GOP Convention
It’s actually a rainy morning at the international headquarters of the FlashReport in Orange County. Due to unforeseen circumstances yesterday involving more than one tow truck and an unhappy family vehicle. As such, my desired goal of penning a write up of last weekend’s State GOP convention for your reading pleasure this morning has been delayed (but not forgotten). We’ll bring you an overview of the activities of the weekend, as well as some politicking of the weekend, highlight some of the important reforms passed in the party’s bylaws, positions on ballot measures, and some great stories including an hour-long battle at the party’s Executive Committee between an Orange County Prosecutor and the former District Attorney of Los Angeles County. While we’ve moved away from our “Winners and Losers” format, I’m still looking for good stories from the weekend that I may have missed. Drop me a line here with any input.
Vote NO The Bail Out!
The FlashReport joins with the Club for Growth in urging a vote against this mega-huge taxpayer bail-out of Wall Street.
This bill is an unprecedented disaster for taxpayers.
Thanks to House Republicans like Reps. Jeb Hensarling, Mike Pence, and Paul Ryan, this bill has been stripped of the most offensive anti-growth provisions, but it is still a fundamentally bad bill. It increases the federal debt by hundreds of billions of dollars, rewards bad behavior made by failing banks, and creates a moral hazard going forward. The free market is designed to give profits for success and bankruptcies for failure. This bill changes that framework and will create costly and unintended consequences that will harm our economy in the future.
At the end of the day, we can’t get over the fact that a vote for this bail out is, frankly, immoral. It is further government intervention in the market, literally taking funds from taxpayers to subsidize bad risk taken by major financial institutions. At some point a market-correction is going to have to be allowed to take place. The more gifts of public funds are made into the marketplace, the worse this will all be in the long run. It is not lost on this website publisher that no-where in the $700 BILLION bail-out plan is a pathway to disengaging the federal government from the kind of programs that have assisted in taking us to the brink of a financial collapse (for example, how about termination of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?).
I have no good words for President Bush this morning, other than to say that this bail-out scheme, promulgated by a Republican President, will further tarnish the GOP’s image in Washington as a party addicted to growth in government spending.
Again, we urge our California Delegation members to reject this bail out, and we’ll let FR readers know how their representative voted. It is my hope to be able to tell you that a great many of at least our California Republicans will have voted against this immoral, redistributive scheme.
While the FR team was busy at the State GOP convention, the Governor was busy with his pen, taking action on hundreds of bills. We’ll try to bring you an update this afternoon on how the Governor did on any of the 2008 Top Twenty Bills To Veto. As of last Friday he had only taken action on one, eroding liberty and freedom with a signature on a bill banning text messaging while driving (last year, the Governor signed a bill banning talking on a cell phone while driving, which was on our Top Twenty List of 2007).
Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?
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