Jim Riley reports on an email from Del. Bob Marshall:

In fact, two well-connected friends have told me that Senator Jim Webb is interested in the Secretary of Defense position in the new Administration.  If he were offered the position and he accepted, that would leave Jim Webb’s U.S. Senate seat open.

Interesting.

On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning Steve Innskeep interviewed Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, about his auto industry bailout plan.  When talking about what will be expected of car companies, Frank says they will pay “No dividends can be paid, no bonuses for people over $200,000 and some other things” and will have to make cars more energy efficient by March 1st or they’d have to pay back the loan.  Nothing about what happens if they go bankrupt before then, or what quality measures might be placed on the industry to improve the overall product beyond MPG.

How will this be paid for?  Frank says that there will be plenty of money for bailing out industries once we end the War In Iraq and that the auto companies won’t have to worry about renegotiating their labor contracts because once the government takes on health care it’ll be less of a burden for all American industries.  Neither solution is going to happen right away, and that the health care “solution” may be a tax burden on individuals and working families was something Rep. Frank did not bring up.

You can read a transcript of the interview or listen to it here.

Today, the Navy, announced based on a year-long Environmental Impact Study (EIS) their preference to homeport one aircraft carrier within the next five years in Mayport, Fla. vice in Hampton Roads.

The announcement elicited reaction from several of Virginia’s elected officials…

Gov. Tim Kaine:

“I note with disappointment the news today regarding the Secretary of the Navy’s preferred alternative for carrier homeporting. While the selected alternative moves one carrier and no additional support ships to Mayport, any such action, if approved and funded by Congress, would incur substantial costs for what appears to be a limited operational advantage. Considering the impacts of the financial crisis on federal, state, and local budgets, we question the wisdom and timing of an option that will cost the Navy an incredible amount of money and not significantly improve the nation’s security.

“Clearly the Navy and the nation’s needs are best served by maintaining Hampton Roads as the east Coast carrier base, co-located with the east Coast Master Jet Base at Oceana. Virginia will continue to offer substantive information in support of this fact during the comment period on the environmental impact statement. I will continue to work closely with Virginia’s Congressional delegation to keep all of Hampton Roads’ fleet in Virginia.”

Rep. Thelma Drake:

“I strongly disagree with the Navy’s decision today. Norfolk has served the Navy well as homeport to the East Coast carrier fleet. Our national debt is exploding and many defense priorities are unfunded. This is not the time for the Navy to spend what they estimate to be $500 million on duplicative infrastructure which President-Elect Obama has already said he is not inclined to support. Our commitment must be to the 313 ship Navy.”

Rep. J. Randy Forbes:

“In the midst of a ballooning budget deficit and a declining economy, every defense dollar should be spent on the most important national security priorities, including the Navy’s stated priorities of providing benefits to our soldiers, reaching a 313-ship Navy, and restoring the readiness in our aging aircraft fleet. Moving a carrier to Mayport will require a great deal of time and upwards of half a billion dollars. I am concerned that the decision made by the Navy today not only lacks strong national security rationale requiring the move, but brings into question the political nature of the decision making process, creating significant challenges for the Navy to meet its stated priorities.”

Two things really bugged me about today’s story about the recommendation to add $7 million to the cost of Norfolk’s starter line light rail project to pay for upgrading the communications and train control networks, installing flashers and gates at all street crossings, and incorporating a public address system, variable-message boards and emergency call centers on station platforms.

First Problem - the safety recommendations were part of the original plan, but were taken out to get federal funding, according to HRT chief Mike Townes.

This is why government shouldn’t build things. We had to make light rail less safe in order to get the federal government to write a check? And what will the response be if we put everything back in after getting the federal funding? Lowballing costs, getting funding, and putting the costs back in - it may be “government as usual” but it’s why it’s almost impossible to gain citizen trust and support for projects like these.

Problem two - they think we’re idiots.

“Part of what’s driving the recommendations is Virginia Beach’s new interest in possibly extending the line into the resort city, said Matthew Tucker, director of the state rail department. (Virginian-Pilot)

Bull! New interest? It’s been called a “starter line” since it’s inception. What idiot thought that a starter line would not extend? It wasn’t called a “stopper line” - starters start. To suddenly proclaim that someone might someday expand a line that was specifically designed to expand as if it’s a surprise means either Mr. Tucker just found out about the Norfolk starter line this year or he’s obfuscating the obvious.

To me, it looks like they lowballed the budget, got their money, and now want to get more money to pay the real costs which are substantially higher.

Ever wonder why referendums fail?

For as much talk as there has been about “change” with the Obama administration, RTD relates today that there looks to be a whole lotta lobbying going on…in fact, predictions are that business couldn’t be better.

Additionally, did you see “Transition member may break lobby ban” from Politico this weekend? Apparently a member of the Obama transition team may break their own rule on lobbyists working on policy issues that they have attempted to influence over the past year.

And then there was this article from the Washington Post: “Ex-Lobbyists Have Key Obama Roles“.

The jury is still out on an Obama administration, but it looks like Lanny Davis’ prediction that “Nothing is going to change” is looking pretty accurate.

Score:
Status Quo - 1
Idealists - 0

I think General Motors needs a demotion. With all the talk about bailing out GM you have to wonder how they got into this mess to begin with. I’m sure many are quick to jump to blaming unions and I agree they have played a role in making the US auto industry less competitive but I think it goes even further than that. Start for example with the GM fleet of 127 vehicles. Upon further inspection it seems to me they cannibalize their own business by creating cars that compete with each other. The Pontiac Solstice vs. Saturn SKY or the Cadillac CTS vs. Buick Lucerne and on and on. The business owner in me says ditch the less popular models and migrate the customer base to the more popular ones.

Aside from creating so many different types of vehicles, GM has also demonstrated stupidity in how to market them. Classic example is the unleashing of the disgraceful H2 right after 9/11 whose fuel efficiency is so terrible it is not even listed on KBB.com. Maybe its just hard to market when you’re a regular on the 50 Worst Cars of All-Time list.

From Fireside Chat to weekly radio address, and now to Youtube. I imagine this 21st century update won’t surprise anyone, considering the “net-savviness” the Obama team showed during the campaign. One thing is for sure though, this presidency is likely to set the bar in its use of communications technologies and innovations. And here’s the video itself.

Washington DC is hosting the G20 summit today to address the global financial crisis. The buzz seems to indicate the G4 bloc will request more regulatory measures on banking institutions and seek more power for the World Bank and IMF. While this is an expected reaction it is also one we should be very concerned with. The logical conclusion of such a path is a global centralized bank with a common currency controlled by a few elites. While I do not have an immediate objection to a global currency (call it the Earthos?) I want the currency to be derived over time by competing currencies, both govt and private, following sound monetary policies. I do not think we will be well served by a single currency controlled by a small governing body but rather will benefit from multiple currencies based on a variety of backings (i.e. gold, oil, World of Warcraft, water).

The Washington Post is reporting Tom Davis will receive a 7 figure salary from Deloitte Consulting putting him fairly close to that top 1% of earners in the country with the highest income tax bracket. In the 14 years serving in Congress, Davis saw his salary go from $133,600 to $165,200. Now with at least a 6x increase in income, he will also teach political science at George Mason University and do some political commentary on Capitol Hill. While he states this is not a revolving door, I don’t think Mr. Davis has run in his last election yet.

President-elect Barack Obama has begun his much-touted transition process. As mentioned here yesterday, there are 63 questions that a potential member of the administration must be able to answer.

Rich Galen writes in his “Mullings” for today, what the impact these questions might have on who is actually selected to serve in an Obama White House. Additionally, Galen correctly asserts that had a Republican issued such a questionnaire, howls of McCarthyism and HUAC would be all over the front pages (or at least the opinion pages - but who can tell the difference) of the New York Times.

We all knew Obama promised to change the tone in Washington…only that change is to get everyone to sing the same note: his.

(Updated 11:30 a.m. on the automobile industry bailout)

One of the resources oft-mentioned as potentially existing in large quantities off the coast of Virginia is natural gas, and exploration for that resource is one step closer to reality as the Minerals Management Service (MMS) announced yesterday that they would begin selling drilling rights.

As early as 2011, companies could begin extracting the resource for our energy needs here at home.

If you have been following the energy debate at all, you would know that natural gas falls in quite nicely with the “Pickens Plan“. This is the energy plan that has been put forward by billionaire T. Boone Pickens.

Pickens says that our biggest consumer of foreign oil and gasoline is the trucking and shipping industry. He claims that large vehicles cannot run effectively on battery power, such as hybrids. However, he does say they will run well on natural gas. Therefore, with an abundance of natural gas in the U.S., he proposes we can achieve Obama’s plan to import no more oil from the Middle East in 10 years if we convert our trucking over to natural gas.

With the federal government now taking the first steps towards drilling, perhaps we are on our first steps to energy independence.

Unfortunately, it looks like liberal interest groups might have the last say.

Gov. Tim Kaine is taking a weak approach, of course. By saying, effectively, “We’ll see what the Obama administration does.”

And, not surprisingly, the Sierra Club continues their opposition by saying any fossil fuels damage the environment.

Because Obama (along with Sen.-elect Mark Warner and Rep.-elect Glenn Nye) was initially opposed to offshore drilling early in his campaign, and only reversed course when prices went up this summer, the group feels Obama could change tack again.

Virginia is the only state where the MMS has begun this process.

One additional thing to consider is how this all ties into the automobile industry bailout.

According to The Heritage Foundation’s blog, “The Foundry”, they state that the surest way to ensure the auto industry retools to build vehicles, such as natural gas and hybrid, is to allow them to go bankrupt.

The biggest loser in an auto industry bankruptcy is not an auto industry company, or even the shareholders, argues THF, but the unions.

When bankruptcy is claimed, all the union contracts and benefits packages would be up for renewal…meaning the automobile companies might be able to become competitive again.

So, it will be any wonder if drilling for natural gas or any other kind of alternative power can come to bear when it is opposed by so many special interest groups, such as Unions and environmentalists.

Between drilling and not bailing out the auto industry, we might actually make progress on energy independence. But with Obama (et al) owing so much of their elections to these special interests, will they even be able to lead on this issue?

Want an appointment in the Obama administration? They want to know 63 things about you: If you’ve committed a crime, dodged taxes, been a sexual harasser,…

…and whether you own a gun.

Anyone else think it’s odd that he’d equate gun ownership with sexual harassment?

Unlike many conservative pundits and commentators, I seem to have been absent the day they passed out Obama’s magic mind-meld helmet, so I don’t really know for certain what actions he’s going to take and what the focus of the new administration will be. What I do know is that on the campaign trail a lot of words have been spent discussing how to address our nation’s ailing health care system, and how to approach the goal of universal coverage. Obama, McCain, and Clinton all had their own ideas. And while some face time was given to Medicare, to my mind it was not nearly enough.

Medicare is our red-headed step child. Much effort and political capital was spent by the Bush administration pushing to “fix” Social Security. Compared to the estimated liabilities of Medicare though, Social Security’s future looks rosy. I understand some Democrats’ reluctance to confront the flaws in one of the pillars of our social safety net, but the need is most definitely there. Not only for the sake of the program, but for the larger impact on our health care system as a whole. In the discussion of the best road towards universal health coverage, the phrase “single-payer” has become anathema to many. And why not, when our limited experiment with single payer (Medicare) has such problems? Why should we vote ourselves into a program that appears to have issues just dealing with its current subscribers? This is why Medicare is so central to the debate on health care, especially for Democrats. Any movement towards an increased governmental role in health care will be regarded with skepticism so long as the problems in Medicare go unaddressed. And as for where to start, may I recommend to President-Elect Obama’s staff that they discuss with Senator McCain some of the proposals he suggested on the stump - cutting fraud, increasing adoption of technologies (like EMR systems), innovative care solutions (like PACE), and reforming payment methodologies (some progress was just made on this).

I personally believe that true universal coverage will only be achieved with a radical redesign of our health care system, and the likely adoption of a single payer system, though not necessarily on the Medicare model. Some of the ideas of Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm Emanuel’s brother) and Victor Fuchs as presented in this TNR article and their book Healthcare, Guaranteed look very promising. But until the government can demonstrate that it can efficiently and effectively operate Medicare, the move towards such a system would be a true leap of faith.

Apparently this video has been everywhere, but I completely missed it last week. Here’s Rep. Jim Moran (VA-8) calling for income redistribution:

Can we start the Singh for Congressman campaign now?

Former Senate Leader Bill Frist wrote an op-ed today for CNN that calls on all Republicans “to rally behind this president-elect and openly express support for the call for change throughout our legislative and executive branches.”

Frist looks at this election not as a defeat of conservative principles and ideals, but as an affirmation on how the Senate does business.

He goes one step further by explicitly advocating for a strong central government:

“The American people expect their government to work together to aggressively attack the problems that face us.”

Do we really?

Leslie Carbone doesn’t explicitly call out Frist in her post today, but he is exactly the sort of Republican she’s writing about here:

Since the so-called Progressive Era, and with escalating intensity, the federal government reinforced this toddler-level sense of entitlement.

Yes, as the perpetrators of the New Deal, the Great Society, and so many other outrages, Democrats bear tremendous responsibility for fostering this sense of entitlement. But they don’t know any better.

As they pad behind the Democrats on the road to serfdom, Republicans know better; at least, that’s the conclusion that flows from all the lip service they give individual freedom and responsibility. And so Republican shame for expanding the nanny state is tremendous.

With all due respect to the former Senator, compromise put the Republican Party right back into the minority, and, in the process of compromising, gave us such monstrosities as campaign finance reform, the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, “No Child Left Behind”, the prescription drug bill, the $700 billion bail-out, and more.

No. No. A thousand times no.

The future of the GOP is not going to be built around being “Democrat-lite”, but by having a robust regard for the Constitution and capitalism; by being conservative.