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Payne: McCotter McBurnout
Posted by hpayne on July 8, 2012
“Better to burn out than to fade away,” goes the great rock lyric.
And like one of the hedonistic rockers that Thad McCotter loved to quote on the House floor , the guitar-wielding Michigan rep imploded in career-ending self-destruction this weekend when he abruptly resigned from Congress – leaving his fans puzzled and his Republican band-mates furious over having to fill a vacant seat just five months before Election 2012.
“This was the ultimate self-centered, egotistical thing to do,” pundit Bill Ballenger, publisher of Inside Michigan Politics, told The Detroit News, looking back at an epic meltdown that began with McCotter’s inexplicable submission of fraudulent signatures in May to qualify for the Republican ballot. The gaffe left Republicans without their incumbent Congressman on the ballot – and vulnerable to Democratic challenge in a district that should be a Republican shoo-in.
“The guy has melted down and imploded before our very eyes in a way we’ve never seen.” continued Ballenger. Well, never seen in politics. But this was vintage rock n’ roll.
What made McCotter unique was his insistence on following his own muse.
Bored by DC politics, he took his guitar to the presidential campaign stage last year, singing a long-shot populist tune. He loudly attacked GOP favorite – and fellow Michigan native – Mitt Romney as an imposter. McCotter saw in ill-conceived Romneycare a reflection of the looming Obamacare disaster. But the rivalry was also personal.
Clearly, McCotter saw Romney as a silver spoon-born establishment Republican, and McCotter would be his populist, grass-roots GOP nemesis. Thad’s whirlwind tour never caught fire, and – despite ultimately endorsing Romney (and the promise of attracting his donor money) – his heart seemed out of politics.
“One minute he’s running for president, the next minute he’s resigning (from Congress),” concluded state Rep. Chuck Moss, R-Birmingham. “I’m speechless. I never saw this coming.”
Maybe not, but its shouldn’t be a surprise.
” I must `strike another match, go start anew’ by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen,” McCotter said in his resignation – quoting rock legend Dylan, natch. A good decision. These are serious times requiring serious leaders.
McCotter had forfeited the right to be taken seriously. There’s too much of that in Washington already.
Payne: Snyder vetoed Voter ID. . . not
Posted by hpayne on July 5, 2012
“Huuuuge!” raved Michigan Radio’s Tim Skubick. “Stunning!” hyperventilated a WWJ-Radio news anchor. Lansing’s media establishment cheered Governor Snyder sticking it to Republicans this week in vetoing the Legislature’s Voter ID law.
Trouble is, Michigan already has a Voter ID law. Since 1996. Affirmed by the Michigan Supreme Court in 2007, Michigan voters have had to show proof of ID since 2007.
Oh. So what’s going on?
Welcome to presidential campaign 2012 where an embattled President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder have made state Voter ID laws a rallying point for the Democratic base. Republicans are racists you see. And Democratic media organs are echoing the Party line.
“Democrats viewed the measures as an attempt to suppress voter turnout, especially among minority and urban populations,” parroted the Detroit Free Press on Page A1 Wednesday.
That’s not true.
There is no evidence that Voter ID laws suppress turnout – in fact, the opposite is true, as The Wall Street Journal reports: “Black voter turnout increased in Georgia and Indiana after voter ID laws passed. No doubt Mr. Obama’s presence on the ballot helped drive that turnout surge in 2008, but then the black vote in Georgia also increased by 44.2 percent during the midterm Congressional races of 2010 from 2006. The Hispanic vote grew by 66.5 percent in 2010 from four years earlier.”
Damn those inconvenient facts.
What is suppressing voter turnout today is Obama’s policies which have resulted in high rates of minority unemployment – and lower Hispanic (-5 percent) and black (-7 percent) voter registrations this cycle. Thus the push-back against Voter ID laws. Thus the manufactured story by Lansing’s liberal media.
The governor’s office was surprised by the veto dust-up. “Snyder signs most of election reform legislation,” read Snyder’s Tuesday press release. “Gov. Rick Snyder recently signed legislation to increase election transparency, prevent election fraud and provide consistency across all voting locations,” read the lead paragraph. Indeed, the governor’s veto of just three of 14 election reform bills – drafted by Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s office – is an afterthought.
Since passage of Michigan’s Voter ID waaaay back in ’96, SOS offices have been tightening up ID laws after the rampant fraud of Detroit elections in 2004 and 2005 (The Detroit News reported 380,000 false names and addresses on voter lists), 1,500 votes by dead or imprisoned people from 2008-2011, and so on.
Snyder okayed most SOS reforms, and found some to be Republican overreach. For example, he vetoed bill H.B. 5061 “requiring a voter to reaffirm U.S. citizenship before receiving a ballot” because Michigan voters are ALREADY required to issue ID upon registering to vote. Snyder found that redundant, saying “he appreciates the issue of ensuring voters are eligible and U.S. citizens, however this legislation could create voter confusion.”
That’s hardly a rebuke to racism that Democrats & Media claim. “The package as a whole would have disenfranchised (voters),” cheered House Minority Leader Richard Hammel, D-Flushing. But the package as a whole DID pass – and did nothing to change the state’s Voter ID law. Calls to both the SOS and governor’s offices found confusion as to why the vetoes created headlines.
Yes, confusing. But simple when you think of Democratic political strategy in 2012.
Payne: Media-made global warming
Posted by hpayne on July 4, 2012
Warm weather warning: Stay hydrated and stay away from Seth Borenstein articles. The Associate Press’s chief Goracle disciple went on one of his typical benders Tuesday (he’s been admonished by scientists for similar tantrums in the past), scaring that this week’s hot summer weather is evidence of global warming Armageddon.
“If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks,” wrote Borenstein, exploiting the warm weather to advance his political agenda (see more from Brother Lopez nearby). The “vast majority of mainstream climate scientists” agree, he says.
That’s simply not true.
Multiple surveys over the last few decades have found no scientific consensus whether man is warming the climate. Most recently, a review of two surveys by the Heartland Institute, for example, found that “scientists are evenly split on whether humans are responsible for changes in global climate.”
Perhaps the most authoritative surveys, conducted by two German climatologists – Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch – of their colleagues from over 20 countries, found that “the matter is far from being settled in the scientific arena.”
For example, on the question of “Do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of (manmade) causes?” 56 percent agreed, 30 percent disagreed and 14 percent were unsure. Of those surveyed, more scientists chose “strongly disagree” than “strongly agree” that climate change is man-made.
Borenstein simply ignores this data in order to manufacture a consensus.
But when the weather does not conform with AP’s political views, it is dismissed as irrelevant. When unusually cold temperatures gripped the United States- and chilled the world from Beijing to Britain in 2010 – AP pooh-poohed the “anamoly.”
“Such weather doesn’t seem to fit with warnings from scientists that the Earth is warming because of greenhouse gases. But experts say the cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming at all – it’s just a blip in the long-term heating trend,” wrote the AP in dismissing the record cold temps.
“Since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now,” hyperventilates Borenstein this week.
But much has changed since 1988 – a landmark year for activists as Al Gore and his scientific sidekick, James Hansen of NASA, launched the global warming movement with Senate hearings. Since then, Hansen has outed himself as a green extremist arguing for violence against coal plants and repeatedly using Holocaust rhetoric to warn of a planetary moral crisis.
Worse, fellow prominent climatologist/activists like Michael Mann and Phil Jones were exposed by Climategate as doctoring scientific evidence.
Significantly, Borenstein and his AP colleagues ignored Climategate because it didn’t fit their narrative. They also ignore an economic consensus that even draconian remedies like the Kyoto Treaty will have no effect on temperature while causing great economic harm. Scientifically in doubt and scandal-ridden, global warming is a failed movement kept alive by Mainstream Media like the AP.
Payne: Obamacare’s War on Women
Posted by hpayne on July 2, 2012
“In 2007, I heard the words no woman wants to hear: ‘You have breast cancer.’ I don’t care how strong you are: It’s a terrifying moment,” writes Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in celebrating the Supremes’ upholding of Obamacare with a fundraising email.
Prepare for it to get more terrifying, Rep. Wasserman Schultz.
The irony of Wassermann Schultz’s celebration is that, if America retains Obamacare, there will be more deaths from breast cancer. That is the evidence of other government-run health systems.
“This fight is personal to me,” continues Wassermann Schultz in appealing for campaign cash. “I want to do everything I can to protect health care for every American.” If true, the breast cancer survivor would change parties and vote to overturn Obamacare.
The United States today has the world’s highest cancer survival rate at 84 percent according to the comprehensive CONCORD study. The countries that Wasserman Schultz admires? The nationalized health systems that Obamacare is modeled on? Germany’s cancer survival rate is 76 percent. Spain, 78 percent. England? Just 70 percent.
Life expectancy? Again, American is #1 once you remove deaths from fatal injuries (America’s murder rate is high compared to other countries, but that’s not a health care issue) according to Texas A&M’s Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider of the University of Iowa.
It won’t happen overnight, but as Obamacare continues America’s transformation to Market Socialist Europe and forces more regulations, more spending, and less compensation for doctors treating a growing population being dumped into public health exchanges, there will be fewer doctors chasing fewer dollars to treat more patients.
Wasserman Schultz says that to preserve America’s health, Mitt Romney must be defeated. But the lesson of Mitt Romney is that Romneycare is creating the same rationed, expensive, high-wait time, high-inflation health environment in Massachusetts that European countries have experienced before it. The MSM ignores these stats – that’s journalistic malpractice.
Romney has gotten religion and rejects Obamacare because of its War on Women. Perhaps Wassermann Schultz will see the light before an Obamacare doctor tells her: “Sorry, the wait time to treat you for breast cancer is 18 months.”
Payne: Stabenow hit on ObamaTax
Posted by hpayne on July 1, 2012
The Michigan Senate race just got a whole lot more interesting.
The Supreme Court’s ruling last week upholding a core Obamacare funding mechanism, the individual mandate, as a tax puts Sen. Debbie Stabenow (and other Democratic Senators running for re-election in 2012) on the defensive.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McDonnell, R-Kentucky, quickly seized on the Obamacare tax hike as a crucial issue in Senate campaigns.
“Seventy-seven percent of this tax is going to be on the middle class making less than $125,000 a year,” he said on Fox News Sunday. “It’s a middle class tax. . . increase. Every Democratic Senator voted for Obamacare. Every single Democrat on the ballot this November was the deciding vote to pass this bill.”
In an uncomfortable interview with Chris Wallace on the same program, White House Chief Weasel – er, Chief of Staff – John Lew dodged and squirmed from the Supreme Court’s toxic ruling, going so far as to fib about the clear language of Chief Justice John Roberts’ ruling. “The opinion said that there are multiple powers that Congress has to make the law,” said Lew in insisting that the court upheld the law under the Commerce Clause as a penalty.
“That’s not what he said,” retorted Wallace. He’s right, of course.
“The federal government does not have the power to order people to buy health insurance,” wrote Roberts contradicting Lew’s rewriting of history. “The federal government does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance.”
If it walks like a duck. . . . Stabenow ignored the issue in spinning the Court’s decision as a win. Indeed, the individual mandate was written as a penalty because Democrats never would have passed Obamacare as a tax. And since tax legislation cannot be filibustered, now GOPers only need 50 seats in the Senate to overturn the mandate – as MIView’s Dan Calabrese reports.
Stabenow’s Senate opponents smell blood.
“The most pressing issue in America is jobs. The new taxes in Obamacare, the new rules, and the new regulations are job killers,” GOP candidate Pete Hoekstra told the Michigan View. “Senator Stabenow will be accountable this November. ”
“The fact that this law stands does not change the reality of its effects. Now we find out that it includes a tax that was never contemplated during its debate in Congress,” said Republican candidate Clark Durant in a press release.
Stabenow has largely skated through 2012 protected both by a friendly Michigan media and her support of the auto bailouts which have helped Michigan and blunted the effect of the bad national economy on her campaign.
Now that her vote for Obamacare has been exposed as a tax hike scheme, she has been wounded. And Jack Lew’s evasions won’t be much help.
Payne in Germany, Part 3: Green ugly
Posted by hpayne on June 27, 2012
(Michigan View editor Henry Payne traveled to Germany this month to revisit Berlin and Frankfurt for the first time in 28 years. He reports on what has changed in the once-divided country and what Market Socialist Europe – the troubled economic model for the Granholm and Obama administrations – portends for the U.S. Third of three parts)
Koblenz, Germany – The Eifel Mountains were once one of Western Germany’s spectacular landscapes with farmed, pine-rich hillsides rolling up from river valleys.
But those vistas are fast disappearing thanks to the Green movement and its wind turbine eyesores.
From Eifel to Braunschweig to the Baltic, where blue sky once met green grass or aqua sea in a symphony of beauty, now ugly, white windmills chop at the horizon. Twentieth century technology had created efficient, centralized, 600 MW power sources like coal and nuclear plants – their white cooling towers and transmission lines limited to a few corridors stretching between metro areas. Now 21st century environmentalist’s preferred, inefficient windmills choke the landscape – Germany has 200,000 and counting – as turbines gulp the intermittent wind of open land. Far from population centers, this antiquated grid forces lines in an expensive criss-cross of nature back to metro areas.
This is Michigan’s future too as Greens – inspired by Jennifer Granholm’s Euro-topia – push a ballot measure to force 25 percent of the state’s power from alternative sources (read wind) by 2025.
Like Germany, Michigan’s once beautiful forests and Great Lakes would become ugly squatting grounds for garish pinwheels – their utility lines cutting swaths through pristine vistas back to metro areas. In return, Michigan would get higher utility bills and lower tourism as travelers seek out prettier venues.
Thus has the Green religion come full circle.
As an elementary school student in the ’70s Earth Decade, I was marinated in the then-Green gospel: Visual pollution is bad. The movement’s edu-stooges drilled us on the damage that billboards, trash, and junkyards did to the natural landscape around us. We students drew posters decrying the cluttering of the Earth’s landscape. How times have changed.
In Michigan as in Germany, citizens today protest the Green eyesores ruining their natural landscapes. Once upon a time, these residents would have been green for opposing visual pollution.
Today they are enemies of the polar bear.
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com.
Payne: The EPA’s Supreme power
Posted by hpayne on June 26, 2012
Tuesday the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia gave the EPA a blank check to run roughshod over U.S. industry without congressional input. This breathtaking affirmation of an agency’s power over the U.S. economy is a reminder in this week of Decision Obamacare how a narrow 5-4 Supreme Court ruling can profoundly change America’s economic landscape.
Just five years ago, in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, five judges gave the EPA the power to regulate inert, non-toxic, non-particulate carbon dioxide (the same gas that human beings exhale) as a “pollutant” under the Clean Air Act — a clear violation of the intent of the congressional legislation.
The Obama EPA has since jumped at the chance, ignoring congressional reluctance to pass cap-and-trade legislation and establishing itself as a rogue agency tasked with fighting phantom global warming by dictating industrial CO2 emissions.
The EPA’s first victim was the auto industry — which the agency hit with an arbitrary 54.5 mpg fuel efficiency standard by 2025 intended to force the industry to adopt electric vehicles (just as similar energy standards were meant to eliminate the common light bulb). This alarming development mobilized a broad national coalition — including states from Virginia to Texas and major industries including chemical, energy, utility, agriculture, and mining companies — to bring suit out of fear that the EPA would strike them next (indeed, utilities and mining are already under the jackboot as EPA has targeted coal for elimination with new power plant CO2 rules).
A spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers denounced this week’s ruling as “a setback for businesses facing damaging regulations from the EPA.”
A unanimous three-judge-panel of Green religious disciples ignored scientific evidence and economic good sense and ruled in favor of the Obama Administration’s global warming crusade. The ruling, gushed New York Times reporter Matthew Wald, dealt “a decisive blow to companies and states that had sued to block agency rules.”
Oh, joy. Another decisive blow to a country struggling through a recession already elongated by draconian regulation.
Wald further warned the plaintiffs against an appeal to the Supreme Court “given the emphatic nature of the decision.”
“This is a slam-dunk victory for EPA,” cheered a spokesman for the radical green group, Clean Air Watch.
“This is how science works,” the judges wrote. “The EPA is not required to reprove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question.” So a scientific theory that has been crippled by the scandal of Climategate — not to mention the collapse of computer model predictions in the last decade — now has the credibility of atomic science according to the judges?
Never mind that the world’s top climatologists say that the EPA’s rules will have no effect on global temperature even if Green Church doctrine was correct. Never mind the plaintiffs’ challenge that EPA timetables make no sense. Never mind that thousands of jobs are at risk.
“The court said it did not have the jurisdiction to block (EPA rules),” reports The Times. Hail the all-powerful EPA.
How total was the defeat for the forces of science and constitutional law? Consider the unanimous appeals court included a Reagan appointee and two Clinton appointees. And who brought the original 2007 suit demanding that the Supremes grant EPA power over carbon dioxide? The administration of then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
The appeals court, after all, was only bowing to that fateful decision. Notably, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers did not join the suit against the 54.5 mpg rules estimated to cost its industry billions. Automakers have decided resistance against the Green Church is futile — and instead are now pouring millions into Washington lobbying firms to game the system in its favor.
In an America in which the EPA has limitless power, and the courts ignore the law, only money speaks. As usual, the American consumer will pay the bill.
Henry Payne is editor of the Michigan View.com
Payne: Illiberal Obamacare
Posted by hpayne on June 25, 2012
Why are liberals in favor of a federal mandate that forces people to hand over their money to private insurance corporations to buy their products?
Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules (on Thursday, we’re told), liberal support for the individual mandate is a telling commentary on where the Democratic Party is today.
The party of civil rights and the little guy? Think again. The party of Barack Obama – who once opposed the mandate – and Nancy Pelosi is about power and nothing more.
“If things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t,” Candidate Obama told Ellen Degeneres in 2008. But it does solve the problem of giving more power to the state – and, by extension, the Party of Government.
Today’s Democrats – like health care socialist John Dingell long before them – have figured out the way to the permanent majority is through health care. The ends justify the means.
Forcing an individual mandate? No civil libertarians here. Force publicly-funded abortions? Bart Stupak looks the other way. Trample the First Amendment to force Catholic institutions to provide contraceptives? No problem. More power for Washington justifies all – even throwing “the little guy” under the bus.
“In Massachusetts, the only state with a so-called individual mandate, the threat of a tax penalty has sparked little public outcry since the state’s landmark health care law was signed in 2006,” writes AP, the Obama News Service.
Not true.
Out-of-work accountant George Fountas from Lynn, Massachusetts – can you say “little guy?” – brought suit against Romneycare in 2007 complaining that it trampled his civil rights (and that it was unfair to fine a guy when he was out of work). By liberal journalism’s self-professed motto, the case should have been a cause célèbre.
It was ignored (and ultimately dismissed).
“This is not real reform,” said Howard Dean – one of the few consistent Democrats on the subject – of Obamacare’s mandate in December 2009. “You’re going to be forced to buy health insurance from a company that’s going to take on average 27 percent of your money so they can pay CEOs 20 million dollars a year…and there’s no choice about that. If you don’t buy that insurance, you’re going to get a fine. This is a bill that was fundamentally written by staffers who are friendly to the insurance industry. I’d kill the bill entirely.”
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will follow civil libertarian Dean’s advice.
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com
Payne: The Terrys speak
Posted by hpayne on June 21, 2012
The human heart of the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious scandal has been in Flat Rock just south of Metro Detroit where Brian Terry’s parents have grieved for their son – even as they have lashed out at Attorney General Eric Holder’s high-handed treatment of them and refusal to explain how a botched U.S. gun-running operation killed their son.
Michigan’s MSM has steadfastly refused to cover the story for fear of the damage it might do to the White House. Fortunately, the new media of the Internet and cable TV have filed the void.
At The Michigan View, we have repeatedly tried to get an interview with Josephine and Kent Terry at their home in the blue-collar Flat Rock community just 25 miles south of downtown Detroit – but without success. Maintaining their privacy, the family has instead been outspoken via emails and Facebook postings about the administration’s stonewalling of evidence on how their son was killed.
Ignoring for 18 months a crucial story about the conduct of government officials, Michigan MSM have ignored even those Terry announcements – as well as their Congressional representative John Dingell who has condemned Holder’s actions (along with other members of the Michigan delegation).
But where the MSM chooses to ignore an explosive story (remember the birth of The Drudge Report in exposing Bill Clinton’s coaching of perjury in the Paula Jones sex harassment case), now alternative media fills the void.
Thursday, Fox News’ Sean Hannity got the first exclusive interview with the Terry family.
In the wake of President Obama’s exercising executive privilege over relevant Fast and Furious documents – and a subsequent House committee vote to hold him in contempt- the Terrys told Hannity they think that AG Holder and other Justice Department officials are “hiding something” in their response to the botched gun-running scheme.
“They’re lying. . . . They’re passing the buck,” Kent Terry told Hannity. “I just know that they’re hiding something big. Something happened out there.”
Blockbuster stuff – and all in our back yard. Incredibly, the MSM would prefer to put its head in the sand.
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com.
Payne: Granobama’s sinking Euromodel
Posted by hpayne on June 20, 2012
(Michigan View editor Henry Payne traveled to Germany this month to revisit Berlin and Frankfurt for the first time in 28 years. He reports on what has changed in the once-divided country and what Market Socialist Europe – the troubled economic model for the Granholm and Obama administrations – portends for the U.S. Second of three parts)
Frankfurt, Germany – Policy twins Jennifer Granholm and Barack Obama both say that the way out of America’s current economic doldrums is to follow the Europe is their economic model . So how’s the model doing?
Spain, the Granobama model of green-subsidized growth, just required a $125 billion ballot from the European Union as it suffers through severe economic contraction and 24.5 percent unemployment.
Italy, Granobama’s Big Labor model, faces a national debt that is 120 percent of its GDP and an economy expected to contract by 2 percent this year, in part because new business is intimidated from creating jobs because workers – by law – have the right to appeal any dismissals to a judge.
France, Granobama’s health care model, has run up a national debt at 90 percent of GDP while its economy has stagnated at 10 percent unemployment. As a result, the country has called in new Socialist Prime Minister Francois Hollande to give it more of the same. He wants a stimulus package with more spending ” to be deployed in areas such as new technologies, renewable energy, transport and other infrastructure,” reports The Financial Times, with “higher wealth taxes, surcharges on banks and energy companies and the suppression of tax breaks.”
Sound familiar? French market socialism meet Granobama.
The result of all this failed Big Government is a continent sinking deeper in recession – accompanied by a permanent Occupy movement that blames everything on the One Percenters in the financial sector. That industry is centered here in Occupy-besieged Frankfurt, Germany. Frankfurt on the Main River is nicknamed “Mainhattan” for its status as the European Union’s banking capital – and its corresponding Manhattan-style skyline of gleaming financial headquarters including CommerzBank to Deutsche Bank. As Greece, Spain, Italy and other Granobamodels sink into bankruptcy, Frankfurt banks – the continent’s largest bondholders – have become the permanent scapegoats.
This is what America’s future looks like.
Europe’s Left has won everything that Granobama and the American Occupy movement demand and more – yet it still isn’t enough. Cradle-to-grave welfare, government-run health care, high energy prices combating global warming, state laws mandating union-friendly work rules, 50-percent of GDP federal spending, etc. is the norm across Western Europe.
The result? European per capita income is just 70 percent of their U.S. counterparts and a sea of red ink. Perpetual demonstrations protest the perpetual calls for austerity caused by the perpetual overspending and overregulation. On June 11, I witnessed police flooding the downtown historic district with shield-wielding troops and a massive police van presence in order to deter yet another demonstration from smashing shops in the city’s thriving commercial district at the height of tourist season.
This is the model?
Payne: Return to Checkpoint Charlie
Posted by hpayne on June 19, 2012
(Michigan View editor Henry Payne traveled to Germany this month to revisit Berlin and Frankfurt for the first time in 28 years. He reports on what has changed in the once-divided country and what Market Socialist Europe – the troubled economic model for the Granholm and Obama administrations – portends for the U.S. First of three parts)
Berlin – Standing at the corner of Zimmerstrasse and Friedrichstrasse, I witnessed a new, bright orange Chevy Camaro ZR1 – its 6.2-liter V8 growling – round the corner and rumble south right through Checkpoint Charlie. The vehicle oozed American swagger, western individuality, and capitalist success. No gate stopped him. No guard shot at him. No East German soldier threw star nails across the street to flatten his tires.
Because today East Berlin is free.
It’s been twenty-eight years since I stood at the same spot, a 22-year old college graduate a little unsettled about what I was about to do. Actually I was sitting – on a bus with other Western tourists waiting to cross the heavily-fortified checkpoint that was the only way in and out of East Berlin. Friedrichstrasse (Friedrich Street) was an armed camp with East German dogs straining at their leashes, sniffing the undersides of returning buses for escapees while their soldier masters swept mirrors under vehicles looking for the same thing. As the gate rose and we crossed through the infamous Berlin Wall I had a sense of passing from a color movie to a black and white film. Commerce ended. Freedom ended. Misery began.
Today, it has all changed – but for the little hut preserved awkwardly in the middle of the bustling street to remind the world of what once cleaved Berlin in two. On the Freidrichstrasse’s west side is a museum cataloguing the history of the wall – its barbed wire, its guards, and those who tried to breach it.
On the west side of the street are shops. In fact all of Friedrichstrasse in Berlin’s central district is crammed with retail stores. It is one of Berlin’s major shopping thoroughfares hosting everything from car dealerships to giant clothing stores to McDonald’s restaurants where 25 years ago there was nothing but grim concrete apartments and government buildings.
The wonderful irony of 21st century Friedrichstrasse is that 20th century Soviet communism was a system designed to prevent this capitalist mecca of consumer goods and individual property rights.
The very human desire to control others is present everywhere. You see it in the Green parties of Europe. In France’s new Socialist government. In Republican Mayor Bloomberg’s diktat on what the collective should eat. In Democrat Barack Obama’s mandate that everyone in the collective should have health insurance. But East Berlin had achieved totalitarianism in its fully-realized form.
No individual had rights. Everyone was subject to the state. All were watched by an army of secret Stasi agents for crimes against the collective. All were necessary to make the collective work. None could leave.
That nightmare has been erased. The wall fell in 1990. Soviet socialism died and Berlin was reunited. And standing on that street corner watching that Camaro rumble past Checkpoint Charlie sent goose bumps down my spine.
It felt like victory. Liberty had won.
Payne: Bridging Candor Gap
Posted by hpayne on June 7, 2012
The New International Trade Crossing could use a little candor. Because we haven’t gotten much so far.
Canada Consul General Roy Norton exploded this week when asked by a reporter if Nolan Finley’s June 1 report in The Detroit News was correct that the use of Chinese steel was a sticking point in the Michigan-Canada bridge talks. “Norton said whoever tipped off Finley did not ‘know anything about Canada’s procurement policies’ and created what he called ‘a fiction, a poorly informed report,'” reported MIRS.
And who are these ignoramuses that Finley sources? “Top officials of the Snyder administration, on the island for the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual policy conference,” according to Brother Finley’s article.
Oh. When politicians insult both reporters and the very Michigan pols with whom they are partnering as know nothings, it should rouse suspicion that they know something.
And what we do know is that the issue of Chinese building American bridges is a very controversial topic these days. Indeed, China is constructing the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge reports the New York Times. Made in China. With Chinese labor. Because it saves the government of California a bundle.
Canada, too, would be smart to have China build its bridge (to the applause of free traders like yours truly) — but to do so would fly in the face of Snyder-Canada claims that the new bridge is about jobs, jobs, jobs.
Yes, North American union labor will construct the bridge and its on-ramps over the Detroit River — but admitting that the actual bridge-construction jobs will be outsourced to China would be a political catastrophe for Snyder-Canada.
“It’s a philosophical difference, but one we’re confident we can move beyond,” says that “know-nothing” top Snyder administration official. I bet it is.
The Chinese issue is part of pattern in this candor-challenged project, beginning with: Why is the bridge necessary in the first place?
Because we need to “put the power of the private sector behind a new project and say that ‘we’re not for monopolies anymore, we’re for competition,'” Lt. Governor Rick Calley told Michigan Public Radio this week. So the bridge is necessary for price competition?
No, other pro-bridge sources tell Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press. We need the bridge because the Ambassador Bridge is falling down.
“The Ambassador Bridge was designed to last about 50 years. It is 83 years old. Arguments about whether bridge traffic has increased or international trade is growing fast enough are irrelevant in an argument about whether a bridge can last forever. It can’t,” reports Riley.
So which is it?
Bridge advocates can’t claim both that two bridges are necessary to compete for increased traffic and also say traffic numbers are irrelevant because one bridge is about to fall down.
In truth, there is no business case for a second bridge. Traffic at the Ambassador Bridge is down 25 percent since 2006 at 50,000 vehicles a day with no increase in sight. Meanwhile, traffic at the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron is up four percent (so much for that monopoly, Lt. Guv). So Canada wants to build a bridge in Detroit where there is the least demand? Why?
Because it wants to put the Ambassador Bridge out of business.
Canada has its reasons: Because it’s jealous that a private company is making money over its border. Because it doesn’t want truck traffic running through downtown Windsor. Because governments like to build shiny new things. Because it’s a once-in-lifetime chance at winning a decades-long war with the Morouns to finally control Canada-Michigan commercial traffic.
Fine. Except that Canada and its U.S business partners don’t make that case. Instead they invent arguments about increased traffic demand and bridge monopolies.
More candor, please. Michigan officials believe a new Canadian-owned bridge is important because the existing bridge is old, the Canadians won’t let Moroun build it, and they covet federal matching money — even if it means throwing a major Michigan business under the bus and saving costs by outsourcing to the Chinese. A tough argument to make — but at least it’s true.
Payne: Walker beats. . . Snyder?
Posted by hpayne on June 5, 2012
Michigan’s political establishment has long sniffed that Rick Snyder’s non-confrontational tactics are superior to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s brawler style. Snyder, it was said, had achieved the same ends as Walker but without the ugly recalls, showdowns, and bitter partisan politics.
Not so fast. In the wake of Walker’s overwhelming recall win Tuesday, the prevailing wisdom is wiping egg from its face.
On achievement. In defeating an extraordinary, nationally-organized recall effort, Walker has won a referendum for his bold fiscal policies. Unlike Snyder’s more managerial reforms, Walker’s fundamental reform of public employee collective bargaining puts his state on much stronger ground for decades to come.
On showdowns. Despite his more conciliatory approach, Snyder still faces a recall effort. Worse, he faces a ballot initiative this November in which Big Labor seeks to not only reverse Snyder’s significant legislative agenda, but to permanently make Michigan a non-R2W state – potentially crippling its competiveness for decades even as Walker has secured Wisconsin’s fiscal future.
On partisan politics. Snyder’s bipartisan politics have yielded. . . nada. Not a single Democrat has voted for his budget reforms. Today Lansing is as divided, ugly, and contentious as Madison.
Rick Snyder and Scott Walker are successful and different pols – one a businessman, the other a Party animal. Snyder was never going to adopt the Wisconsin guv’s tactics. But after Walker’s brilliant recall victory, we now know that he deserved a lot more respect than he has received in the Mitten State.
Payne: The little engine that can’t
Posted by hpayne on June 4, 2012
To read America’s mainstream media, the U.S. economy is a victim of forces beyond its control.
“Businesses are facing a growing threat from Europe’s financial crisis, which has worsened in recent weeks,” wrote the Associate Press Friday in a report echoed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and other outlets. ” Greece could be forced to exit the euro, which could push the region into a sharp recession. That could limit U.S. growth.”
Echoing the Obama administration’s press releases, the Obamedia has been predicting an economic boom ever since the U.S. emerged from recession just months after Barack Obama took office. But, alas, we’re told, fate keeps getting in the way. The Japanese tsunami, tornados, Egypt’s political revolution, and now the European debt crisis – all are responsible for America’s lackluster job growth and stubborn 8.2 percent unemployment rate.
Excuses, excuses. But what is almost entirely missing from the news reports is any recognition that American economic policy matters.
The U.S. economy is one-third of global output. Thirty percent. America is the world’s economic locomotive, and when it is laboring the world is hurting. For the last three years, President Obama’s historic expansion of the regulatory state has put extraordinary burdens on American business, depressing job creation. Yet, in insisting that America is a victim of external forces, the Obamedia has ignored asking the job creators here at home why they aren’t creating jobs.
If they did, they would hear businessmen under the strain of bad policy. Here’s what Michigan businesspeople told The Detroit News Editorial Page last fall.
“For the home-building industry to regain strength, we need to have the administration stop crippling our industry at every turn,” said Colin Herren, president Michigan Association of Home Builders. “”From the EPA lead laws to the new OSHA fall protection laws, we need to stop the barrage of Washington-based mandates that impact our ability to remain competitive and keep home ownership affordable.”
“It seems that this administration assumes that all businesspeople are evil-doers and that we’re out to cheat somebody. But that’s not true. We want to hire people and provide services and run good businesses,” said Jerry Grubb, owner, Wee Discover Child Daycare and Learning Center, Waterford. “There are so many regulations.”
“We are most worried about regulations,” said PVS Chemicals Vice Chairman James M. Nicholson in Detroit. “The riskier projects, the ones that intend to involve more jobs, are going to stay on the shelf as long as there’s the threat of constant (regulatory) change.”
Talk to Michigan entrepreneurs and you will get an earful about the difficulty of raising capital due to Democratic banking regulations. These sentiments are echoed nationally from Conoco CEO James Mulva (who visited our offices to protest the EPA’s anti-carbon policies) to Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus.
“Rather than encouraging economic growth, policies from Washington are making it difficult for small businesses to grow into bigger businesses,” wrote Marcus last month lamenting that he probably couldn’t have started Home Depot today given Obama’s anti-business assault. “Massive government expansion into health care, banking and a wide variety of other areas has become a major hurdle to job creation.”
It’s the regulations, stupid.
Yet you would never know it reading today’s MSM. Obamacare? Dodd-Frank? EPA’s War on Coal? They are rarely mentioned.
Policy matters. Which is why America’s last deep recession – in the early 1980s – had a very different outcome. Then, the Reagan administration followed pro-growth polices of deregulation and tax reform. The result? Growth rates that were three times greater that today’s Obama recovery. America wasn’t a victim.
It was the engine that could.
Payne: Friedman vs. freedom
Posted by hpayne on May 31, 2012
Mackinac Island – Mackinac Policy Conference keynote speaker and liberal icon, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, told an overflow crowd at the Grand Hotel Thursday that the world is turning away from the United Sates and looking to China as the model for the 21st century.
America’s most notable new émigré, Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, might beg to differ.
Writing in Friedman’s paper on Wednesday, Chen condemned China as a lawless nation. His home country “inflicted (punishment) on me and my family over the past seven years,” writes Chen. “The fundamental question the Chinese government must face is lawlessness.”
Indeed, China is less a model for the 21st century than a relic of the 20th, a century that saw the American model of democratic capitalism triumph over both German fascism and Russian communism. Today, China is a hybrid totalitarian-fascist state – a government with one boot on the industrial accelerator and the other planted firmly on its people’s necks. And as last century, 21st century Chinese like Chen wish it were more like America.
Friedman, however, envies the Chinese model – infamously titling a chapter of “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” his 2008 book, “China for a Day” in which he dreams of an American dictatorship that can impose Friedman’s vision of a green, post-carbon economy to prevent global warming.
“Watching (the) climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today,” he wrote in a 2009 Times column. “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks, but when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.”
Disturbing stuff from a man whose own opinions are protected by the Bill of Rights – an alien concept in his Utopian China. But what Friedman fails to grasp is that the same totalitarian government with the power to ban things he doesn’t like (“Bam! Just like that – 1.3 billion people, theoretically, will stop using thin plastic bags,” he thrills in “Crowded” about China damning plastic bags), can also ban things he likes. Like Chen’s speech.
Friedman never mentioned Chen in his Mackinac talk.
Chen would have inconveniently forced Friedman to admit that liberty is what makes America the envy of the world. Instead, Freidman ludicrously claims that what made America a superpower is a five-part “formula” (a formula the Obama Administration has enthusiastically embraced with ruinous effect on the nation’s economic recovery):
1) Education
2)The best infrastructure
3)The most open immigration policies
4)The best rules and institutions
5)Most government-funded research
Well, he got #4 right. But to suggest that millions of immigrants like Chen flock to the U.S. because of our “infrastructure” is laughable. They come for freedom. The freedom to realize the fruits of their hard work. To own their own property. To start their own business. To speech.
In short, the freedom from Big Government, the historical enemy of liberty.
But here is where it gets really weird. Deep down, Friedman knows this. Responding to a question from moderator Devin Skillian, Friedman said we are beating China. Say what? “I would start to fear China when they are stealing our sauce,” said the columnist who has spent the last 30 minutes explaining how China had stolen our sauce. ” Without a Bill of Rights, he said, China can never be a rich nation. “When you steal those, I’ll worry.”
Huh? You can envy Chinese totalitarianism. Or you can envy the American Bill of Rights. But you can’t do both.
It is this utter confusion that betrays Friedman as today’s most overrated thinker. A brilliant reporter when on the ground (his must-read Middle East reports, for example) columnist Friedman is incoherent when organizing his facts into a cohesive philosophy.
The Times man’s appearance at Mackinac was breathlessly anticipated by Detroit’s establishment. But his failure to grasp what makes America the greatest nation in the history of humankind simply takes your breath away.
Payne: Stabenow defends her title
Posted by hpayne on May 30, 2012
Mackinac Island – Incumbent Michigan Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow will get a pass on her waste of federal money on green energy boondoggles and Pete Hoekstra will get grilled on whether he’s a birther.
Welcome to the Michigan Senate race 2012.
Stabenow and her potential challengers, Hoekstra and Clark Durant, appeared on the same stage for the first time on Mackinac Island Wednesday in a preview of one of the country’s heavyweight Senate matchups this fall. But in a clunky format, the three candidates appeared individually, never faced one another, and were at the mercy of inept moderator Rick Plute of Michigan Public Radio.
The U.S. may be mired in its worst recovery since the Great Depression, record deficits, and 8 percent unemployment, but moderator Plute was intent on painting Hoekstra as a birther and Durant as a tea party fossil advocating a part-time federal legislature.
Stabenow, meanwhile, showed why she will be a formidable opponent.
With MSM-MPR running protection on her record, she smiled sweet platitudes while taking credit for saving the Detroit auto industry. If Al Gore created the Internet, then Debbie Stabenow created the GM resurgence.
“I authored” seemed to begin every Stabenow sentence as she took credit for the Big Two bailouts, (sorry, “bridge loans” is the market-tested term), manufacturing retooling loans, advanced battery subsidies, Cash for Clunkers, and the sun coming up in the east.
But how to get America’s economy jump-started? Ummmm . . . . “The greatest opportunity for us is clean energy technology. It’s all about innovation,” she claimed, despite the fact that Obama/Stabenow investments in Solyndra, Evergreen, A123 Systems, and other “innovative” companies have been financial black holes.
Faced with this waste of taxpayer dollars, MPR’s Pluta asked Stabenow . . . whether she was in favor of Senate filibuster reform. Really.
The grilling would come from Durant and Hoekstra who both opened fire on Stabenow over the national debt.
“We are crushing our kids,” protested Durant, a successful Detroit charter school entrepreneur who champions a record as Mr. Fixit. “There’s not a business here that would keep this team in place with that kind of performance. Thank you, Debbie and Pete, for your service, but we need different answers.”
But the only answer Pluta was interested in was whether Durant wanted a volunteer Congress ” badgering the candidate about why he allegedly had a problem with paying public officials.
Payne: The McCotter Politics Conference
Posted by hpayne on May 30, 2012
The Mackinac Policy Conference? Call it the McCotter Politics Conference.
GOP Rep. Thad McCotter’s ballot blunder dominates discussion among this year’s Republican-friendly conference of business and political movers and shakers. There is general confusion on how McCotter’s campaign could have screwed up the most basic task in politics – getting 2,000 signatures to qualify for the primary ballot – but consensus that McCotter is a moron.
“(McCotter’s district) was one of the top 10 safest in the country,” said Oakland County Executive Brooks Patterson disgustedly on the Frank Beckmann Show this morning. Patterson thinks the ballot SNAFU must have been sabotage.
He is not alone. Many political pros can think of no other explanation. It is that inexplicable. One pro even suggested to me that McCotter sabotaged the ballot himself in order to get out of running for Congress (is that any stranger an explanation than running for president to get out of Congress?).
But sabotage would suggest a mole. Unlikely. More likely, say most, is that McCotter’s staff simply forgot the ballot deadline and rushed to meet it with a cut and paste mess. That’s not only dumb – it’s fraud. And heads are likely to roll before this is over.
Meanwhile. . . who will be the GOP nominee for the 11th district?
Stu Sandler, an experienced Michigan political pro, says McCotter is McToast. “A write-in campaign is an overly complicated task,” he says. A task too large for a candidate who has struggled to raise money in the past. Rusty Hills, a Michigan Republican vet, points to Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s write-in win in 2010 as evidence it can be done.
But the consensus is McCotter won’t be the man. Which means Kerry Bentivolio – a candidate most Republicans agree is a Ron Paul wing nut yet is the only name on the ballot – will be the GOP candidate Which Democrats are salivating over.
Thanks a lot, Thad, sigh Mackinac Republicans.
Payne: McCotter McToast?
Posted by hpayne on May 29, 2012
Thad McCotter is toast.
That’s the word from one longtime Republican Party insider who says on condition of anonymity that McCotter’s “bizarre” inability to do his most basic electoral duty – get his name on the GOP primary ballot – calls into question whether he should be in charge of anything, much less a Congressional district. Combined with McCotter’s loose-cannon style (the notoriously aloof Livonia native has never been considered a team player by his party brothers) and the very real possibility that his campaign may be charged with fraud, Republicans are unlikely to return the five-term congressman to office this fall.
Michigan pundits are also ripping McCotter’s McFumble.
“It’s hard to imagine blundering on this cosmic a scale,” says Michigan political watcher Bill Ballenger who says the wheels have been coming off McCotter ever since he took up his guitar and thought he could outplay Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination last year. “Something’s wrong.”
“After all if you can’t count to 1,000, why in the heck should anybody send you back to Congress where they count higher than that everyday,” writes Tim Skubick at MLive.com. “Just what is the number of the national debt?”
McCotter may yet pull out a write-in win, but party insiders aren’t counting on it. They say the party is pursuing two other options: Get behind the only GOPer on the ballot, the relatively unknown Kerry Bentivolio – or get behind a better known candidate of the party’s choosing who would run as a write-in or as an Independent. Michigan law allows an Independent candidate with 3,000 signatures to file by July 19 – and names are already making the rounds, from Rocky Raszkowski to Mike Kowall.
Bentivolio is obviously in the catbird’s seat as the only GOPer on the ballot. The tea party favorite deserves the party’s consideration – especially as a four-time McCotter voter who had the foresight that something wasn’t right with his rep – and is not untested given his second place finish to Kowall for state Senate in 2010. He isalso running against two Democratic unknowns (one a LaRouchie) in a 55 percent-Republican district.
But nervous GOP big wigs will be weighing their options this weekend on Mackinac Island. Having failed Politics 101, McCotter is not popular in the party. “The real issue,” says Ballenger, “is whether the party drops everything to get him elected a write-in. I’m not hearing any great urge to pull his fat out of the fire.”
On the Frank Beckmann Show Tuesday, McCotter said you have to be and “idiot” to think that his quixotic presidential run was a distraction. After his disastrous ballot failure, “he needs to be careful about who he’s calling an idiot,” says my GOP insider.
Payne: Truth stranger than satire
Posted by hpayne on May 23, 2012
In the satire game these days, it’s hard to stay one step ahead of reality.
As the Detroit News cartoonist, I’ve regularly lampooned Washington’s “greening” of the automobile with an eco-NASCAR send-up. This one is from 2011. This one from 2008. This one from 2004. And so on.
Now comes the real news headline, courtesy of the Washington Examiner, that NASCAR is partnering with the EPA to green the sport:
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, NASCAR will encourage fans to buy “sustainable concessions” at races, expand the use of “safer chemical products,” conserve water, reduce waste, promote recycling, push products approved by the EPA that have a small enviro footprint and encourage suppliers to get an “E3 tuneup” aimed at promoting sustainable manufacturing.
This after NASCAR had already buckled to the EPA (and Big Ethanol) on using E15 fuel (apparently, reducing world corn supplies to the needy by diverting corn to politically-connected Big Ethanol is what passes as good corporate citizenship these days). Once the rebel of sports — a distinction that attracted a Live Free or Die, anti-government demographic and the iconic NASCAR Dad — NASCAR’s heavy corporate sponsorship is turning it PC.
“This collaboration is a statement of NASCAR’s commitment to green innovation and our role as a leader in sustainability,” said Mike Lynch, NASCAR managing director of green innovation. NASCAR director of green innovation? We can’t make this stuff up.
Will the satirical poster that accompanies this post be reality come 2015?
Payne: Turning their backs on progress
Posted by hpayne on May 21, 2012
Henry Payne/ The Michigan View.com
St. Louis – Last week at Washington University’s (and my son’s) graduation ceremony, one of the Midwest’s most prestigious universities honored one of its city’s most prominent citizens – a man whose company has developed technologies that have transformed agriculture and fed millions while making cropland more environmentally sustainable.
But when Chancellor Mark Wrighton called the name of former Monsanto CEO Richard Mahoney to receive his honorary degree, some 100 green student activists and alumni stood up and turned their backs in protest.
That Mahoney, who spearheaded the development of game-changing, genetically-modified crops, is a controversial figure says a lot about the American Left today.
Our colleges school students about the importance of getting involved – of solving the problems of hunger and poverty in the world. That is what Mahoney and his fleet of engineers have dedicated their lives to. Since 1960, the St. Louis company has led a productivity revolution that has more than doubled crop yields without increasing the area of land used. This revolution defied the Apocalyptic claims of the Left (before global warming, greens were obsessed with famine) that the world would run out of food by the end of the 20th century.
” If farmers were still producing food at 1960 levels of productivity, agriculture would have had to expand from 38 percent of the earth’s land to 82 percent to feed the world’s current population,” reports Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine. “This enormous increase in yields is the result of applying more artificial fertilizers, breeding higher yielding crops, a wider use of pesticides and herbicides, and expanding irrigation. More recently, advances in modern biotechnology have also contributed to boosting yields.”
Mahoney is one of the giants of this technological feat. From corn to wheat, his company developed crops that proved resistant to disease and drought – increasing crop yields at the same time they needed fewer pesticides in order the thrive.
These advances steadily increased crop yields in the U.S. (even as production has leveled off in hysterically anti-biotech Europe) – but created a boon in developing countries where help was needed most. For example, “biotech insect resistant cotton varieties have boosted the yields for India’s cotton farmers by 45 to 63 percent,” reports Bailey. “Similarly, biotech insect resistant corn varieties increased yields (or prevented losses) by 24 percent in the Philippines.”
For this, Mahoney gets booed? His industry’s breakthroughs are as misreported as they are significant.
Type a Google search on “Monsanto genetically-modified foods” and you are met by a wall of hysteria and misinformation from mainstream media outlets to Greenpeace to academics. Gorged on this ignorance, Washington University students protested Mahoney’s honorary degree. “Wash. U. should not award such a prestigious honor to someone responsible for a company that seeks to profit off the destruction of our agricultural system,” wrote one protestor. Destruction?
In addition to feeding the world, Monsanto has made this student’s university a powerhouse in American education. Aided by tens of millions in Monsanto contributions, Wash. U. churns out engineers and biology majors who will continue Mahoney’s groundbreaking work. Now retired, Mahoney gives his time to mentor students in the Olin School of Business. My son and his business colleagues were upset that activists stole next-day news headlines for their graduation stunt.
These activists are the children of the anti-business, anti-science Obama administration that is poisoning today’s airwaves with messages of class warfare and green extremism. The Mahoneys of the world can only be successful as long as governments make sensible regulations.
In 2006, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm bravely signed into law a statute forbidding attempts by her Green allies to prevent Michigan farmers from using genetically-modified seeds – potentially devastating the state’s #2 industry where 32 percent of corn and 90 percent of soy are genetically engineered. Those activists no doubt cheered at the negative publicity from Washington University last week.
Fortunately, however, its newest degree recipient never turned his back on the world’s hungry.