Clipping blog

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• The Delivery Presents – The Pot Calls the Kettle Gaffetastic
• Clearing the Browser Tabs – Don’t Ask Don’t Leak Wednesday Edition
• A Balanced Budget Amendment Doesn’t Excite Me

The Delivery Presents – The Pot Calls the Kettle Gaffetastic Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:26 AM PDT When I started The Delivery almost two years ago, I confess I gave some thought to what I might do for Episode 100. I didn’t have big plans, but I wanted to make a splash, like Wendy and Mike did when they got Mark Steyn to take over the 50th episode of Brass Balls Radio. But as you know if you listen to the show at all, I’m not a “splash” kind of guy. I make the kind of show that suits me best: fun, comfortable, a little bit goofy, and smart enough (hopefully) that I can learn something new every week. Steve and Ed fit that bill almost perfectly (I think they’d quibble over the “bit goofy” part, but that’s my slack to bear). The video by I Own the World to which Ed referred in the first half is here. It’d be a great template for Michele Bachmann to use for a video of her own. If I can get the clear time to write this afternoon, I’ll flesh out the idea I tossed out during the show at The Sundries Shack. If you have not seen Toy Story 3 (what is wrong with you?), this is the scene we talked about in the second half. From that same discussion, “Tow Mater. Average intelligence”. You know, I may use that as an unofficial The Delivery motto! Thanks again to all of you who have made the first hundred shows such a joy to make. Your support, feedback, and encouragement has meant more to me than I can fully convey. Here’s to a few hundred more! The Delivery - Episode 100 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Clearing the Browser Tabs – Don’t Ask Don’t Leak Wednesday Edition Posted: 29 Jun 2011 03:10 AM PDT Remember the misleading story the Washington Post published just before last November’s election about soldiers’ attitudes toward the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy? That story ended up getting covered better than did the study itself (which conclusions were not quite what the WaPo said they were) and contributed greatly to Congress’ lifting the policy. Well, according to the Inspector General for the Department of Defense, the President’s Deputy Chief of Staff leaked the slanted version of the study’s results to the WaPo “to support a pro-repeal agenda”. As it turne out, the study itself was a put-up job that the IG’s report said was “just for show”. Even so, it showed that more soldiers opposed the repeal of DADT than supported it. We were conned by a rather amateurish show of political theater put on by a dishonest White House and their lapdogs in the meda. Regardless of your feelings toward DADT, I would think you’d be a trifle upset that your President and the WaPo couldn’t make their case without deceit. The podcast post will be out a little bit later this morning. I’m proud of Episode 100. Steve Green and Ed Driscoll, my guests for the hour, were their usual gracious and ridiculously intelligent selves. We talked gaffes and Pixar and had a blast. And now, links! The more we learn about Operation Fast and Furious, the more I believe we’re headed toward jail time for members of this administration. The most recent news about the ongoing scandal is that the ATF fired one of the chief whistle blowers who, before he went public about ATF misdeeds, had gotten evaluations well above average. Meanwhile, the MSM continues to run interference for the administration (via Instapundit). Really, the question “Why would Newsweek print a highly deceptive article about the Constitution” is rhetorical, but Patterico asks it anyway and delivers the Mother of All Fiskings. Yes, Pete, the media really is going to Weinerize itself again. This time, they’re going to run with a thinly-sourced story published by a Soros-backed media outlet that makes a mild-mannered Wisconsin judge seem like a violent woman-hating maniac. The progressives lost every fight they started in that state over the last few months and smear campaigns are all they have left. So public workers in Greece, angry that their gravy train may stop dispensing free goodies, are going to stop working for two weeks in protest? Yeah, that makes sense. If you want an example of how reckless federal regulatory agencies destroy small businesses with well-meaning plans, this story of baby cribs should do nicely. Seriously, people. Tar and feathers. If you’re a fan of the Washington Capitals, you probably already know this, but the team signed winger (and possibly center) Brooks Laich to a 6-year deal. That’s a very good thing. Laich is incredibly talented and a team leader. He’s the kind of player a championship team has to have.

A Balanced Budget Amendment Doesn’t Excite Me Posted: 28 Jun 2011 12:28 PM PDT As the debt ceiling talks enter the phase where at least one side has gone to full-on chest thumping, it seems like whatever the final agreement, it will involve a Balanced Budget Amendment vote. Emily Miller makes the case that we need a BBA in order to wrestle the Federal budget into submission and I think it’s fair to say she speaks for most conservatives. I’m not sold on the idea. Actually, I’m worse than “not sold”. I actually think a BBA hurts our fiscal position when we use it as a bargaining tool. Here’s the biggest reason why. When Republicans say they’re getting a BBA, they’re not really getting a fully-fledged amendment supported by the Democratic caucus in Congress. They’re simply getting an agreement to a vote on the amendment relatively free of political sabotage by the Democrats. Even if they got the amendment out of Congress with overwhelming Democratic support, they’d still need Democrats to prevail on their ideological brethren in state governments so that the amendment would get the majority of the vote in 38 out of 50 states. Can you imagine that? I certainly can’t. In fact, it’s far more likely that any Balanced Budget Amendment that could pass Congress would do so with the barest minimum of Democratic support and a lot of opposition. In short, Republicans would give up something for a chance to do something else. That’s not a good deal. But, even if the BBA passed, I’m not all that sure it would be the wonder drug to cure our fiscal ills. Any amendment capable of running the gauntlet of votes necessary for ratification will have to be both strong and simple. Read the other amendments. None of them are particularly complex and few of them run more than a couple of hundred words long. Those that are deal with complicated subjects like the Electoral College or the line of Presidential succession. A Balanced Budget Amendment needs to be simple but therein lies the trouble. Let’s say we write an amendment that says, essentially, that any budget passed by Congress must be balanced. Easy enough, right? Except there are a couple of ways you can balance a budget, at least on paper. You can either make sure your spending matches your projected revenues or you can crank up revenues to match the amount of spending you want to do. Which one do you think the Democrats, and more than a few Republics, will choose first? Which one do you think is more rife for political shenanigans? Okay, so we’d need to write the amendment so that the method by which a budget is balanced leans toward matching expected revenues. But how, exactly, do you do that simply? Here is the text of House Joint Resolution 2, which you could consider a draft attempt at a BBA. It looks simple but when you read it a bit more closely, the loopholes become fairly obvious. Let me point one out in the opening section: Section 1. Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless three-fifths of the whole number of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a rollcall vote. In other words, if you can cobble together a supermajority, you can blow through this amendment like a cannonball through wet toilet paper. The Democrats managed that for a couple years not all that long ago all by themselves and even got a few controversial votes through with some Republican assistance. It wouldn’t be exceedingly difficult to step around this amendment, especially if you pepper in phrases like “the children”, “the elderly”, “the poor”, and “the districts back home”. If you don’t think this can happen, you’ve not been paying attention to Congress the past few years. Not only have they blown through any semblance of  ”balance”, they’ve stacked trillions of new debt on our children’s shoulders with barely a second thought. But, Congress does need flexibility to fund the government in a way the public demands, but that flexibility requires an “out” clause so large in any BBA that the amendment itself can be rendered impotent. Not only does that run counter to the workings of nearly every other Amendment in the Constitution (which put strict limits on what Congress may do) but it runs counter to the purpose of having a restrictive law in the first place. In the end, the only answer to our fiscal problems is self-control. No Balanced Budget Amendment can cure our addiction to big government. We’re going to have to do that ourselves. But if we can apply the same national will that sent a man to the moon to reining in governmental excess, we’ll achieve the same exhilarating success, and it’ll last.

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