Dodd Makes Leno's Monologue

I don't have a link, but our senior senator got a mention in Jay Leno's monologue on The Tonight Show this evening (I know it's a re-run, but I'm seeing it for the first time). When even a lefty like Leno finds it hypocritical that Dodd was calling for Rick Wagoner to be ousted as GM's CEO while he himself has contributed so heavily to our current economic problems, you know you've got issues.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds has a couple more Dodd updates at Instapundit: here (quoting this article from the Greenwich Time) and here (citing an article in Congressional Quarterly).

And check out the latest post at the Everyday Republican. I don't know all that much about Peter Schiff yet, but at least someone is getting out there early to challenge Dodd. From what I know of him, he strikes me as the type who is willing to get throw some punches, and we all know there are plenty of openings waiting to be exploited.

New Poll Shows Dodd's Vulnerability in 2010

If Chris Dodd could tear himself away from the seemingly endless job of ruining our economy and socializing our country, perhaps he would find himself worrying about the Quinnipiac poll numbers released today. Other coverage of the poll can be found at The Everyday Republican, Connecticut Local Politics, The Hill, NBC New York, Hartford Courant.

Let's look at what the Dodd-related numbers indicate.

Question #3: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Chris Dodd is handling his job as United States Senator?"

His overall approve/disapprove was 47/41, with 22% of Dems and 44% of Independents disapproving. Only Democrats and women had higher approval than disapproval numbers. The trend shows Dodd at his lowest point ever, down 4% since July and 24% since his high in April, 2001.

Question #8: "How likely are you to vote to re-elect Chris Dodd for United States Senator in 2010? Do you think you will definitely vote for him, probably vote for him, probably not vote for him, or definitely not vote for him?"

Overall, Dodd got 13/31/20/27. That means there are 3% fewer voters who are likely to vote for him than against him. Independents are only 37% def/prob to 48% prob not/def not. The overall trend shows a 7% drop in def/prob and a corresponding 8% increase in def not since July.

The bad numbers for Dodd may be attributable to voters linking him with the economic downturn. The economy in general as "the most important problem facing Connecticut today" jumped from 22% eighteen months ago to 59% today (Question #9). No other problem was even close, with taxes coming in second at 14%.

Voters don't appear to be blaming the economic situation on Governor Rell, though. 54% of respondents indicated they would definitely or probably voter for her again in 2010, versus just 31% who would either probably or definitely not vote for her (Question #7). Since July, Rell actually gained 1% in the definitely voting for her category and lost 2% in the probably not voting for her category.

74% of those responding indicated that they voted for the senate seat in 2006 (Question #34). Interestingly, 16% of Dems (to only 11% of Repubs) chose not to vote. 2006 was an off year election, like 2010 will be, but remember that the Democrats were all fired up that year with Ned and Joe battling it out. No such drama yet for 2010, which may move the Dem "not voting" number up, while two years of socialism may be enough to light the fire under the conservatives in Connecticut.

I think these numbers show that many Connecticut voters are catching on to the damage Dodd and his buddies have done and are still threatening to do to our economy. If Obama, Dodd and the Democrats do the kinds of things they have said they would (no sure bet, if their past record of trustworthiness is any indicator) with their complete control in Washington, the economy won't be much better come campaign time. There is no reason to think that this seat is not in play.

If Rell ran against him now, she could win. She might even be favored. Of course, that would likely mean Gov. Blumenthal, which makes me want to vomit, but that is for another post, I imagine. I would prefer someone else run for Senate and leave Rell in Hartford, if only to keep Blumenthal out of there.

But that someone will have a harder time than Rell. He or she needs to be someone with pre-developed name recognition, and they need to come out early and swinging. Dodd has repeatedly opened these doors, and someone needs to take advantage and barge through. Someone needs to lay out the facts of Dodd's substantial role and responsibility in the collapse of the mortgage markets with the CRA and Fannie and Freddie, and remind everyone of the campaign contributions he was taking from the very lenders he was allegedly overseeing on the Banking Committee.

If he hasn't run out of excuses for not turning over his Countrywide records, he needs to get hammered on that as well. Despite all the Democratic scandals going around, there is still room for another one. Blagojevich, Rangel, Jefferson, Dodd. Link them all together. Getting sweetheart mortgage deals from those you are supposed to be regulating while allowing them to run rampant, then sending them hundreds of billions of dollars to get them out of the hole you dug is not that far removed from auctioning off a Senate seat when it comes to abusing the public trust.

Depending on how the automaker bailouts go, he needs to get hit there too. Americans don't support it, and for good reason. Chris Dodd has been doing everything in his power to give away billions of taxpayer dollars to companies not that are failing, but that have already failed. The companies need to be restructured, and a few billions dollars now is like putting a Dora the Explorer band-aid on a severed limb. It might look pretty for a few seconds and it might make you feel like you are doing something to help, but what it needs is a tourniquet, serious surgery and painful rehab to recover. Otherwise known as bankruptcy.

So, who's it going to be? Maybe Rob Simmons. Rell isn't too fond of him apparently so he could be out of a job with additional budget cuts, and he has the name recognition and Congressional experience. Or how about Associate Attorney General Kevin O'Connor. He is a young guy, well-known in Connecticut, has a fancy resume, he's got some money and has campaigned before, and he will likely be looking for work sometime in early 2009 after Obama brings in Holder.

If you skipped the whole post and are only reading the last paragraph, Dodd in 2010 will be as vulnerable as he'll ever be. Republicans need an early challenger to strike while the iron's hot, and we need to support the best option that comes forward, even if he or she is not your dream candidate. Remember that the alternative is six more years of Chris Dodd. You need to work to rebuild the Republican party in Connecticut, get out the vote, volunteer with the CTGOP, and write letters to your newspapers (at least until they go under) making the case against Chris Dodd.

November 2, 2010, is not that far away. And after two years of Obama appointing federal judges, another Republican Senator will be no small matter.

Bad PR Day for Chris Dodd

This was not a good weekend for publicity for Chris Dodd. After failing (thankfully) to stuff his next bailout down the throats of Americans who don't want it (despite having the Republican votes to pass it, by the way), Kevin Rennie had an editorial in the Hartford Courant.

If the auto companies needed only three months to figure out how to make cars consumers want to buy, my guess is they would have dazzled us with it by now. Especially interesting for consumers would be the section on how to reach the resale values of comparably priced Hondas and Toyotas. The bailout collapsed on Thursday night when the UAW refused to reach wage parity with foreign automakers' U.S. workers before 2011. Twelve senators didn't show up to vote, so maybe this isn't an emergency.

There was also an article in The Day and a letter to the editor in the Stamford Advocate. These articles made it to the big leagues of the blogosphere at Instapundit here and here. Glenn Reynolds also linked to an open letter to the Senator, which included this:

Speaking of expensive clothes, I'm noticed that you were in such a hurry to give $700 billion to the Wall Street guys that you didn't ask any of them to step down.

But really, no one would expect you to make that demand of your friends. I mean, you are a "Friend of Angelo," which means you got low-interest, no-points loans for a $500,000 refinancing on your Washington, D.C., townhouse and a $250,000 refinancing on your Connecticut home.

The cheap loans came from Countrywide, and some sticklers think that was a violation of federal law. But you said you got the good deals because you were a good client and not because you are chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

And this:

In all fairness, though, I think you might want to hold yourself to the same standard that you apply to Wagoner. Seeing as how the federal deficit is at an all-time high and that has happened on your watch.

After all, you are the longest-serving Connecticut senator in history. I realize that's kind of like being the winningest Detroit Lions football coach, but still, it's something to hang your hat on. (Although I don't know why you would wear a hat and cover up that great haircut.)

Back to my point. It seems to me that our income taxes are really a form of loan so that the government can continue to spend more money than it takes in. If Wagoner has to step down before you will loan money to the American auto industry, shouldn't you step down before Americans have to give the federal government another loan that will never be paid back?

The letter is a little petty in places, and I don't really care who Senator Dodd dated. But it is interesting to note that Dodd gave away $700 billion to his friends, the bosses at the mortgage companies, without requiring any heads to roll. Now he wants to give away a fraction of that, and he is going to decide who stays and goes.

Chris Dodd, HR Specialist?

So after leading the utter failure in regulation of the now-decimated banking industry as the head Dem on the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd has decided that it is a good idea for the US government to invest in companies that are on the brink of bankruptcy or worse.

As if that weren't backwards enough, he goes further by asserting that not only should there be changes in the management teams of these failing companies (which may very well be true), but that he should be the one to decide who goes and who stays. If only he would look back at the damage his "oversight" has done to our economy, even he could not think that taking his own advice would be a good idea for anyone. The hypocrisy is staggering.

What on earth qualifies him to make this kind of decision? Being an old lawyer? Wagoner, the CEO of GM that Dodd has decided needs to go, has been working for GM since the 1970's, which was before Dodd's reign of terror began. Even if Wagoner caused all of GM's problems, which he didn't, he is infinitely more qualified to work on solving those problems than Dodd and his meddling buddies are. Don't misunderstand: Wagoner may need to go, but let the stakeholders figure that out, not some politician in DC who has overstayed his welcome and refuses to take responsiblity for his own role in this disaster while happily accepting VIP treatment and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the industry he is supposed to be regulating. For fixing this problem, I'd trust the judgment of an expert who has made some mistakes before Dodd, who knows nothing, any day.

Have we really come to a point as a country where people think it is a better idea to have government officials with no relevant experience making these kinds of decisions? Wait... what's that? We just elected a former state legislator with two years of US Senate experience and zero other qualifications to be President? Never mind.

Ironman's Blog at The Next Right beat me to this, and you can get other coverage of Dodd's epiphany from the AP, Reuters, Wizbang, Bloomberg, Detroit Free Press, Truthdig, and The Hill.

"Five Percenters" and Leaders

Our Congress contains a small number of great leaders, and a much larger number of "five percenters." A five percenter is someone who knows about five percent more than the average person on any given subject. They often have an inordinate amount of sway with average people, who see the extra five percent and assume the five percenter is a subject matter expert. But they're not.They hardly know more than their audience.

This can be overcome, so long as the five percenter understands that they are not an expert simply because they know a little more than the average guy. After all, no one can be an expert in everything. A good Congressman, or any leader for that matter, knows enough to get real experts to support them, delegates work appropriately, makes decisions based on the work and recommendations of their staff, then takes personal responsibility for their decisions.

Read this post from The Auto Prophet on the coming auto bailout:

The whole mass has been a fascinating, and depressing political show. I listened to a few hours of the hearings over the last few days, and [the] pompous arrogance of some of the members of Congress was infuriating. Even the sympathetic members, such as Chris Dodd (D-CT) offered ridiculous and unhelpful advice, such as suggesting with a straight face that maybe the Detroit 3 could retool their plants to build mass transit products such as busses and rail cars. "The truck and SUV plants you are closing... these have pretty long wheel bases, don't they?" said Dodd, who apparently acquired a manufacturing engineering degree somewhere, secretly.

Then came the spectacle of Maxine Waters (D-CA) complaining that dealers, specifically small dealers, specifically, minority dealers, were being hurt by all the cuts, and inquiring what the Detroit 3 were planning to do to protect the dealers. This at a time when many commentators, and many other members of Congress correctly realize that having too many dealers their hurts profitability, and reduces the efficiency of the service and distribution divisions.

Time and again I am reminded that some of our Congressional representatives are not good leaders; in fact, many are not even five percenters. That would be giving them too much credit, as their public statements often demonstrate that they do not know even as much as an average citizen.

And even fewer take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions.

Russian Roulette?

The following quote is from this AP article:

But Dodd also said that doing nothing "plays Russian Roulette with the entire economy of the United States."

I think this is a bad analogy. I understand it makes good theater for a Congressional hearing, but I think it is overstated. There will certainly be negative effects, and it will hurt, but we aren't going to die. The banks were not in as bad a shape as the auto makers, but if they had been, that would have been closer to Russian roulette. If all those banks collapsed, there would have been deadly effects felt everywhere.

But with the auto makers, a better comparison is Russian roulette with the gun pointing at your leg. We will definitely feel some pain, but some parts of the economy will feel it more than others. We might lose the leg, or a part of it, but the entire economy isn't going to collapse. Some of those who made bad decisions, whether they were management decisions, marketing decisions, or bad contracts with workers, will cease to exist, and the auto manufacturing landscape may be disfigured, but the country as a whole will recover.

Post-Hearing Coverage

I apologize for being so late with this. I was out of town for work last night, and the hotel did not have wireless internet. I thought for sure every reasonably nice place did, but I was wrong. Oh well, better late than never.

Wall Street Journal
AP
CNN and another here
Washington Independent
FoxNews via Investor's Iraq, which has links to the statements of the CEOs and Gettelfinger
Hartford Courant (if you're not boycotting it for being a joke)
Reuters
Sydney Morning Herald (dated 12/6, since it is already tomorrow there)

Here are a couple talking about The Chosen One and his role:

ABC
AP via Desert Conservative

And then there is this story from the Washington Post focusing on the most ridiculous part of this whole fiasco: how the CEOs are getting to and from Washington. Folks, we are talking $35 Billion just to start, probably ending up in the $125 Billion range over two years if Congress commits to keeping these guys afloat. Putting the CEOs jet in a hangar (or putting it up on e-bay, a la Gov. Palin) probably won't save as much in a year as if each UAW member donated the cost of a morning cup of coffee to the cause. It's not a bad idea, but it shouldn't be taking up time in Congressional hearings when they have as much work to do as they have. Some seem willing to bail them all out, if they'll just drive around instead of flying. Ridiculous.

Dodd's Auto Industry Bailout Round-up

Tomorrow is the Senator's big day, where he gets to publicly lead the charge to spend some $35 billion of my (and your) money instead of letting the automakers take their lumps like everyone else. Tune in at 10:00am to say bid farewell to billions of dollars and free markets. Coverage can be found at the Huffington Post and the Detroit Free Press.

In the meantime, the public largely disagrees with the idea of bailing them out, according to this CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey. Gee, I wonder why. I think it is difficult for most average Americans to relate to the kinds of benefits that the UAW employees have gotten for themselves. I mean, I don't think unions are evil, but a number of "foreign" auto companies have successful factories staffed with non-union workers here in the US while the big 3 are crashing faster than Amy Winehouse after a night out. I understand it's not that simple, but programs like the job bank have got to go for most people to even care about the auto workers.

This NRO article calls for the UAW to make more concessions to help keep their employers in existence, and they should. They have been feeding at the trough for awhile now. But give them credit, at least a little, for making some. Time and ABC have related stories.

And here, via the Wall Street Journal, is GM's plan for pulling through.

If the Roles Were Reversed...

Commentary by Frank Beckmann via the The Detroit News, on what the automakers should have asked their Congressmen at the show-hearings last week:

Why did members of Congress -- such as House Banking Chairman Barney Frank, Senate Banking Chairman Christoper Dodd and others -- raise fuel economy standards, adding more than $85 billion in costs as the industry was restructuring itself?

If the reason was forcing automakers to deal with higher gasoline prices, perhaps the politicians could explain why they have made fuel more scarce by blocking domestic drilling for oil and preventing new refineries from being built during the past three decades.

If global warming was the reason, perhaps the politicians could explain why some scientists now point to cooling temperatures while carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.

Our politicians like to claim the automakers have been slow to react to changing consumer demand. Perhaps they'd care to explain U.S. Energy Department figures that show flex-fuel vehicles, many made by the Detroit Three, accounted for a mere 6 percent of sales in 2007, while hybrid vehicle sales accounted for 2.6 percent of the market.

Politicians who insist on claiming that foreign manufacturers emphasize "green" technology over muscle might explain why sales last year of Toyota Tacoma and Tundra trucks were 30 percent higher than its hybrid vehicle sales.

Next, the execs and Gettelfinger could begin querying lawmakers about the credit crisis, born of government decisions that forced tens of billions of dollars in loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to borrowers who were unqualified and high credit risks. This, in turn, has led to the reduced availability of credit for potential car buyers and helped send auto sales plunging.

All good questions, if you ask me.

Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Bailout Committee

What happens when your average company runs out of money? They file for bankruptcy, right? Isn't that how the system is supposed to work?

Apparently, that never crossed Senator Dodd's mind. Instead, he immediately started thinking about ways to take your money and hand it out, even though it very well may just postpone their collapse. How do we know this? Dodd said so last Wednesday, as reported in the Hartford Courant today:

Sen. Chris Dodd — whose committee seems to be Bailout Central — has been in the forefront of yet another debate over taxpayer billions, although this latest effort for the auto industry has been hanging by a thin thread.
...

The day after a Tuesday hearing went into the night, he said, "I'd like to do something, but the last thing I'd like to do is write a check for these people without some major changes."

He was, at that point, warming up to the idea of a pre-packaged bankruptcy — a controlled restructuring — for the automobile manufacturers.

"I'm finding this a more attractive idea as I find out more about it," he said.

As he finds out more about it? Has he never heard of bankruptcy? That should have been his first thought, not something he "is finding out more about" several weeks into this thing.

If the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is just learning about Chapter 11, we are in more trouble than I thought. And that is saying something.

Dodd Threatens Congressional Intervention on CEO Compensation

Why not, if we are going to have the government buying banks, bad mortgages, auto companies, and whatever they throw into the bailout tomorrow? The Washington Post and HuffPo have some details.

The Auto Industry Bailout

Stories at RedState, Bloomberg and the Detroit News on how Dodd and his friends want to buy up a bunch of car companies that are hemorrhaging cash.