by Publius from BigGovernment.com
This morning, we broke video of a USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, recounting for attendees at an NAACP awards dinner how she withheld help from a white farmer seeking the agency’s help in saving his farm.
Fox News is reporting that Ms. Sherrod has resigned. From Fox:
“There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a written statement. “We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.
“I figured that if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him,” she said.
So, the USDA has issued a statement. We’re still waiting to hear from the NAACP.
Presumably, they will denounce the racism in the video as strongly as the Obama Administration has.
Its not good to throw accussations of racism when your organization lives in a glass house. We will be awaiting the removal of Shirley Sherrod from her position but we won't hold our breath.
"The United States did not invent slavery. The United States invented freedom. Someone name me another country on earth that fought a civil war to make men equal. "
by Fred Barnes The Washington Examiner
For Republicans, the road map authored by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is the most important proposal in domestic policy since Ronald Reagan embraced supply-side economics in the 1980 presidential campaign. It's not only the freshest, boldest, and most comprehensive Republican thinking, it's also the most relevant. If Republicans adopt the road map as their basic ideological blueprint, it offers them the prospect of a landslide in the midterm election this year, followed by victory in the presidential election in 2012.For sure, that's a lot of weight for a policy statement drafted by a 40-year-old House member to bear. But the road map is perfectly timed to deal with the crises of the moment: economic stagnation, uncontrolled spending, the deficit and long-term debt, soaring tax rates, health care, the housing problem, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
Yet Republican leaders are wary of endorsing it, and for understandable reasons. The road map is sweeping and politically risky. It would overhaul popular programs like Medicare, relying on individuals to make decisions now made by government. Democrats are already attacking it. When Ryan delivered the weekly Republican radio address in late June, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put out a press release under the heading, "Republicans Make Key Advocate of Privatizing Social Security and Ending Medicare Their Spokesman on Budget."
There are three reasons Republicans should ignore their jitters about the road map. The first is that the nation's disenchantment with Obama and Democrats will take Republicans only so far. There's a residue of bad feelings toward Republicans from the years the party ruled Congress, spent too much, and produced scandals.
Voters have memories. To overcome their qualms, Republicans need to provide more than a litany of Democratic faults. Voters are looking for a serious solution to the mess we're in.
The second reason should be obvious after the ignominious Republican defeat in May in the race for John Murtha's old House seat in Pennsylvania. Democrat Mark Critz won by running to the right -- against Washington, Obama, spending, the deficit -- and Democratic candidates across the country are taking the same tack.
Republican candidates need to put some daylight between themselves and their Democratic opponents. The road map will stamp Republican candidates as the real conservatives, which is what voters happen to be looking for in 2010.
The third reason is the Republican message (or the absence of one). In Pennsylvania, it was "send a message to Nancy Pelosi." Voters declined. The road map is a message. The country is falling apart, we're going broke, government is on a takeover binge, the economy is wobbling. The road map is the solution. That's a pretty good message.
For now, the road map has a relatively small but growing cheering section. A dozen House members have endorsed it. Sen. Jim DeMint praised it in his book "Saving Freedom." Jeb Bush likes it. On CNN last week, economic historian Niall Ferguson called Ryan "a serious thinker on the Republican right who's prepared to grapple with these issues of fiscal sustainability and come up with a plan."
The plan would give everyone a refundable tax credit to buy health insurance, allow individual investment accounts to be carved out of Social Security, reduce the six income tax rates to two (10 and 25 percent), and replace the corporate tax (35 percent) with a business consumption tax (8.5 percent). And that's not the half of it.
As ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, Ryan was able to get the Congressional Budget Office to run the numbers in his plan. CBO concluded the plan would "make the Social Security and Medicare programs permanently solvent [and] lift the growing debt burden on future generations, and hold federal taxes to no higher than 19 percent of GDP." Pretty impressive results, I'd say.
The road map does one more thing. It would give Republicans an agenda if they gain control of the House or Senate in the midterm election -- or a mandate if they win both. "What's the point of winning an election if you don't have a mandate?" Ryan asks.
He doesn't expect a mandate in 2010. "I need to make sure these ideas survive this election," he says, and set the stage for "the most ideological, sea-changing election in our lifetime" in 2012. Merely survive in 2010? The road map can do better than that. How about thrive?
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