usually scheduled for an angioplasty or a bypass in a matter of days, because that is the best way to achieve a long-term solution to the problem. In Canada and Britain the common response is dictated by a shortage of surgeons and facilities, so you are given beta blockers to try to keep your heart functioning and sent away. If you're lucky you'll survive the months that it takes to get you scheduled for surgery or maybe come into the hospital in the middle of an actual heart attack when your chances of surviving the surgery are lower but they may actually operate. Or even better, if you live in Canada they may slap on a heart monitor and have an ambulance drive you to the US for treatment as they do with hundreds of cardiac patients every year. The sad reality is that many who are denied immediate surgical treatment for heart problems just die.In the US a coronary patient is four times as likely to receive surgical treatment as in Britain. In the US only 5% of Americans are made to wait more than four months for surgery. In Canada 27% wait four months or more and in Britain 36% wait four months or more. While the base rate of coronary disease in the US is higher than in other countries because of diet and lifestyle, the rate of survival for those diagnosed with coronary problems is much higher than in other countries because patients get the best and most appropriate treatment more quickly.

The same pattern holds true with cancer. Overall Britons and Europeans in general die at a higher rate from all forms of cancer than US citizens and the difference is dramatic in cases where early detection and treatment are important. For example, women with breast cancer in Britain have a 46% death rate as opposed to 25% in the US. Men with prostate cancer in Britain have a 57% mortality rate while in the US only 19% die and the death rate is declining rapidly because of early detection. It's the same with colon cancer. In Europe as a whole there is only a 8% survival rate, in Britain there's a 40% survival rate and in the US there's a 60% survival rate. With cancer of the esophagus only 7% survive while in the US 12% survive, although it's still one of the most deadly forms of cancer. Both long- and short-term recovery and survival rates for all forms of cancer are also significantly higher for US patients. Rationed care has limited diagnostic facilities like MRI machines and has created long wait times for specialist doctors. In fact, 40% of cancer patients in Britain never get to see a cancer specialist at all, and the National Health bureaucrats have denied basic tests like pap smears and ruled out powerful chemotherapy medicines as too expensive, all of which has cost lives. With diseases like cancer where early detection and treatment are vital,  resource rationing means a lot more dead patients.

The human cost of delay of care caused by rationing is particularly significant. One key element of this is the wait time to see a specialist who can provide the best treatment for specific ailments. In the US 74% of patients get to see a specialist within four weeks. In Canada only 40% get seen that quickly and in Britain only 42%. In many cases these delays can cost lives, but the cost of suffering has to be considered as well. In both Canada and Britain the wait times are even longer for conditions which are not life threatening, but can be very painful and seriously reduce quality of life. In Britain a hip or knee replacement can take more than five months and in Canada it can take as long as eight months. That's a very long time when pain is literally crippling.

An unsurprising irony is that as our congress looks at health care reform, activists in Canada, Britain, and a number of other countries are also looking at health care reform. The difference is that they are trying to figure out ways to introduce more choice and more market elements and reduce rationing at the same time we are plunging headlong into the same mistakes which they made a generation ago and which they now realize have left them with unacceptable failures in their systems with thousands of preventable deaths every year and millions stuck on waiting lists for essential treatment.

This is how bad it can get with government-run, single-payer systems, which may have a cost in lives and suffering, but do at least bring down the cost of health care. Imagine how much worse it could be with a combination of government bureaucracy and rationing and the high prices of private insurance and you have some idea of what ObamaCare will be like. It is likely to have all the flaws of socialized medicine while preserving most of the shortcomings of our current private insurance system, because the thousand-page bill which congress was considering is largely authored by lobbyists for the health care, pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It's like yet another bailout for these industries at a high cost in life, suffering and taxation to the American people.

Even the far left agrees that the health care plan currently being rammed through congress serves the interests of big insurance, medical and pharmaceutical companies while doing more harm than good to the average citizen. It rations and reduces the quality of medical care. It massively increases costs and forces small businesses and individuals to purchase insurance plans at inflated prices which they cannot afford or pay substantial penalties which they also can't afford. It passes many of these costs on to the public in huge tax increases. It doesn't solve the key problem of inflated insurance and health care costs and is projected to still leave 20 million people uninsured.

This may be the most monumental legislative disaster ever given serious consideration in the notoriously profligate halls of congress. This plan is not what the American people have in mind when they think of health care reform. It ignores their needs and sets their interests aside to pander to statist radicals and big business. The American people deserve better.

Drawing on the concept of the "Four Estates" of Republican France, it has been popular to call the press the "Fourth Estate," a non-governmental entity whose independence made it one of the pillars which supported liberty, and an important check on the power of government. In a free press the people had a way to express their concerns about government and a relatively unbiased advocate for truth independent of the self-serving assertions of political parties and leaders. In America that great tradition of a free press which truly stood out as a Fourth Estate began with the publication of Publick Occurances in 1690 and lasted for over 300 years before dying with a whimper this Wednesday at the hands of ABC News.

On Wednesday the 24th of June ABC will give over most of its programming schedule to custom programming, much of it direct from the White House, dedicated to promoting and publicizing the Obama administration's multi-trillion dollar healthcare plan. This programming will begin first thing in the morning with a Good Morning America interview with the president and continue throughout the day's newscasts, culminating in a primetime special touting the benefits of government run healthcare. The network has been given unprecedented access to the White House, where it has even been encouraged to set up an office in the East Wing. ABC and the White House are collaborating on the content of the special, few opposing voices or alternative plans will be heard, and they are refusing any advertising from groups advocating patients rights or opposing socialized medicine.

Just a few years ago Democrats were crying foul and demanding investigations when the Department of Education sent out a few Video News Releases to promote the No Child Left Behind Program, yet now they are willing to do the same thing on a much larger scale when it is their program which is being promoted. At a time when Democrats are talking about reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine and demanding a balance to right wing talk radio, turning over an entire network to government propaganda seems particularly hypocritical.

The left has long derided the right for complaining about media bias, insisting that the corporate nature of the media automatically biases it to the right, but here we see a corporate media giant deliberately whoring itself to become the propaganda outlet for a left-wing administration, and there is no question where ABC's loyalties lie. ABC News employees overwhelmingly supported Obama in the last election, donating 80 times as much to his campaign as they did to John McCain. In addition, a study by the Media Research Center shows ABC giving a disproportionate amount of coverage to the Obama healthcare plan compared to other health care options by a 3 to 1 margin.

The Obama administration has made state-corporatism a cornerstone of its economic plans, taking over businesses, forcing them into bankruptcy and handing out the spoils to their cronies and allies. But at least in the financial and auto industries there was some effort to resist, and many of those companies are still trying to buy back their freedom. What ABC is doing is many times worse, because they are volunteering willingly for a government takeover, offering themselves up as propagandists without considering the consequences. Perhaps they see a future where the state controls all media and they want to get in on the ground floor and have a favored status, but that just makes them like the slave who turns in the runaways hiding in the barn to the slave-catchers. He may get more scraps from the master's table but he's still a slave and he's also a traitor.

Journalists used to believe that they had a responsibility to keep politicians honest and hold their feet to the fire. Woodward and Bernstein didn't go to Nixon looking for ways they could help him promote his pet projects. When the press becomes nothing more than another arm of government, promoting the party line and dishing out propaganda, the people have lost one more essential safeguard of their liberty. ABC has decided to leave integrity and objectivity behind and become nothing more than shills for an ideology and a style of government which they believe in. Whether you support socialized medicine or not, this trend in the media should scare you. It's the death of the independent press and the beginning of state-run media. I halfway expect to hear the strains of "Moscow Nights" over the credits on ABC as I did on every radio or television newscast when I lived in the Soviet Union formally confirming that the media has gone from watchdog to lapdog.

Join me and many others in boycotting ABC, starting on Thursday and continuing through their summer line-up of very little but tawdry reality shows. You won't be missing much and you might be striking a blow for freedom. Though it's entirely possible that if we manage to dry up their advertising revenue they'll just get bailed out and taken over completely by the government.

I was very interested to see the reaction of many Republicans to the over-the-top behavior of the extreme right in the wake of the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller earlier this week. On The Next Right they quickly removed an offensive article and comments had loudly condemned the author. On Little Green Footballs they posted a substantial article condemning commenters and posters on several other right-leaning blogs for their comments about Tiller. These reactions give a clear impression that more and more mainstream Republicans are fed up with the fanaticism of the religious right, sickened over their behavior over the Tiller issue and just about ready to give them the boot.

Is it possible that this incident is the straw which finally broke the camel's back and has created an unhealable rift between rational conservatives and the extremists of the religious right? Even Republicans who are socially conservative seem to have had enough of the extremist rhetoric and support for violence coming from people like Fred Phelps and Randall Terry. They seem to have worken up to the fact that the fanaticism and terrorism they oppose in the Islamic world is not much different from the beliefs held by some they considered allies.

As Barry Goldwater pointed out many years ago, the one thing which Republicans ought to be extreme about is liberty and on all other issues they ought to be rational and pragmatic. Maybe that lesson which he spent decades trying to teach with his own actions, is finally sinking in.

The obsession with legislating morality and with opposition to abortion and gay rights is really not part of the core Republican agenda. These ideas and the fanaticism they inspire were brought into the party through its alliance in the post-Reagan era with religious conservatives. Historically, Republicans have had a laissez faire attitude, not just to the economy, but also on moral issues. Republicans used to be dispassionate, leaving moral decisions in the hands of individuals and keeping government out of the picture. It seems like the pendulum might be swinging back in that direction.

As Abraham Lincoln said many years ago, our nation and by extension the Republican Party, was "conceived in liberty" and that idea of individual liberty ought to be the basis of every policy and every decision which Republicans make. There is very little question that abortion is a sin, but shouldn't that sin be a matter of personal responsibility to be resolved between the individual and his or her soul and church and god? Once you get government involved, a change in policy or administration could as easily mean forced abortion and sterilization as you have in China as it could mean protecting unborn fetuses. Putting such personal decisions in the hands of government can only work out badly when there is the potential to go to either extreme.

This change in attitude in the GOP seems real and very significant. It has been building for years, starting with uneasiness with many Bush administration policies and perhaps culminating with the Tiller incident. That doesn't mean that I expect a wholesale casting out of the religious right, but it does seem as if the more reasonable elements of the religious wing of the party are finally realizing that they have to distance themselves from the exrtremists, and perhaps put broader priorities first if they want to continue to play a role in the party and if they want that party to be successful. Extremism has been like an anchor dragging the GOP down and if the party cannot cast itself free of that extremism and chart a better course for itself it will never be successful.

Fanaticism and extremism breed violence and terror and are the enemies of liberty. If we are determined to fight them in the War on Terror how can we be less vigilant in opposing them at home? If we are to have a Republican party which makes liberty its first priority, then it must reject extremism and intolerance in every form. We can still embrace conservative and moral values, but we must accept that these are personal values and that only evil and oppression can come from giving government the power to dictate morality and institutionalize the prejudices of religious fanatics.

This week you can probably expect a big push in the media for the cynically misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (Card Check), which I've written on before. One element of that push which will be getting coverage is an article by Seth Michaels on the AFL-CIO Now blog which heralds the fact that:

"A coalition of major investors who oversee more than $750 billion in assets is joining the fight for workers’ freedom to form unions by asking major corporations what they’re doing to protect and enhance the ability of workers to form unions."

Wow, that sounds pretty serious. That's a lot of investment money. It must mean that stockholders and important players on Wall Street are really concerned about making sure that unions can bully workers into joining by taking away their right to a secret ballot.

In fact, stockholders and major investment groups have not actually taken leave of their senses and decided it would be great to further burden businesses with rapacious union interference in our current harsh economy. What you actually have here is a classic example of how propagandists can use legtimate seeming sources to support their positions and create the impression of a popular movement or widespread support where it does not actually exist.

In the article there is a link to a press release from Domini Social Investments which further heralds this letter which has been sent to various Fortune 100 companies in support of EFCA by a group of "major institutional investors" controlling $757 billion in assets.

The effort here is to create an impression of widespread support in the financial community for Card Check. The core deception in this propaganda effort is that the letter is actually signed by a very limited group dominated by investors controlled by or closely associated with the unions promoting the legislation. The major signers on the letter are actually mostly international union pension funds or organizations representing union pension fund managers. Also signing the letter are a variety of specialty investment groups which invest in "socially responsible" businesses (unionized businesses), but they control only a small fraction of that $757 billion in assets and they are on the list mainly as a smokescreen for the union-controlled investment groups who hold the vast majority of the assets referred to.

In fact, the top signer on the list and the one with the largest assets is the AFL-CIO Employees Staff Retirement Fund, so the AFL-CIO is using their blog to promote this letter from "a coalition of major investors" without bothering to point out that they themselves are the major investors in question. Everything in the article is true as written, but the appearance that the unions have found major allies in the investment community for Card Check is entirely deceptive. The progressive angels of Wall Street who have joined them in their fight turn out just to be the unions themselves in a not very clever disguise.

What's more, the letter itself is hardly the clarion cry for EFCA which the AFL-CIO would have you believe. The letter actually makes an effort to look like it originates with the UNPRI a United Nations labor practices workgroup. The letter also does not actually endorse EFCA in any way as the AFL-CIO website suggests, but actually just solicits companies for their input on various labor issues. The letter says clearly:

"Please note that, although individual investors represented in this letter may have taken a view on the legislation, the group as a whole has itself not formulated an official position."

In reality the UNPRI and perhaps even many of the signers on the letter don't actually support Card Check at all. The letter also describes what policy towards unions and workers rights ought to be:

“The freedom to form or join a union of one’s choice or not, and to bargain collectively for the terms of one’s employment, are fundamental human rights that we as global investors recognize and respect.”

Who could disagree with that statement? It's broad enough that almost anyone would sign off on it, and would apply to the position of those who oppose the EFCA as well as those who support it. In fact, the main argument against Card Check is that it limits worker freedom to join unions by taking away the secret ballot which protects their free choice. So it could very well be that many of the signatories oppose the EFCA and it's certainly true that the group as a whole has not take a position on it and the letter is not an endorsement of it.

The letter actually seems to originate with a company called Boston Common Asset Management which like many of those signing the letter is a strange amalgem of investment firm and advocacy group. They're a worker owned collective which manages "socially responsible" investments, but seems to devote more of their time to lobbying for and promoting various left-wing causes. This business model raises all sorts of questions, like where they get the money to fund their advocacy work and how much of their customer base and revenue comes from union sources. Adding to my suspicions is that what appears to be the draft version of a similar letter to selected congressmen clearly originated on the AFL-CIO site, suggesting that these letters are being written by the union and passed on to these other groups for publication. Further research may turn up more evidence, but looking at the websites of these "social investing" groups I find it hard to believe that they could attract a great deal of money from legitimate private investors. My suspicious nature makes me wonder whether any of the groups signing the letter represent anyone other than domestic and international union interests.

What this example shows us is that when you have enough money and resources you can effectively generate your own news. Your shills issue a letter, you then hail that letter in your own publicity as a newsworthy event, you misrepresent it to make it seem more significant than it is, and then with any luck the compliant media picks up on it. With the letter released on Thursday, we'll see if that happens this coming week.

Meanwhile, in contrast with the score of shills advocating Card Check in this letter, 3100 businesses have sent their own letter to Congress opposing the passage of EFCA.

For Republicans in the Senate the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor is a lesson in the law of unintended consequences and another unfortunate legacy of the mistakes of the Bush administration.

I have occasionally defended some of Bush's well intentioned mistakes, but there's no way to put a happy face on this one, because it is going to put a woman on the highest court in the land who believes that judges should write the laws, that some racial and social groups are more worthy than others, that gun rights aren't really protected in the constitution, that government can seize your property without due process and give it to businesses and that free speech is a privilege granted by government to some and not others.

The problem which faces Republicans in this nomination, is that they will likely find themselves unable to filibuster or oppose Sotomayor with any vehemence because she is hispanic and a woman with a record of flaws which are ideological rather than ethical. Already great pressure is being exerted on GOP senators from party leadership to go easy on Sotomayor to earn some credit with the administration for the future. The fear is that opposition to Sotomayor may cost Republicans hispanic support at a time when they need every new vote they can get and when hispanic Republican politicians are rising on the national stage, increasing hopes for a breakthrough with that constituency.

The irony is that this would not be nearly as much of a problem for the GOP had it not been for a little noted failure of the Bush administration. The seeds of this situation were planted back in 2005 when Sandra Day O'Connor was retiring and Bush floated the names of a number of hispanic judges as potential replacements, including Emilio Garza, Alberto Gonzales and Consuelo Callahan. In each of these cases Democrat Senators told President Bush that he would face a filibuster against the candidate and his response was to back down and look for another nominee who was more acceptable to Democrats. The problem with this morally weak strategy was that it meant that despite his desire to apppoint the first hispanic justice, Bush threw away that opportunity and the chance it provided to score points with hispanic voters and now that opportunity has been handed to the Democrats.

In 2005 Bush should have picked the best qualified of the hispanic candidates -- probably Emilio Garza -- and nominated him and taken his chances with a filibuster. Or he could have nominated the ever-cooperative Alberto Gonzales with the specific expectation that he would be borked for the team. That would have put the Democrats in the position of having to attack and filibuster a hispanic nominee, costing them support in that community and making the administration and the GOP look like they were the ones fighting for the advancement of minorities in government. Even though the nomination might have been blocked the result would have been an enormous boost in popularity with hispanics for the Republicans and a ding on the civil rights record of the Democrats. It's also entirely possible that the Democrats might have been bluffing and would have backed down to avoid seeming hostile to a hispanic nominee.

As in other situations, Bush played politics like an amateur and failed to push what should have been an obvious advantage and the Republican party is still paying the price of that mistake. If Bush had played the situation the right way in 2005 then today Sotomayor would not enjoy the immunity conferred on the first hispanic Supreme Court nominee, the GOP would be stronger overall, and might be able to oppose Sotomayor if their ideological concerns are strong enough. But as a weakened party desperate to be liked, the GOP may very well have to bite the bullet, sacrifice principles again and roll over and accept Sotomayor despite her troubling record. And yes, you can blame Bush for it.

Although I have opposed the use to which the facilities at Guantanamo are being put for years, the plans which the Obama administration is developing to deal with the remaining terrorists held there present problems which they seem not to have considered and which may be unresolvable.

The Bush administration already released about two thirds of those being held at GITMO. They released all the easy prisoners. They sent home the ones whose countries would welcome them and they tried the ones where the evidence was easy to argue in court. Even so, a significant number of those they freed immediately returned to fighting for al Qaeda or the Taliban or resumed engaging in acts of terrorism. What they've left for Obama to deal with are prisoners who are confirmed to be serious terrorist threats, but against whom the evidence is weak or hard to present, even in a military tribunal, and whose home countries will not take them back because they know what diehard bastards they are, and they have absolute confidence that they will be involved in future violence if given an opportunity.

If we take them out of GITMO either permanently or to face trial, we have to put them somewhere. Evidence suggests that our prisons are already a breeding ground for potential terrorists. The recent terror plots in Miami and New York both originated with Muslim converts who had been radicalized in prison. Allowing these terrorists from GITMO who really are "the worst of the worst" into the prison system where they will be treated by some as celebrities and role models could prove to be disastrous. Even in the relative isolation of a supermax facility their influence would be felt; passed on through the several hundred other terrorists already in the federal and state prison system and the underground communications networks of the prison gangs.

The only alternative would be to put them in a completely separate maximum security facility, either built or adapted to house them, inside the US. Although many governors are trying to keep GITMO prisoners out of their states, governors in states with the most severe economic problems might be persuaded to offer facilities in their states in exchange for federal dollars. Michigan's Governor John Engler has already offered one of the two small maximum security prisons in Michigan's upper peninsula for the purpose. Others are also interested, like the town of Hardin, Montana whose city council voted unanimously to welcome GITMO prisoners to their brand new maximum security prison which remains unoccupied after three years of disputes with state authorities.

So despite the "not in my back yard" attitude which prevails in most states when they envision terrorists as guests in their prisons, there are places which are desperate enough for federal dollars and jobs to take the terrorists, so housing them in the US is certainly feasible. However, aside from the technical difference of being on American soil, a supermax prison devoted solely to GITMO prisoners would not be much different from housing them where they are now. They would still be isolated from other prisoners, likely in a very remote part of the country, and held under uniquely high levels of security. No one has ever escaped from a supermax prison in the US, but keeping the prisoners secure is really the least of the problems.

But even if we put them in prison somewhere else, respect for the rule of law and the Constitution demands that we give them fair trials. Yet there's a reason why the Bush administration was only able to try a handful of them. The evidence against the rest is strong enough to convince most people that they really are dangerous terrorists but it is not sufficient to form an effective case good enough to stand up in US courts which have already rejected the kind of evidence the government is trying to use in many of these cases. There's enough evidence to know they are the "worst of the worst" but it's often not the kind of evidence which is up to the standards of a normal American court. Twenty reliable sources may have told us someone is a terrorist and we may absolutely believe them, but without witnesses to acts of terrorism or physical evidence, a trial may well end in an acquittal which should result in the release of the prisoner. Then what do we do? We can't keep him in the US because he's not a citizen and he really is a dangerous terrorist even if not convicted, so he's not about to get a visa. We can't send him home or to another country because they know who and what he is and won't take him. We can't just release him in the wilds of Waziristan when no one is looking, because he'll just start killing civilians and US soldiers as a recent Pentagon report demonstrates. What do we do that honors our legal system and our Constitution and also protects our people and the world?

President Obama admits he doesn't have a solution, saying "there are no neat and easy answers here." He has a plan but it is expected to be unable to provide a real solution for as many as 100 of the GITMO prisoners who cannot be repatriated or freed in the US. The president seems to be leaning towards holding them indefinitely in the US without trial instead of at Guantanamo, and that's really no solution at all. It's still a violation of their right to a trial and some sort of justice. And if they are going to continue to be held without trial, the prisoners might actually prefer the balmy climate of Cuba to a concrete cell in the frozen wastelands of Montana or northern Michigan.

There aren't a lot of other options. We can't set them free in the US, we can't send them home and we can't legally hold them forever without trial. What does that leave?

It's tempting to apologize to the acquitted terrorist, drop him near the fighting in Waziristan or Somalia with an unloaded AK-47 and then turn a blind eye as a soldier -- perhaps a Pakistani soldier for propriety's sake -- with more common sense than our government, shoots him as an enemy combatant. That wouldn't be nice, and the backlash would be horrendous if it leaked, and it's guaranteed to leak.

Or we could take that idea to a higher and even more draconian level that will appeal to fans of the New World Order. Tag them with the dreaded GPS locator chips which are now being put in dogs by the humane society and which some people are suggesting we put in our kids. Then release them in a terrorist controlled area and track them until they meet up with some terrorists and call in an airstrike or a drone with a Hellfire Missile and take them and their friends out. Even less nice, but we might have plausible deniability if we claimed we targeted the other terrorists, not the recently released guy with the chip.

I can think of only one other slightly less sleazy and considerably more humane solution, which will certainly appeal to the administration's legion of lawyers. Let them go through trial, and as soon as they are set free immediately arrest them on a trumped up charge -- illegal immigration comes to mind -- and imprison them again. Conveniently, our immigration laws are so screwed up we could probably hold them just about forever if we can't find a country to deport them to. This really isn't any different than just leaving them in jail, but they do get a trial and we get a legal fiction to hide behind.

After thinking long and hard and not being able to come up with better solutions than these, I do know one thing for sure. I'm glad I'm not President Obama, because even if he has the wisdom of Solomon, I don't think he can find a solution any better than the ones I outlined. He's in a no-win situation and will pay a high price for whatever inevitably unsatisfactory resolution he finally selects.

As President Obama's kids are settling in at Sidwell Friends, one of the best private schools in the nation, their father has signed a budget which takes away the opportunity for poor kids in Washington DC to attend schools like Sidwell Friends with the help of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which makes it possible for 1700 kids a year — mostly African-American — to escape from the worst public school system in the country and attend a charter school or a private school which will give them a chance at a better future.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program is only four years old and has barely had a chance to prove itself, but it stands little chance of continuing when the federal funds backing it are eliminated from the budget by Democratic legislators eager to keep campaign contributions from the teachers unions flowing. Teachers unions don't like any kind of program which gives kids a chance to escape from government-run schools, and even this relatively modest voucher program is too much of a threat to be allowed to survive now that they have some clout. The funding was in the budget coming out of the last session, but has now been removed and is unlikely to be added back in with Democrats in control.

The program provides $7500 vouchers to about 1700 DC public school students chosen by lottery which they can then use to change schools, attend a charter school or attend an area private school. Every student who uses a voucher releases more money for other students who stay behind in public school because their voucher is underwritten by the federal government and is considerably less than the $14,400 per student spent by the DC public school system, which has the sad distinction of being the one of the most expensive and lowest performing school systems in the nation. DC ranks last in the nation in math and reading, 4th lowest in SAT scores and 6th worst in graduation rate,

Perhaps most important and almost always overlooked by those doing studies on voucher programs is how many graduates go to college and the quality of the colleges they end up attending. In the DC public school system only 59% of high school students even graduate. Of those only 36% have completed the coursework necessary to qualify them to go to a 4-year college degree program. Only 52.8% of those who take the SAT in DC go to college. Of those 86.2% attend in-state colleges which in the overwhelming majority of cases means that they attend the University of the District of Columbia which offers 4-year degrees but is basically comparable to a decent community college. That means that of entering freshmen only about a fifth will end up going to college and most of those will go to a second-rate institution.

In comparison, at the top private schools in DC like St. Albans, National Cathedral and Sidwell Friends virtually all of the students graduate and about 99% of those graduates go on to college and more than 25% of those graduates go to one of the top 10 colleges in the country -- like Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Princeton and Stanford. So that means they send more graduates to the very best colleges in the world than even manage to get to college at all after graduating a public high-school in DC.

Now admittedly, the $7500 which this program provides to students isn't enough by itself to pay for a private school which costs $15,000 to $30,000 a year. But all of these private schools also have endowments for scholarships, some of them quite substantial and targeting kids from the poorer parts of DC. On average for every 3 students who come with a $7500 voucher that's another student who can attend one of these schools for free, so between vouchers and private endowments a lot more poor students can attend some of the best private schools in the nation than could have otherwise.

In addition, these vouchers can also be used at charter schools in DC, which have performance much closer to private schools than public schools. DC charter schools graduate 91% of their students, almost double the rate at DC public schools. 83% of those students attend college, close to three times the number of DC public school students going to college. As a group in 2007 DC charter school graduates received $11 million in college scholarship awards, a vital advantage when so many of them come from an underprivileged background.

High school graduation and the chance to go to college can make all the difference in the world for a poor kid from the inner city. It massively reduces the chance that they will be involved in crime, reduces their chance of using drugs, more than doubles their long-term earning potential and even raises up others in the community around them. It even substantially reduces their chance of a violent death. DC has a rate of violent crime which is three times the national average and its poor neighborhoods are among the poorest in the nation. Unemployment is high, drug use is widespread in the poor communities and for many there is no way out. Kids born into this environment are born doomed.

Access to better educational opportunities is the key to saving children from poverty and social disadvantage. A public school system which sends only a small fraction of its graduates to college and is rated third worst in the nation is not providing that opportunity, but for almost 2000 students a year the Opportunity Scholarship Program did offer hope of a much better education and a very good chance at a degree from a good four-year college. By taking this program away Democrats in congress are reminding us that they don't really care about helping the most needy in our society. They just want to keep getting their votes, while pandering to the special interests for whom keeping the people poor and undereducated is politically advantageous.