Don't Let Your Dingell Dangle

John Dingell Jr. recently announced that he intends to retire from the House of Representatives. He succeeded his father, John Dingell, Sr. in December 1955. Earlier in 1955, Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, The Salk polio vaccine received full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.West Germany became a sovereign country.

Six months after Dingell Jr. took over his father's seat, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act, creating the Interstate Highway System. So, Dingell Jr.'s term in Congress is older than the highways upon which drove the cars once made in his district.

A year after John Dingell ascended to Congress, Fidel Castro and his followers land in Cuba in the boat Granma.

Judging from before and after photos  of Detroit and Cuba, it looks like Detroit has fared worse under 60 years of Communist rule than Detroit has under Democratic management.

Michigan Theater, Detroit

Detroit street before and after

Havana streets before the Revolution

Havana after the Revolution

John Dingell Sr was seated in Congress in 1933; the same year that construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge, Adolph Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, Pakistan was part of India, Prohibition was still in effect, and perhaps the most ironic of all, during the first year that a Dingell sat in the House:

• The United States Federal Government outlaws cannabis.

And during the last year of Dingell Jr.'s reign, the US Federal Government has effectively legalized cannabis:

Justice Department Will Allow Washington, Colorado Marijuana Legalization

So, the combined "service" of Dingells senior and junior will have spanned over 80 eventful years.

Where the wacko birds roost

I've grown tired of Leftists (and some Republicans) complaining about "right-wing extremists" and warning about some supposed takeover of the Republican Party by purists who refuse to accept compromise on issues.

Of course, it isn't just the Left who seems convinced that anyone who pushes back against the "Progressive" march of our country to bigger, more intrusive government is a "wacko bird."

All the while, the real monomaniacal, uncompromising purists of extreme positions are pretty solidly from the Left.

The NYT reports that Leftist lobbyists and senators are chaffed at a deal Obama made to get a political crony through the judicial nomination process.

"When Democrats changed Senate rules last year to limit the filibuster against White House nominees, it raised hopes among some liberals that President Obama would use his new power to reshape the federal judiciary. Now, just over three months later, some Democrats and progressive groups are instead trying to stop two of the president’s latest nominees to the federal bench on the grounds that they are too conservative.

Black lawmakers, civil rights advocates and abortion rights groups are challenging two Georgia nominees put forward by the White House under an agreement with the state’s two Republican senators. The two Republicans were given a say in picking candidates for district court in exchange for allowing a stalled nominee to a federal appeals court to advance."

This sort of deal making with senators is as old as the Republic. But, of course, there is no honor among the Progressive thieves infesting Washington today, so the prospect of Democrats reneging on the president's deal is very real; even probable. And the president will object to that even less than he did to the Russian re-conquest of the Ukraine or al Qaeda re-conquest of Fallujah.

The Democratic Party is run part and parcel by true believers who will accept no deviation from the "Progressive" vision they have set before themselves for the country. Look at the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Nearly a majority of Democrats in Congress are members and almost all of the leadership. Then look at their platform. Look at what the caucus leadership has said and the sorts of things they want to inflict on this country. Then tell me that Ted Cruz is an extremist wacko bird.

Spinning the CBO

They say statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics. Case in point: President Barack Obama’s top economist, Jason Furman, tried to obfuscate the impact of Obama's, and the Left in general, demand for an increase in the federal minimum wage. While passing over the CBO's projection that doing so would result in 500,000 people losing their jobs, Furman posited that increasing the minimum wage would " lift many [employees] out of poverty". A projection, based on statistical modelling done by the CBO.

Furman is also the man tasked with spinning the CBO's dire predictions about the effects of Obamacare on opportunity in this country. The CBO projected that "Obamacare would decrease labor participation by the equivalent of 2 million jobs by 2017". “This is not businesses cutting back on jobs,” Furman said during the conference call, in an attempt to put a favorable spin the CBO-provided numbers. “This is people having new choices.”

I would like to know if the people who might have been "lifted out of poverty" by the increase in the minimum wage are the same people who then face Furman's Choice: reduce their work hours and income to maintain their insurance subsidy or accept the increased income and the reduction in take-home pay that comes with it. That is a Hobson's Choice created by government policies which ultimately results in trapping low-income employees in poverty and limiting their upward mobility. Another tragic consequence of the law of good intentions.