The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Jeb Bush's 10% Solution

It sounds like a good idea:

Portraying himself as a political outsider — despite his family’s 12 years in the White House — Mr. Bush called for a 10 percent reduction in the federal work force, an immediate hiring freeze, a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and a six-year waiting period before members of Congress can lobby on Capitol Hill.

Just so you don't think Jeb! is a mean and heartless man, readying himself to flood DC with pink slips, his civil service trimming comes with an important caveat:

Mr. Bush said his policies could reduce the size of the federal work force by 10 percent in four years. Much of that, he said, would be accomplished through attrition and a strict system of replacing every three departing federal workers with one new employee.

It was often said of Mitt Romney that he spoke conservatism as a second language. It would be unfair to describe Jeb Bush in quite that way. Change his last name to Smith, and change his mind on Common Core, and you have, all in all, a pretty conservative guy. Yet his proposals have a focus group feel to them; they sounds like something he's suppose to say.

Shrinking the number of people who work for the federal governments does NOT necessarily shrink the federal government. It's easy enough to spend more money with fewer people handling it. It's even easier to contract out government work to private companies. Does it really matter if the IRS' own employees are harassing you or if they've out sourced the bullying to someone else? President Jeb's 10% rule won't simply be broken; it's going to get drop kicked into oblivion. 

The deeper you dig the less impressive Jeb's proposals become. The balanced budget amendment has been a conservative chestnut for decades. Yet it's gone precisely nowhere. If your job depends on bribing some people with other people's money, including those yet unborn, it would be bad business to make your job much, much harder. No self-serving politician would vote for a balanced budget amendment. Since the self-serving make up a working majority of Congress and all 50 state legislatures the idea will remain a dead letter.

Extending the lobbying ban for ex-law makers is - admittedly - an interesting twist. But again the devil is in the details. If you stretch the definition of lobbyist and lobbying far enough, safe in the knowledge that any oversight will come from people who are planning post political careers on K Street, the new law will be as useless as the current law. The source of lobbying isn't lobbyists, it's the massive size of the federal government. Until it gets hacked down to a manageable size curbs on lobbying are cosmetics for those who aren't paying attention. 

The word that comes to mind is disappointing. Even staunch critics of a possible Bush 3.0 Presidency have to wonder why Jeb! is phoning it in so early in the cycle. When you get past the unimaginative nature of the proposals you're left with a kind of cynical pandering to the base. There is that uneasy sense that the former Florida Governor is patting us on the head. 

 

Thursday Night - The Natural

Apparently You Can Talk to Moe Green Like That

Alex Rocco dead at 79:

His most famous role came in 1972's "The Godfather," where he played the humbled casino owner who meets his fate on a massage table, with a bullet through his thick eyeglass lenses. His confrontation with Al Pacino's Michael Corleone -- in which he condescended to the new boss: "I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!" -- was among the movie's many indelible scenes.

"Without a doubt, my biggest ticket anywhere," Rocco told the AV Club in 2012. "I went for. I dunno, one of the Italian parts. Maybe the Richard Bright part. But Coppola goes, 'I got my Jew!' And I went, 'Oh no, Mr. Coppola, I'm Italian. I wouldn't know how to play a Jew.' And he goes, 'Oh, shut up."'

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

The Ephemeral Career of Béatrice Zako

The silly things NDPers say:

An NDP candidate who once compared Quebec to a colonized African country has resigned, the party says.

In a statement emailed to The Huffington Post Canada over the weekend, spokesman Marc-André Viau confirmed Béatrice Zako, the Montreal NDP candidate selected Thursday to go head-to-head against Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in the Papineau riding, has since stepped aside.

The statement, written in French and attributed to Zako, says she did not inform the party of some of the positions and sentiments she had expressed during her “ephemeral passage” in another party.

Just one of those things that slips the mind. Given that Ms Zako was running as a sacrificial lamb against Prince Justin odds are that the vetting was a touch slipshod. Her Linkedin profile indicates that she's an HR student at the University of Quebec. Zako's NDP bio page is a bit more detailed saying that she has worked since 1998 at "Montreal’s Gingras-Lindsay Rehabilitation Institute in the purchasing department responsible for rehab technologies." Needless to say her political experience, aside from a failed mayoral run in a Montreal borough, is non-existent.

What gives this story a certain significance, at least beyond the brief embarrassment for the NDP, are the comments that led to Zako being dropped as a candidate. In a report on Friday HuffPost quoted Zako as saying:

“Why Quebec’s independence?” she asked. “As a child, I studied the history of my ancestors’ continent, Africa. Unfortunately, many of our colonized countries are not yet completely independent. This is a continual struggle that resembles the one of the Quebec people, for liberty,” she wrote.

The bit about arguing for Quebec independence might seem shocking coming from someone who now purports to be a federalist. That is until you realize the incredibly fluid nature of politics in La Belle Province. Ambitious pols slip in and out of the separatist and nationalist camps with the grace and ease of a champion figure skater.

In the ROC merely switching between the Liberals and Tories is likely to attract dirty glances for years to come. By comparison you'd think that changing your mind about breaking up Canada, something rather more important than mere partisan allegiance, might be a momentous decision. In Quebec, however, it's just one of those things. It's a distinct society but not always in a good way.

The quote is also a fascinating glimpse into the mind of Quebec separatists. The description of Quebec as a colony is actually a common meme among members of the PQ, BQ and their various offshoots. In the fervid mind of the province's hard core nationalists they are "liberating their country" from Canada. This is why a putative nationalist, as Ms Zako was at the time, can seriously compare a Canadian province to the Belgian Congo or Portuguese Angola. 

In a certain sense Quebec is a colony of Canada, though not in the way often portrayed in the psycho-drama of Quebec separatism. For all the half century of hemming and hawing an independent Quebec republic is less viable today than it was when Rene Levesque quit Jean Lesage's cabinet. In those long ago days Quebec had a strong private sector economy, a respectable fiscal position and robust birth rates. In the 1960s Quebec could have become a decently run nation state. That's simply not an option today.

Through the Health and Social Transfer and equalization payments Quebec is Canada's largest welfare junkie. A clear victory after a third referendum would see the new republic emerge with Greek level credit ratings but without the lovely Mediterranean climate.

For fifty years the voters of Quebec have had choice: An independent country with a capitalist economy or a socialist province subsidized by the ROC. They've picked the latter option every time. If Quebec is a colony it's a colony of its own making.  

Wednesday Night - Dean Martin & Ted Knight

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Useless wheels within useless wheels:

The Honourable Bal Gosal, Minister of State (Sport), today congratulated Patrick Burrows, Sharon Creelman, Nancy Mollenhauer, Sue Neill and Marina van der Merwe on their induction into the Field Hockey Canada Hall of Fame.

The special ceremony was held today at Field Hockey Canada House prior to the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games match between the Canadian and Mexican men’s teams.

Minister of State Gosal also took this opportunity to announce funding of more than $1.3 million for Field Hockey Canada in 2015–16 for its programs and services that have a direct impact on athlete development. This support, provided through Sport Canada’s Sport Support Program, includes $20,000 in enhanced excellence funding provided specifically to prepare for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games.

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

Learning to Love Vampires

For those seeking proof that the modern world is beyond satire:

The study, titled “Do We Always Practice What We Preach? Real Vampires’ Fears of Coming out of the Coffin to Social Workers and Helping Professionals” was conducted by researchers from Idaho State University and College of the Canyons and the Center for Positive Sexuality in Los Angeles.

“Most vampires believe they were born that way; they don’t choose this,” said Dr. D. J. Williams, the study’s lead researcher and the director of sociology at Idaho State.

The study is based on the experiences of eleven “real” vampires — which, by the way, are different from “lifestyle vampires.”

An important distinction to keep in mind. We shouldn't confuse the merely eccentric with the genuinely deranged. The story reminds me of an old English saying: There's nowt so queer as folk. Spend enough time getting to know people - as you move past the polite pleasantries and daily trivia - and you do find all sorts. I had a neighbour years ago, a sensible fellow to the point of being utterly boring, who lead an unexceptional life except for one thing: He believed in fairies.

This was not some affectation, or a joke gone a bit too far, he sincerely believe that tiny fairies lived in his house and kept him safe from harm. Naturally enough he had names for them all. They had different personalities and from time to time he would glimpse them - for only the briefest of moments - before they vanished again into the woodwork. His great fear in life was that people would discover his belief and mock him for it. Having been raised by a scrupulous courteous mother I nodded politely and tried to move the conversation onto something else.

This neighbour was never violent or rude. Not once in all the years I knew him did he attempt to pressure me into believing in the fairies. Never, except that one time, did he discuss the fairies at any great length. For him the fairies were a vital part of his identity, an essential reason why he never moved despite the home being too large for his needs. I doubt many of his friends had the slightest inkling that their co-worker, neighbour or relative believed in fairy power. 

It was a largely harmless delusion, proof perhaps of the old idea that mankind can bear only so much reality. To the liberal minded social reformer my neighbour's problem was not that he believed in fairies in the woodwork, it was that he was afraid to express his beliefs frankly. In this worldview the great evil is not in believing in the absurd, it's being embarrassed by believing in anything that is widely considered absurd. 

At a political level the mainstreaming of vampires, or fairies or what have you, is an attempt to destroy the current normal. If every form of behaviour, opinion or attitude is acceptable then there is no normal and therefore no social standards to observe. Everything is relative and your beliefs are just as good as mine. Following the logic carefully for a few steps you wind up with an obvious problem: If the standard is that there are no standards how is that a standard? 

The answer is that there isn't. Too often conservatives spend time obsessing over absurdities rather than asking what they accomplish. A society without some standards of behaviour is no society at all. Relativism is a temporary phenomenon. It's social and political purpose is break up whatever is - by creating doubt and discord - to allow for something else to take its place.

The people who will today welcome the "real" vampires into the full fellowship of man will tomorrow, possibly sooner even than that, demand jail time for anyone foolish enough to wave the Confederate battle flag in public. A new carefully delineated form of speech and thought will be established - cleverly enough - under the happy rubric of tolerance and good will.  And who among us is against tolerance and good will? Even if the meaning of those words has shifted in recent years.

If people wish to indulge their private fantasies it's no business of the state. Nor is it really the business of anyone else in a free society. What we have here is something else. We are well past the ancient libertarian notion of consenting adults behind closed doors. The vampires and their advocates wish to march right into the public square and demand to be taken serious. Wretched is the man or woman who shakes their head or even giggles. The calls for subsidy, privilege and political glorification will be automatic and uncontested. One form of vampire perfectly complimenting another. 

 

Tuesday Night - North By Northwest

An Advanced Auction of Stolen Goods

I am shocked, shocked to find technically legal corruption in Canadian politics:

Most of what is billed as the largest, one-time benefit payment in federal history is likely to hit suburban voters living in federal ridings where the Conservatives can be considered the party to beat, an analysis by The Canadian Press shows.

Number-crunching based on the last census shows that many of the ridings in line to get the biggest cheques from the newly increased Universal Child Care Benefit are in suburban Alberta and the all-important ridings that surround Toronto — and they usually have a history of tilting Tory.

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

The Prosecution of Dinesh D'Souza

Once he was a darling of the mainstream conservative community. An Indian immigrant of Goan ancestry Dinesh D'Souza snagged a place at Dartmouth, where he helped found the legendary Dartmouth Review, before gingerly moving onto an editorial gig at Policy Review and then a staff position in the Reagan White House. After a series of scholarly books D'Souza's Illiberal Education shot him to national prominence in 1991. 

Carefully researched and cogently argued, Illiberal Education was a prescient take down of the political correctness regime on college campuses. The rest of 1990s saw him become one of the most widely known and respected conservatives writers in America. It's a position he likely would have retained to this today if not for his notorious 2007 book The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. 

Taking the contrarian tendencies of a successful pundit to a bizarre extreme, D'Souza blamed the American Left for the 9/11 attacks. The book was littered with such observations as:

In faulting the cultural left, I am not making the absurd accusation that this group blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world. The Muslims who carried out the 9/11 attacks were the product of this visceral rage—some of it based on legitimate concerns, some of it based on wrongful prejudice—but all of it fueled and encouraged by the cultural left. Thus without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened. …

And it went down hill from there. His absurd twist on "blame America first" was so shocking even The New York Times called it treason:

I never thought a book by D’Souza, the aging enfant terrible of American conservatism, would, like the Stalinist apologetics of the popular front period, contain such a soft spot for radical evil. But in “The Enemy at Home,” D’Souza’s cultural relativism hardly stops with bin Laden. He finds Ayatollah Khomeini still to be “highly regarded for his modest demeanor, frugal lifestyle and soft-spoken manner.” Islamic punishment tends to be harsh — flogging adulterers and that sort of thing — but this, D’Souza says “with only a hint of irony,” simply puts Muslims “in the Old Testament tradition.”

The reaction of mainstream conservatives was even more strident. Not since William F Buckley "read" the Birchers out of the conservative movement was a prominent pundit so quickly dumped from respectable commentary. The better part of a decade later D'Souza concedes that:  “Look, I may be wrong about it...I am attracted to arguments that have a certain plausible originality to them.” 

The arguments in The Enemy At Home did have a certain originality. Plausible they were not. In the years since D'Souza has reinvented himself as a somewhat recherché critic of the Obama Administration. His 2010 book The Roots of Obama's Rage painted the 44th President as the product of the anti-colonial ideology of his absentee father. Two hit documentaries followed: 2016: Obama's America and America: Imagine The World Without Her. The films gave D'Souza a sort of cult status in some conservative circles.

There he might have remained, little noticed beyond his devoted fan base, until January 2014 when he was charged with making an illegal $20,000 campaign contribution to an old friend. Using a series of straw donors D'Souza had funnelled the money to Wendy Long's unsuccessful bid to unseat junior New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand. The use of straw donors, illegal under the Federal Election Campaign Act, has been a common political tactic for decades and is very rarely prosecuted. 

The unexpected nature of the prosecution, the smallness of the amount involved and D'Souza's strident anti-Obama output have triggered suspicions across the political spectrum. Alan Dershowitz went so far as to describe the case as an example of "selective prosecution". Whatever one's opinion of D'Souza's politics this is a chilling moment. Last week it got worst.

In an almost Stalinistic twist to the saga the presiding judge, Richard Berman, ordered that D'Souza continue psychological counselling: 

“I’m not singling out Mr. D’Souza to pick on him,” Berman said at the hearing Monday. “A requirement for psychological counseling often comes up in my hearings in cases where I find it hard to understand why someone did what they did.”

WND reported that at the Sept. 23, 2014, sentencing hearing, Berman said he could not understand how someone of D’Souza’s intelligence, with credentials that include college president, could do something so stupid as to violate federal campaign contribution laws.

Probably because the contribution laws are as scrupulous observed among political activists as the speed limits on the I-95. Justice Berman also expressed puzzlement at D'Souza not feeling terribly guilty about committing his crime: 

The psychological case notes indicate that while Mr. D’Souza is highly intelligent, he has remarkably little insight into his own motivations, that he is not introspective or insightful, but that he tends to see his own actions in an overly positive manner.

Perhaps because D'Souza views his actions, circumventing an arguably unconstitutional law, as perfectly rational given the context and that his prosecution is politically motived. In other words he doesn't feel guilty because he doesn't think what he did was a real crime. Apparently that's not good enough for Justice Berman's peculiar sensibilities. The good judge, like the inquisitors of old, wants D'Souza to truly repent of his terrible sins. 

Whatever you think of Dinesh D'Souza, his unusual public career or his controversial views, his story is warning sign of what might be ahead for the rest of us. 

Monday Night - The Hollow Crown - Richard II

eMedicine

NYT:

But telemedicine is facing pushback from some more traditional corners of the medical world. Medicare, which often sets the precedent for other insurers, strictly limits reimbursement for telemedicine services out of concern that expanding coverage would increase, not reduce, costs. Some doctors assert that hands-on exams are more effective and warn that the potential for misdiagnoses via video is great.

How long before the Tommy Douglas Fan Club shuts this down?