David Boaz

But I couldn’t help thinking of him when I read this Washington Post headline:

Ex-Sailor Guilty of Pretending to Be an Admiral
Delaware Man Gave Speech to Vietnamese American Group in Va.

And I was transported back to 1987, when Biden withdrew from the presidential race after appropriating the details of British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock’s life in his speeches, falsely claiming to have three college degrees, and boasting of a much higher rank in his law school class than he actually achieved.

I remembered a purported “Joe Biden resume” that circulated widely back in 1987. Being from prehistoric days, alas, it’s not on the World Wide Web, so I have to recall it from memory. But as I recall, in standard resume fashion it recounted Biden’s achievements in life: NCAA basketball championship, Heisman Trophy, top of his law school class, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Nobel Prize in physics, Pulitzer Price for literature, Oscar, chief justice of the United States, and so on.

Of course, if he actually had all those accomplishments, Sarah Palin would dismiss him as an elitist.

In his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama stirringly declared that all people are connected: “It’s that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — that makes this country work.” And in his appearance at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, he said, “America’s greatest moral failing in my lifetime has been that we still don’t abide by that basic precept of Matthew — whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me.”

And some conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh suggested that it was hypocritical of Obama to declare his belief that each of us is “my brother’s keeper” while his own half-brother lives at subsistence level in Kenya. Shouldn’t being your brother’s keeper start with, you know, your brother?

But maybe that’s unfair. This particular half-brother, George Hussein Onyango Obama, is 20 years younger than Barack Obama, and they’ve met only twice. Why should he be responsible for his half-brother’s welfare?

But then I noticed something else. Barack and Michelle Obama gave almost nothing to charity until their income skyrocketed after his election to the Senate in 2004. Between 2000 and 2004, for instance, they made about $1,218,000 and gave $10,770 to charity, a bit less than 0.9 percent. In 2005 and 2006, Obama earned much more from his books, and his wife’s salary at the University of Chicago doubled. In those two years they made more than $2.6 million and gave just over 5 percent to charity.

And then Joe Biden released his tax returns. And as the TaxProfBlog says, “the returns show that the Bidens have been amazingly tight-fisted when it comes to their charitable giving.  Despite income ranging from $210,432 – $321,379 over the ten-year period, the Bidens have given only $120 – $995 per year to charity, which amounts to 0.06% – 0.31% of their income.” The average American in that income category gives far more.

Read more…

In the new movie “The Duchess,” the young Georgiana Spencer is told that the much older and more prominent Duke of Devonshire wishes to marry her.

“He loves me?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But I’ve only met him twice.”

It seemed so current.

The U.S. Postal Service has far less mail to carry, but they’re still not quite ready to cut their massive workforce.

Never before has the U.S. Postal Service laid off workers. Now, it’s a real possibility.

“For the first time in history, that is being considered,” said Gerald McKiernan, a USPS spokesman.

Already, the Postal Service is not hiring because it simply doesn’t move as much mail as it once did. E-mail has taken an increasing amount of its business. McKiernan says mail volume dropped 11 percent in fiscal 2008, which ended Tuesday. That resulted in the service spending $2.3 billion more than it took in.

The workload is down 11 percent, but they’re not yet ready to lay anybody off? That’s government at work. Or non-work.

NPR’s “Studio 360” ran a segment Saturday on conservative folk music of the ’60s. Yes, it existed, though it seems to have been largely parodies of lefty folk songs. One of the clips included was a 1964 tune from the Goldwaters: “Oh, what have you done, left wing, left wing? Oh, what have you done for our country? Well, we’ve raised the national debt, Yeah, it’s going higher yet!”

So it must be a great disappointment to Goldwater Republicans to discover this story that got almost no notice this week:

With no fanfare and little notice, the national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion during George W. Bush’s presidency.

It’s the biggest increase under any president in U.S history.

On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That’s a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush’s watch.

The bailout plan now pending in Congress could add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt – though President Bush said this morning he expects that over time, “much if not all” of the bailout money “will be paid back.”

But the government is taking no chances. Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It’ll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration.

Which might be why the former lead singer of the Goldwaters says he would describe himself “as a Libertarian today.”

The Washington Post discusses the great new options for street food in downtown Washington–not just hot dogs but “po’ boys, pulled pork, gumbo, shawarma” and more. Sure sounds like the much-criticized D.C. government is really helping this time: The jump headline says, “With City’s Help, Vendors Break the Mold.” Author Tim Carman writes, “Both [new food] vendors still needed public assistance.” And “the city [has] been working with vendors to give hungry Washingtonians a taste of what they want.” All praise the D.C. government, font of good food.

But of course the city hasn’t produced the food. It hasn’t subsidized the vendors. It hasn’t put vendors together with investors. All it has done is to lift, in one part of the city, “regulations that have choked the life out of D.C.’s street food for decades.” There are licensing rules (and a moratorium on issuing any new licenses), prohibitions on hiring employees, cart size rules, regulations on where you can park a cart at night, and so on. So the “public assistance” the vendors received was to be exempted from some of the regulations, inside a 32-block demonstration zone.

It reminds me of the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau: “This government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way.”

Another great column from George Will today, on the House’s “vote against rashness.” With a conservative’s sense of history, he traces some of the policy choices that brought us to today’s crisis:

Suppose that in 1979 the government had not engineered the first bailout of Chrysler (it, Ford and GM are about to get $25 billion in subsidized loans). Might there have been a more sober approach to risk throughout corporate America?

Suppose there had never been implicit government backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Better yet, suppose those two had never existed — there was homeownership before them, just not at a level that the government thought proper. Absent Fannie and Freddie — absent government manipulation of the housing market — would there have developed the excessive diversion of capital into the housing stock?

But really, if you haven’t been reading George Will this year–on the problems with both Obama and McCain, on the automobile bailout, on local government fiscal crises–go here. And to read what he says about his new book, go here (pdf)

The New York Times takes note of the brewing tax revolt in Massachusetts, where a grassroots group has put an initiative on the ballot to repeal the state income tax. The Times headline (on paper) reads, “On Massachusetts Ballot, a Tax Repeal That Worries Leaders.” Why does a newspaper that purports to be a check on government so often present questions from the government’s point of view? Did they once publish headlines like “On Washington Mall, a Peace March That Worries Leaders” or “In Massachusetts, a Civil Rights Crusade That Worries Leaders”? I doubt it.

And I should in fact congratulate reporter Pam Belluck for writing

It would save the average taxpayer about $3,600 a year. Annual revenue from the tax is about $12.5 billion, roughly 45 percent of the state’s budget of about $28 billion.

Too often, as we’ve noted before here on Cato@Liberty, the mainstream media use the formulation “the proposed cut would cost the government millions of dollars.” At least this time Belluck started with the taxpayer.

In 2002 a ballot measure to repeal the income tax got very little attention and still won 45 percent of the vote. This year, with a perception of hard economic times, it might do better. But this time the Establishment is on the alert. The advocates of repeal have raised some $270,000, and after their signature-gathering have only $25,000 left to spend. The special interest groups that thrive on taxpayer money have raised $1.3 million to oppose the initiative.

Let’s hear it for Carla Howell and the Committee for Small Government, who are at least forcing the government–and its beneficiaries–to explain why they need more than the $16 billion of citizens’ money that they would still have after repeal of the income tax. And let’s hear it for pizza shop owner Lakis Theoharis, who tells the Times, “I’m for the repeal of the tax. To me, the smaller the government, the better for the citizens.”

Some commentators are suggesting that the McCain campaign has panicked about Sarah Palin’s appeal, trying to cram her head with policy-wonkery and then hiding her in a closet when that didn’t work. Let Palin be Palin, they say — let her show her authentic self, the gun-totin’, family-raisin’, reformist governor that Alaskans love.

Good idea. Let’s start with the bailout. Surely a rugged individualist reformer from way outside the Beltway is champing at the bit to denounce this $700 billion bailout for Wall Street insiders cooked up by Washington insiders behind closed doors, without public hearings, with the unanimous support of the mainstream media. Let ‘er rip, Governor Palin. Tell the Wall Street bankers that when a small business makes bad decisions in Wasilla, it goes out of business, and the same rules should apply to large businesses in Manhattan. That’s the Sarah Palin conservatives say America would love.

A page one Washington Post headline reports, “Credit Crisis Has Given Obama a Distinct Edge.” Which must be really frustrating for McCain, because McCain did try to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2006. Obama, meanwhile, as I reported at the American Spectator, received more donations from Fannie Mae in four years than any other senator (except Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd) received in twenty years. That’s quite an accomplishment–more money from a primary creator of the financial meltdown in just four years than senior members of Congress like Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Richard Shelby, Spencer, Bachus, John Kerry, and Roy Blunt got in entire 20 years that the Center for Responsive Politics tallied. And of course, Obama chose former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson, who was found to have jiggered the books, to head his search for a vice president.

Shouldn’t somebody in the media ask Obama why he was Fannie Mae’s favorite senator?