Moe Lane

…and he just did.

“I know some of my Democratic colleagues had been thinking about ways to, in effect, get around the results by working in various parliamentary ways, looking at the rules, trying to get a health care bill passed that would have been the same bill that would have passed if [MA AG] Martha Coakley [D] had won, and I think that’s a mistake,” Frank said. “I will not support an effort to push through a House-Senate compromise bill despite an election. I’m disappointed in how it came out, but I think electoral results have to be respected.”

And if you’re wondering why Barney Frank did this, it’s because he can read a map.He’s the only member of the MA Congressional delegation whose district went completely for Coakley [UPDATE: Actually, no, that was Capuano's district.  OTOH, Rep. Frank is one of the safest Members of Congress right now, so the point fortunately still stands], and at least two of them are personally sweating the election results right now – so if anybody’s going to be taking the lead in walking back from the precipice, it should be the guy who can take the hit and still be favored to keep his seat in November.  Mildly disappointing, from a Republican point of view… but killing this abomination of a health care bill is the best thing for the country, which of course should be our paramount concern.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

This is via That’s My Congress, which is about to become very confused about why it’s getting traffic from a VRWC site. Here’s the list:

Lois Capps
Michael Capuano
Ben Cardin
Diana DeGette
Eliot Engel
Barney Frank
Alan Grayson
Carolyn McCarthy
Bill Pascrell
Adam Schiff
Allyson Schwartz
Heath Shuler

…and they have two things in common. First, they’re all Democrats. Second, they all have email addresses with Erickson & Company. And what is Erickson & Company? As That’s My Congress puts it:

Erickson & Company is not a lobbying firm. Instead, it helps set up events like the Heath Shuler’s BBQ, at which lobbyists and other people seeking special favors can come, check in hand, to pay for access to elected officials and their aides.

In other words, it’s a legal [and Democratic-aligned] money-laundering facility for lobbyists. Need to toss Heath Shuler some cash, but you’re a dirty lobbyist? Well, go to Shuler’s little BBQ (run by a go-between), drop a grand for a plate of food, and say hi! No fuss, no muss, no need for disclosure. Shuler’s happy: he’s getting his cut of your entry fee. The go-between is happy: it’s getting its cut of your entry fee. And you’re happy: this is a lot cheaper than a maximum campaign contribution would be.

So remember this, the next time anybody on that list – or, honestly, any Democrat – talks about the evil of lobbying: the sound you hear isn’t scorn towards those who would try to pay for influence.  Nope.  It’s scorn towards the rubes who don’t know how to tell when a Democrat is gaming the system.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Banks with political ties got bailouts, study shows

(Via Drudge)  Oddly enough, Reuters completely forgot to mention any particularly egregious examples.  This one in particular: you’d think that they would have wanted to do some actual reporting on skulduggery.

OneUnited Bank in Massachusetts got aid after Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) inserted language into the bailout bill that effectively directed Treasury to give the bank special consideration. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) also helped the bank, in which her husband held shares, by arranging a meeting between government officials and a group including OneUnited’s chief executive. The bank got $12.1 million last December, but it has made only a single dividend payment. It has now missed payments in three straight quarters, and it is not required to make up the missed payments.

You’d think.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

This is a marijuana leaf.

As you can see, it’s quite distinctive.  Dried, it looks like this:

I mention this so the next time the cops show up to bust your boyfriend for pot possession, you’ll at least know why they’re there. (more…)

It’s almost as if he doesn’t like people actually treating him as some sort of elected official, instead of His Excellency, Baron Massachusetts-Four.

(Via @BrianFaughnan)

How dare that commoner object to having what he said be corrected by his betters! Didn’t he know who he was talking to?

Moe Lane

PS: I almost imagine that Article I, Section 9 is beginning to grate upon certain of our legislators. To effectively have the thing, but not the name of the thing itself…

Crossposted to RedState.

I participated in a conference call yesterday with Senator Alexander (R-TN) about his “Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer” bill; not to mention his “Car Czar” awards for government intervention in the car industry (his first one was to Barney Frank, for spreading intervention largess among his subjects). The general themse of the call was to discuss the problems inherent in making the government (in the abstract) an owner of a specific type of business; I don’t recall the word ‘nationalization’ being used in the call, but the word loomed there throughout. Not to mention its connotations.

The whole call is available here: my only – rather garbled, alas – question was on whether the general atmosphere of government intervention (and the specific one of Frank’s interference) gave credence to allegations of partisan Democratic interference in Chrysler dealership closings. Senator Alexander did not go so far as to endorse this theory, but he raised the important point that when you have an ‘incestuous relationship like this’ (his term) – which is to say, a direct relationship between the dealership and the government – allegations like these are credible. Even the appearance of impropriety is in fact a problem (I agree: it erodes trust in the government as being a reasonably impartial referee), and the only way to fix that is to get ownership out of the hands of the government.

And I really don’t have anything even semi-witty to say to end this, sorry.  We just have to get the government out of the car industry.  Simple as that.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

(Via Protein Wisdom) How fortunate the subjects* of MA-04 are to have as their overlord someone who can make certain that the collective pain of an automotive company bailout ends up collectively pains everybody else but them:

Rep Barney Frank (D-Mass.) won a stay of execution on Thursday for a General Motors plant in his district that the automaker had announced it would close.

No other lawmaker has managed to halt the GM ax. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Frank oversees the government’s bailout program, known as TARP. Frank’s staff said the lawmaker spokes with GM CEO Fritz Henderson on Wednesday and convinced him to keep the Norton, Mass. plant open for at least 14 months.

GM announced Monday in its bankruptcy and restructuring plans it would close of nine of its plants and idle three others. The automaker said it would also shutter three service and parts operations by the end of the year — one of which is in Frank’s district.

Bad luck for the folks in the yet-to-be-determined plant that thought that their jobs were safe, and now have to lose them because MA-04’s subjects are special – more accurately, because their overlord is special – but I’m sure that the Democrats will find a suitably Republican district to punish.  After all, once you’ve decided that some animals are more equal than others, why not go whole hog, as it were?

Moe Lane

PS: This would be the time where I would suggest that the subjects of MA-04 should make the decision that they want to be citizens, again: only, I can’t quite make myself believe that there’s any chance that the suggestion would work.

*That should be an insult that would start fights in bars in this country; but it’s not.  Alas.

Crossposted to RedState.

Your laugh line of the day: “The party has grown by becoming the party of inclusion.”

…which is the worried reaction from a Lefty blogger who can’t quite understand why Barney Frank, head of the House Financial Services Committee, would say anything like the below in response to the way that the bankruptcy bill got shot down in the Senate (if only temporarily):

The reason that he said something like that, of course, is because the Democratic party is not the ‘party of inclusion:’ it’s the ‘party of expedience.’ The leadership (which is somewhat more liberal than its current Congressional roster, and very much more so than the rank and file) have been throwing this inclusion line around, with admittedly some success: but they have no intention of actually living up to it.
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It’s dead during the term of this administration, and never mind what TPMDC thinks. I’d give credit for the Obama administration for at least not duplicating the public relations fiasco that the Clinton administration got itself into sixteen years ago, but do we really want to reward a lack of intestinal fortitude?

Frank: Democrats Punting on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Until 2010

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Thursday that Democratic leaders won’t push to repeal the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy governing gay service in the military until 2010.

“I believe we should and will do ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ next year,” said Frank, a co-chairman of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Equality Caucus. “We haven’t done the preliminary work, the preparatory work. It would be a mistake to bring it up without a lot of lobbying and a lot of conversation.”

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The question being, “How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?”

More here, and H/T Instapundit. I hope that the guy wasn’t actually expecting a substantive answer: there’s no way that Rep. Frank is going to admit that his party has been merrily contributing to our current mortgage disaster… and there’s no way that he’s going to give a definitive “no” to that question, either.  When you’ve been in Congress as long as Frank has, you learn to obfuscate, prevaricate, insinuate, and get irate when asked unfortunately pointed questions like that.

But, hey, his constituents and supporters are the types who’ll groove to hearing about right-wing deregulation conspiracies anyway, so I guess that he’s got a pretty good shtick going there.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Or, the neocons induct its newest member.

In one of the more memorable television moments yesterday, the lunatic Democratic fringe group known as Code Pink got smacked in public for being, well, Code Pink:

I understand that there are some people for whom rational discussion is not an appropriate means of expressing themselves. You are entitled to do that in general, but not in a way that interrupts those of us who are trying to have rational discussions… I do not know how you think you advance any cause to which you might be attached by this kind of silliness.

Who said it? Clearly a hardcore neoconservative or war hawk, yes? Bobby Jindal? Tom Coburn? Sarah Palin? Thad McCotter? Mark Sanford? Marsha Blackburn?

Nope. Barney Frank.

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