stylegal's Blog

November 19, 2008

Expect an early Obama bailout of the Big Three

By C. Edmund Wright

The chances of any meaningful bailout of the Big Three U.S. auto makers are shrinking rapidly in this lame duck session of Congress. With George Bush in the White House and somewhat slimmer Democrat majorities on the Hill, the very fatty pound of flesh the unions want is not possible now. This week's Congressional shenanigans are just chumming the waters and to allow the networks to have all Thanksgiving and Christmas to run "woe is me" stories about the wonderful hard working union families facing economic extinction after the holidays.

That will set the stage for what is sure to be the first big battle of Obamunism. And it is a hugely important battle for the future of business in this country. Forget this little distraction about Hillary and the Secretary of State job. If the Obamunists (my name for the hard core leftists who support Obama and on certain days, Obama himself) can get everything they want regarding the auto industry and widespread forced unionization via the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act that would abolish the secret ballot in unionization elections, this country will be plunged into Euro-socialism faster than Hillary and Bill could have dreamed with their ill-fated "Hillary Care" in 1993.
It's the leftist tri-fecta. Nationalization of industry, explosive union membership growth and job-killing green initiatives in one fell swoop.
And this is what the Obamunists really want. Why else would Obama install Governor Jennifer Granholm and former congressman David Bonior, both of Michigan, on his economic team? These are two key architects of the worst economy in the nation, and they are now in positions of power and influence for Obamanomics. This is not what Mark Cuban had in mind when he issued his suggestions this week via the Huffington Post.
Michigan has been in recession for a number of years, and was running a 9% unemployment rate while the rest of the nation was around 5% or less. This is a state that has elected pro-green and pro-labor liberal upon liberal for years, and they can't seem to figure out "why George Bush has ruined their economy." It never dawns on them that gasoline costs run amok due to environmental laws, not to mention unsustainable union compensation, might have anything to do with it.


So while Obama went on 60 Minutes and spoke in moderate terms about the auto industry and mentioned the need for all the stake holders to answer the question "what does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like," his team was not at all interested in going to South Carolina or Tennessee to find out.
Bonior tipped their hand this week. In a Monday interview on CNBC, he launched into the need for an auto industry bail out fueled by more of what has almost killed the industry in the first place. He rants about "reducing executive pay" and the need for re-tooling "for the new energy economy" and the need to save "millions of union jobs." When pushed by the interviewers on the need for addressing the union contracts, he avoids the question but launches into the need for EFCA.
So vital is this in Bonior's mind, that he came armed with a brochure on the legislation and waved it in front of the camera as CNBC tried to end the interview. Make no mistake, this is about the unions, the whole unions and nothing but the unions.  It has nothing to do with what a sustainable U.S. auto industry looks like.
Meanwhile, Harry Reid was on the Hill crafting legislation doomed to failure. On Tuesday, details of his bill came out and there was not a single part of the legislation that addressed the unrealistic labor costs faced by the Big Three. Of course, it was laden with executive pay decrees and all kinds of green initiatives, but nothing to actually help the auto makers actually bring in more beans than they are spending.
It was nothing but a show to set up a battle royal in January when the Dems will have what might be a stranglehold on government. (Why do you think Lieberman was let back into good graces and senate race in Minnesota is sparking fundraisers by Soros?)
Because frankly, the answer to this problem is not that hard to figure out. These companies could easily survive under a properly structured re-organization plan.  "We have a mechanism for this" said Arizona Senator Jon Kyl. "It is called Chapter 11."
The Wall Street Journal's Steve Moore, in an interview with Fox's Neil Cavuto added, "...the bankruptcy option is the best one for these companies. It would give them the ability to re-structure and to render null and void a lot of these contracts that they can't possibly pay. This is not to say that these companies would go away. "
Currently, according to Moore "there is no talk...of slashing the labor costs that make these companies hopelessly uncompetitive. They have to cut back on some of these super-sized benefits."
But there will not be talk about that from the Democrats or the UAW. Elections have consequences, and their team won this past election. The UAW had a lot to do with that win, and they expect quid pro quo.  The plan is simple. Get in power in January and put the pedal to the metal on a huge auto bail out for the Big Three with no union give backs. And throw in the EFCA for good measure. This is their vision. This is Obamunism.
"It's the model that Europe used in the 80s and 90's"  said Moore. "Anytime an industry would get in distress, they would throw money at it. They haven't created a single new job in two decades, whereas the dynamic U.S. economy with entrepreneurship but also creative destruction, has created 40 million jobs in the last 25 years."
The irony is, the best chance to save the dynamic entrepreneurial economy may be for the Obama Administration to over-reach on this issue. As strong as the union influence is among Democrats, many Americans who have seen their 401 K's and jobs go away might well balk at a "UAW" bail-out. Folks will lose patience with semi-skilled assembly line workers retiring in their 50's and living like royalty. For all of the union bluster, many people voted for Obama for his tax cuts, not his Obamunism.
In 1993, the Clintons over-reached on Hillary Care and it was one of the building blocks for the GOP take over of Congress in 1994. Perhaps the best we can hope for now is that the Big Three Auto Bail Out will do for Obama what Hillary Care did for Clinton.

Zawahiri gives Obama the Belafonte treatment

posted at 10:40 am on November 19, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

If you can imagine Ayman al-Zawahiri singing The Banana Boat Song, perhaps you’ll get an idea of the irony — and the insult — of his message today to Barack Obama.  Zawahiri called Obama a “house slave”, which other translators changed to “house Negro”, in condemning Obama’s election.  If that sounds familiar, it should:

Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.

The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is “the direct opposite of honorable black Americans” like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.

In al-Qaida’s first response to Obama’s victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — “house negroes.”

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term “abeed al-beit,” which literally translates as “house slaves.” But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as “house negroes.”

Zawahiri channeled entertainer Harry Belafonte, who leveled the same slur against both Powell and Rice.  After Powell publicly rebuked Belafonte for the insult, Belafonte hardly appeared contrite over it.  In fact, he called Powell a “sell out”, using the same logic as Zawahiri uses here.

So what prompted this outburst?  Well, the sun rose in the east, and the Caliphate remains a fevered fantasy, and that’s probably enough.  Zawahiri objected to Obama’s plan to escalate the effort against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Apparently, Zawahiri thinks Malcolm X wouldn’t do that, or profess alliance to Israel, which are both true, and both as pointless as Zawahiri himself, since Obama has never professed to be a disciple of Malcolm X anyway.

At the least, it shows that racism and profiling exist in far greater quantities outside the US than within it.  Except for the occasional exceptions to the rule, of course, like Harry Belafonte.

November 19, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

‘No’ to Obama's Experimental Government
Give it a rest.

By Jonah Goldberg

November 17, 2008

Obama Declares War on Conservative Talk Radio

By Jim Boulet, Jr.

Barack Obama sought to silence his critics during his 2008 campaign.  Now, with the ink barely dry on this November's ballots, Obama has begun a war against conservative talk radio.

Obama is on record as saying he does not plan an exhumation of the now-dead "Fairness Doctrine". Instead, Obama's attack on free speech will be far less understood by the general public and accordingly, far more dangerous.

The late community organizer Saul Alinsky taught his followers to strike hard from an unexpected direction, an approach known as Alinsky jujitsu.

Obama himself not only worked as an organizer for an Alinsky offshoot organization, Chicago's Developing Communities Project, but would go on to teach classes in Alinsky's beliefs and methods.

"Alinsky jujitsu" as applied to conservative talk radio means using vague rules already on the books to threaten any station which dares to air conservative programs with the loss of its valuable broadcast license.

Team Obama and the "localism" weapon

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule in question is called "localism."  Radio and television stations are required to serve the interests of their local community as a condition of keeping their broadcast licenses. 

Obama needs only three votes from the five-member FCC to define localism in such a way that no radio station would dare air any syndicated conservative programming.

Localism is one of the rare issues on which Obama himself has been outspoken. 

On September 20, 2007, Obama submitted a pro-localism written statement to an FCC hearing held at the Chicago headquarters of Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.'s Operation Push.

Furthermore, the Obama transition team knows all about the potential of localism as a means of silencing conservative dissent.  The head of the Obama transition team is John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress.

In 2007, the Center for American Progress issued a report, The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.  This report complained that there was too much conservative talk on the radio because of "the absence of localism in American radio markets" and urged the FCC to "[e]nsure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
Podesta's choice as head of the Federal Communications Commission's transition team is Henry Rivera.

Since 1994, Rivera has been chairman of the Minority Media Telecommunications Council.  This organization has specific ideas about localism:

In other words, it would not do for broadcasters to meet with the business leaders whose companies advertise on their station.  Broadcasters must reach beyond the business sector and look for leaders in the civic, religious, and non-profit sectors that regularly serve the needs of the community, particularly the needs of minority groups that are typically poorly served by the broadcasting industry as a whole.

Rivera's law firm is also the former home of Kevin Martin, the current FCC chairman.  Martin is himself an advocate of more stringent localism requirements. 

It was on Martin's watch that on January 24, 2008, the FCC released its proposed localism regulations.  According to TVNewsday: "At the NAB radio show two weeks ago, Martin said that he wanted to take action on localism this year and invited broadcasters to negotiate requirements with him."

FCC complaints as politics by other means

Remember that an FCC license is required for any radio or television station to legally operate in the United States.  A single complaint from anyone can significantly hinder a station's license renewal process or even cost the station its FCC license entirely.

There have been some attempts to utilize the FCC complaint process for partisan political ends, most memorably in 2004, when Sinclair Broadcasting agreed to air a documentary questioning Senator John Kerry's war record:

Poised to pre-empt programming on its 62 television stations to run a negative documentary about Sen. John Kerry, Sinclair Broadcast Group has come under fire from critics calling it partisan and questioning whether it is failing federal broadcast requirements to reflect local interests.

Members of Congress and independent media groups have questioned the company's willingness to respect "localism," a section of federal law that requires media companies to cover local issues and provide an outlet for local voices.

One group, The Leftcoaster, went further:

But what isn't done a lot which requires the broadcaster to rack up expensive legal fees, is to challenge every one of their affiliates' FCC license renewals as they come up this year and next.  ... [T]here still is time to organize and file Petitions or objections by November 1, 2004 for Sinclair stations in North Carolina and South Carolina, and for Florida by January 1, 2005.

More recently, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium issued a "fill in the blanks" official FCC complaint form which begins "Anything that you feel is offensive is worth reporting."

Community advisory boards as permanent complaint departments

These random efforts could be far more effective at silencing conservatives if they could only be systematized and institutionalized.  That is exactly what the FCC proposed on January 24th.   Every radio and television station would be required to create:

[P]ermanent advisory boards comprised of local officials and other community leaders, to periodically advise them of local needs and issues, and seek comment on the matter. ... 
To ensure that these discussions include representatives of all community elements, these boards would be made up of leaders of various segments of the community, including underserved groups.

The "community advisory board as permanent complaint department" model may well be based upon the 1995 revisions of the Community Reinvestment Act, as described by Howard Husock in City Journal:

[T]the new CRA regulations also instructed bank examiners to take into account how well banks responded to complaints. ... [F]or advocacy groups that were in the complaint business, the Clinton administration regulations offered a formal invitation.  ...

By intervening-even just threatening to intervene-in the CRA review process, left-wing nonprofit groups have been able to gain control over eye-popping pools of bank capital, which they in turn parcel out to individual low-income mortgage seekers. A radical group called ACORN Housing has a $760 million commitment from the Bank of New York...[emphasis in original].
Understand that even allowing conservatives to be radio talk show guests may provoke a FCC licensing complaint.  Just ask "right wing hatchet man" Stanley Kurtz.

For Obama, when it comes to radio talk, silence is golden, at least when it comes to conservatives.

Can localism be stopped?

FCC observers agree that the outpouring of complaints from groups like the National Religious Broadcasters during the original comment period helped delay matters. 

However, Kevin Martin's determination to enact a localism regulation has led him to ask the broadcast industry to accept a voluntary standard that the FCC would then enact.  If industry failed to agree now, Martin warned, "a future FCC may be less willing to compromise than the current one."

This scare tactic -- agree to our demands today or suffer dire consequences tomorrow -- is having an impact. 

What broadcasters need to do: speak up now

Radio and television station owners need to become engaged in the localism issue and then take the time to educate their own Congressman and Senators about the dangers of the FCC's proposals. 

get involved, it just may be possible to block implementation of any localism rules during the few months remaining of the Bush Administration.

This delay is critical, since once it is the Obama Administration leading the fight for rules which would shut down conservative talk radio, Republican Congressmen and Senators will find it easier to fight back.

The Senate needs to draw a line in the sand: free speech, not localism

While President Obama will have the authority to name Commissioners as their terms end, these nominations must be confirmed by the Senate. 

A few pointed questions on localism to FCC nominees during their confirmation hearings would be useful.  A filibuster of any and all pro-localism FCC nominees would be even better.

Any Senator leading such a filibuster would earn the gratitude of millions of fans of talk radio as well as everyone who believes in free speech.

The 11 Blunders of Hank Paulson

November 17, 2008 08:57 AM ET | James Pethokoukis

Strategist Ed Yardeni says that  "everything that [Hank] Paulson has done or endorsed has worsened the credit crisis and sent stocks reeling." Like what, for instance? Like these, and I quote:

(1) Paulson's Super-SIV proposal was a distraction that went nowhere. It was the first clue that he likes half-backed schemes that are hard to implement.

(2) The vaunted "Teaser Freezer" hasn't worked. Neither has the Hope Now Alliance. Indeed, many borrowers who've been foreclosed never even heard about these new outreach programs to keep them in their homes.

(3) Letting investment banks borrow from the Fed's discount window just after Bear Stearns failed suggests that letting the firm go was done as a risky gesture to the principle of avoiding moral hazard, which has subsequently been thrown out the window.

(4) The government's unwillingness to provide transparent rescue plans started with the mysterious $29bn Bear Stearns portfolio acquired by the Fed.

(5) After multiple assurances that Fannie and Freddie were solvent, they were seized and put into conservatorship. Stiffing owners of their preferreds opened an estimated $25bn black hole in the capital of regional banks that owned these securities. It also seized up the one market that financial firms had for raising capital.

(6) Refusing to support the suspension of mark-to-market accounting was Paulson's second biggest mistake.

(7) His biggest mistake was letting Lehman go under. Dick Fuld should have been forced out, and Lehman should have been rescued. A guy who ran GS and all the MS advisors around him should have known that letting Lehman go under would blow up money market funds and the commercial paper market. It also blew up the prime brokerage business and massacred the hedge fund industry, which sent stock prices into a free fall.

(8) When AIG was seized, the terms of the government's rescue package were punitive. They've been recently eased, but the firm can't raise funds by selling only 49% of its various non-core assets, as required by its "bailout" deal.

(9) TARP was a really bad idea that was sold to Congress and the public by inciting a panic, and sending the global economy into a tailspin. Claiming that the Treasury could purchase one-of-a-kind troubled assets in reverse auctions made no sense. The RTC solution to the S&L crisis of the early 1990s won't work to end this crisis.

(10) The Capital Purchase Program of TARP, started on October 14, is providing capital to banks that probably should be forced to fail and to those that don't even need it. Hopefully, Congress won't give the second $350bn installment of TARP to the Treasury.

(11) Paulson has been aiming to kill "bad" hedge funds. The result of his disjointed fixes has been a massacre of innocent bystanders, including long-only investors getting killed in all the stocks that hedge funds are being forced to sell.

My take: I think Paulson's credibility with the financial markets has been exhausted. Now I am not sure what the magic solution was. Maybe some  recapitalization of key players plus an Uncle Sam-led home refinancing plan. Or maybe a) suspending mark to market, b) a zero capital gains tax for the next five years, and a corporate income tax holiday. But I will give this to Paulson: He does strike me as a guy who is working himself near death to deal with an amazingly tough problem.

Video: How Obama Got Elected

posted at 7:57 am on November 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

I’m sure we’ll all be linking to this video today. John Ziegler interviews Obama voters to gauge their knowledge of various issues that came up during the election, and gets very … entertaining results.  His new website, How Obama Got Elected, marries this with a more disturbing report from Zogby that emphasizes a great deal of ignorance in the vote:

Let’s start with Zogby’s numbers.  The poll surveyed over 500 self-professed Obama voters and has an MOE of 4.4%, with 55% having a college degree and over 90% having a high-school diploma.  It asked 12 multiple-choice questions; only 2.4% got at least 11 correct. Only .5% got all them correct.

• 57.4 could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)
• 81.8 could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)
• 82.6 could NOT correctly say that Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)
• 88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)
• 56.1 % could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).And yet…..

• Only 13.7% failed to identify Palin as the person their party spent $150,000 in clothes on
• Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter
• And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

On the last point, though, Palin was the only candidate from Alaska.  Palin did state that one could see Russia from the state as an answer to an interview question about her foreign-policy credentials.  I don’t believe that the survey gave Fey as a choice, so Palin would have been the obvious answer from those provided.

However, the rest of these results show the abysmal state of media coverage of Barack Obama.  It’s not that the voters couldn’t absorb data provided to them by the Tanning Bed Media; these voters quite obviously learned plenty about Sarah Palin.  In the video, the subjects demonstrate that by assigning every stupid thing said on the campaign trail to Palin whether she said it or not.  Meanwhile, no one can figure out what Barack Obama said, how he conducted his campaign, or his political history.

As for the video, without the Zogby poll, it would be hilarious but without context.  Anyone can find fools for “man on the street” interviews; Jay Leno does it as a regular staple for the Tonight Show.  Zogby’s poll shows that Ziegler’s video is no anomaly.  Wait for the end, where the ignorant endorse their favorite media outlets, which is the real highlight of this project.

Video: How Obama Got Elected

posted at 7:57 am on November 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

I’m sure we’ll all be linking to this video today. John Ziegler interviews Obama voters to gauge their knowledge of various issues that came up during the election, and gets very … entertaining results.  His new website, How Obama Got Elected, marries this with a more disturbing report from Zogby that emphasizes a great deal of ignorance in the vote:

Let’s start with Zogby’s numbers.  The poll surveyed over 500 self-professed Obama voters and has an MOE of 4.4%, with 55% having a college degree and over 90% having a high-school diploma.  It asked 12 multiple-choice questions; only 2.4% got at least 11 correct. Only .5% got all them correct.

• 57.4 could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)
• 81.8 could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)
• 82.6 could NOT correctly say that Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)
• 88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)
• 56.1 % could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).And yet…..

• Only 13.7% failed to identify Palin as the person their party spent $150,000 in clothes on
• Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter
• And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

On the last point, though, Palin was the only candidate from Alaska.  Palin did state that one could see Russia from the state as an answer to an interview question about her foreign-policy credentials.  I don’t believe that the survey gave Fey as a choice, so Palin would have been the obvious answer from those provided.

However, the rest of these results show the abysmal state of media coverage of Barack Obama.  It’s not that the voters couldn’t absorb data provided to them by the Tanning Bed Media; these voters quite obviously learned plenty about Sarah Palin.  In the video, the subjects demonstrate that by assigning every stupid thing said on the campaign trail to Palin whether she said it or not.  Meanwhile, no one can figure out what Barack Obama said, how he conducted his campaign, or his political history.

As for the video, without the Zogby poll, it would be hilarious but without context.  Anyone can find fools for “man on the street” interviews; Jay Leno does it as a regular staple for the Tonight Show.  Zogby’s poll shows that Ziegler’s video is no anomaly.  Wait for the end, where the ignorant endorse their favorite media outlets, which is the real highlight of this project.

Minnesota Recount: Coleman victory certified today, recount tomorrow

posted at 8:35 am on November 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

A necessary step in the resolution to the Minnesota Senate race will take place this afternoon when the state Canvassing Board will certify the election results and declare Norm Coleman the winner.  The action clears the way for Minnesota to begin the automatic recount tomorrow.  The Canvassing Board will reject a demand from Al Franken’s campaign that they add in previously rejected ballots before certification, based on an opinion from the state’s AG:

DFLer Al Franken asked Monday to have rejected absentee ballots be considered in the U.S. Senate election results that are to be certified today by a state board, a move later blunted by an attorney general’s opinion that the issue should be left to the courts.

The eleventh-hour maneuvering occurred as the five-member state Canvassing Board prepared to meet at 1 p.m. today in St. Paul to review results showing Republican Sen. Norm Coleman with a lead of 215 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast.

That margin includes the canvassed results submitted by Minnesota’s 87 counties, plus an additional nine votes in Coleman’s favor that emerged from a post-election audit conducted in a sampling of about 200 precincts to check the accuracy of voting machines.

Franken’s brief wanted “improperly” rejected absentee ballots added back into the count, but that would have ground the entire process to a halt.  It would have tied up Minnesota’s Canvassing Board for weeks while the Franken campaign challenged every rejected ballot.  They have already lied about at least one of the ballots they used as an example of supposedly improper rejections, and we would have to wade through a veritable flood of fictional sob stories before we could get down to the business of recounts.

What does this mean for the recount?  It will start on the assumption that the ballots counted are the only ones eligible, and only miscounts will change the results.  That makes it more difficult for Franken to make up enough ground to catch Coleman.  Most precincts used machine counts, which are highly accurate.  A subsequent recount may shift votes slightly, but statistically speaking, the shifts should favor no candidate unduly — unlike the “errors” made after Election Night, whose corrections favored only Franken.

Without a doubt, Franken will wind up suing over the absentee ballots after the recount, but the recount has to take place first.  The certification has to take place before the recount.  Franken wants to turn that entire process on its head, demanding that clear election law be ignored in a desperate attempt to hijack the election.  With that kind of attitude, Franken will certainly not blithely accept defeat, even a second time, without attempting to steal a Senate seat through the courts.

If you’re in Minnesota, you can volunteer for recount efforts.  Visit Norm Coleman’s website, call his office at 651-645-0766, or e-mail the office for more information.

Update: The Canvassing Board has not yet rejected Franken’s request but is expected to do so when they meet today.

I can't believe this tax cheat pornographer Frankin received even one vote for the Senate race in Minnesota

By George Neumayr on 11.13.08 @ 6:09AM

In his haplessly earnest commitment to egalitarianism, Jimmy Carter lugged around his own suitcase and sent his daughter Amy to a D.C. public school. As she trotted off to Thaddeus Stevens Elementary, Carter could console himself with the consistency of his convictions.

Will Barack Obama follow Carter's example? the press wonders. Washington, D.C.'s mayor, Adrian Fenty, wants him to, as do Robert C. Bobb, president of the D.C.'s Board of Education, and board member Mary Lord.

Bobb and Lord have ludicrously urged Obama to send his daughters into the "trenches" of D.C.'s public school system. They write that "no private option offers President-elect Obama a personal reality check on the No Child Left Behind mandates he campaigned to reform. Public school parents see test-prep squeezing out art. They push for quality. As the law's reauthorization looms, what better crash course on its impact than to have kids in the trenches? Now that would be a change any family can believe in."

That the president of D.C.'s Board of Education and a board member counsel an incoming president to deprive his daughters of a superior private school education in order to use them as a "personal reality check" and "crash course" on the failures of No Child Left Behind says all you need to know about the insanely politicized character of D.C.'s public school system.

But the advice, while cruel, is perversely consistent with liberalism's logic: sacrificing the immediate educational good and opportunity of children for the sake of some ill-defined greater political good defines the mindset of the National Education Association. Don't let children leave public schools, the attitude goes. Keep them in the trenches, lest people lose confidence in the system and money and resources drain away. If this means most children receive a crummy education, oh well; a larger good has been achieved.

Moreover, since "equality" is defined by the NEA as sameness of outcome, its proponents have to try and restrict opportunity ruthlessly, as opportunity generates so many differences of outcome. "Equality" and liberty can't coexist. Of course, those who hold this ideology rarely subject their own children to it, dropping them off at posh private schools before heading off to make egalitarian-style arguments at NEA meetings.

While Bobb and Lord may want Obama's daughters in the "trenches," a growing number of public school teachers don't want their children anywhere near them.

According to columnist Clarence Page, "who reluctantly moved my own child to private school after the fifth grade," public school teachers from big cities are more likely to send their own children to private schools than parents in the general population.

Citing a Thomas Fordham Institute study, he writes: "In Obama's hometown, Chicago, for example, 38.7 percent of public school teachers sent their children to private schools, the Fordham study found, compared to 22.6 percent of the general public. In Washington, D.C., 26.8 percent of public school teachers sent their children to private schools, versus 19.8 percent of the public."

These stats are worth remembering the next time the NEA cranks out a report on the unsettling growth of homeschooling, charter schools and private academies. Obama has served up plenty of this propaganda himself, casting perfectly reasonable conservative educational policies as a betrayal of the public school system. But he sensibly if hypocritically exempts his children from these stances.

From press reports it appears that Obama's daughters will be spared the fate of Amy Carter. He already sends them to private schools, and Michelle Obama took a look around the Georgetown Day School this week, a private school known for its progressive educational practices.

At the Georgetown Day School, its children of destiny take their first steps toward an egalitarian society free of hierarchy and distressing disparities by calling teachers by their first names, and the students enjoy a curriculum heavy on "community service." Tomorrow's social engineers, after all, have to be educated somewhere, and the pampered egalitarians of the Democratic Party certainly aren't going to expose their children to the "reality check" of D.C.'s public schools.

November 17, 2008, 7:00 a.m.

Time to Consider Palin
One of the political phenoms of the year.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

U.S. Virgin Islands — I suspect that when Time magazine chooses their Person of the Year for 2008, there will be little internal debate. They’ve probably long picked The One — Barack Obama. After all, more than half the country went and elected him the next president of the United States.

And, come to think about it, the ink-stained pundits at Time have already vaulted the former senator from Illinois to top-dog status. When, last December, they declared the 2007 champion “You,” they hit on one of the key ingredients to Obama’s successful strategy: he was so disciplined, so likable, so broad in his way of speaking that Americans were able to project their hopes and dreams for their country onto him, regardless of what he actually had to offer.

But Time shouldn’t diss the not insignificant portion of the country that voted for Republican John McCain. And, specifically, they shouldn’t ignore the people who were energized by the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to his ticket. She offered something new on the right, something new from a woman and something new for Republicans. Mind you, Palin was far from the first pro-life conservative woman to appear in the Republican party — there are plenty of them in the House of Representatives. (With the defeat of Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, though, there are no pro-life women in the Senate.)

Whatever you thought of her, it seemed everyone in the country had an opinion of Palin  — at the very start, throughout, and after the Republicans’ failed national campaign. And like Obama, all you had to do was look at her to see that she offered something different on a national ticket. In neither case did I think that novelty alone was a sufficient qualification for executive office, but the sheer innovative force of each was blindingly obvious, and the first things you noticed.

Here at National Review’s post-election cruise, a group gathered for a weeklong post-mortem on the high seas has Palin on the brain. Palin’s not on ship, but neither her absence nor the McCain loss has dampened enthusiasm for her here.

On the lighter side, one foreign-policy expert showed up for a panel in a towel (but fully clothed underneath) in an act of solidarity with Palin (referencing the now debunked post-election story that she once appeared to top campaign officials in a towel). What is it about Sarah?

For many folks on the Right, she represented an influx of social conservatism in the campaign. All she had to do was arrive at the scene with her son Trig to demonstrate her pro-life bona fides. Some estimated 90 percent of Americans faced with the knowledge that they might give birth to a child with Down Syndrome wouldn’t have made the choice she and her husband, Todd, did to let the child live.

For other conservatives, she simply represented anybody but McCain, a stubborn gadfly they had bumped up against more than once on issues of immigration, free speech, and even judges. And for some it was the pride she exuded in “this great country” that made her so appealing. Some will to this day compare her to Ronald Reagan. Why is this? It’s about her simple and clear patriotism, and, frankly, her forthright belief system compared to a now president-elect who was comfortable being friends with a domestic terrorist. I don’t question Obama’s patriotism, but to ignore the contrast would be a lie.

Like the “change” from the Obama campaign slogan embraced by so many, Palin offered something different. For some it was an anti-Washington feel. Many consider her a refreshing citizen-politician in the old mold, one that Thomas Jefferson would be proud to meet. Does that make her just like Obama? I do wonder what the campaign would have been like had they both been at the helm: He wouldn’t have had a monopoly on change, and she would have had her own staff and freedom to follow her instincts, and perhaps better advice than she was given as she ran for vice president.

We’ll never know what could have been in a straight-on Obama vs. Palin contest. But what we do know is this: Palin, like Obama, energized people. And she did it in a heckuva lot less time than he had to do it, only coming onto the national scene and the GOP ticket Labor Day weekend. It’s still a free country. Media outlets still can do as they please (save for those who choose to hand over their editorial direction to one party or another). But Time would make a mistake if it ignored the Palin phenom this year just because the ticket didn’t win in the end.

Obama would be wise to agree.