“Come on John.  You are coming with me.”

The raspy voice belonged to Corinne Michel, the wife of House Minority Leader Robert Michel, and probably one of the nicest people of I have ever met.

Mrs. Michel, an avid smoker, had a wry sense of humor and very level head.  The mother of four grown (and successful kids) and the wife of one of the most powerful men in Washington, Corinne could spot bullshit from a mile away.

I think she was getting a kick out of taking me out of the Capitol building and bringing me to my first (and so far in my life my only) visit to the Vice President’s residence.

I wasn’t exactly clear why we were going, but it had something to do with a woman from Peoria who died of breast cancer.  We arrived at the residence, and I walked into a nicely appointed room filled with very imposing and somewhat intimidating group of professional women.

I was the only man in the room.  Mrs. Michel smiled and introduced me to the Vice President’s wife.  “Hello Marilyn,” she said, “This is John Feehery.”  I shook her hand and Marilyn Quayle smiled.   “He’s one of our top interns.”   The smile disappeared and Quayle abruptly turned away and talked to somebody else.  Read more...

(January 3, 2017)  Hillary Clinton today became the first female President of the United States, as she took the Oath of Office on the West Front of the Capitol.

Clinton promised to build a village for the American people, because as she put it, “it takes a village to raise a child.”

The former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State survived a difficult primary and a brutal Presidential campaign, which included a Fox News expose of her husband’s marital affairs.

The expose became a mini-series on the Fox Business Channel, boosting ratings for the network and creating new legal challenges about some of the material that ran afoul of the FCC’s indecency standards.

Clinton takes the reigns from Mitt Romney, who lost in his bid for re-election.

Romney’s four-year reign was marked by remarkable economic progress, but dogged by a series of verbal blunders kept him on the defensive throughout his tenure.

The signature accomplishment of the Romney campaign was the historic Tax Reform Act of 2013.  The Act created two flat rates of 20% and 10%, and equalized the treatment of all incomes.  Read more...

I get what Mitt was saying.  He wants to focus on the middle class.  The middle class is where the votes are.  The middle class is gettable.  The very poor?  Well, they don’t vote and if they do vote, they certainly won’t vote for Romney.

But his statement is not only incredibly stupid from a political point of view.   It is not only incredibly stupid from a moral point of view.  It is also incredibly stupid from a budget point of view.

Let me put it in terms that Republicans should appreciate:  The very poor need to be helped because it is better for our budget situation.

The very poor are very poor for a variety of reasons.  Many have had incredibly bad luck.  Many of have substance abuse problems.  Others have diseases, whether it be cancer or mental diseases.  Still others have really bad habits.  And still others just aren’t very bright and don’t have any marketable skills.

The social safety net is important.  It keeps people from starving and it allows them to get medical care if they need it.

But it ought to be the goal of every American to help the very poor to be able to get off of public assistance and take care of themselves.  Read more...

Mitt Romney won a big victory and that win should propel him to the nomination sometime by June, given the vagaries of the proportional delegate system put in place by the Republican National Committee.

But Romney shouldn’t feel that comfortable with his position in the party or with the state of his party at the moment.  Sarah Palin can be dismissed as a goofball and an idiot for continuing to embrace Newt Gingrich, despite the former Speaker’s trouncing in the Sunshine State.  But she speaks for many of the goofballs and idiots who make up a fairly large chunk of the Republican/Tea Party base.

And those goofballs/idiots could make up the critical difference between winning and losing in next November.

The Republican Party is a grand coalition of upper and upper middle class mainline Protestants and Catholics, evangelical Christians, white working class Catholics, a smattering of Cuban Americans in Florida, a smaller smattering of black conservatives, an even smaller smattering of Orthodox and conservative Jews, and a few other folks.  Read more...

In 1956, Kenneth Stampp, a historian from the University of California at Berkely, wrote the seminal book about slavery.  Called The Peculiar Institution, the book destroyed the myth of a benign, paternalistic southern society, popularized by such movies as “Gone with the Wind.”

In truth, slavery sucked.  It dehumanized the slaves, destroyed families, destabilized society, and skewed America’s economic development.  But before Stampp’s book, there was a national consensus (except, of course, among the descendants of slaves) that the slavery really wasn’t that bad.

Abraham Lincoln quoted scripture in his famous speech in 1858, a couple of years before the Civil War:  “”A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.”

He proved to be correct.  Eventually, freedom won out, but it took more than a century to give African Americans the full freedom they deserved.  Read more...

A smart guy emailed me over the weekend with a very provocative assertion:  All of this income inequality stuff is over-blown political rhetoric.

He makes a compelling case.  Instead of paraphrasing it, I am going to let the smart guy speak for himself:

It seems to me the whole premise of the Obama/Hill Dem position is that a dramatic income inequality trend has ensued.

They are wagering all the chips of the election on that premise and their preferred policy.

What if the premise is wrong?

What if shares of income have been relatively constant or have not changed dramatically from 1979-2006?

What if taking the edges off of market forces, which their policies, by definition, must do, actually reduces the economic pie that Americans basically share pretty constantly (as they move between cohorts over their lifetime)?

An income re-distribution policy carries the burden of dampening growth.  That’s the trade-off between equity and efficiency that most policy makers agree exists.

What then?

 Read more...

There were two really good moments for Mitt Romney is last night’s debate.

One was his smack-down of Newt Gingrich’s moon colony remarks.

I am in favor of a moon colony, by the way, but Newt only trotted out his proposal when he addressed Florida’s Space Coast, and as Romney pointed out, Newt has a habit of promising pork in every State he campaigns in.

Given the anti-pork nature of the Republican primary voter, I thought that was nice shot by the Massachusetts governor.

The other moment came when Mitt responded to the Gingrich allegation that Romney was the most anti-immigrant Republican candidate left in the race.

He was furious and he showed it, which showed that he has a strong spine.

But he also let everyone know that he is a Mexican immigrant too, which must have been a revelation to most of the television audience last night.

I wonder how his Spanish is.

Jeb Bush pointed out in a Washington Post op-ed that the Hispanic community is a pretty diverse group.  Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Hondurans, El Salvadorans, Columbians, Nicaraguans all have different reasons for coming to the United States.  They share the same language, but they don’t necessarily share the same life experiences, views of the United States, habits or wealth potential.  Read more...