Archive for August 30th, 2009

Denver Post and Those Darned Think Tanks

I know it’s accepted by now that the MSM group will label any conservative group, “conservative,” any libertarian group, “conservative,” and any liberal group, “left-leaning” or “centrist,” when they bother to label them at all.  But when a new one comes along, it’s good to put both that group’s leanings, and the MSM’s failure to note them, on the record.

The Denver Post recently ran a story about small business’s internal divide over health care “reform.”  In it, this:

Despite those fears, a study from the nonprofit Small Business Majority found health reform, even with a mandate, would save small business more than $500 billion over the next decade.

“Should everybody be in?” asked Elisabeth Arenales, an analyst with the Colorado Center on Law and Policy. “What’s the contribution of the business sector? Businesses stand to gain a lot from health-insurance reform.”

The CCLP may be talking about small business, but that doesn’t mean it’s speaking for small business.  Far from it.

As for the Small Business Majority, it’s definitely a “left-leaning” advocacy group, with a pretty typical pedigree for such recent endeavors.  Founded by a liberal Silicon Valley dot-com boomer, (he’s given exclusively to Democrats and Democrat causes), the group boasts that it, “works with the White House to organize policy discussions that focus on small business issues.”  It’s an advocate of greater government involvement in health care, and appears to have been founded specifically in order to promote that goal.  It examines reform proposals, but only those that increase government involvement.

There’s nothing necessarily the matter with this.  Most groups claim to be “unbiased.”  But only a biased paper would accept such claims at face value.

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Rangel Should Go

In case you’ve been too busy watching Obamacare implode like the latter stages of a supernova, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel has a little integrity problem.  He has a problem reporting his income and assets – and thus his tax liability.  He’s had to file amended disclosures on a number of occasions, with excuses that would have gotten you or me a trip to the slammer with a detour through bankruptcy court.  He has a problem remembering which house he’s living in.  He has a problem taking free vacations from cronies.  He has no problem taking taxpayer-funded trips to the Caribbean.  All of which has earned him what must be a record for Ethics Committee investigations into a sitting chairman.  Despite which, the Democrat leadership re-appointed him to the chairmanship.

This is all from the guy who’s responsible for writing – although if he’s anything like the rest of his fellow committee chairmen, not reading – changes to the tax law.  It’s not original to point out that there’s apparently one set of rules for you and me, and another set of rules for the people who write them.

It’s time for Charles Rangel to go, and at least until January 2011, it’s up to his fellow Democrats to do it.  There is a process for removing errant committee chairmen.  Each party caucus has a committee whose job it is to recommend to the entire caucus committee assignments and chairmanships.  The Democrats’ is called the “Steering and Policy Committee,” although in their case, it appears that the policy is to let the steering take care of itself, with predictable results for the guardrails.

Our own Rep. DeGette, as a Chief Deputy Whip, is a member of this committee.  How did she vote on Rangel’s re-appointment, and when will she move to undo that mistake?

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