"Spit not into the fire, especially when there be meat upon it."
— George Washington, the father of our country.
That bothersome old Communist Clarence Kailin is finally being stuffed into the ground. Dead, you know.
My friend John Nichols, the La Pasionaria of today’s Left, lights this sputtering candle at Kailin’s shrine:
Kailin, who died recently at 95, was one of the first Americans to take up arms against the fascist forces that swept across Europe in the years before World War II. He was one of 2,800 American volunteers who fought from 1936 to 1939 as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in defense of the elected Spanish government against a coup engineered by Generalissimo Francisco Franco with the backing of Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini. His role in "the good fight" [Blaska: on behalf of the Soviet Union’s old Joe Stalin] gave Kailin, a scrawny kid from Madison’s multi-ethnic Greenbush neighborhood, a place [Blaska: of shame] in an essential chapter of 20th century history.
Now that’s some truckling (and un-journalistic) hero worship! The gulags? The purges? The show trials? Darkness at Noon? Alexander Solzhenitsyn? The Berlin Wall? Forced starvation of 7 million kulaks? Persecution of religious believers?
Never mind, look over here! Clarence Kailin, lifelong admitted member of the Communist party, unrepentant to the last, fought against fascism! Of course, so did old Joe Stalin, but I digress.
In the spirit of such hagiography, I have commissioned a florist to deliver a wreath of prickly roses in the shape of a hammer and sickle to the memorial at the First Unitarian Society this Saturday. The card reads simply, "In grateful memory of our victims. /s/ Joe."
After all, the purpose of a memorial is to remember, is it not?
Seventy years later, left-leaning journalists like Nichols and Amy Goodman continue the same errors of omission. Why? ... To forget that "the good fight" against fascism also involved the crushing of a revolution? [A Capital Times letter: The dark side of the Spanish Civil War]
The noted political commentator Walter Williams asks and answers:
Why are the horrors of Nazism so well known and widely condemned, but not those of socialism and communism? For decades after World War II, people have hunted down and sought punishment for Nazi murderers. How much hunting down and seeking punishment for Stalinist and Maoist murderers?
Academics, media elites and leftist politicians both in the U.S. and Europe protested the actions and military buildup of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the breakup of the Soviet Union. Recall the leftist hissy fit when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire and predicted that communism would wind up on the trash heap of history.
... The reason why the world's leftists give the world's most horrible murderers a pass is because they sympathize with their socioeconomic goals, which include government ownership and/or control over the means of production. In the U.S., the call is for government control, through regulations, as opposed to ownership. [A Minority View: Excused Horrors]
Kailin’s memorial service, John Nichols tells us,
will feature talks, music and video presentations recalling Kailin’s service in Spain and his lifetime of campaigning for civil rights, trade unionism and international solidarity.
In Clarence’s honor, Nichols will provide voice-over narration for the following film: (Actual footage of Clarence the K marching off to do some "international solidarity." Look for a guest appearance by the Havana Paul look-alike.)
Compulsory campaign donations, aka: "reform"
Taking our tax dollars to pay for the political class’ entry examinations (aka: "public financing" political campaigns) is the holy grail of the Left. Ed Garvey, the last candidate for governor to take the people’s money and run, to no effect, cannot go two blogs without extolling the colon-cleansing virtues of this virtuous-sounding scam.
The proverbial camel’s nose under the tent of public financed campaigns occurred 30 years ago with the introduction of that little box on your state income tax form. You know the one: where you can check off $1 to be used to help politicians finance their campaigns? Doesn’t ring a bell? You are in good company. Thirty years after it was created, fewer than 5 percent of all state income tax payers check off the Wisconsin Election Campaign Fund. Now, there is democracy in action!
The check-off is voluntary and that is the problem. Which is why Ed Garvey, Michael McCabe and other goody two-shoes want to use the coercive powers of the state to suck up your involuntary tax dollars to finance their campaigns.
If state-subsidized political speech is not nefarious enough, the unintended consequences of the Wisconsin Election Campaign Fund are themselves reason to run screaming from public financing. Milwaukee writer Mike Nichols blows the cover off publicly funded political campaigns in the latest WI Interest magazine.
Spencer Black, the longtime Democratic representative from Madison, has repeatedly taken the public subsidy while building up big surpluses in his campaign account. First elected to the Assembly in 1984, Black has been reelected a dozen times. Up until 2000 (when opponents just gave up and stopped running against him), he applied for the tax dollars almost every time he ran.
Black, for example, received $4,155 from the public fund on Sept. 30, 1996. This is the same year he gave a total of $4,775 in cash or in-kind contributions to other politicians or committees, including $1,200 to the Dane County Conservation Alliance—a special interest committee registered with the state.
On Sept. 30, 2004, state Rep. Mark Pocan accepted $5,574 from the public fund. According to his campaign reports, on that very same day he made a $1,000 contribution to the Unity Fund—the Democratic Party of Wisconsin campaign account that was used, at least in part that year, to support Democratic candidates at the national level.
... The simultaneous funneling of money elsewhere raises fundamental questions about whether some politicians really need public dollars-–and whether their use of those dollars, instead of making the system more competitive, has helped make it more byzantine, more sophisticated and more of an insider’s game. [WI Interest: Anatomy of a Failed Idea]
B.O.H.I.C.A
Want a taste of what Obamacare would be like? Look no further than the latest developments on mammograms.
A government panel's decision to toss out long-time guidelines for breast cancer screening is causing an uproar, and well it should. This episode is an all-too-instructive preview of the coming political decisions about cost-control and medical treatment that are at the heart of ObamaCare....
... every Democratic version of ObamaCare makes this task force an arbiter of the benefits that private insurers will be required to cover as they are converted into government contractors. What are now merely recommendations will become de facto rules, and under national health care these kinds of cost analyses will inevitably become more common as government decides where finite tax dollars are allowed to go.
Stimulus nimbulus
- Public policy wonk extraordinaire Christian Schneider is running for Congress from Wisconsin’s historic 10th district.
- $4,800,000,000,000 — Unless lawmakers make big changes, the interest payment on the debt Americans will have to pay to keep the country running over the next decade will reach unheard of levels. [CNN: Interest on U.S. debt = $4.8 trilliion]
Today’s Chuckle:
Three prisoners of the Soviet gulag were sent out on work detail. "How did you get sent here?" asked the first.
"I opposed Bukharin," the second inmate answered.
"I supported Bukharin," the third replied.
"I am Bukharin!" the first inmate exclaimed.
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