“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.

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.

(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.

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.

The part I don’t get is: if this happened in 2007, and you’re trying now to get a medical marijuana bill through Congress… surely somebody would have shown you what pot at least looks like since then, right? As part of the preliminary briefings, and everything. Instead, you still don’t know how to recognize it, apparently.

It’s all very mysterious.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

OOPS: H/T AoSHQ.

(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.

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.

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.

…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.

That’s why the Speaker of the House has completely suppressed ‘regular order‘ in legislation and is now running one branch of Congress like it was a private fief. That’s why the ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats are currently being bribed or cowed into submission on fiscal conservatism. And that’s why Specter’s about to have the deal altered, and he really should pray that they don’t alter it further.  In light of that, Frank’s comments seem a good deal more understandable: the man must be bored silly with having to constantly pretend that he likes or even tolerates anybody to the right of him, and if you can’t sound off on those awful trimmers and equivocators on Bill Maher’s show, then where can you?

So I suggest that this Politicususa.com fellow get with the program. The people who actually run his party will let him know when they need him to express an opinion; until then, all that’s desired is the usual money, vote, and critical willingness to accept whatever today’s talking points are.

Business as usual, in other words.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

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.”

And next year we’ll hear another reason why gay people can’t openly serve, and the year after that there’ll be yet another reason (which will probably involve the increased GOP presence in Congress), and the year after that – well, that’s an election year, and so it’s understandable that the administration will be forced by circumstances to not play up the issue, right? And so on, and so on, and so on. The truth of it is, the Democratic leadership doesn’t want to open that can of worms. Ever. It’s like DoMA all over again: if they tried repealing the law, the only thing that would happen would be an embarrassing failure in Congress as roughly half the Democratic caucus (that’s a guess) either abstained or voted against repeal.

This does not please me, by the way: I think that we should allow gay people to serve openly in the military (I’m aware that this is a minority position in my party, and in this context I’m frankly indifferent to whether you agree with me on it). I do find it exasperating that the Democratic Party is so adamantly against having this topic settled once and for all, even when it controls the executive and legislative branches of government…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

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.