United Liberty

President Barack Obama is rolling out a tax on banks to pay for the Wall Street bailout that was the centerpiece of the government’s intervention during the economic crisis:

President Obama laid down his proposal for a new tax on the nation’s largest financial institutions on Thursday, saying he wanted “to recover every single dime the American people are owed” for bailing out the economy.

With both anti-Wall Street sentiment and the budget deficit running high, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill welcomed the proposal, which could ultimately raise up to $117 billion to cover projected bailout losses. Republicans were uncharacteristically silent, their instinctive opposition to tax increases apparently checked by their fear of defending big bankers. And the financial industry lobby seemed splintered, with small community banks happily exempted.
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The proposed tax would apply to bank, thrift and insurance companies with more than $50 billion in assets and would start after June 30. It would not apply to certain holdings, like customers’ insured savings, but to assets in risk-taking operations. The levy would raise an estimated $90 billion over 10 years, according to the White House.

But it would remain in force longer if all losses to the bailout fund, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, were not recovered after a decade. The Treasury now projects that the losses from the $700 billion loan program, which was created in October 2008, could reach $117 billion, about a third of the loss that it projected last summer — an improved forecast that reflected the renewed strength on Wall Street.

Democrats may have come to an agreement on an excise tax for high-end insurance plans to help fund ObamaCare:

The White House reached a tentative agreement with union leaders early Thursday to tax high-cost insurance plans, officials said, removing one of the major stumbling blocks in the way of a final compromise on comprehensive health care legislation sought by President Barack Obama.

Complete details of the tentative deal were not immediately available, although the White House was expected to present it to senior lawmakers later in the day. Union leaders also were returning to the White House.
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In a win specifically for union members, negotiators were working out a plan to delay the tax from being imposed on collectively bargained health plans for several years.

So, to make sure you understand this…a tax high-end insurance plans, aimed at the evil “rich” (even though this tax will hit the middle class), will apply to private health insurance plans, that is unless they are part of a labor deal (collective bargaining agreement).

Our president just got a sweetheart deal for his number one political constituency, exempting them from major tax hike. Once again, President Obama bows to labor interests.

Rothenberg Political Report has now moved the Senate in Massachusetts to a toss-up, a significant down grade from what was a certain Democratic win just a week ago:

Democratic desperation and other compelling evidence strongly suggest that Democrats may well lose the late Senator Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat in Tuesday’s special election. Because of this, we are moving our rating of the race from Narrow Advantage for the Incumbent Party to Toss-Up.

Whatever the shortcomings of the Coakley campaign (and they certainly exist), this race has become about change, President Obama and Democratic control of all of the levers of power in Washington, D.C. Brown has “won” the “free media” over the past few days, and if he continues to do so, he will win the election.

Late Democratic efforts to demonize Republican Scott Brown, to make the race into a partisan battle and to use the Kennedy name to drive Democratic voters to the polls could still work. But the advertising clutter in the race works against them, and voters often tune out late messages, which can seem desperate.

With the election just a few days away, Scott Brown seems poised to make an impact, and just as Rick Klein of ABC News noted a few days ago, regardless of whether he wins or not the Republican Party has set the tone going into the mid-terms in November by putting Democrats on the defensive in the blueist of blue states.

When your campaign is faltering the last thing you need is someone associated with you that is caught on tape trying to rough up people trying to ask you a question.

On Tuesday evening while trying to have some questions answered by Martha Coakley, Democratic nominee for United States Senate in Massachusetts, John McCormack of the Weekly Standard was shoved to the ground by Michael Meehan, a Democratic campaign consultant, with Coakley watching.

It may not be that Meehan actually pushed him to the ground, but he definitely tries to physically prevent him from walking down the street. Perception is reality.

Activists in the state of Washington filed a ballot initiative to legalize all adult marijuana possession, manufacturing and sales under Washington state law.  ABC News reports:

Its sponsors include two Seattle lawyers and the director of Seattle’s annual Hempfest. They call themselves Sensible Washington, and say that in a time of dire budget woes, the state’s government should stop spending money on police, court and jail costs for people who use or produce marijuana.

Hempfest is one of the largest gathering of marijuana activists in the United States.  In 2008 the gathering eclipsed 310,000 attendees, a new record for the event.

The electoral prospects of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continue to dim, thanks in part most recently to his questionable comments about President Barack Obama:

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Nevada finds Reid earning just 36% of the vote against his two top Republican challengers. That’s a seven-point drop from 43% a month ago.

Reid, who is seeking a fifth term, received 61% of the final vote in 2004.

But the poll shows that neither of the Republicans - Sue Lowden, ex-chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, and businessman Danny Tarkanian – gained any ground in the new survey, highlighting the fact that the race continues to be a referendum on Reid rather than an outpouring of support for either of the top GOP hopefuls.
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In a match-up with Reid, the GOP’s Lowden now earns 48% of the vote while Tarkanian picks up 50% of the Nevada vote against Reid. . In December, both had 49% support.

In both races, the number of those who prefer some other candidate and are undecided remain in single digits.

In September, Lowden led Reid by 10 percentage points, 50% to 40%, while Tarkanian bested him 50% to 43%.

The folks over at the Club for Growth have launched Repeal It, a new website aimed for citzens, candidates and lawmakers to repeal ObamaCare should it pass in 2010.

Members of Congress, candidates, and citizens have the opportunity to sign the pledge supporting repeal of ObamaCare. The reason for doing this before passage is an effort to define the movement. Even if Democrats buy enough votes to pass this (see Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson and a host of others), it’s not over.

Head over to Repeal It and sign the pledge.

Yesterday I finished the book Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert.  There have been a variety of books written about marijuana prohibition, but this book is particularly timely and has an interesting twist on the issue.  They address the past arguments against marijuana prohibition, such as the fact that it prevents law enforcement from responding to more serious crimes, prohibition has made it easier for children to obtain marijuana, regulating the drug would make it safer, etc.  Their main point is that, while these arguments should be enough, they have not struck a chord in the American public.

The book offers a new approach: compare marijuana with alcohol

This is a potentially ground-breaking approach to the fight for marijuana legalization. Fox, Armentano, and Tvert are not new to the public policy scene; Fox works for the Marijuana Policy Project, Armentano NORML, and Tvert SAFER, all organizations working towards reforming our current marijuana laws. They have been engaged in countless debates about marijuana and the pros and cons of legalization. What they have seen in the past few years is that pitting marijuana and alcohol against one another is an extremely effective way of getting their point across.