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The sign, "The Looser Won," looked to be held by a paid activist of the anti-WTO persuasion. In the bitter weather of inauguration day, the sign sums up the week in Washington for the Left. Not knowing how to spell "loser" is just one symbol of the decline of the quality of their argument. Not knowing how to act when they are not in charge is a more critical one. "We are ungovernable," another sign said. Indeed, adult behavior was in short supply in either the Democrat or Clinton camp this week. Only the DLC, shoved aside by the Gore campaign, made the attempt. As a courtesy to the ex-president, the administration furnished Air Force One to the Clintons for their final trip to New York City. Renamed "Special Air Mission," the plane was fully equipped with all the presidential amenities. According to John McCaslin, the Inside the Beltway columnist, by the time the plane arrived in New York, staffers and passengers had stripped the plane of all items with the presidential seal such as porcelain china, silverware, salt and pepper shakers, blankets and pillow cases. A military steward said that they even took the toothpaste. Although the extent of damage is being kept under wraps, the departing Clinton White House staff seems to have trashed and vandalized their own office space before leaving. Damage goes far beyond prying the "W" key off of some 40 computer keyboards. Phone lines have been cut. Voice mail messages have been altered to provide obscene greetings. Phone numbers have been misdirected to other government offices. Filing cabinets have been glued shut. The Vice President’s Office in the Old Executive Office Building has been trashed. An internal investigation has been launched into the legal ramifications of vandalism and possible theft. The radical left Senators on the Judiciary Committee, lead by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) have extended the Attorney General confirmation hearings for a week and unleashed the gay activist community to take their turn at Ashcroft bashing. Kennedy, rapidly becoming the Jabba-the-Hut of the Left, is still threatening a filibuster but the Republican leadership is claiming 60-70 votes for confirmation, enough to defeat a filibuster move. In the meantime, Ashcroft has been required to provide written answers to over 400 questions. Their hope? That Ashcroft will say or write something that can be presented as perjury. The statements of opposition all still boil down to the assertion that people who disagree with the Left are unfit to govern. It’s a marvelous experience to see a Senator who claims to be Catholic asserting that a nominee who agrees with the Pope on when conception occurs is unfit to hold government office. We are reminded of George Will’s observation that if hypocrisy were oil, Washington would be the capital of Saudi Arabia. With less than two hours left in his presidency, Bill Clinton pardoned international financier Marc Rich and his partner Pincus Green. A third partner did not skip the country and resides in an American jail. He was not pardoned for the same offense. Who the heck is Marc Rich? Begin with what’s important. Marc Rich’s ex-wife Denise is nearly as good as Terry McAuliffe at raising money for the Clintons and the Democratic Party. She is legally represented by Jack Quinn, a Clinton crony and former member of the White House legal staff. (Yes, we know Quinn was employed under a Presidential Executive Order that banned lobbying by staff for five years. However, lawyers representing their clients are exempted from the order.) Marc Rich is a fugitive living in Switzerland. Some years ago he tried to corner the world’s oil market in a recession. Even in sophisticated circles, that is called price manipulation and is frowned upon. Rich was indicted on 65 counts in 1983 but never brought to trial. He is also a convicted tax dodger who has paid a $150 million fine plus penalties. Rich’s pardon was also supported by Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Barak. Rich is estimated to have given $200 million to Israeli charities. The reason he is a fugitive is that he owes another $48 million in taxes on his oil profits and skipped the country 17 years ago. Jack Quinn went directly to Clinton, who told no one. He ignored the Federal prosecutors who were in charge of the case. It was, in financial writer Rod Boyd’s words, "A triumph of the politics of getting-away-with-it, the codification of the guilty-but-connected." Another numerical anomaly is the voting in the New York town of New Square. A conservative Hasidic Jewish community, it regularly votes Republican. The surrounding communities voted 90 percent for Rick Lazio last November, but not New Square. It voted 1,359 to 10 for Hillary. By coincidence, four of their residents, who were convicted of defrauding the government of $40 million in 1999, were pardoned by Bill in his last batch before leaving office. A presidential pardon cannot be reversed but these actions have prompted an investigation by the House Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep Dan Burton (R-Ind). The case is similar to the clemency given to members of the FALN Puerto Rican terrorist organization in 1999 at the beginning of Hillary’s Senate campaign. The moderate Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) met this week to dissect the election. They concluded that Gore ran too far to the left. "Mondale with a surplus" Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, called it. "Gore failed to articulate any sense of public purpose larger than the expansion of government for the benefit of favored groups." Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash) stated that the Gore campaign turned off the wired worker because "Democrats appeared too partisan and excessively loyal to interest groups." DLC president Al From quantified the point. "The percentage of all voters with family incomes over $50,000 has risen on an inflation adjusted basis from 32% of voters in 1992 to 53% today. A full 70 % of voters now own stock and are a part of the new investor class. Gore was especially weak (down 17% in the vote) with the fastest-growing segment of the electorate – upwardly mobile men. In other words by accepting the dictates of the AFL-CIO, NAACP, NOW and NARAL, the Gore campaign lost the new economy workers and the young. If the Democratic Party continues on the rigid left, the DLC says, it makes a gift of the center to the Republicans. Showing that there is much to be said for the DLC analysis of a new investor class, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan endorsed tax cuts at a Senate hearing on Thursday. The Fed chairman believes that the huge new forecasts of the surplus are legitimate and big enough to accommodate both substantial debt reduction and reduced taxes. Greenspan endorses a tax cut over increased government spending or government investment in the markets. The Congressional Budget Office has been projecting a ten-year surplus of $4.6 trillion but the new CBO forecast is expected to balloon to $5.7 trillion. The bi-partisan formula has been 50 percent for debt reduction, 25 percent each for new programs and tax relief. Applied to the new projection, that would mean $1.425 trillion available for a tax cut. The Fed view is that the economy faces a risky period of sub-par growth but should avoid outright recession by a combination of fiscal and monetary approaches. Adding up the first week of the Bush presidency, the left side of the Democratic party is still stuck in disparately defending the big government status quo by denying that they lost the election. Their uncompromising posture opens up the center for Bush whose strategy of finding a Democrat to help build a coalition on an issue by issue basis is off to a good start. The electorate rates itself as slightly right of center, according to meta-theme research. They see Gore as to the left of them and Bush to the right of them. Either party can win their support. Education and taxes are the right issues. The DLC seminar did produce one unanimous point of agreement. Everyone thought Gore was a lousy candidate. In confirmation of their judgement, Al Gore has announced his new career. He plans to write a book and to lecture one day a week at three different universities: Columbia University, Middle Tennessee State and Fisk University. His topics will be community building and national affairs. Where is that guy with the "looser" sign when you need him? #### |
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