The Democrat's Dilemma

Republicans and Democrats share a history of legislative shenanigans, to be sure. And though Republicans are suddenly sounding reasonable when discussing the pork in the latest stimulus bill on its way to the Senate (after passing in the House 244 - 188, with all Republicans voting against), the traditional Republican mantra of tax relief for the upper and upper middle class would certainly be a bad proposal in today's recession.

But, again, Republican talking points today seem much more reasonable. Contra Bob Herbert, who writes in the NYT today that we should all just stop listening to the minority party (nice spirit of bi-partisanship, Mr. Herbert), I think the minority party, in its opposition, is helping improve the pork-ridden bill and hence is serving the public's interest.

They're doing this in two ways. One, they're caterwauling about the obvious pork in the bill. Indeed some of the more egregious examples of pork have already been removed, like hundreds of millions for contraceptives under the guise of a family planning expansion promoted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (Give initial credit for removal of this lu lu to George Stephanopoulos, who raised this issue in an interview with Pelosi on ABCs "This Week". Also it was President Obama who, officially, requested it be dropped. Bravo.) Resodding the White House lawn also got nixed.

Two, they're asking the hard questions about where the stimulus actually resides in the stimulus bill, questions that I think point to real problems that the majority Democrats seem curiously sanguine about, given the severity of the economic crisis.

For instance, the Congressional Budget Office released a troubling analysis of the proposed bill, calculating that only about 20% of the 816 billion will be spent in fiscal 2009. So much for shovel ready. And there's the troubling fact that, of this, only about 30 billion is tagged for infrastructure spending.

So, where is the money going? Well, to entitlement programs and special interest groups, of course:

• 2 billion for child care subsidies
• 50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
• 400 million for global warming research
• 2.4 billion for carbon capture projects
• 650 million for digital TV conversion coupons
• 87 billion for Medicaid
• 1 billion for nutrition programs
• 66 billion for education spending

And on and on.

To be sure, some of this spending is laudable, and provides funding for worthy goals (like funding the arts, or modernizing the Smithsonian). But if it's really job creation that we're trying to accomplish, it's hard to understand the distribution of funds. For example, the unemployment rate for government workers is a mere 2.3% today, and in the education and health sectors it's only 3.8%. Yet fully 39% of the 550 billion allocated for spending -- the rest is tax relief -- targets these sectors. This is particularly puzzling when we consider the unemployment rates in the sectors hit hardest by the recession: 8.3% in manufacturing, and 15.2% in construction. As Alan Reynolds of the CATO Institute points out today in the WSJ, "If the intent of the plan is to alleviate unemployment, why spend over half of the money on sectors where unemployment is lowest?" Hmm.

So, here's the Democrat's Dilemma. They don't need the lowly Republicans to pass President Obama's stimulus plan; it'll likely sail through the Senate without major modification just as it did the House. And then it'll be law. But, if it's judged a failure in the coming years, they'll be solely responsible for it. Republicans, for their part, can look reasonable by simply pointing at the facts of the bill. They may get blamed for throwing out the spirit of bi-partisanship, but they have the pork in the bill and the puzzling distribution of funds to keep talking about. No one will care about their stubbornness today, if in a few years the stimulus is viewed as a Democratic christmas tree, full of entitlements and goodies for Americans, but a very flawed piece of legislation given its ostensible purpose.

And so it goes. As Speaker Pelosi put it, "We won, we write the bill". Indeed.

Armey Misplaces the Current Century

This was hilarious. Armey lets slip the dogs of politically incorrect war. He hits Joan Walsh with no less than "glad you can never be my wife", a comment that was over the top, to be sure.

But on the general contours of the stimulus discussion, it's becoming a commonplace for the Democrats to talk around the stimulus bill rather than about it, a sure sign that something's rotten in Denmark. There's suddenly very little direct explanation of how the stimulus happens. This was, I suspect, Dick Armey's frustration, a man with a Ph.D. in Economics (not that this gives anyone much of a leg up these days...) and of course the former House Majority leader.

Republicans, whatever you think of them as a party, have a point when they harp on the details of the stimulus package that just passed the House. They're doing the people's work right now more than the party in charge. Mad Money's Jim Kramer -- hardly an apologist for Conservatives -- said as much today. But Armey I think forgot himself on Hardball tonight...

Swearingen Reprieve

God bless Texas. It was the right thing to do.

Decaf Drinkers Shut Out

Starbucks nixes decaf after noon. I'm sure people will be screaming in the streets with this latest.

Brooke Blog

My daughter's blog. I gush.

Sam

My wife brought our dog Sam back from the animal shelter Spring of 2006. He was a sickly puppy at the time, full of worms, with a running eye, and a pensive, shy demeanor. But he won over my wife, with his tawny fur and big, innocent eyes. He was Paul when we took him home, and when he reached our house he was Sam.

Sam's running eye was harmless, according to the vet, and the worms clinging in his swollen belly were let loose by the pills we embedded in his food. He grew larger by degrees I'm sure, but as we experienced him his progress was discreet, so that he was suddenly a larger pup, and then an adolescent, with no stages in between. Sam took to chewing everything in our back yard, which caused me great consternation, and prompted ongoing friction between my wife and I, as she remonstrated me on my lack of patience, and I her on our lack of unpunctured water hoses, and unchewed bushes, and boards on our deck free of marks from puppy teething.

Sam was a classic mut, a pound puppy that was listed as a cross between a Pit Bull and a Labrador, the faintly discernible drops in an ocean of breeds comprising his motley origin.

Troubles in Texas - New Evidence in the Larry Swearingen Case

A man on death row in Texas who is scheduled to be executed Tuesday for the murder of a nineteen year old college student received last minute hope from forensic pathologists -- including one who performed the original autopsy on the victim -- who have concluded that the prosecution's case does not square with further forensic analysis of the victim's body.

In 1998, Larry Swearingen was found guilty of the strangulation death of Melissa Trotter, whose body was discovered dumped in the woods of East Texas. The original autopsy concluded that her body was discovered about twenty five days after her murder, a conclusion that coincided with the last time she was seen alive, having lunch with Mr. Swearingen.

The latest forensic analysis since the 1998 murder, however, suggests a far different picture -- her body was discovered at most within fourteen days of her death, and probably within two to three days. The forensic evidence supporting this conclusion is substantial, including well-known decay rates for organs, levels of bacteria in the body, absence of factors such as bloat, lack of animal mutilation, loss of body weight, and others.

If the forensic scenario is correct, Mr. Swearingen could not have committed the murder, since he would have been in jail for unpaid traffic violations when the murder occurred. "It's just scientifically impossible for him to have killed the girl and thrown her into the woods," said James Rytting, Swearingen's appellate lawyer. "It's guilt by imagination."

In the original trial of Mr. Swearingen, the prosecution built its case on strong evidence, including "a match between the panty hose leg found around Trotter's neck and the stocking remnant found in a trash dump next to Swearingen's mobile home." Additionally, hair samples from Ms. Trotter were found in Swearingen's truck, and witnesses say that she had had lunch with Swearingen the day she disappeared.

Nonetheless, the Texas death penalty case is particularly troubling for the prosecution -- and more generally for advocates of capital punishment -- because it reveals that even when death penalty cases have seemingly indisputable, damning evidence and even after a lengthy appeals process, new evidence can surface that may call into question the guilty verdict. When such evidence is compelling, as it appears to be in this case, concerns about the innocence of the condemned should receive further, serious review. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is the standard of course for all criminal trials in our judicial system; it does not appear, given the apparently exculpatory forensic findings in the case against Mr. Swearingen, that the standard has been met.

With days left before the state is scheduled to execute Mr. Swearingen for the murder of Melissa Trotter, one can only hope that the execution is stayed while the additional forensic evidence is reviewed.

Source article here.