Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

LEVIN ATTACKS STATISTS

2009-07-14T14:42:00.008-04:00

The Statist urges Americans to view themselves through the lenses of those who resent and even hate them. He needs Americans to become less confident, . . . and to accept the status assigned to them by outsiders—as isolationists, invaders, occupiers, oppressors, and exploiters. The Statist wants Americans to see themselves as backward, foolishly holding to their quaint notions of individual liberty, private property, family, and faith, long diminished or jettisoned in other countries. . . . -- Mark R. Levin

Mark Levin in his book, "Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto," demonstrates the tyranny of Statists by their positions on current issues. According to Levin on his radio show, he wrote 98 percent of the book before Barack Obama became President. Obama’s name appears only twice, but his positions are apparent on many of the issues discussed.

How does the Statist operate? He attacks the Founding Fathers as slaveholders, and he favors revolutions because they cleanse “society of religious dogma, antiquated traditions, backward customs, and ambitious individuals who differ with or obstruct the Statist’s plans.” He favors the progressive income tax (Marx would endorse, Adam Smith would oppose). He creates more agencies (Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance is in the Cap-and-Trade bill, Consumer Financial Project Safety Commission surfaced last week).

The Statist is a master of the public vocabulary. Challenged on Global Warming, he accuses the skeptic of being a “denier,” of favoring corporate polluters, of being “against saving the planet.” He takes up issues that threaten liberty and prosperity, like Cap-and- Trade. Those who disagree with his immigration policy are “exclusionists, nativists, xenophobes, or even racists.” The Conservative believes that immigration is good if it contributes to the “social cohesion of the civil society.”

Levin shows how the housing subprime fiasco came about in which “the Federal Reserve Board’s [hurtful] role cannot be overstated.” It provided bailout funds to financial institutions and then acquired equity in private corporations. (pp.68-71; there is no index).

Levin turns to the Great Depression, in which the Presidents raised taxes and invented new agencies to dictate production and pricing. Not once during Roosevelt’s terms did unemployment fall below 14%. “His ill-conceived stimulus policies” retarded growth, extending the Depression by seven years, according to a report by two UCLA economists. (No bailouts then.)

Hoover, amidst rising unemployment, raised the income tax from 24% to 63%, and FDR raised the top rate from 79% to 90%. Industrial production fell 25% in the six months after Roosevelt introduced the NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act), which forced companies into cartels and set up a government bureaucracy of two million firms and 22 million employees to control the economy.

He gives a clear, brief history of how global cooling is being dealt with as Global Warming, of Cap-and-Trade, CAFÉ standards, and DDT. The killers of DDT, which had saved millions of lives of World War II forces from malaria, William Doyle Ruckelshaus and Rachel Carson, today are honored. “The Enviro-Statist position is now law.”

Treaties that do not improve and preserve civil society, Levin says, are useful to lock in the Administration’s position. Subjects like weakness on foreign policy (Law of the Sea Treaty hasn’t yet come up), national security (civil rights used to weaken it); criminalizing war, global citizenship.

START I expires on December 5, 2009. President Obama has returned from Russia with a new treaty. He says he will preserve some START provisions by Executive Order if the Senate has not acted upon them, which may be unconstitutional.

We constitute a fifth of the world’s population but use most of the world’s resources, so we are expected to shrink our economy, according to the Statist-global governance and Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society.

“Henceforth, Mother Nature’s doings will be mankind’s responsibility,” says Levin, “no matter what science reveals. The Enviro-Statist has declared war on the civil society and he is impatient.”

A pending fiscal disaster is cost of entitlements Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Medicaid subsidizes low-income, pregnant, and disabled people—one fourth of the population. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, if nothing is done to stop the inclining trend, those who now pay 10% in income tax will, by 2082, pay 25%; those who pay 25% will pay 63%; the highest bracket now paying 35% will pay 88%.

Social Security was started by Roosevelt. These days, the government regularly sends the individual “the false impression that his payroll taxes have been set aside for his use upon retirement.” We have been deceived by the Statist to believe that the government has been prudent in managing his accumulated pension investment in Social Security.

There is no “Social Security trust fund.” So virtuous is its purpose that no one dares betray the fraud. Economist-journalist Martha Derthick wrote about it and Medicare and Medicaid 25 years ago: “Economic analysts who exposed . . . the myth of social security learned to expect a swift and vigorous response from program executives especially if critics were liberals”—heretics endangering the system. Social Security is not a program, it is a religion observes Levin.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are built on a family of frauds—the fraudulent concealment of material facts, the fraudulent representation of material facts, and the fraudulent conversion of one’s money for another’s use. . . .

What should conservatives do? See Levin’s Epilogue.

By Natalie Sirkin
c2009

The Nation on Obama’s War Of Choice

2009-07-13T08:37:00.002-04:00

Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, the county's premire leftist magazine, has weighed in on the Vietnam-like war in Afghanistan:

Where is the US nightly television (broadcast and cable) coverage of our service people returning in coffins? Where are the brutal and honest images of Afghanistan--of Afghan women and children killed, of US soldiers in the hell of combat. Where is the coverage of the staggering increase of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, traumatic brain injuries and suicides among the many 1000s of service members who've already paid a price for Iraq and Afghanistan? Have the networks and cable channels spent so much of their budgets covering Michael Jackson's untimely death and star-studded memorial, Sarah Palin's ramblings and Mark Sanford's personal and political derelictions that they can't give us the real news we need if we're to be a democracy informed about what our country is doing in our name?

Top Secret Budgets: Crisis, What Crisis?

2009-07-12T09:32:00.003-04:00

Every time politicians gather together in secret sessions, journalists the world over feel a floppy emptiness in the pit of their stomachs, perhaps because they realize the justice of George Bernard Shaw’s remark: Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.

Professional politicians are the conspirators; journalists, on the other hand, like to think of themselves as representatives of the laity.

This rule – that the public business must be conducted in the naked public square, where the tribunes of the people can keep a watchful eye on the conspirators and report back to the laity– is generally waved in around budget time. Here in Connecticut, final budgets are hammered out not in open sessions but in formerly smoke filled rooms where politicians practice their profession, the second oldest profession.

This year, as in most years, Republicans, Democrats and the reigning governor have not been able to fashion a budget while under close scrutiny by the fourth estate. There are many reasons for this, principle among them that politicians, fearful of an excess of light, like to work after hours in the dark.

Michele Jacklin, once the chief political reporter for the Hartford Courant, Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper, who left the ink-stained wretch business to work on John DeStefano’s fruitless campaign for governor, returned to her old haunt some time ago and suggested – nay, demanded – that Gov. Jodi Rell, who claims to want to put the lid on spending, and free falling, free spending Democrats in the legislature should be put together in some formerly smoke filled room, far from the madding crowd of journalists who dog their every step, so that the warring parties may hammer out a budget acceptable to the conspirators.

No one blinked an eye at the suggestion.

And that is what is now coming to pass.

The conspirators this year have assembled at the governor’s mansion; the doors have been locked and barred; pizza has been ordered.

A monstrous combination, a cross between donkey and an elephant, will emerge at the end of these sessions. Of course, no one will like the product, no one -- not the assembled Democratic leaders, not the Republicans in the room, not Governor Jodi Rell, not the tribunes of the people, not the taxed to death laity, not even Michele Jacklin.

A “compromise” budget will be produced, a perfect conspiracy. Rolls will be reversed. Republicans will say, “We didn’t want to tax you, but we produced a pragmatic budget.” Democrats will say, “We did not want to cut necessary programs, but we have given you a pragmatic budget.” The members of some editorial boards, wearing pasteboard frowns, will say, “It had to happen this way. No one likes taxes. No one likes spending.”

Everyone will be shatteringly displeased. The last time in Connecticut the legislature and governor gathered together to discharge multi-billion dollar deficit, the laity was whacked with an income tax.

Everyone frowned for a full month.

This ancient show, this grand posturing, is beginning to wear thin, which is why tea parties and other mini-revolts are springing up everywhere in the state. The tea parties are small crucibles of people who have had enough of taxes and just aren’t going to take it any more. Connecticut, last in job growth for the past decade, is a magnet for discontent. While California’s deficit is higher, $26 billion to Connecticut’s puny $8 billion, the nutmeg state is number one in per capita debt. California’s debt will cost every person in that state around $712, New York about $918. The comparable figure in Connecticut is a crushing $2,513, according to the Institute of Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, known for many years here in the Job Bleeding State as Taxachussetts.

Expropriating taxes from plundered quarter-millionaires, a vanishing species, the application of the usual bromides, and Band-Aid solutions ain’t gonna patch together this shattered Humpty Dumpty.

Neda and Obama’s Witness

2009-07-08T09:38:00.005-04:00

The name Neda, here in the United States and in the world, has become pretty much a synonym for the Iranian resistance, now in a pause mode.

Neda Agha-Soltan was the beautiful young Iranian, not yet wrapped in a burka, shot by a sharpshooter in Iran, whose gruesome death was caught in a brief video seen by millions, including the president of the United States, Barack Obama.

It was that death and the iron fist of the leaders in Iran pummeling unarmed protestors that tore from Obama’s bosom this piece of prose: “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.”

And then Obama reached for his Martin Luther King: “Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now we are bearing witness to the Iranian people’s belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

We have in Obama a referential president: These few lines contain references, obvious and implied, to Martin Luther King, protests during the Vietnam War – “The whole world is watching” – and, possibly, the Christian Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, whose name will forever be associated with the expression “witness to the truth.”

It would have been a grand idea had Obama reached for his Kierkegaard before using the words “bearing witness” and “truth” in the same sentence.

When those words were used by a eulogist in connection with a Danish bishop who had just died, Kierkegaard exploded in indignation, because he knew witnessing to the truth was a Christian category that pointed directly to the cross. Peter, crucified upside down because he felt he was not worthy to die upright in the manner of Jesus, was a witness to the truth. The bishop, whose witness consisted entirely in words – pretty and, at least in connection with Christian witnessing, entirely false -- was not. Paul, who suffered martyrdom, was a witness to the truth. The bishop, whose rhetorical witness, uncrowned with the wreath of suffering, paled in comparison with that of the early Christians, was not.

Neda, an innocent victim whose blood was poured out, was a witness to the truth; Martin Luther King was a witness to the truth.

Witnessing can never be a passive act, particularly when one is witnessing injustice. Surely, that is what Martin Luther King meant when he said the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. One bends towards justice because witnessing injustice demands a response that is clear, unambiguous and virtuous. Words, in these circumstances, are valuable as a prelude to action. But if they do not lead to corrective action, they are worse than useless. One does not bend towards justice by impassively delivering pretty speeches from one’s easy chair.

To bend towards justice is to honor justice through virtuous action. Originally, the word “virtue” pointed to moral strength, manliness, valor and worth, from the Latin root “vir,” which meant “man.” The phrase “by virtue of” preserves the word’s medieval sense of “efficacy.” It is right action that bends the moral universe into a bow.

Nothing could be plainer than the truth: the withering away of jihadism in the Middle East is in the interest not only of the United States but of the Islamic and Non-Islamic world. That is a truth to which Obama has closed his eyes, because if the truth struck him with the force of a thunderbolt, he would be spurred to action – and action involves hard choices.

The palpable truth, Thomas Jefferson said, is that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

How Much?

2009-07-06T19:44:00.005-04:00

According to a story in the Hartford Courant, the state’s US House delegation, all Democrats, voted in favor of climate change legislation that will increase the average American family’s yearly expenses by $1,500. The federal congressional budget office and the US Environmental Protection Agency estimate the yearly rise at $80 - $175 per year.

Asked to clarify the gap between the widely divergent estimates, spokesman for United Illuminating Al Carbone said "From our initial review, we don't think it's going to decrease rates. Let's put it that way.”

Let's put it this way: All regulations involve hidden costs passed along to consumers in the form of price increases. In this way regulatory costs are like business taxes, and business taxes passed along to consumers are destimulants.

What the government gives with the right hand it takes away with the left, leaving taxpayers, to quote an old saw, "holding the bag."

Bill Offered To Repeal Gravity, Colin Powell Offers A Rebuke

2009-07-06T05:56:00.005-04:00

Last week it was reported, incorrectly as it happened, that President Barack Obama wished to pass through the US Congress a bill reversing the rotation of the earth on its axis because it had been brought to his attention, by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi some thought, that water in the toilet bowel revolves when flushed in a counter clockwise direction.

“This is intolerable,” the president reportedly said.

And, according to a report by My Way news:

Colin Powell worries that President Barack Obama is trying to tackle too many big issues at one time and he offers this advice: take a hard look at costs and consider the additional red tape that will be created.

"The right answer is, 'Give me a government that works,'" the former secretary of state said in a television interview to be aired Sunday. "Keep it as small as possible," added Powell, who said he has spoken recently with Obama and stays in touch with him. Powell, a Republican, endorsed Obama last year over the GOP presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Obama wants to overhaul the health care system and take on climate change while also helping the country emerge from the recession.

"I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president - and I've talked to some of his people about this - is that you can't have so many things on the table that you can't absorb it all. And we can't pay for it all," Powell said.

"And I never would have believed that we would have budgets that are running into the multi-trillions of dollars, and we are amassing a huge, huge national debt that, if we don't pay for in our lifetime, our kids and grandkids and great grandchildren will have to pay for it."

Advisors surrounding the president deflected Powell’s criticism.

“Next up on the ‘to do’ list” said (never let a crisis go to waste) Rahm Immanuel “is the repeal of gravity.”

Palin’s Choice

2009-07-04T07:49:00.028-04:00

Hell hath no fury like a media commentator whose narrative has been scorned.

This is the way things were supposed to go: Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin would abide the pelting of a pitiless storm of law suits filed by her political opponents in Alaska, all of which have been turned aside by the courts; then she was supposed to run either for president or for some other national office, at which point the pelting would begin all over again.

As the Fourth of July approached, Palin announced that she was retiring as Governor of Alaska, and shortly thereafter the speculation hit the fan.

Vain speculators on the left, a good many of whom apparently read Vanity Fair, thought that Palin resigned because she could not bear the heat pouring out of the political kitchen. The Vanity Fair article, ten thousand words long, drew the veil off some of the infighting that occurred in the John McCain political camp after McCain picked Palin to run as his vice presidential candidate, on the whole not a pretty picture. With the exception of a few new snark bites, there is nothing fresh in Todd Purdum's piece, much of it being warmed over vitriol. Maureen Dowd, the New York Time’s Queen of scorn, is far better at the catty putdown than Purdum.

A sampling of Dowd’s toxic bon bons: "Exquisite battiness... solipsistic meltdown so strange... incoherent, breathless and prickly... Sarah's country-music melodramas... girlish burbling."

Since the ascension of President Barack Obama, the left has found it inconvenient to write on national political issues.

Most of the chatter on television was devoted to two questions: Why had she done it, and is there political life after resignation? Running like a dark rumor through the chatter was the supposition that some unspeakable political faux pas had yet to be uncovered.

The answer to the second question was “probably not.” Some wiser heads with memories pointed out that other politicians had salvaged their careers after greater tragedies. In deference to Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, now suffering from a brain tumor, Chappaquiddick was not mentioned. In deference to Obama, the tax delinquencies of his Treasury Secretary remained in the commentary closet. As yet, there is no federal investigation of Sen. Chris Dodd's property in Ireland.

The vindictive prosecution of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is a distant memory.

Last April, federal judge Emmet Sullivan formally accepted a motion to set aside a guilty verdict against former Sen.Ted Stevens of Alaska issued by President Barack Obama’s Attorney General. The presiding judge threw out the indictment, and called the case the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he'd ever seen. The judge also initiated a criminal contempt investigation of six members of the prosecution even though an internal probe by the Office of Professional Responsibility was in process. Sullivan said he was not willing to trust it due to the "shocking and disturbing" nature of the misconduct.

Palin herself suggested 1) that her family had been unjustly pummeled before and after the campaign, both by vain politicians and consumers of Vanity Fair; 2) that she was spending an inordinate amount of money defending herself from unmerited prosecutions; 3) that she cared about Alaska’s future, and that resigning now would enable the Lieutenant Governor of that state to carry on after she had left and most likely win a future campaign in his own right, thus keeping her beloved state in Republican hands. She was resigning, Palin said, “ … so the administration could continue effectively” without her. Self sacrifice of this kind is unheard of in national politics. Palin also intimated she would be willing to go on the road to support the candidacy of grown up politicians in either party.

Point 1 was studiously ignored by the Vanity Fair crowd; everyone but some small minded bloggers on the left conceded point 2; and point 3 was opaque to the kind of political beltway commentator who believes that politics ends at the borders of Washington DC. Anyone who had spent any time commenting on state politics would have had no problem processing point 3.

So, here we have a politician who cares about her family, cares about her reputation, cares about her state, thinks some ideas are bogus while others are worth sacrificing for, and wanted to avoid the perils of federal politically inspired prosecutions.

How could there possibly be a place for her in Washington politics?

Obama Takes Hillary’s Advise on Iranian Revolution

2009-07-03T13:31:00.001-04:00

Citing a source close to the principals, the Washington Times is reporting that “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran's crackdown on demonstrators last week, administration officials say.

“On the one hand, he may have felt that the United States should naturally criticize the Iranian government's violent crackdown on the protesters," said Alireza Nader, an analyst at the Rand Corp. "On the other, he acknowledged that the U.S. was still willing to engage with Iran in the future. Strong U.S. criticism of the Iranian government could jeopardize future negotiations."

Mrs. Clinton agreed with the president, but she thought it was time to get tougher after the June 20 killing of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, on a Tehran street, officials said. A video of the killing was widely viewed on the Internet.

At the same time, they added, she was content to leave the decision to Mr. Obama, because she understood that he bore ultimate responsibility for any consequences.

The Fishwrap

2009-07-02T10:17:00.011-04:00

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is passing around IOUs. Well after President Barack Obama’s one hundredth day in office, the nation’s unemployment rate has climbed to 9.%. Governor Jodi Rell said “No” to Connecticut’s suicidal Democrats. It's a pretty safe bet that no one either in California or Connecticut will be "living the life of Reilly" any time soon, the subject of this month's word for the day.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal thinks that Connecticut’s Ethics Committee attack on the Catholic Church may be unconstitutional. In East Hartford Connecticut on Tuesday, 35-year-old William Castillo succumbed to bullets. The next day on Wednesday, his friends gathered together at a candlelight vigil, and a quarrel over a dog broke out among the mourners. Three people were shot, one fatally. The good news is that police have determined that the second shooting was not in retaliation for the first.

Grandma Rell And Snow White Reconsidered

2009-07-01T06:01:00.002-04:00

At one point in his career as a fiscal conservative transforming into a tax and spend liberal, Jim Amann, the then the Speaker of the House now running for governor, speculated that Gov. Jodi Rell’s popularity was unsinkable because the public viewed her as everyone’s grandma. When the “grandma” body-slam failed in its effect, Amann, and other Democrats, took to calling Rell ‘Snow White,’ which was even less productive.

People who know Snow White, an evocation of Eve in the garden, like her because she is snowy and white and not at all like the queen disguised as a farmer’s wife who tempts her fatally with that poisonous but tasty apple.

Amann intended his remarks as withering criticism. The intimation was that in matters of economics, an arcane and highly manipulable science, Rell was somewhat dimwitted when compared to, say, the economic propaganda minister of the Democratic Party, the academic or party functionary with a degree in Early Marx we see regularly on our TV sets waving in our faces the latest “study” showing that Connecticut, relative to other states, is actually under taxed. Not for nothing did Disraeli say that there were three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Amann’s ham fisted attack didn’t work, and it is worth considering why.

Our grandmother’s view of economics is certainly more homespun and far less self interested than the propaganda minister’s.

Gramma says: “Work hard, save money, and if you get in debt, for Heaven’s sake stop spending money. Cut up your credit cards. You may have to get another job, or move to a state where business costs are lower and jobs are more plentiful.”

This sound advice does not accommodate the tax and spend proclivities of many leading Democrats. Grandma will always and ever be a great disappointment to them.

But we know, almost instinctively, that grandma is on to something. And we also know that advice good for the goose is also good for the gander. Municipalities and states would be well advised in hard times to save money. And during lean times, The state would be well advised to stop spending money and cut up its credit card. Bonding in Connecticut is the equivalent of a state credit card.

It is not academic stuffed shirts or statistical reports written by Disraeli’s “liars” or bewitching tales told by propaganda ministers – take a bite of this pretty apple please -- that have driven these lessons home to us. It is the lashes on our back as we move through the world that has taught us the truth.

Rell also has had her problem with Republicans, who now are in a fighting mood. Republicans generally are perfectly willing to accommodate themselves to their own Grandma’s superior wisdom. However, having been bitten in the past by other faux Republicans and faux conservative Republicans -- former Gov. Lowell Weicker, who gave us the income tax, violating an implicit promise he would do no such thing, and former Gov. John Rowland, who wrested the office from Weicker’s designated gubernatorial hitter, Eunice Groark, on a promise he would devote his efforts to repealing the income tax – stalwart Republicans are just a little leery of campaign feints and dodges, not to mention the compromises past Republican governors have made to accommodate unyielding legislative leaders.

Lately, Rell has sounded grandmotherly -- in the good sense – in her opposition. She has not hesitated to call Democrat budget makers out on their failure to present a timely budget. Democrats slammed the governor for short-sheeting the bottom line on her own budget, but this was no bar for them in presenting their own, which they steadfastly declined to do.

When Democrats finally did present a budget, days before the fiscal year was to end, it was all thorn and no rose, a laughable piece of legislation that will send remaining Connecticut businesses scurrying to other states.

The two parties, Rell and the Democratic mob of legislative leaders, have now entered private negotiations. Common wisdom has it that, having put away their rhetoric, all will emerge from the secret confab with a rescue plan acceptable to all. That plan, most political watchers imagine, will be something on the order of a fifty-fifty split: a fifty percent raise in taxes and a fifty percent cut in spending to accommodate a more than $8 billion deficit.

Rell, when last heard from, wanted a plan that would position the state favorably with respect to other states.

She should stick with her grandmotherly perceptions.

Dodd and Big Pharma

2009-06-30T08:53:00.003-04:00

Don Michak, a reporter for the Journal Inquirer, asks “If it looks like a campaign contribution and acts like a campaign contribution, is it still a campaign contribution?”

He’s referring to what can only be regarded as a piece of campaign literature supporting Sen. Chris Dodd. A fine line in the in the slick brochure reads “Paid for by America’s Pharmaceutical Research Companies and FamiliesUSA.”

Since Edward Kennedy’s brain tumor had incapacitated Massachusetts’ longs serving U.S. Sen., Dodd, a good friend, was more or less delegated by the senator to press forward Kennedy’s health reform bill, a piece of legislation that many on the right consider a first step toward universal health care.

According to Michak:

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group whose 30 members include some of the nation’s biggest drug companies, and Families USA, a liberal health care advocacy organization, are sponsoring a glitzy television and direct mail campaign lauding the five-term incumbent for making health care "more affordable for the people of Connecticut."

The costly campaign features both a television commercial and a four-color flier mailed to state residents proclaiming that "On The Issues That Matter Most To Connecticut Families, Chris Dodd Has Been There For Us."

The flier also urges Dodd’s constituents to call him in Washington and "tell him thanks for standing up for us."

The trade group’s members include three Connecticut-based companies: Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals of West Haven, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals of Ridgefield, and Purdue Pharma LP of Stamford.

A spokesman for the trade group was not immediately available for comment.
But Ron Pollack, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Families USA, said Friday that his organization had joined with the trade group to promote affordable health care coverage, especially for the uninsured and underinsured.

While acknowledging that the two groups are "strange bedfellows," Pollack said that they agreed that "Senator Dodd’s work that related to these affordability questions has been unusually and very noteworthy.

Very noteworthy indeed.

HEALTHCARE, CAP & TRADE

2009-06-29T19:52:00.004-04:00

Last week by a thread, President Obama and Speaker Pelosi won their Climate-Change Cap-and-Trade bill, by 2l9 to 212. The bill was designed to decrease Greenhouse gas emissions and promote renewable energy. Eight Republicans voted for it, 44 Democrats voted against it. (All five Connecticut representatives voted for it.) One hundred amendments were submitted, only one was allowed. The bill now goes to the Senate.

Misnamed “American Clean Energy and Security Act,” HR 2454 is about four words, announced Nancy Pelosi celebrating the victory, “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.” But it is not a green jobs bill. Millions of additional jobs will be lost, according to the Heritage Foundation: In an average year, 844,000 jobs will be lost. In a peak year two million jobs will be lost.

Over 1,000 pages long, HR 2454 has another 300 pages in an amendment drafted overnight and submitted Friday morning at 3:09 a.m. Minority Leader John Boehner for an hour read aloud from it on the House floor. To be understood, the amendment’s provisions have to be integrated with the 1,000-paged text which nobody had time or opportunity to do.

Less revolutionary, perhaps nearly as important to Mr. Obama, is the health-care bill. At the health-care gathering at the White House on June 24, expert Gail Wilensky asked the President how he expected to pay for it.

He gave a non-answer. The American people are up to it, he said. There is not a challenge we have not been up to. We will not spend money we do not have, he added. It will be deficit-neutral. Previously he has said he would decrease spending on Medicare (and Medicaid?) by $313 billion (and adding another new $643 billion.) An elderly needing costly surgery might needt to settle for a “painkiller,” he implied.

The easiest way to pay the ballooning cost it is the way Canada and England do it, by rationing. People die or travel to another country rather than waiting for appointments. Commissions take a long time to make decisions. Even in the U.S., appeals to Medicare took 21 months on average in 2003.

If you like your insurance, nobody is going to take it away from you, says Mr. Obama. Several times as a candidate he said that we should have what he as a Senator has. He meant the FEHBP, Federal Employee Health Benefit Program, available to congressmen and present and past federal employees, who can make their choice among 290 separate plans. (Sections 3101 and 277 of Senator Kennedy’s bill, which requires everyone have health-care insurance, offer a wide range of choices, but if you do not enroll, you can be fined.)

But that is not what Mr. Obama means when he says “public option.” He might mean a separate parallel program. The uninstructed public may think that’s a good thing especially if it is public. Our Congressman Christopher Murphy on the floor of the House cited one (flawed) poll indicating that the public prefers public to private.

Unfortunately, a public option will drive out private insurers. Since it can call upon the Congress for more funds and the Treasury for bailouts, it will undercut private insurance. Millions will drop their private policies, which will drive out private insurers.

Supporters of public option make several claims: It will be efficiently administered. Like the post office and the IRS? That it will offer competition, but there are 1,300 private companies offering competition. It does not need to make a profit, but there are non-profit insurers all competing.

Particularly where the public-option company is also the referee, a public option does not level the field. And it leads to single payer. Canada and England, single payers, are widely known (or should be) for unsatisfactory quality and quantity of care.

It is often claimed that single-payers cost less than the U.S. But spending among countries is not comparable that ignores differences in drugs, protocols, and equipment. Our drugs are the newest and finest available; theirs, we will have replaced for our newest. Between 1998 and 2002, twice as many new drugs were created in the U.S. as in Europe.

The Obama Team argues that “expanding health-care will bring down the cost.” How, adding 47 million enrollees will lower cost, is baffling. Peter Oszac says spending can be “moderated” if “diffusion of existing costly services were slowed.” Medicare has already curtailed use of “virtual colonoscopies, certain would-healing devices, and even a branded asthma drug.” The Medical Advisory Council or Federal Health Board, will let them know.

A great deal can be done to lower spending on health-care. A new revolutionary structure is not needed. Its spending will rise, its quality will fall. Finally, one might ask, is it constitutional? Does any of this violate the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” of the Constitution? Do the Leaders care?

While the House will shortly be debating the health-care bill, the Senate will be facing the Cap and Trade-Climate Change-Energy bill. The consensus on global warming is breaking up. Support for Climate Change has stopped in New Zealand and slowed in Australia, Japan, and parts of Europe. In the U.S., an EPA report, hitherto concealed, weakens EPA support. In the Senate, this green energy bill will be a hard sell.

By Natalie Sirkin
c2009

Soaked Rich Swim to Safety in Maryland, Picasso's Budget

2009-06-26T10:17:00.009-04:00

Maryland tried to soak the rich, but they swam off.

Trying to settle what liberals here in Connecticut call “a revenue problem,” a cash shortage in their budget, Maryland legislators enacted a higher tax bracket for “millionaires.” Here in the land of steady bad habits, Democrats are seeking to plunder “millionaires” who earn more than $750,000; call them mini-millionaires.

Democrats hope to raise $1.5 billion in increased income taxes and $125 million in new fee increases to pay for their improvident spending. The Democrat plan, almost certain to face a gubernatorial veto, would raise the state income tax on couples earning more than &170,000 by 7.5%, a 50 percent rate increase.

Maryland boosted its top bracket to 6.25 percent.

Result?

One third of Maryland’s “millionaires” disappeared from the tax roles and took up residence in Virginia, Delaware and Florida, all less tax punishing states.

And now, even though Maryland is colleting more money from its vanishing “millionaires,” it is hauling in $100 million less a year from the mobile rich.

National Review, an oasis of good sense in a nation of thoughtless liberals, reasons: “Capital is mobile. So are capitalists.”

The more Connecticut's governor talks about state finances, the more she begins to sound like Thomas Paine – or Margaret Thatcher, giving the evil eye to political wastrels.

Connecticut does not have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. And its spending problem has been caused by Democrat legislatures and Republican governors that together have been folding billion dollar surpluses into the state budget ever since former Gov. Lowell Weicker, who some disgruntled Republicans consider a menace, muscled the legislature into passing an income tax. All that excess money was spent and it bloated future budgets. Now we have a $37 billion fat-boy budget on our hands, and Democrats still insist the state has no spending problem. It has, the Democrat caucus iterates in unison, a revenue problem – which means this: “The proposed two year [Democrat] budget,” the Harford Courant reported, “calls for 2.5 billion in tax increases and about $1 billion in spending cuts…”

As my old Aunt Lena once said, looking somewhat abstractedly at Picasso’s “Portrait De Femme” – “As a portrait of a lady, it’s a failure because the proportions are wrong; as a painting, it’s a failure, because it lacks beauty.”

The recently proposed Democrat budget – these guys had months to bring forth this improvident mouse – is both unlovely and an insult to the laws of economics, one of which is: When you find yourself in an economic hole, stop digging.

"The Democrats' budget,” Rell said according to a story in the Republican American, “goes in precisely the wrong direction at precisely the wrong time. It is neither balanced nor remotely realistic ... It contains so many holes — together with unachievable spending cuts — that new and higher taxes would be needed each and every year for years to come,"

Taking the long view, Rell is most interested in positioning her state so that, when good times return, Connecticut will not be, shall we say, another Maryland.

Republicans have been somewhat shocked at Rell’s steely resolve. Other Republican governors, including Rell herself, have taken bows in the direction of fiscal responsibility, only to surrender later in budget negotiations to importunate Democrat leaders. You say “no, no” with your lips, but your eyes say “yes, yes.” It is all part of the budget mating game.

In past times, when Connecticut was flush with surpluses, no one much cared that the state was even then digging itself into a hole. But now, waist deep in red ink, some politicians are seriously engaged in political reform, and wouldn’t it be refreshing to count Rell among their number when the saints come marching in?

Big Pharma And Dodd

2009-06-25T20:09:00.003-04:00

Who Paid For This Dodd Ad?

Dodd’s Way

2009-06-25T15:28:00.006-04:00

What percentage of the Connecticut Congressional delegation is Catholic?

Some orthodox Catholics would say zero percent. To turn a phrase, it depends on what you mean by Catholic.”

Sen. Chris Dodd is a well known Catholic.

At least, he was baptized into the Catholic Church. His immediate family – Sen. Tom Dodd and his mother Grace – were indisputably Catholic. We all were in the early 40s when baby Dodd was received into the Catholic communion.

But there is a question mark hanging like a Damoclean sword over Chris Dodd’s head. Being Catholic is similar to but not exactly the same as being a member of the Democrat Party.

Catholics have a thing called communion which, in addition to being a sacrament, also points to the unity of the church. In fact the words “unity of the church” are pronounced in the liturgy when the faithful take communion. And if you are not in doctrinal unity with the faith, you ought not to take the sacrament which, in any case, will not be efficacious.

Sometimes when public Catholics are visibly and ostentatiously not in communion with the Catholic Church, they are denied communion by the heads of their church. About a year ago, a great stir was created in the media when some Catholic bishops threatened to excommunicate a few senators who vigorously supported abortion. There are a few reasons for this, the most important of which is that the Catholic senators had advertised themselves as being Catholic. Leading Catholics are supposed to lead by example, to use a much abused expression.

Some would say Dodd is a poor example of a Catholic, one who is not in communion with his church on matters considered important to the church.

Think of it this way: Dodd is a liberal Democrat. Let’s suppose that tomorrow he were to reject the progressive income tax as incompatible with good government and come out in favor of a flat tax –publicly, volubly, boastfully.

Under those circumstances, befuddled Democrats would question both Dodd’s sanity, his standing within the Democrat Party and his political acumen, since most voters in Connecticut are Democrats who hold the Democrat line on the question of the progressive income tax. We should not be surprised in such a case if leading Democrats in his party rail against him. Among them there would be not a few who would be calling for his ouster from the Democrat Party on the grounds that he had converted to a heretical form of Republicanism. No one would be the surprised at any of this.

When Sen. Joe Lieberman jumped ship – actually he was forced to walk the plank by certain disgruntled Democrats who supported Ned Lamont in a fractious primary – by supporting Sen. John McCain rather than Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton for president in the last campaign, there were calls that the party’s doors should be bolted shut against him. No one was surprised at this, least of all Sen. Lieberman, who had already made a graceful exit by running for re-election to the senate as an independent.

Why should we deny to the Catholic Church a similar means of purgation thought to be therapeutic in political circumstance?

Dodd and other Catholic politicians who are not in communion with their church are bad examples.

This much obvious in matters of abortion and gay marriage: Dodd should not be permitted to get within ten feet of a catechumen, at least on the point of abortion and, lately, gay marriage.

Dodd’s position on this issue – if he can be said to have a position – is, from a Catholic point of view, simply incredible. It lacks credibility. People who make up a kind of synthetic religion as they go along will find it satisfactory. Because that is what Dodd has done: He is making it up as he goes along, as many politicians do.

Here is what Dodd said: “While I’ve long been for extending every benefit of marriage to same-sex couples, I have in the past drawn a distinction between a marriage-like status (“civil unions”) and full marriage rights.

“The reason was simple: I was raised to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. And as many other Americans have realized as they’ve struggled to reconcile the principle of fairness with the lessons they learned early in life, that’s not an easy thing to overcome.”

Such beliefs, common in benighted Catholic households when Dodd was received into the church, are subject to revision by ambitious public figures, increasingly at the whim of the revisionist.

“I believe that effective leaders must be able and willing to grow and change over their service. I certainly have during mine – and so has the world. Thirty-five years ago, who could have imagined that we’d have an African-American President of the United States?”

So, Dodd has grown up, after having had a conversation with some gay rights activists. Would his growth have been any different if he had had a conversation with his priest?

Probably not.

The reasoning here is just silly: I believed A when I was a thoughtless child; I have grown up; now I believe not-A.” This is a radical reversion of Paul’s declaration, “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.” Paul had a reason. Dodd had a political opportunity to put himself in the good graces of yet another liberal constituency at a time when he has been weakened by political controversies.

There are different kinds of growth. It was Cardinal Newman who said that to become perfect is to have changed often. But Dodd’s “growth” is a radical departure from the theology of his church, one which, if persisted in, will and should leave him outside the church doors. He is “growing” out of his faith, and if he continues on this path, he should have the decency to leave his church and join a syncretistic faith more to his liking.

Paper Reports Obama Administration Sent Letter to Khamenei Prior to Election

2009-06-24T11:06:00.003-04:00

In a recent sermon (read: potboiler political address), Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei made an oblique reference to a letter sent to him before the elections in Iran by President Barack Obama, according to a report in the Washington American Spectator.

Khamenei said, misquoting the American president, "The American president was quoted as saying that he expected the people of Iran to take to the streets. On the one hand, they [the Obama administration] write a letter to us to express their respect for the Islamic Republic and for re-establishment of ties, and on the other hand they make these remarks. Which one of these remarks are we supposed to believe? Inside the country, their agents were activated. Vandalism started. Sabotaging and setting fires on the streets started. Some shops were looted. They wanted to create chaos. Public security was violated. The violators are not the public or the supporters of the candidates. They are the ill-wishers, mercenaries and agents of the Western intelligence services and the Zionists."

Obama never said he expected Iranians to take to the street, but the letter does much to explain Obama’s awkward silence once the Iranian government began to crack the heads of peaceful protesters.

Obama Finds His Tongue

2009-06-24T08:18:00.006-04:00

Better late than never, but the extended pause that preceded President Obama’s statement during his last news conference suggests a compromised will. The next time Amadinijad appears anywhere in the West, he should be greeted with protestors bearing aloft the word “Neda” — that’s all, just that. We can no longer depend on presidents and White Houses anxious to rub noses with murderers to represent the best in us.

Politico reports: “Obama borrowed language from struggles throughout history against oppressive governments to condemn the efforts by Iran’s rulers to crush dissent in the wake of June 12 presidential elections. Citing the searing video circulated worldwide of the apparent shooting death of Neda Agha Soltan, a 26-year-old young woman who bled to death in a Tehran street and now is a powerful symbol for the demonstrators, Obama said flatly that human rights violations were taking place.

“‘No iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests of justice,’ he said during a nearly hour long White House news conference dominated by the unrest in Iran. “Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.’”

Yes -- bearing witness, preferably silently, so as not to disturb future negociations with the Iron Fist.

It may be expecting too much to expect presidents to do more than “bear witness” passively.

The Revolution This Time

2009-06-23T12:46:00.006-04:00

President Obama’s muffled response to the revolution in Iran -- and it is a revolution – is due to his perception that Iran might possibly use strong statements supporting those who resist oppression in that country, mostly Western oriented young people and intellectuals, to effect its own purposes: He does not wish, by imprudent statements, to allow the United States to become “a foil” used by oppressors to snuff out the resistance.

There is a serious objection to this diplomatic nonsense: The oppressors in Iran – and they are oppressors – will seize on any pretext to accomplish their purposes. Even Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon’s mild retorts, paralleling those of Obama, have been used by the oppressor regime to suppress the revolution. To the oppressors in Iran, all words are fighting words. All words are foils.

Obama’s excessive caution is a double-edged sword. It is also used by the oppressor regime as a permission to commit violence on the resistance.

When a victorious Janos Kadar said, following the suppression of the Hungarian revolt in 1957, that there could be no counterrevolution in Hungary, Albert Camus, the apostle of liberty in France at the time, replied that Kadar was right – because his was the counterrevolution, a betrayal of the liberty of Hungarians.

We need clear voices like this in the White House. The revolution in Iran, were it to succeed, would secure the promise of the more democratic Iran that was betrayed by Amidinajad and his overlords in Iran. That was the counterrevolution. This is the revolution.

Towards the 4th of July

2009-06-23T12:11:00.004-04:00

According to an AFP report, State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly said earlier this month the United States “would invite Iran to US embassy barbecues for the national holiday for the first time since the two nations severed relations following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"’There's no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats,’ State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

"’We have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran,’ Kelly said. ‘We tried many years of isolation, and we're pursuing a different path now.’

Why let a bloody revolution get in the way of “hot dog diplomacy?”

No Meddling Please, The Iranian Revolution

2009-06-23T10:31:00.002-04:00

It is uncertain at this point whether President Barack Obama would subscribe to Iran’s official assessment of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nation’s Secretary General.

On Monday, Ban called on the Iranian authorities to stop resorting to arrests, threats and the use of force against civilians in the post-election unrest that has gripped the country for more than 10 days, to which ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi responded, “Ban Ki-moon has damaged his credibility in the eyes of independent countries by ignorantly following some domineering powers which have a long record of uncalled-for interference in other countries internal affairs and colonisation.”

The overlords in Freedom loving Iran have not been entirely successful in smothering the revolution in silence. The truth continues to trickle out in bloody streams that soon may be staunched with the complicity of those who do not wish to interfere in Iran’s domestic affairs.

Obama Zeros Out

2009-06-23T10:04:00.002-04:00

The latest Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows President Barack Obama zeroing out:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 33% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of 0 (see trends).

The number of respondents who blame former President George Bush for the dismal economy has fallen 8 points to 54%, and a growing number say it’s Obama’ economy now.

Friends Of Dodd (FOD) To The Rescue

2009-06-22T06:28:00.018-04:00

The Hartford Courant, assaulted by the paper's columnist and ex-radio talk show host Colin McEnroe as being insufficiently empathetic to Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, invited Friends of Dodd (FOD) to weigh in on the senator’s sterling virtues.

The shade of former Gov. John Rowland, towards whom all the commentators celebrating Dodd’s spotless career in the U.S. Senate were insufficiently empathetic, hovered over the whole enterprise like Banquo’s ghost.

McEnroe wrote that the Courant had “engaged in an unattractive feeding frenzy,” displaying “a tabloid-style headline that was so garishly loaded as to constitute a real lapse in journalistic standards.” The “political establishment, with one or two exceptions, has shown itself to be utterly without spine.” They have repaid the kindnesses shown them “by treating him like a pin pulled hand-grenade. They stand 80 yards from the blast site feebly waving.”

A lament for Connecticut's beleaguered ex-governor perhaps?

Nope. It’s Dodd being roughly handled by putative ungrateful liberals that has aroused McEnroe’s ire.

Bill Curry lamented that “one columnist” – presumably Kevin Rennie of the Courant – “can still lay siege to a good man’s reputation and turn a modern state into a latter day Salem.”

Rowland being savaged by Curry’s friend McEnroe? By Curry himself? By the whole journalistic brass band that brought Rowland down?

Nope. It’s Dodd, this year’s saintly liberal martyr, being hacked to pieces by renegade Rennie that has engaged the solicitude of Curry and McEnroe.

Lowell Weicker very likely would be incapable of writing about anything at all if some imp were to steal the capital “I” from his keyboard. His generous appraisal of Dodd contains a brief 13 lines, 12 of which are studded with “I.” Weicker – a self described “turd in the Republican punchbowl” –unsurprisingly has a soft spot in his heart for Dodd.

Weicker’s plaint begins: “In 1970, I made my first run for the U.S. Senate. It was a unique event in that I was pitted against a Democrat, Joe Duffy (sic), and an Independent, Tom Dodd — a beginning for me but an end to the distinguished career of Sen. Dodd. Though happy to win, I wasn't particularly proud of the tough verbiage I had landed on Dodd.”

Macbeth lamenting the murder of Banquo?

Well, sort of.

We discover, after all these years, that Weicker has been suffering from a bad conscience. Was he not at least partially responsible for having ended the long and lustrous career of Tom Dodd, the senator's father?

“Though happy to win,” Weicker wrote, “I wasn't particularly proud of the tough verbiage I had landed on Dodd.” Not to mention the blows to the solar plexus he delivered to Joe Duffey, a forthright anti-Vietnam war protestor running for senator along side Tom Dodd and Weicker. These days, Weicker credits Dodd with his “opposition to the war in Iraq. While other Democrats were too afraid to speak up — or worse, were doing their own saber-rattling — Sen. Dodd spoke out loud and clear against this travesty of money spent and lives lost.”

Fortune favoring the brave, the war lamented by Weicker was won by the good guys, a victory that has permitted President Barack Obama to commit additional needed troops to Afghanistan. No doubt there will be casualties in future battles mourned by all. Weicker and Dodd, however, have been unusually silent on the wisdom of the most recent military build up promoted by the Democrat president.

Dodd’s fall from grace includes the following lapses: As a “Friend of Angelo”(FOA) Mozilo, President of Countrywide, Dodd received special treatment from the now defunct mortgage lender. He bought a house in Ireland in tandem with William Kessinger, a business associate of Edward Downe, who was friendly with Dodd during the senator’s wild and wooly bachelor days. Dodd and Downe owned a Washington condominium together in 1986. Dodd later bought out his co-purchaser's share of the house in Ireland and has persistently under-reported the true value of the property on congressional financial forms. Dodd intervened successfully with former President Bill Clinton, who pardoned Downe, previously convicted of insider trading. Dodd has received in campaign contributions oodles of cash from financial companies he is supposed to be regulating as chairman of the senate banking committee. He worked hand and glove with the Obama administration to see to it that the AIG culprits who brought down the U.S. economy by peddling junk insurance were not penalized by a move to withdraw their bonuses. AIG contributed heavily to Dodd’s political campaigns, which included a fruitless run for the presidency.

Rowland, who had no friends in the media when he accepted a hot tub and other favors from the political cronies to whom he turned over his government, spent a year in jail. Dodd likely will seek and win office once again --memories are perishable -- retiring, far from the madding crowd, to his cottage in Ireland after a sterling career in the U.S. Congress .

He has plenty of friends in low places.

North Korea to Fire Missile Towards Hawaii

2009-06-18T09:30:00.004-04:00

According to a Japan news report, North Korea early in July “may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii,” one of President Barack Obama’s hometowns.

But, not to worry, North Korean missiles won’t be striking the United States this Fourth of July: “U.S. officials have said the North has been preparing to fire a long-range missile capable of striking the western U.S. In Washington on Tuesday, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would take at least three to five years for North Korea to pose a real threat to the U.S. west coast.”

Is anyone home?

2009-06-16T23:16:00.000-04:00

The following video, which ought to outrage anyone who’s passed fourth grade math, answers the question: Who’s minding the federal store?

Answer: No one.

Amadinijad Had His Day Of Fear

2009-06-16T10:28:00.018-04:00

Both the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post have published pictures that prompted President Barrack Obama to say he was disturbed by the violence in Iran.

The photo below shows a crowd of young Iranians bearing the bullet ridden body of a protestor.

When Iranian police elsewhere fired upon a crowd of protestors, the crowd began to chant in unison, “Don’t be scared. We’re all together.”

The president had been criticized as being tardy in his response to the Iranian election (read-- fraud).

On Sunday, according to a report in Politico, Vice President Joe Biden expressed “doubts” about the election, and on Monday, press secretary Robert Gibbs was battered by a reporter:

"... State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the U.S. is 'deeply troubled' by events in Iran but stopped short of condemning them.

“'I haven’t used that word, condemn,"' he [Gibbs] told the State Department press corps. 'We need to see how things unfold.'

“'You need to see more heads cracked in the middle of the street?' Fox News’ James Rosen shot back.

“'We need a deeper assessment of what’s going on,' Kelly said."

The Wall Street Journal reported that images from the protests and allegations of election fraud “drew stronger reactions around the world Monday, after an initially muted response from the West. Late Monday afternoon, President Barack Obama said he was ‘deeply troubled’ by the violence. ‘The democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent -- all those are universal values and need to be respected,’ he said.”

In Europe now such remarks will be regarded as too little too late.

The Obama administration’s politicized response to the events in Iran was determined by two considerations: Administration officials recognized, according to Obama’s statement, that “It’s not productive, given the history of the U.S.-Iranian relationship, to be seen as meddling.” And the administration also feared that such meddlesome interference could fortify the anti-American Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, according to a generally friendly but refreshingly critical Tribune newspaper report, “make things more difficult for Obama’s long promised diplomatic overture to Iran.”

In our cringing solicitude towards oppressors, we have strayed very far here from the words of former President John Kennedy, with whom Obama has often been compared: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

What we are witnessing in Iran is a full blown revolt, such as occurred in Hungary in 1956. And it is a revolt inspired and led by the youth of Iran and its intellectuals.

Much of Europe at the time of the Hungarian revolt against Soviet tyranny was slow to respond to the brutal suppression of the Hungarian patriots, but some pens were quicker than others.

Among these was Albert Camus, who wrote a piece that sings down the ages: “Kadar Had His Day Of Fear.” Kadar was an Hungarian Soviet pawn who facilitated the brutal suppression of the noble but doomed Hungarian revolt.

In 1951, Camus published what must be regarded as his Magnum Opus, “The Rebel,” the central tenet of which is that liberty and revolt are inseparable. A political system that denies either denies both. Camus was among the few anti-Stalinists in Europe who hated totalitarianism for the right reason.

Amadinijad now has had his day of fear.

After comparing the revolt among intellectuals and students in his country to the protests in a minor key that occurs in his country and Europe after soccer matches, several reports indicated that Amadinijad went to Russia "for a conference."

While there, perhaps his sponsors can dig up a copy of Camus timeless piece on revolt to share with their guest.