Ted Cruz's Bizarre Appearance At the Heritage Foundation

Sen. Ted Cruz praises noted racist and homophobe Jesse Helms. Cruz said more politicians should say "crazy things." I'm speechless.

“I’ll tell you something … the very first political contribution I ever made in my life was to Jesse Helms. When I was a kid, I sent $10 to Jesse Helms, ’cause they were beating up on him, they were coming after him hard and I thought it wasn’t right, and at the time my allowance was 50 cents a week,” the Texas Republican said. “I am willing to venture a guess that I may have been Jesse Helms’ single largest donor as a percentage of annual income.”

Cruz also recalled a story about when a young Helms received a campaign donation check from John Wayne. He explained that, according to the story, Helms figured out how to get in touch with Wayne and called to thank him for the support.

“Apparently Wayne said, ‘Oh yeah, you’re that guy saying all those crazy things. We need 100 more like you,’” Cruz said. ”The willingness to say all those crazy things is a rare, rare characteristic in this town, and you know what? It’s every bit as true now as it was then. We need a hundred more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate.”

Cruz reminds me of this scene from Airplane!

Dubious Rubio Gets An Astroturf Burn

Sen Marco Rubio gets a taste of astroturfing. Tea party protesters came to the Washington DC to voice their disapproval of immigration reform. Did these tea party protesters organize themselves? Of course not. Politico reports that Rep. Steve King organized the event.

“This bill is at its core amnesty,” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who organized the event, told the sympathetic crowd. “We’re here to today… to take this debate outside the halls of Congress. If it’s not going to be good enough inside, we’ll take it outside!”

The Heritage Foundation was also at King's astroturfing rally. Apparently, the Heritage Foundation isn't letting former fellow Jason Richwine's discredited reports and ties to the white nationist movement keep them from being against immigration.

“Marco Rubio has not read his own bill!” said Robert Rector, a senior researcher for the Heritage Foundation.

I am no fan of Rubio but it should be noted that the Senate immigration reform bill is still being written. Rector hasn't read the bill because it isn't done.

This is essentially King and the Heritage Foundation calling all the media outlets and bringing and busing in a handful of tea party faithful. Politico and other outlets cover this like it is a big story.

Meet Jason Richwine, White Nationalist At the Heritage Foundation

Jeb Bush and Hispanic Republicans are pushing back against the Heritage Foundation’s Jason Richwine. Richwine is a researcher at the bogus think tank. Richwine's Harvard dissertation made the outlandlish claim that Hispanics have lower IQs. Bush and the Hispanic Network sent out this press release.

WASHINGTON, DC – Members of the Hispanic Leadership Network’s (HLN) National Advisory Committee released the following statement regarding the inflammatory remarks on immigrants’ intelligence by the Heritage Foundation’s Jason Richwine. The HLN Advisory Committee signees are: Governor Jeb Bush, Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin, Mario Rodriguez, Massey Villarreal, Jovita Carranza and HLN's executive director, Jennifer S. Korn.

“The beliefs espoused by the Heritage Foundation’s Jason Richwine are ignorant and reflect a lack of understanding of our immigration system and the American immigrant experience. American Hispanics are not a community of low intelligence but rather one of entrepreneurship and upward mobility. This lack of understanding, from the author himself of Heritage’s immigration study, only further discredits their already controversial and flawed findings. This is particularly disappointing because of our respect for the Heritage Foundation and their traditions of high standards, rigorous work, and support for immigration reform. We look forward to the next Heritage study that excludes such obvious biases and flawed starting points.”

The Hispanic Leadership Network began its efforts in 2011 and strives to engage the Hispanic community on center-right issues that will restore opportunity and prosperity in America.

If you are wondering if Richwine is a racist then wonder no more. Richwine has written for the website AlternativeRight.com. The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented the website's history of racism.

At “Alternative Right,” Spencer’s senior contributing editors are Peter Brimelow and Paul Gottfried. Brimelow founded VDARE.com, an anti-immigrant website, and he has described “Alternative Right” as a project of the VDARE Foundation. Gottfried has been a contributor to “Taki’s Magazine” and has spoken at conferences of the white nationalist American Renaissance magazine, whose editor has written that black people are incapable of sustaining any kind of civilization. Gottfried gave a speech at the inaugural meeting of the H.L. Mencken Club in November 2008 titled, “The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right.” Brimelow was the keynote speaker at that event, and Spencer the master of ceremonies. Spencer and Gottfried also appeared together last October on “The Political Cesspool,” a racist and anti-Semitic radio program.

One of the bloggers at “Alternative Right” is Richard Hoste, who recently wrote that “low-IQ Mexican immigration is the greatest threat to America.” He also wrote: “Schools should stop wasting time trying to close achievement gaps. And not only do whites have nothing to feel guilty about, they are the best thing to ever happen to blacks. Even ignoring race, humanity will not move forward through equality or by raising up the really stupid to the level of just plain stupid.” Finally, Hoste had this pithy observation: “While there’s more miscegenation [interracial sex] than in the past … we should be heartened that white teenage girls aren’t passing themselves around in black neighborhoods.”

On the AlternativeRight.com website made the claim that if Hispanic immigrants are allowed to become U.S. citizens then their children will become harden criminals.

An even more serious problem with Unz's analysis is his glossing over of the generational issue. U.S.-born Hispanics are much more likely to be incarcerated than foreign-born Hispanics. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, this is a finding that is well known to researchers in the field, and it implies that Hispanic crime will become more of a problem as time goes on, not less.

While neighborhoods with mostly first-generation Hispanics do not have a large crime problem, entrenched Hispanic communities are usually more dangerous. In many of Unz's most prominent examples of low-crime Hispanic communities -- Silicon Valley, the Jackson Heights section of Queens, even Los Angeles proper -- the adult Hispanic population is primarily immigrant.

Richwine makes the bizarre argument Hispanic crime is skyrocket the the better educated and more economically mobile they become.

Unz adds: "There actually does exist a connection between poverty and crime ... and ... there is every reason to expect this crime rate will drop further as Hispanics continue to move up the economic ladder." Wrong. Consider again what happens between the first and second generations. The children of Hispanic immigrants are much wealthier and better educated than their parents, but they also commit crimes at higher rates. The poverty-crime correlation here is negative, not positive.

The fact that the Heritage Foundation would hire Richwine says much about the credibility of their think tank.

Jim DeMint Partner

Some jokes write themselves.

What can we expect from Jim DeMint when he becomes president of the Heritage Foundation? Thoughtful policy papers? Innovative solutions to problems facing America? How about more Glenn Beck.

Sen. Jim DeMint called in to Glenn Beck's radio program today to discuss his decision to resign from the Senate to become the president of the Heritage Foundation. DeMint explained that, with the re-election of President Obama, conservatives were not going to be able "to do anything positive at the federal level for the next four years" so he needed to be somewhere outside of government, working on solutions for when Obama's policies inevitably bring America "to its knees" ... and that will entail partnering with people like Beck to get the message out; a prospect that Beck was very eager to embrace:

DeMint is kissing Beck's ass. Beck is enjoying getting his ass kissed. Republican politicians like DeMint view conservative media as their true constituency. What a sad world we live in when a U.S. Senator feels the need to treat Glenn Beck as someone of great stature.

Jim DeMint Is Really Stupid

"To state the obvious, you don't make Jim DeMint the head of your think tank in order to improve the quality of your scholarship."

Ezra Klein, on Jim DeMint becoming the president of the Heritage Foundation.

DeMint is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. DeMint ventured into conspiracy land with his statement that President Obama is like the evil government in the novel 1984.

• In April, he accused President Obama of taking us into Orwellian 1984 territory. “When I read George Orwell’s novel 1984, I would almost smile because I would think that could never happen,” DeMint said. “But he [Obama] really is saying one thing and meaning the complete opposite. He is presenting a complete redefinition of words and ideas.”

DeMint has publicly opposed single mothers and gay people being school teachers.

At a 2004 debate, DeMint declared that openly gay people should not be teaching public school. "We need the folks that are teaching in schools to represent our values," he said. DeMint later added that he "would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman, who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend, should be hired to teach my third grade children."

During the debt ceiling crisis, DeMint told Andrew Napolitano that he was willing to push the federal government into default.

DEMINT: The reason the president hasn’t addressed the issue even though we knew it was facing us, and this is the fourth time he’s asked for an increase in the debt limit, he has been burning time — that’s what [Vice President Joe] Biden was supposed to do is get the Republicans behind closed doors — is burn the clock up until we have a crisis. So now we’re at the point where there would have to be some serious disruptions in order not to raise it. I’m willing to do that, I just don’t think we can find enough of Republicans and Democrats to say it’s time to stop spending.

DeMint is so economically ignorant that Sec. of Treasury Tim Geithner had to explain to the Senator that a cap can not be placed on placed on the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is either raised or paid down. There is no in between.

Geithner's letter to DeMint.

In your letter, you suggest that the debt limit should not be raised, and instead that federal debt be "capped" at the current limit. You further propose that after the government's borrowing authority is exhausted in August, the United States should for some indefinate period pay only the interest on its debt, while stopping or delaying payment of a broad swath of other commitments the the country has made under the law.

I have expressed my concerns about this idea before, but I will restate them to be clear: this "prioritization" proposal advocates a radical and deeply irresponsible departure from the commitments by Presidents of both parties, throughout American history, to honor all of the commitments our Nation has made.

The debt limit applies to past decisions of Congress. Increasing the debt limit is necessary to allow the United States to honor obligations previously authorized and appropriated by Congress.

DeMint was one of the 38 Republican senators to vote against U.N. Treaty on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Republican Bob Dole came back to the Senate in a wheelchair to lobby fellow Republicans. Dole himself is disabled and currently moving about in a wheelchair. DeMint and other Republicans voted against the treaty over conspiracy theory fears that the United Nations would take away America's sovereignty.

Dan Drezner marvels at the stupidity of not ratifying the treaty.

Now I'm honestly pretty dubious about whether U.S. ratification of the treaty would accomplish all that. Unlike Law of the Sea, not ratifying this treaty doesn't appreciably harm U.S. interests. It does, however, make the United States look pretty dysfunctional. In essence, the U.S. Senate just rejected a treaty on protecting the disabled that would have globalized the status quo in U.S. law on this issue. To use the parlance of international relations scholars, this is dumber than a bag of hammers.

One would look at DeMint's record and think this guy is really fucking stupid. Marco Rubio views DeMint as an intellectual giant.

Jim DeMint. He’s a great source of wisdom as a person who’s had to make decisions that have made him unpopular in his own party.

The Shark Tank reports that Rubio is putting together a farewell video for his intellectual mentor.

Update: DeMint is neither a fan of free speech or a woman's right to choice. DeMint sponsored an amendment that would ban women from discussing abortion with their doctors over the internet.

“What about a woman experiencing a high-risk pregnancy who is talking with her doctor through video conferencing?” Keenan said. “Under Sen. DeMint’s extreme plan, if abortion came up in that doctor-patient conversation, the woman and her physician would have to go to a separate communications system. He’s calling for an abortion-only version of Skype. It is impractical, ridiculous, and, most importantly, bad for women in rural or remote areas who would not be able to discuss the full set of options with their doctor.”

Once Again With Feeling: Bush Tax Cuts Created Deficit

The Heritage Foundation is attempting to make the dubious claim that the Bush tax cuts were not responsible for the deficit. The Heritage Foundation claims to use Congressional Budget Office numbers. The graph adds up the entire budget deficit to $11.7 billion. We should be so lucky.



In 2005, the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities did their own calculations of CBO numbers. 48 percent of the deficit came from tax legislation, 37 percent from defense, international and homeland security, 15 percent from domestic programs.

The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the
deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for nearly half — 48 percent — of this $539 billion in increased costs.1 Increases in program spending
make up the other 52 percent and have been primarily concentrated in
defense, homeland security, and international affairs.

The Administration has repeatedly defended its tax cuts as a needed stimulus during the recent economic downturn. But the downturn is behind us, and the cost
of the tax cuts is scheduled to increase in the years ahead. Indeed, some of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 that benefit only highincome households have not even started to take effect yet. The repeal of the “personal exemption phase-out” for high-income taxpayers, as well as repeal of the limitation on itemized deductions for high-income taxpayers, do not start to phase in until 2006 and do not take full
effect until 2010. Estate tax repeal also does not take effect until 2010.

A growing number of studies from highly respected institutions and economists have
concluded that the negative effect on long-term growth of the increased deficits that the tax cuts.

The wealthiest Americans benefitted. The tax cuts didn't create the magic surplus that Bush promised. That is why the Heritage Foundation is attempting to reframe the Bush tax cuts with a chart that makes absolutely no sense.

Obama Pushes For Insurance Exchanges

Conservatives have supported health insurance exchanges. The Heritage Foundation and U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio have advocated taking health care coverage away from employers. The advantage of employer-based health insurance is private companies can negotiate cheaper coverage with insurers. Citizens don't have that power. That is the same reason why the proposed co-opts have limited leverage with insurance companies. The public insurance option will be big enough to leverage for cheaper medical treatment.

Obama has caved in to Sen. Olympia Snowe and is proposing insurance exchanges.

Now, if you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who don't currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange - a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It's how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it's time to give every American the same opportunity that we've given ourselves.

This will take health insurance coverage from employers and into the private markets. Companies save money by not offing insurance and insurers can charge higher prices per person. This is not health care reform. Obama is offering a financial giveaway to insurers and businesses. My fears have been proven to be true.

Snowe told David Shuster she will not support a public option. Snowe is optimistic about Obama's speech. Health care advocates should be worried.



Update: After watching speech, it appears a scaled down version of the public option is still on the table.

TARP Making Profit: True

This is bound to drive Republicans using the "Obama is a socialist" attack. Politifact checked President Obama's statement that the federal government made a profit off the loan money being repaid by banks.

"Several financial institutions are set to pay back $68 billion to taxpayers," he said. "And while we know that we will not escape the worst financial crisis in decades without some losses to taxpayers, it's worth noting that in the first round of repayments from these companies the government has actually turned a profit."

Politifact found the answer to be completely true.



The ten major companiesd are repaying the Treasury Department $1.8 billion in paid dividends from prefered stocks.The short answer is the Treasury became a shareholder and the companies are now repaying with profits from shares. 600 companies have paticipated in stocks and the federal government has received $4.5 billion.

The treasury borrowed money for the TARP loans at a low interest. The loans were less than the returning dividend payments. Simple math equates that to a profit. The federal government has warrants to by stocks as these companies start to rebound. The government would get in as the stock goes up. The Fed would buy enough stocks to boost the price and makes the stocks desirable for investors. The Fed gets out when the stock peaks. More potential profit.

I love how the Heritage Foundation attempts to spin this against Obama.

David John, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that while it's accurate to say the government is turning a profit on these specific transactions, it was so costly to create the TARP that "you can't say the overall program is a money-maker."

John recently wrote a paper at the Heritage Foundation calling for "Allowing American workers to save and invest a portion of their income in accounts." That is the 2005 DOA Bush plan to have people invest money that would be going into Social Security, instead, into the stock market. Conservatives have been trying to kill Social Security by defunding the program.

Other experts disagree with John's economic on TARP. Short answer: the federal government will make a profit.

Still, the public too often tagged TARP as a bailout, said John Hall, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association.

"It's as if people thought money was handed out to banks," Hall said. "It wasn't. And it drove us nuts. The government has turned a profit. It made money plus some."

Bank analyst Bert Ely said while the government may end up losing money on investments in some financial firms, it's likely the entirety of the bank portion of the TARP will ultimately turn a profit.

The 5 percent paid in dividends on preferred stock purchased by the Treasury will certainly outpace the interest rate on money borrowed to finance the program, he said. And the warrants could also prove profitable.

What are conservative going to call Obama if the TARP plan succeeds? Successful Socialist has a nice ring but not a lot of political punch.