From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Editor's note: James Taranto is returning from an assignment today. In place of his regular column, here's a free sample of our premium email newsletter, OpinionJournal's Political Diary. If you like it, you can subscribe here. Mr. Taranto returns Tuesday.
In today's Political Diary:
- Hsu Shoos
- Mike Bloomberg and the Future of the Welfare State
- Never Share a Foxhole with Hillary (Quote of the Day)
- Needed: An Intervention for Californians Addicted to Public Office
A New Member of 'Exiles for Hillary'?
Norman
Hsu, the fugitive from justice who may have illegally funneled over a million
dollars to Hillary Clinton and other leading Democrats, has apparently gone
missing. The New York Times tried to find the elusive Mr. Hsu this week and
ran into a stone wall.
There are no offices for Mr. Hsu at any of the addresses he listed for his companies, and at the elegant residential tower that he gives as his personal address, Times reporters were told he moved out two years ago.
Even E. Lawrence Barcella, Mr. Hsu's lawyer, seemed to be abandoning his client. He said that Mr. Hsu was getting a California lawyer to represent him over a warrant that was issued there in the 1990s when Mr. Hsu failed to show up for a court hearing after pleading no contest to grand theft charges. Mr. Barcella carefully declined to comment on the whereabouts of his client and stressed that he won't be handling Mr. Hsu's argument with California authorities: "On that matter, he will be represented by California counsel."
All of this is very reminiscent of the 1996 Clinton fundraising scandal. A total of 120 witnesses either fled the country, pleaded the Fifth Amendment or otherwise were unavailable for questioning. In the end, a total of 14 people were found guilty on various charges relating to the scandal. No wonder the Hillary Clinton campaign wants to change the subject away from Mr. Hsu.
In the Future, We'll All Work for Bloomberg
The
rich are different, and so is New York City. That's the way to understand Mayor
Mike Bloomberg's latest big idea. In conjunction with the Rockefeller Foundation,
he's promoting a privately funded demonstration project to pay poor New York
City parents to take better care of their kids. Take your kid to the dentist:
$100. Get your kid a library card: $50.
The Mayor is not the first to discover bribery as a means of kid-behavior management. His own daughter Georgina is famous even in top-flight horsy circles as an unusually indulged young lady (so much so that she's started a business selling second-hand jodhpurs). Mr. Bloomberg told NPR: "We pay rich people not to plant corn. We pay rich people to drill in some places and not others." He added: "We have been trying to end poverty for a long time. We have spent trillions of dollars... Time to try something different."
Less clearly stated is another rationale. Because New York is already fiscally responsible for the poor, it can make sense to pay them to change their behavior. More than 30% of city residents are Medicaid recipients, a million receive food stamps, and more than $100 million goes out every month in public assistance checks. New York also spends far more than other cities on public housing and rental subsidies, on child-support enforcement, on home health-care subsides, on everything.
A similar rationale was behind the mayor's public smoking ban and trans-fat ban -- because the city ends up paying for the health consequences of smoking and obesity. Mr. Bloomberg has a consistent philosophy at least, which might be called public ownership of the welfare class.
Such ultra-interventionist behavior management undoubtedly appeals to New York taxpayers more than it might to taxpayers elsewhere. Polls show voters see Hizzoner's just-make-it-happen attitude as a sensible route in a city where the costs of it not happening end up in their tax bills.
"Speaking at a forum organized by Lance Armstrong on cancer research, Hillary Clinton told Chris Matthews if she is elected president, she will declare war on cancer, and then she will support the war on cancer for two years, and then she will be against it for a year, and then she will back out of it all together" -- Jay Leno, host of NBC's "Tonight Show."
Talk about election officials being hoisted by their own political petard.
Facing a forced career change next year under the state's term-limits law, California Senate President Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez have fast-tracked a ballot initiative that would allow them to stay in office. While the measure would ostensibly toughen the term limits law, it would also create a special "transition period" that would let 80% of today's sitting legislators delay their departure. "The practical effect of the measure would be to allow more lawmakers... to stay in office longer," concluded a San Francisco Chronicle analysis.
Armed with a highly favorable ballot summary crafted by Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown, the two legislative leaders appeared to be well on their way to hoodwinking the electorate. But this week it became clear that those in charge of gathering signatures to put the measure on the ballot -- mostly paid mercenaries and public employee union members -- may have slacked off on the job. County voter registrars are reporting that an unusually low number of signatures are passing muster during sample checks. Los Angeles County, for example, is clocking in with only a very low 59% validity rate.
While it's still likely the measure will qualify for the ballot, registrars now are contemplating a laborious manual check of the million-plus signatures, a process that might not be completed by the late September deadline to allow the measure to qualify for the February presidential primary ballot. If not, the measure would have to go on the June primary ballot, when parties nominate candidates for Congress and the state legislature.
But there's a fly in the political ointment: Candidates for state legislature must file for re-election in March. None of the termed-out legislators would legally be eligible to file. They'd have to seek other employment.
There is another way to make sure the Perata-Nunez employment extension proposal makes it on the all-important February ballot. A two-thirds vote of the legislature can override any obstacles and place it there. But minority Republicans would be in a position to exact enormous concessions for supporting the initiative, including perhaps a redistricting commission that would draw more competitive seats or even a major overhaul of state budgeting practices.
Even if the Perata-Nunez plan makes it before the voters in February, the latest desperate maneuvering may finally cause the public to gag. "A lot of voters may ask themselves why these people just can't go into the private sector and find work," says Jon Fleischman, who broke the story of the signature meltdown on his political blog FlashReport.org.
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Today on OpinionJournal:
- John Bolton: Thanks to feckless diplomacy, Kim Jong Il may preserve his nuclear program.
- Kim Strassel: How the GOP can woo the ladies.
- Peggy Noonan: America needs unity in dealing with Iraq. That means the president must lead.
- Pete du Pont: Curtail the First Amendment? Why not just do away with elections?
- The Journal Editorial Report: Tune in this weekend for an encore presentation: the Romney campaign, the White House after Rove, and Muslim footbaths.
And on the Taste page:
- Naomi Riley: Why sex scandals still scandalize.
- Howard Husock: Arriving in a new city gives me a sense of what it's like to be an immigrant.
- Nathaniel Popper: Do culture-themed public schools cross a legal line?
