MADDOG10's Blog

•  y Big Fat Greek Wedding," the daughter Toula complains to her mother about her stubborn father being the "head of the house," Maria replied, "Let me tell you something, Toula. The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants."

 

Welcome to America, "We the People" are supposed to be informed and in control, but the media is the "neck," she can turn the focus of Americans to what it wants them to see and believe.

 

Ever since news programs were required to pay their own way, market share and advertisers who want to reach those viewers took control of what news gets into our homes on mainline media news shows. If it bleeds, it leads. The only requirement is that they have video footage. Whether it's domestic violence in your city or war carnage around the world, we see what gets the eyeballs of viewers to watch.

 

If the media can get that video from a citizen's smart phone or from a reporter on the front of breaking war, we are drawn to see what is "really" happening first hand. The media wants what sells.

 

So with violent Jihadist terrorists burning churches and killing Christians who refuse to convert to Islam in Syria, Iraq and Nigeria, why isn't the Western media sending images of that carnage into your home every night?

 

The first reason is understandable. Islamic Jihadists will not just kill Christians and moderate Muslims. They will kill any media they can get to that in any way tells a story they do not want told. Reporters and cameramen have been raped and killed. The media "neck" turns our attention to conflicts where the media can safely have access.

 

We are being fed 24-7 coverage of the conflict in Gaza, because they know that Israel targets its attacks on Jihadists and does everything possible to spare innocent civilians...AND the media covering that war.

 

The media needs carnage for their nightly news. Only Israel's commitment to spare as many citizens as possible and the joy Hamas has in showing the media any examples of where they fail gives them what they want.

 

But that does not explain why the media rails against the collateral damage and deaths attributed to Israel's "immoral war" against Gaza while failing to adequately cover the barrage of missile strikes by Hamas that started the war, the UN schools and Mosques that hide weapons and tunnels, and the actions by Hamas that have broken ceasefire after ceasefire.

 

The reported 1,400 deaths in Gaza are regrettable, but they are a direct result of the actions of the terrorist government that is responsible for their safety and their future. In addition, there is no attempt by the media to provide any perspective of the horrors of any war in the modern age.

 

When the Western allies carpet bombed Dresden, Germany in 1945, an estimated 25,000 civilians were killed. When America dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, within the first two-to-four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki. Roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day. With those numbers of innocents dying, was not America "immoral?" War is hell, now and then.

 

If our media is going to turn "the neck" of American citizens to cover the war in Gaza, at least they should do their job of providing balanced coverage. They should stop letting the Jihadists' strategy of using citizens as shields cause them to lose sight of who is primarily responsible for the carnage.

 

Never before has America been more in need of a responsible, fair media in understanding the numerous hot spots around the world. Demand that your media give you balanced coverage on Gaza and ask them to start covering the violent attacks on Christians throughout the Middle East and Africa.

1) Republicans ahead of him on the golf course wouldn't let him play through; so he missed calls telling him ISIS was overrunning Iraq.

2) Obama has been too busy reliving his choom gang days by getting high and watching old Cheech and Chong movies to fix the economy.

3) Don't blame Obama for Obamacare. It's George Bush's fault!

4) Obama was completely unaware that there is more to being President than giving speeches blaming Republicans for causing all of America's problems.

5) What failed presidency? Chris Matthews says Obama is the most successful President ever!

6) He's distracted all the time because Michelle won't let him eat anything other than carrots, beets and arugula.

7) Joe Biden said something dumb? That's George Bush's fault!

8) The mainstream media only gives Obama more credit than he deserves 90 percent of the time instead of 100 percent; so it’s not doing its part!

9) Going on frequent vacations to take a break from not working is a lot more stressful than you’d think.

10) As we all know, Obama learns about most of the problems in his administration by watching the news and he has been too busy golfing to watch TV.

11) He doesn't want to say all those nasty things about Republicans, but they keep appearing on his teleprompter; so he has to read them.

12) A lot of the white people who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 figured out he is black and went all racist on him!

13) People don’t like Barack Obama’s executive orders? That’s George Bush’s fault!

14) That liar Putin never came through with the magic beans he promised Obama in exchange for allowing him to invade Ukraine.

15) It was just too creepy to get any work done with Hillary Clinton in the building. There were broomsticks in the corners, flying monkeys everywhere, and Hillary peeping out of the corners screaming, "I'll get you, my pretty!"

• Bipartisanship is dead. That's the conventional wisdom, and there's a lot of evidence to support it.

 

But there's evidence to the contrary as well. On two important issues, veterans' health and job training, congressional Republicans and Democrats have, with little notice, reached constructive bipartisan agreements.

These are both issues on which everyone agrees government should be involved. The country certainly owes something to veterans. And no one's proposing to eliminate job training programs altogether.

But government is also not doing a good job on either. The Veterans Affairs Department scandals have revealed a culture of lying and incompetence that comes as little surprise to those who have been scrutinizing the agency for many years.

And think-tank analysts both liberal and conservative have been concluding that government job training programs don't do much to prepare people for work or help them get jobs.

The best job training, many experts agree, is a job. But job-training programs have appeal to voters, and they do probably help some not insignificant number of people move ahead.

So there's an obvious need for legislation. And on these issues, as on so many others, Republicans and Democrats are in principled disagreement.

Nevertheless, Senate Veterans Affairs Chairman Bernie Sanders and House Veterans Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller managed this week to come to an agreement.

Sanders, a self-described Socialist, did not get all the money he wanted. And he accepted a provision that at least some veterans could get funds for medical treatment at private non-VA facilities.

Miller, who has being doing dogged oversight work that was not much noticed until last year when the Washington Examiner's Mark Flatten began highlighting it, made concessions as well.

The bill includes $5 billion for hiring more medical professionals and $1.7 billion for new VA facilities -- more than many House Republicans might like.

The Republican-controlled House overwhelmingly approved the bill Wednesday on a 420-5 vote, and the Democratic-majority Senate is expected to pass it quickly as well.

Both houses have already passed, the House by 415-6 and the Senate by 95-3, significant legislation reauthorizing and consolidating government job-training programs.

It eliminates 15 existing programs, consolidates others, gives states more flexibility and attempts to orient job training programs to "in-demand skills."

This represents some hard work at the subcommittee and committee level, notably by House Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline and ranking Democrat George Miller.

Miller, who is retiring from Congress this year, also helped to fashion the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, working with a committee chairman named John Boehner. Both have shown that you can be strong partisans and still successfully negotiate bipartisan agreements.

I doubt that these are perfect pieces of legislation, and I suspect that none of their lead sponsors would claim they are. There's always a danger that bipartisan agreements turn out to be mush and that negotiators put aside bolder reforms that would produce better results.

But they probably represent at least incremental progress toward better policy. And they refute the conventional wisdom that bipartisanship is dead, even in this politically polarized Congress.

What they also share in common is that the Obama White House seems to have had little or no involvement. Members of Congress and their staffs were left to do the hard work of analysis and negotiation themselves.

When the Obama administration does get involved, this kind of bipartisan compromise doesn't seem to happen.

Second-term presidencies are ordinarily a time when the stars are in alignment for bipartisan reforms. Examples include the 1986 tax law and the 1997 Medicare reforms.

But not in Barack Obama's second-term presidency. The Obama administration has ignored House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp's tax rewrite, which would cut rates and eliminate many preferences.

When Camp was negotiating with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, Obama removed the latter by appointing him ambassador to China. Baucus' successor Ron Wyden is a skilled bipartisan legislator, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Obama White House have given him little running room.

Even on the one tax issue, which Obama recognized as reform-worthy -- cutting the U.S.'s highest-in-the-developed world corporate income tax -- the administration has eschewed bipartisan discussion.

Instead it's trying to make a campaign issue with a bill somehow barring companies from moving their corporate domiciles to lower-tax nations. Sort of like ordering water not to flow downhill.

Some people like to denounce Congress for partisan legislative gridlock. But the real problem is at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

In June, President Barack Obama sent a letter to Congress asking for help to address the surge of illegal crossings at the Texas-Mexico border. Among other items, Obama asked Congress to grant him the legal authority "to exercise discretion in processing the return and removal of unaccompanied minor children from non-contiguous countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador."

 

The administration blamed a 2008 anti-human-trafficking law signed by President George W. Bush for preventing officials from promptly deporting minors not eligible for asylum.

House Republicans were happy to oblige. Speaker John Boehner maintained that voters would not accept spending more money on unauthorized migrants without fixing the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

So what did Obama do? He left that reform out of the $3.7 billion emergency border package he sent to Congress.

"Suddenly, magically, there was no reform," observed Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "There was just money."

What happened? Early on, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., an author of the Wilberforce law, maintained that the law includes an "exceptional circumstances" clause, which would allow authorities to modify how they process the more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors who are here now, largely from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Having witnessed the chaos at the border, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, crossed the aisle to work with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to offer a bill to treat unaccompanied minors from Central America's Northern Triangle the same as children from Mexico. As Cornyn argues, a bill that was supposed to shield children from human traffickers has had the unintended consequence of boosting business for human smugglers to use children as "commodities."

A July Pew Research Center poll found that 53 percent of those polled want Washington to speed up deportations of asylum seekers, whereas 37 percent oppose a change in policy.

But this White House doesn't move to the center. Ditto the Democratic leadership. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., maintains that the 2008 law has had no role in the surge of unaccompanied minors. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi protested to MSNBC, "The baby Jesus was a refugee from violence."

In Majority Leader Harry Reid's Senate, there are no enemies to the left. Once a Democrat opposes an item because it's not liberal enough, moderate Democrats shut up and back off.

Reid spent the week threatening to add last year's big Senate immigration bill to any measure passed by the House, apparently just to poison the well in the House.

Though the Senate forwarded a $2.7 billion emergency bill in a procedural vote Wednesday, it will fail absent a Wilberforce reform. Already, GOP senators and three at-risk Democrats have announced their opposition.

As Congress is scheduled to begin a five-week recess, don't expect Obama or Reid to support the White House's erstwhile request. In Obama and Reid's Washington, there is no crisis that cannot be prolonged for politics.

The Obama administration often denies any responsibility for the current global chaos or claims that it erupted spontaneously. Yet most of the mess was caused by, or made worse by, growing U.S. indifference and paralysis.

Over the last five and a half years, America has had lots of clear choices, but the administration usually took the path of least short-term trouble, which has ensured long-term hardship.

There was no need to "reset" the relatively mild punishments that the George W. Bush administration had accorded Vladimir Putin's Russia for invading Georgia in 2008. By unilaterally normalizing relations with Russia and trashing Bush, Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton only green-lighted further Russian aggression that has now spread to Crimea and Ukraine.

There was no need for Obama, almost immediately upon assuming office, to distance the U.S. from Israel by criticizing Israel's policies and warming to its enemies, such as authoritarian Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan and Hamas.

Any time Israel's enemies have glimpsed growing distance in the U.S.-Israeli friendship, they seek only to pry it still wider. We see just that with terrorists in Gaza who launch hundreds of missiles into Israel on the expectation that the U.S. will broker a favorable deal that finds both sides equally at fault.

Sanctions had crippled Iran to the point that it soon would have grown desperate to meet U.S. demands to stop its nuclear enrichment. Instead, Obama eased trade restrictions just as they were coming to fruition. Iran is now on its way to acquiring a bomb, while supplying missiles to Hamas and Hezbollah.

We had an option in Libya to let the tottering but reforming Muammar Gadhafi government fend for itself. Or we could have taken out Gadhafi and then sent in peacekeepers to ensure a transition to ordered government. But the Obama administration did neither. Instead, the U.S. participated in a multi-nation bombing campaign and all but guaranteed that a failed state would be left on Europe's doorstep. Now we have just closed our embassy in Tripoli and fled the country entirely.

There were once viable choices in Egypt. Instead, the administration managed to alienate the old Hosni Mubarak regime, alienate the elected Muslim Brotherhood that immediately tried to subvert the democracy, and alienate the military junta that stepped in to stop the Islamization of Egypt. All of these rival groups share one thing in common: a distrust of the U.S.

We could have made a choice in Iraq to negotiate a bit more with the Nouri al-Maliki government, leave behind a few thousand token peacekeepers and thereby preserve the calm achieved by the surge. Instead, the administration pulled out U.S. soldiers to ensure that a withdrawal would be an effective re-election talking point. The result of that void is the present bloodletting and veritable destruction of Iraq.

The U.S. once had choices in Syria. We could have loudly condemned the Bashar al-Assad government and immediately armed the most pro-Western of the anti-Assad rebels. Or we could have just stayed quiet and stayed out of the mess. Instead, we chose the third -- and worst -- option: loudly threaten Assad while doing nothing. Both a bloody dictatorship and its bloody jihadist enemies share a general contempt for a perceived weak America.

There were choices on our own border as well. Obama could have advised Central American governments that our southern border was closed to any who would cross illegally, while attempting to remedy the violence in those countries. Instead, the administration opened the border, welcomed in thousands without scrutiny, and has all but destroyed federal immigration law. The result is chaos.

The Obama administration apparently has assumed that calm, not conflict, is the natural order of things. The world supposedly can run on autopilot without much guidance from its only superpower.

If conflict does arise, the U.S. counts on sermonizing without the need to back up tough and often provocative rhetoric with any action. When occasional decisions must be made, the U.S. usually chooses the easiest way out: withdrawals, concessions and appeasement.

Behind these assumptions also lie the administration's grave doubts that the U.S. has in the past played a positive role in postwar affairs, or that in the present and future America can claim the moral authority -- or has the resources -- to confront aggressors.

In 2017, Obama may well leave office claiming to have reduced our military while avoiding conflict during his tenure. But will he also be able to assure us that China, Iran and Russia are less threatening; that the Middle East, the Pacific and the former Soviet republics are less explosive; that our own border is more secure -- and that America is safer?

To paraphrase the poet Robert Frost: Two roads diverged in the world, and we always took the one of least resistance -- and that has now made all the difference.

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Barack Obama famously declared that as a former teacher of Constitutional law, he actually respects the Constitution, unlike his predecessor in the Oval Office. Subsequent events make it fair to wonder exactly how he shows this respect.

Some on the Left barely conceal their disdain for the world-changing handiwork of dead white males. Reverence for the Constitution isn’t universal even among its chief custodians. Justice Ruth Ginsburg raised eyebrows when she advised Egyptian civic activists she wouldn’t look to the US Constitution as a model today. She pointed instead to the constitutions of South Africa, Canada, and the European Charter of Rights and Freedoms, praising them as “great work,” more recent and more generous in protecting “human rights.” The late Justice Thurgood Marshall also was cautious about putting too much stock in Constitutional guidance, asking a PBS interviewer: “What does the Constitution say about rocket ships?”

Actually, the Constitution says as much about rockets as it does about horses and buggies: basically nothing. The Constitution is not the US Code of Statutes, setting out the federal law. It’s more like the rule book or citizens’ owners’ manual that governs the government. It’s a uniquely successful compact in history. But it remains vital only as Americans understand it, support it, and demand politicians do likewise.

Citizens who accuse President Obama of violating the Constitution should have a clear idea what they mean. This would include being able to explain to a friend or child basic constitutional principles and describe the ways they are threatened. Here’s my attempt at a simple, easy to share explanation:
Life is hard and sometimes dangerous. Government can help protect peace and security, but it’s important to think seriously about what government should be and do, as our Framers had to when they organized America.

The big thing they realized is government is unique. Some things need governing, but others just involve voluntary cooperation. Lots of people or groups--like street preachers, hotdog vendors, corporations, your mother—have things they want you to do: repent, buy stuff, call home. But government decides things you have to do or can’t do, at the risk of fines, jail, or, at some level of resistance, getting shot.

Government’s essence is controlling people—forbidding things, requiring things, and extracting the taxes to pay for things. Our Founders realized the power to control people, as opposed to offer or invite in voluntary exchanges is potentially dangerous. It must be limited and channeled, as in the apocryphal wisdom of George Washington: like fire, government is a dangerous servant and fearsome master.

The Founders figured out controlling people involves three different kinds of power: making rules, enforcing rules, and resolving disputes between people and between the enforcers and the people. They also realized the controllers could be kept honest and fair only if those different powers were kept apart: the people who make the rules shouldn’t be the ones who enforce them; the enforcers shouldn’t decide disputes between themselves and the people.

That’s why the Founders arranged separation of powers. They created Congress in Article I, the Executive in Article II, and the Supreme Court and judiciary in Article III.

Our Founders also realized the young nation sat at the edge of a continent it might grow to fill. Even the 13 colonies had a diverse mix of heritage, religion, resources, climate, industry, and so forth. They determined people should govern themselves as locally as possible. Daily government was left with the states. The national government would be limited to matters that truly needed to be nationally uniform. It was delegated only enumerated powers.

The Founders crowned their structure with a Bill of Rights, identifying some, but not all, of the sacred liberties and protections needed for the free pursuit of happiness. The finished work was an intellectual revolution more spectacular than the military revolution that made it possible. The path has not always been smooth or safe. But most people agree, it’s the most successful system of governing ever designed.

Some clever and sophisticated people today say the Constitution is outdated. It was designed for a small, simple society. Our modern world needs something more complex. This claim is curious, both as a matter of observable history and of theory.

If you hear such criticism, you might challenge it. Historically, ask if any other national system has lasted longer, or produced better fruits, including freedom, due process, stable government, opportunity, prosperity, and a magnetic draw to people around the world.

On theory, ask what has changed in the world or human nature that suggests government’s controlling powers shouldn’t be limited. Or why it makes sense to mix the powers to legislate, enforce, and judge. Ask too, if rigid, centralized government across diverse states and communities, geography, cultures, and economies makes any more sense than before.

The critics likely will talk about how things should be different; but they won’t show that anything has ever worked better than the United States Constitution. But the Transformer and his supporters find it very inconvenient. And for some, that’s all that matters.

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When President Obama proposed healthcare reform that added 30 million to the insurance rolls while promising lower costs, most people who passed fourth grade math raised an eyebrow, if not a ruckus. The simple realities of supply and demand, coupled with the burden of government mandates, could only push healthcare costs skyward. With Obamacare now in effect, those early concerns have come to be realized through skyrocketing premiums, as confirmed by a recent Morgan Stanley survey of 148 national insurance brokers.

 

Premiums are up as much as 100 pecent in some cases, and this is after Obama promised "savings." One can only imagine what would happen to the cost of a commodity the President promises to make Americans pay more for. Unfortunately, we don't have to imagine, as this is exactly what Obama promised his energy plan would achieve.

 

In January of 2008, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that "under my plan... electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket." No sanguine language here about savings, just a flat out mission to make Americans pay through the nose for energy. It's no coincidence that under Obama gasoline prices have doubled, and have remained above $3 per gallon throughout his two terms.

 

Now to make good on his promise to make electricity cost more, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have issued brutal new rules on emissions for electricity generating power plants, just what the doctor ordered for skyrocketing electricity prices. This is a story largely ignored by the mainstream press who never miss an Obama chip shot on to the green or a grip and grin in some remote diner. But Americans are catching on fast.

 

On HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy declined to disagree with the host's contention that Obama was waging a "war on coal." Indeed, it was candidate Obama who in the same Chronicle interview stated, "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can. It's just that [my plan] will bankrupt them." The President makes no bones that his aim is to make producing electricity cost-prohibitive, but in the end it will be you, me, and everybody with an outlet and a light switch paying the bill.

 

The EPA's war on coal is no less than a war on seniors and our nation's most vulnerable. Seniors on fixed and diminishing incomes pay a disproportionate share of their monthly budget on utilities, and Obama's EPA will serve only to make them poorer and more vulnerable. A recent Harris poll found 88 percent of seniors are at least somewhat concerned that the new EPA rules will force them to pay more. Sharing this view is a U.S. Chamber of Commerce analysis showing the new EPA rules will cost Americans $17 billion a year more to pay their electricity bills, and hit the economy with $50 billion a year in new costs.

 

As recently as six years ago coal accounted for about 50 percent of America's electricity, and now stands at 40 percent. Obama wants it below 30 percent, a chokehold on energy production which is nothing short of pulling the emergency brake on the economy and letting America's most vulnerable go flying through the windshield.

 

Seniors of limited means are least able to absorb the increasing costs of energy and electricity, as we've seen from far too many stories of elderly dying in their homes or requiring hospitalization during severe weather conditions. Clearly the President and the EPA are willing to gamble with the lives of seniors for the sake of their extreme ideology.

 

A study of the Administration's new power plant emissions rules revealed job losses of 442,000 by 2022, and a loss of 40 percent of electrical capacity generated by coal in the next 15 years. What's even more alarming is that the environmentalists at the EPA can't even point to a tangible, achievable benefit to these new proposed standards. The truth is these additional regulations are of benefit to no one, and do nothing to address the fact that developing nations like China and India will double their power-plant emissions in short order with Americans essentially subsidizing their increased production.

 

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Just for once, wouldn't it be great if PresidentObama actually defended American business, instead of attacking it?

 

Just once?

Wouldn't it be great if Obama acknowledged that U.S. firms are overburdened by the highest corporate tax rate among developed countries, and as a result are becoming less and less competitive?

Wouldn't it be great if he said he wants to fix this tax imbalance in order to grow the economy faster and give U.S. businesses a leg up on the global scene?

Couldn't he just say that?  Nope.

He could say it like this: "Look, I don't want to drive businesses away. I want to keep businesses here. I understand the importance of business. I understand that you can't have a good job without a thriving business. And I get that businesses require capital investment. And I understand that the investment and the business must have a high rate of return, after tax. When that's the case, the company expands, jobs grow and families have more income to pay for health care, education and the good life."

Instead, Obama mocks businesses. And now he's hauling out an election-year populist whine about "economic patriotism." He's attacking companies that merge with foreign businesses and reincorporate in lower-tax foreign countries. It's called inversion. And Obama wants to stop it in the name of patriotism.

In an interview with my CNBC colleague Steve Liesman, Obama talked about how businesses are ungrateful for "the range of benefits that have helped to build companies, create value (and) create profits." He complained that these firms are moving their "technical address simply to avoid paying taxes."

That sounds a bit like, "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

But the issue isn't avoiding all taxes. If a U.S. business reincorporates overseas, it still pays the same record-breaking 35 percent tax rate on its U.S. income. The difference is that it doesn't pay 35 percent on profits made in foreign countries. That's the double tax it is trying to avoid.

We are the only nation that has this goofy system. And it reduces after-tax profits and renders our companies less competitive. That's why nearly $2 trillion in cash from American companies is sitting overseas.

But Obama could turn this around in a blink. He could say, "We need that cash to grow the economy, create more jobs and, yes, to build more infrastructure. So I'm going to grant a small repatriation fee of 5 percent to bring that money back and put it to work at home."

He could then say, "And to make American business number one, we're gonna drop the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent -- with full cash expensing for new investment -- and scrap all other deductions and special credits. In other words, we're gonna end crony capitalism and corporate welfare, just as I pledged in my 2008 campaign. And that includes the Export-Import bank. "

He could then say he understands from numerous studies that 70 percent of the benefits of a corporate tax cut will flow to working wage earners while the rest will flow to lower-priced consumers. And he could add that we're going to allow pass-through S-corps and LLCs who now pay the personal tax rate to reincorporate and take advantage of the new lower C-corp rates.

And that's when he could argue that American companies must come home and stay home.

Nobody, including myself, likes the idea of foreign-based inversions or foreign-parked cash. But corporate tax reform is the solution, not corporate punishment.

The president sometimes gives lip service to corporate tax reform. But he never follows through. There have been a dozen good proposals down through the years. But Obama keeps blaming Republicans in Congress, even though he has been completely disengaged from any serious talks about tax reform.

Five years ago, Simpson-Bowles had a good corporate tax reform. The president ignored it. Democratic Sen. Max Baucus developed a corporate tax-reform package when he was chair of the Senate Finance Committee. It was completely disregarded by the White House. And Republican Dave Camp, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, delivered a comprehensive tax reform that included corporations. It wasn't perfect, but the White House overlooked that too.

And now it looks like corporate tax reform is dead again this year. The Obama Democrats will try to push through a bill to stop foreign re-incorporations. It will never pass. And they'll keep trashing business and turning up the flame on the class-warfare burner. Divide the country and bash success. The same old tired themes.

It's a pity. Why isn't it patriotic to stand by large and small businesses, which are at the heart of the American free-market economy? Just this once, can't we get the story right?