Squaring the Culture

The House voted it down.

More to come as information trickles in.

Update: The vote was as follows:

Yea: Democrats 141
Republicans 66

Nay: Democrats 94
Republicans 132

There’s talk that a particularly partisan speech by Speaker Pelosi, blaming the Republicans for the economic crisis and calling them hypocrites for supporting the free market, was responsible for the loss of the measure. I find that a little hard to fathom, especially since Pelosi could only land 60% of her own caucus. Hot Air has some discussion, along with a video of the speech.

This is disturbing. The reason for the bailout is the freezing up of capital markets. The fact that Congress is debating what to do about them will, itself, cause the markets to remain frozen until Congress decides what it’s going to do. In a way, the worst fears of the crisis are self-fulfilling. The longer it takes Congress to decide what to do — or to announce that they’re going to do nothing — the longer the market will remain frozen, holding its breath.

Update II:Jim Geraghty at The Corner asks an interesting question: how on earth did Pelosi and company conduct negotiations on the bailout measure without knowing the minds of their own caucus? How is it that 40% of Democrats voted “No?”

Update III: The comments I’m reading from Democrats who voted against the proposal suggest they’re upset about the vast increase of Executive power, and a windfall to bloated Wall Street executives who caused the problem. Whadaya know? I agree with them! I can feel the temperature dropping under my feet as I write.

Here’s a link to the New York Times Business Section’s write-up on the afternoon’s events.

Update IV: Michelle Malkin has the roll-call vote from the House. Use it to see how your Congressman voted. Mine — William Delahunt (D, MA), voted “No.” I’m astonished; I think this is the first measure about which he and I agree.

I have a lot of respect for the Annenberg Public Policy Center, but they’ve made some serious errors in the past several weeks, errors that all lean in the same direction. They’re on their way toward marking themselves as just another biased source. It’s unfortunate; we all want unbiased sources to which we can resort, but that’s sadly becoming a thing of the past.

The one that caught the attention of major blogs was their response to the NRA’s criticism of Barack Obama. The National Rifle Association put together a flyer and a pair of video ads criticizing Obama’s record on 2nd Amendment issues (see “Hunter” here). FactCheck.org took them to task for the campaign, claiming that the campaign “…falsely claims … that Obama plans to ban handguns, hunting ammo and use of a gun for home defense.” The problem is, FactCheck.org is basing its assessment entirely on the Obama campaign’s policy claims since the end of 2007, after Obama’s dramatic and utterly utilitarian shift toward the center; the NRA, explicitly and with good reason, bases its claims on Obama’s voting and speaking record before that shift. Patterico tears FactCheck to bits over it, but even the mild and scholarly Volokh Conspiracy (whom I judge to be very near the center of the political spectrum) calmly declares that FactCheck.org completely missed the boat on this one.

This is not the first time FactCheck.org has taken Obama’s side incorrectly on a complaint about an ad, though. Back on Sept. 10, they complained about the ad claiming that Barack Obama’s “one accomplishment” on sex education was “legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex education’ to kindergarteners.” Byron York was the biggest name to respond, doing yeoman’s duty to track down originators and original wording of the legislation in question, and determined that the ad was accurate. Not wanting to take his word for it, I read over the proposed legislation myself, and discovered not only that it said precisely what the McCain ad claimed it said, but that Obama’s defense of the measure was not even plausible in light of the wording of the measure. The act calls for age-appropriate instruction of grades K-12 on the subject of “the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases;” the Obama campaign said he was supporting age-appropriate instruction against unwanted touching, which is not even mentioned in the legislation. You can read the act for yourself here.

The only complaints from the FactCheck article that hold water at all were those that objected to calling this “his one accomplishment.” On one hand, FactCheck points out, Obama neither wrote nor sponsored the measure; however, his committee approved the legislation, and if the committee under Obama’s leadership produced no other significant changes in education policy, then this measure could properly be called his “one accomplishment” in the Illinois legislature regarding education. FactCheck further observes that Obama proposed 3 amendments to a federal act while in the US Senate that were accepted by acclamation; calling these amendments “relevant to education” is a stretch, as is calling them “accomplishments,” but I’ll at least agree that the McCain ad should have specified that it was talking about his tenure in the Illinois legislature specifically. Finally, FactCheck claims that Obama co-sponsored the Chicago Education Reform Act of 2003, but that occurred during a period when Emil Jones was shuffling legislation toward Obama in an effort to make him a US Senator; Obama’s co-sponsorship was on paper only. In short, the McCain ad was substantially correct, and the FactCheck.org response to it was wrong.

Two days later, FactCheck.org griped about Gov. Palin’s comment in her interview with Charlie Gibson on ABC that her state produces “20% of the US domestic supply of energy.” This turns out to be a minor quibble that the McCain campaign corrected as soon as it was brought to their attention; it’s correct to say that Alaska historically has produced about 20% of the nation’s oil and gas supply, and it’s pretty clear that’s what Palin meant. It’s also correct to note that the percentage is smaller now than in past decades (more like 14%,) but since her point was that she was governor of a state that contributes significantly to the US supply of energy, a quibble over the specific percentage or over the accidental substitution of “energy” for “oil and gas” hardly deserves a title like “energetically wrong” (even allowing for the pun,) nor the apparent energy that the article’s author felt, saying things like “Not even close.”

The point is that sadly, we cannot take FactCheck.org as an unbiased and reliable source of information, as they seem to be starting to flack a little for the Obama campaign. Naturally, I never took their word as gospel anyway, but until fairly recently I’d been impressed with the level of objectivity I’d seen. No longer. Let the browser beware.

I tire of the topic, but since 60 Minutes, continuing its tradition of partisan falsehood last night, spent a fair portion of its coverage of the bailout on “why nobody saw this coming,” I have to reproduce this simply for the sake of preserving the historical record.

These are all from a single hearing of the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and GSEs, chaired by Republican Richard Baker, from October 6, 2004. You get to hear several Republicans expressing concern about Fannie and Freddie cooking the books and investing irresponsibly, and also several Democrats complaining that there’s no crisis, that Fannie and Freddie are fine, and that the Republican investigation is the real problem.

I’m just sayin’, is all…

For the record, I don’t agree that the solution was a new regulator for Fannie and Freddie. The solution was to fully privatize them, which would make them subject to ordinary SEC oversight.

Leftists are screaming that the free market doesn’t work, and that the current situation was the result of deregulation. I am asking for somebody to provide me with links to any site that dares to identify which specific deregulation of what activity led directly to this crisis; absent that analysis, I can’t take the claim seriously.

Yes, I watched it. No, I honestly don’t care much about these presidential debates. I think it’s insane to base one’s vote on watching candidates trade memes and sound bites for 90 minutes in a media show. I always have. These debates are part of the evidence that far too many fellow citizens have become too shallow to govern themselves.

That being said, I thought there was more substance discussed in this 90-minute show than in most presidential debates I’ve seen. That’s arguably because neither candidate really had time to get briefed up thoroughly, due to the economic crisis. So here’s my proposal for the next election cycle: let’s have the networks kidnap the candidates with no warning and force them to debate unprepared. They could tape the session and release the tape in a scheduled time slot. (Just kidding, but…)

Neither candidate scored any really decisive blows. Obama was stylistically superior much of the time, but his style was not sufficient to overcome McCain’s overwhelming edge in real-world foreign policy experience.

Polls are showing more people think “Obama won” than “McCain won,” and the lefty blogs and mainstream press branch of the Obama campaign are happily reporting that, so that’s the meme we’re going to hear from now on. I’m voting “draw,” myself.

Now, my personal, visceral reactions to some of the contents: Obama really needs to give up on “McCain-Bush,” McCain’s amused dismissal of that repetitive nonsense was effective and completely appropriate. If I hear any more “Wall Street/Main Street” juxtapositions, I’ll be tempted to staple the speaker’s mouth shut. McCain’s point about Russia blocking action in the UN and the need for a League of Democracies is interesting, though, frankly, I’m no fan of sanctions — they get used against peoples whose governments really don’t care. I was intrigued by Obama’s claim that the Iraq war was a mistake because it made Iran more powerful; is he saying that we should have permitted genocide of the Kurds, mass graves, WMDs, and assassination attempts on our head of state because if we take down the nation that does this, it makes their opponents stronger? That’s loony. Obama got called on his “tough guy” stance on Pakistan and tried to back away from it, but the damage was done. What does he imagine the Pakistanis’ response to a similar public gaffe by the President might be? McCain was right; you don’t say things like that out loud. I’m disappointed McCain didn’t bring up the role NATO played in Afghanistan, which is the reason for the current debacle there, but that’s also a touchy subject that doesn’t need airing by high-profile fools (and this is where Obama’s NATO committee should have been meeting, and wasn’t). “I’ve got a bracelet, too…” (gag) McCain: “Watch Ukraine.” Ok, I will, but for what?

Obama lied through his teeth about Henry Kissinger’s support for his approach to Iran and Pakistan, and Kissinger was good enough to say so publicly this morning. Obama lied about his response to the Georgian crisis, and about his position on the Iraq war and his opposition to the surge. Obama also obfuscated badly while trying to make his position on talks without preconditions palatable. The number of statements Obama has made that he now wants to unmake is pretty high, and his standard approach to unmaking things that have slipped out of his mouth is to lie about them, and then call somebody else a liar for pointing it out. That says something truly vital concerning his fitness for the office.

With a hat tip to one of my readers calling himself “RL,” I offer you radio host John Batchelor’s comments on the bailout debate in Congress. It’s got some fascinating details on the maneuverings, and it’s definitely worth the read.

The most intriguing feature is that the Democrats, who actually support the Paulsen plan, will not pass it without at least 100 votes from Republicans, so that they can say “It’s not our fault, it’s bipartisan.” Meanwhile, while some Republicans will go along, enough refuse to allow the government to take over so large a portion of the US economy that Speaker Pelosi will not get her 100 votes. The bailout seems doomed, but it’s not over yet.

Think about it; the Democrats have a majority in the House, they could pass this, but they will not pass it unless they can successfully assign the blame elsewhere. What does that say?

Brave Sir Robin ran away, away.
Bravely ran away, away.
When danger reared it’s ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat…

Don’t you wish we had elected leaders who were brave enough to take responsibility for their actions?

I plucked this video off of Hot Air, and I’ll post it here with some caveats.

The reason I want to display it is that it provides some detail concerning why we think the current housing crisis is tied to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1978. The part I was particularly interested in occurs between 3:15 and 3:45; it shows that housing prices started to rise faster than inflation after the Clinton administration’s acceleration of the CRA in 1995. I’ve actually provided some of this evidence before, in this blog article from February. The video gives more complete information, albeit without solid citations, so take the actual numbers with a grain of salt.

Also worth noting is the contrast between the goal of the CRA — “affordable housing” — and the resultant housing bubble, during which time home prices soared far above the average citizen’s ability to pay. It’s a classic case of liberal floundering; the changes they force on us hoping to make things better invariably make things worse for the very people they claim to be helping.

Ed Morrissey provides some other worthwhile comments, noting in particular that while certain Republicans did attempt to draw attention to the problem during the last decade, the Republican Congress failed to pass these measures — and the Democrats could not have stopped them if support had been unified. Some Republicans are to blame in this mess as well. Morrissey adds that we had plenty of warning that things were out of control, but didn’t really take note because we were all so thrilled at how much our houses were worth. All of us share some of the blame. But the root cause was the CRA.

Here’s the video. It’s 10 minutes long. Not all of it is worth as much as the parts I mentioned; there are a few individual statements I disagree with. Also, it goes by pretty quickly, so I recommend watching with your cursor poised over the “pause” button. Enjoy.

I want to spend a little time this morning explaining why the Republican alternative to the Bush administration’s bailout proposal is a good idea.

First of all, recall what the proposed bailout does: it gives the US Treasury Department the authorization to buy assets that nobody else wants to buy. This provides liquidity to the market; as Megan McArdle explained earlier this week, the problem Sec. Paulsen is trying to address is not that some big companies are going out of business (though they are), but rather that capital markets have frozen in fear. Banks and large investors are so afraid of their assets losing all value at this point that they’re trying to dump huge blocks of them, driving the prices of those assets (Money Market instruments, formerly thought to be as safe as buying a house!) into ridiculously low numbers. With this going on, there’s a danger that there won’t be any short-term capital for banks and businesses to borrow for their day-to-day operations — and then the economy would simply screech to a halt. It’s an ugly doomsday scenario to which we are alarmingly close. Paulsen’s plan relaxes the tension by making the bad assets more profitable than they’d be otherwise.

The problems with the bailout are many. It grants the government immense power. It rewards bad behavior, in that it uses the money of taxpayers who behaved well in economic terms, and directs it into the hands of businesses that behaved badly in economic terms. It relies for solution on the very institutions that caused the problem in the first place. It saddles the government with buying assets for far more than they’re worth; the money would be wasted. It’s a response to a market panic with a government panic; it’s a knee-jerk, and that’s a very bad way to make policy.

Based partly on the responses of some very influential Senators, and partly on proposals from well-known conservative think tanks, Republicans in Congress suggest four specific actions instead of approving the Paulsen plan:

1. Suspend the capital gains tax completely for two years.
2. Schedule Fannie and Freddie for privatization.
3. Suspend “Mark to market” accounting rules.
4. Repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978.

In order:

They want to suspend the capital gains tax for two years. This would encourage those who are afraid to invest, to invest immediately in sound assets, not in failing institutions. This provides liquidity to the market as certainly as Paulsen’s plan, only it does it by encouraging investors rather than direct spending by the Treasury. In effect, the Paulsen plan uses the government as a middleman between taxpayers and the market, and suspending the capital gains tax cuts out the middleman. It would reduce tax revenues to the government in the short run, but not nearly as much as the Paulsen plan would shell out in already-collected tax revenues, so even if you don’t buy supply-side economics it’s the cheaper solution. However, because supply-side economics really does work, the amount of business created by eliminating the capital gains tax would probably increase overall tax revenues within a year or two. This is a stupendous idea.

The objections from leftist blogs are awfully silly. The one I’ve seen most frequently is “there are no capital gains from the sale of bad investments!” This proves that they don’t have the faintest idea what the real problem is, let alone how to fix it. The problem is a lack of short-term capital to drive the economy, not just that some big companies are failing. The Paulsen plan rewards lousy investments by putting money directly into the hands of those who made the worst investments; the Republican plan rewards sound investments by putting money into the hands of those who have been functioning properly all along. Both plans create liquidity in the capital markets, though, which is what solves the current crisis.

The second most common objection is that it allows rich people to get richer. This is as opposed to allowing certain rich people who mishandled assets to remain rich; I don’t see how that’s any better. I think it’s time we all stopped allowing envy to make our economic decisions for us. People ought to be rewarded for good economic behavior, and everybody benefits from a robust economy.

China and Singapore both operate with zero capital gains taxes. American investors have the second highest capital gains taxes in the world. We need to unleash the American economy, not increase the power of the government.

Second is to privatize the GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises). This is at least 30 years overdue, and has been prevented by Congressional Democrats. There is no reason for the US government to be creating businesses; it’s probably not even Constitutional. Cut Fannie and Freddie loose, and make them sink or swim according to how well they actually perform. It’s the cozy relationship between the GSEs and their sponsors in Congress that allowed this disaster to develop in the first place. Break the relationship.

Third is to abolish the “mark-to-market” rule. This is technical but crucial, so pay attention.

This is a change in FASB, the Financial Accounting Standards Board decisions that make up the rules of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) for auditors. The mark-to-market rule was created by FASB rule 157 in September of 2006. It requires accountants periodically to adjust the values of assets in public financial statements to reflect the current fair market value of those assets including the risk of non-performance — that is, how much the investor would get if the mortgagor didn’t pay and the mortgagee had to foreclose. This practice is actually the immediate cause of the current crisis; investors are panicking because financial companies holding mortgages as assets are forced by FASB 157 to adjust the stated value of those assets downward as the market value of the home drops, and investors are seeing their long-term investments shrink in value before their eyes.

Now, it sounds like FASB 157 is good disclosure policy, but it’s really not; rather, it makes investors focus on short-term, worst-case conditions rather than long-term expected value. The reason mortgages were considered safe investments is not that homes have never gone down in value, but that they’ve never gone down in value for long — they always recover. However, because of FASB 157, the books were saying “These mortgages are worth half of what they used to be” when in fact the mortgages were probably worth as much as they always were in the long run. Even with sub-prime loans figured in, all but about 2% of all mortgages get paid off in good order at face value plus interest over the long haul. FASB 157 forced investors to view their assets as though 100% were going to default, and this caused a panic when no panic was in order. If investment companies had been allowed to report mortgage face value instead of market value in case of default, there would have been no crisis at all.

The alternative to FASB 157 is not a lack of disclosure, but simply a return to the previous accounting practice of valuing assets according to one of several accepted methods (most likely face value), and then disclosing the method in footnotes to the financial statements. Anybody who reads financial statements knows they need to read the footnotes; anybody who reads a financial statement and skips the footnotes a) is proving he’s either a rookie or a fool, and b) is asking for trouble. GAAP always required disclosure; FASB 157 required a specific type of accounting that’s not even particularly accurate in this case.

Abolishing mark-to-market is a good way to prevent this crisis from recurring.

I’m going to have to defer the last item for somebody who knows more than I do; I honestly don’t know what the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 does to the Fed in anything but very general terms. The items I’ve read suggest that it requires the Fed to use “full employment” as one of its goals for adjusting the discount rate (the mechanism for setting the interest rates on loans throughout the financial sector). The authors of the Republican alternative would prefer it use “price stability” as the primary goal. If somebody comes up with a good explanation of what this measure is supposed to achieve and how it’s supposed to achieve it, please leave a comment with a link. I was unable to find such an explanation. (Author’s update: apparently this is an attempt to pare down the role of the Fed. I don’t know enough to comment further.)

For my own part, I’d like to see three other items added:

Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley. It saddled publicly-own companies with millions of dollars worth of paperwork, discouraged a number of profitable companies from going public (they remained private to avoid Sarb-Ox paperwork,) and did not measurably improve financial reporting.

Repeal the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. This is the one that leftist activists are using to force banks to make loans to home buyers who can’t repay.

Impeach Sen. Christopher Dodd (D, CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D, MA) for their role in protecting the Enron-like misrepresentations by the executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Allowing them to remain in office would be like allowing a member of Enron’s Board of Directors to remain on the board after finding out that the Board member knew of the improper accounting but said nothing. I’d love to see these two jailed, but the behaviors that we know about are not explicitly criminal; they are, however, grossly irresponsible and corrupt.

The Republican alternative illustrates why Republicans should be in charge of Congress rather than Democrats. These are sensible measures directed at fixing what’s broken. The Democrats, by contrast, are spinning like tops attempting to cover up their complicity in the mess, and at the same time focusing on meaningless and tyrannical measures like capping executive compensation — as though stupidly paying CEOs tens of millions dollars is responsible for the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars. I mean, if you really want the government telling businesses how much their employees are worth, go ahead and advocate that — I won’t be supporting it, but you can advocate it if you want to — but it has absolutely no plausible effect on the current crisis. It’s a red herring, another Democratic instance of pursuing symbolism rather than addressing substance.

From the Associated Press:

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon this summer.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.

I’m holding my breath, and will release it after the bill actually expires and enough time has passed to verify that there’s not been a trick of some sort slyly inserted into another bill. However, this is very, very good news, in an economy that needs some good news.

The United States actually has more oil than does Saudi Arabia, and with development of offshore resources, the North Slope, and oil shale in the Rockies, could become a net energy exporter. Producing new oil domestically will strengthen the dollar internationally by reducing the trade deficit, and will reduce the price of crude oil pretty much immediately, giving consumers some relief. Oil from offshore should actually start reaching world markets in about 2 years, from wells that are already partially drilled.

Journalist Stanley Kurtz fought for and won access to review the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) at the Richard M Daley Library at the University of Illinois. Today, he reports in the Wall Street Journal regarding what he found, and supplements it with his reply to the rebuttal by the Obama campaign at his home turf, the National Review Online. What he found was that Ayers and Obama collaborated in directing $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical activists to teach radicalism to elementary students in Chicago.

The CAC, if you recall, was the education reform effort in Chicago that was masterminded by unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and chaired by Barack Obama from 1995-1999. It constitutes the only significant executive experience on Obama’s resume. Conceived and funded by Nixon-appointed ambassador Walter Annenberg for the sake of improving the achievement of inner-city school students, the CAC project was hijacked by radicals to serve their political ends instead. Several reviews of the CAC noted that it was a failure when evaluated for its impact on the performance of students in school (Kurtz provides the links in his NRO article, on page 2). However, from the standpoint of Ayers’ own educational foundation and those of various other radical activists, it was a success, in that it forced elementary schools into partnership with political radical organizations in such a way that students were exposed to radical political content.

I won’t review the details: you should read Kurtz’s pair of articles. I also recommend a visit to Power Line and Classical Values where they discuss today’s articles, and also a visit to Classical Values’ review of Ayers as mainstream educator from last month.

My take from Kurtz’s project is as follows:

• As predicted, Obama lied about his past associations with Ayers. The man is simply not capable of telling the truth about his past; that he badly desires to keep his past covered up is beyond dispute. Recall that Obama unleashed his lawyers and Action Line subscribers in an attempt to bully local TV stations into refusing to air the American Issues Project ad concerning the connection between Ayers and Obama. He tried to get the Department of Justice to investigate the donor who funded the ad, unsuccessfully. This lying about his past has become so routine that we should expect any statement he makes about his past to have been altered to hide relevant detail; we should expect him to lie, by default, because he’s been caught doing it so many times.
• The Annenberg Challenge was granted hundreds of millions of dollars to improve educational achievement. It appears that the money was spent, under Chairman Obama’s guidance, for a very different purpose. This gives us a sense of how much we can trust Obama to carry out the will of the people who elected him — to wit, not at all. His stewardship of the CAC constitutes either gross incompetence, or worse, dereliction of his obligation to the stakeholders in the project, diverting money placed in his trust into the furtherance of his own political agenda. Barack Obama cannot be trusted.
• The connection settles the question regarding Obama’s radical leanings. He did not simply seek and accept support from radicals for his campaigns, he participated with them in an attempt to radicalize education in the inner city, as recently as the turn of the millennium. As Kurtz puts it, this is not guilt by association, but rather guilt by participation. Obama does not just know radicals and hang with them, he acts with them.
• The Chicago Annenberg Challenge permits a reasonable projection of what an Obama educational policy might look like. If you connect this project with Obama’s proposals for school-based citizen corps, it becomes immediately obvious that actual intellectual achievement of students is not nearly so important to Obama as is their participation in radical activism. It’s not illegal to be a leftist radical, but we need to ask, is this what we want for our children from our public schools?
• The central characteristic of Ayers’ radical ideology posits the United States philosophy and culture as the source of significant evil, a bastion of racism, sexism, homophobia, and repression of the poor. Ayers literally, vocally, and explicitly hates America as most of us recognize America. Obama’s collaboration with Ayers makes it clear either that he shares his ideology, or that he feels comfortable aligning himself with that ideology in order to further his career. Either way, this makes plausible the accusation that Obama hates traditional America. As John Hinderaker at Power Line points out, there is a straight line from “fight American repression” Ayers to “God Damn America” Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It’s clear that Obama, at the very least, tolerates this ideology, and very likely shares it.

This will not receive anywhere near the press attention that it deserves; the press collaborates in Obama’s efforts to lie about his past. Please be sure to forward links to this article and others like it to folks you know who are considering what to do in the present election.

It is not illegal for neo-Marxist radicals to run for office in the United States, it is their inherent right. However, it is morally incumbent on them to tell the truth about who they are; the attempt to gain power by fooling the nation into thinking they are centrists is wholeheartedly dishonest, and fundamentally evil. We have every right to reject their ideology because we disagree with it. We have no way to evaluate whether we agree or not if they lie about who they are.

A number of us have been watching the pattern of internet attacks against Obama’s opponents during this seemingly endless election season, noting disturbing patterns that include attempts to silence opponents. I’ve suspected at times that this is actually orchestrated by the Obama campaign, although it looks like ordinary folks on the left took the initiative themselves.

Today, Dr. Rusty Shackleford (a pseudonym) at The Jawa Report produced a report tying a specific YouTube ad smearing Sarah Palin to several individuals at the public relations giant Winner and Associates, the owners of which support Obama and other major Democratic party candidates. The YouTube ad claims, apparently falsely, that Palin is a member of a radical separatist organization. The report identifies several anonymous accounts apparently created by two individuals to get the ad into circulation, and ties the various accounts back to Ethan Winner, Executive VP of Winner & Assoc. and marketing pro, and marketing associate Jared Liu-Klein, also of Winner & Assoc. The voice on the ad appears to be the same voice used in several ads produced for David Axelrod’s political lobbying firm, AKP & D. Within two hours of Shackleford posting his analysis, somebody began deleting all the phony accounts associated with this particular ad, and also began attempting to alter the Wikipedia article about David Axelrod to remove any mention of “Astroturfing,” the creation of apparent grass-roots campaigns by marketing professionals for which Axelrod is justly famous.

The claim is that the ad campaign may have been ordered and paid for by the Obama campaign.

It’s a long report; it’s worth reading if you’re interested in understanding what’s known about the incident. In my humble estimation, they’ve produced enough information here that an investigation by law enforcement is called for. I do not believe they’ve proved their case yet; I do believe they’re onto the truth, though, and have begun a legitimate look into one of the dirtiest political campaign tactics in any of our memories.

The mainstream press is not going to pay attention to this at all, because they’re mostly members of Obama’s campaign by default. So, if Shackleford’s claim is to be spread, it will have to be spread by individuals like us, forwarding links to our friends and neighbors. If you’re going to get involved, don’t just send it to people who believe like you do; send it to people who disagree. A lot of Obama’s supporters support him because they believe he’s honest (though how anybody who follows the news could think so is beyond me). Revelation of the sort of dirt his campaign does behind our backs should change some votes.

By the way — among the items revealed in The Jawa Report is discussion among participants in hard-left blog sites that encourages disseminating false information about their political opponents far and wide, which they believe is justified because they’re opposing evil. If we’re going to counter this, we must counter it by spreading truth. Do not make claims about the article that cannot be supported. Jawa has uncovered a possible connection to the Obama campaign, but has not proved that such a connection exists. What we want is law enforcement action, and action immediately — because we don’t want the nation to elect a crook to high office, but we also do not want innocent people slandered by false accusations.