Mr. Chavez said his socialist government is going to apply strict quotas regarding the number and types of vehicles auto makers can produce. The president also ordered his trade minister, Eduardo Saman, to inspect the Toyota plant, saying it may not be making enough “rustic vehicles,” a style of all-terrain vehicle that is much-needed in Venezuela’s countryside, where they are often converted into minibuses.

“They’ll have to fulfill [the quotas], and if not, they can get out,” Mr. Chavez said during a televised address. “We’ll bring in another company.”

He said if the inspection shows Toyota isn’t producing what he thinks it should and isn’t transferring technology, the government may consider taking over its plant and have a Chinese company operate it. “We’ll take it, we’ll expropriate it, we’ll pay them what it’s worth and immediately call on the Chinese,” Mr. Chavez said. Chinese companies, he said, are willing to make vehicles made for the countryside.

It seems like Venezuelan workers want the same deal Obama gave the UAW:

Venezuela’s auto sector is in tatters amid recurring labor problems that have led to a lack of productivity. Analysts say many auto workers hope their company is nationalized so they can become de facto government workers and enjoy the extra job security that comes with that status.

By the way, this seems like a suckers play — please put more valuable stuff in your store window so when we break in there is more to steal:

Mr. Chavez said late Wednesday the Japanese auto maker needs to transfer more new technologies and manufacturing methods from headquarters to its local unit in Venezuela.

While Mr. Chavez directed most of his criticism at Toyota, he said other auto assemblers, including Fiat SpA and General Motors, are also guilty of not sharing technology from abroad with their Venezuelan units.

The left often seems to imply that the US government is too eager to shed blood to protect American industry overseas, but in point of fact American industry has had to live with the reality for decades that foreign governments often steal billions of dollars in American-owned assets with barely a peep being heard from the US government.  For example, there is really no such thing as a Saudi or Libyan or Venezuelan or even Mexican oil industry – those are just assets paid for and built by private Western concerns and then stolen by local governments.

Jonathan notes that the health care bill includes certain “entrenchment” provisions, and asks, “can the current Senate bind future Senates in this way?”  If I understand the bill correctly, it creates an independent board that recommends ways to limit Medicare payments.  These recommendations go to the president, who in turn is supposed to submit them to Congress.  Congressional procedures are likewise constrained.  The Senate, for example, cannot debate the proposal for more than 30 hours; there are limits on House procedures as well.  The idea seems to be to constrain filibustering and other parliamentary maneuvers that would defeat cost-saving legislation in the future.  As Jonathan notes, the bill further provides that these constraints cannot be overturned by majority rule but require a 2/3 supermajority.

More here

A couple of thoughts:

1. I expect future Congressmen to be no less arrogant than current Congressmen, so there is little chance they will allow themselves to be bound by this
2. Do Democrats really think that they have gone through such a thoughtful and deliberative process in creating this bill that no future Congress can improve on it?
3. This has been tried, e.g. on balanced budget stuff.  It never works.  Even the 60-vote cloture rule could be tossed out in a second — it is public opinion and concern for future periods when the ruling party in the minority that prevents change, not law
4. This is particularly hilarious as while this bill was being debated, there was a commission of experts that did make a recommendation of the type they are looking for in the future – in this case to limit screening of breast cancers for women under 50.  And Congress immediately overrode this recommendation with specific language in this very legislation.  No way Congress will allow itself to be bound by some unelected commission in the Administration, particularly when the two are inevitably controlled by different parties.

If Tiger Woods winds up in Wickenburg for rehab over his apparent sexual compulsion and pill addiction, local businesses are ready.As the rumor mill seems to suggest, Tiger would be checking into the Meadows Rehabilitation Center in Wickenburg just after New Years, and despite being a little late in covering Tiger-gate’s Arizona connection, the Arizona Republic reports today that local businesses are gearing up for golf’s greatest Lothario.

For example, the owner of Sundance Pizza in Wickenburg, Bob Halsey, has already placed a sign in front of his store that says “Hey, Tiger, we deliver.”

Chances of Tiger ordering some of Halsey’s take-out are probably unlikely — perhaps a more suiting sign should say “hey, droves of paparazzi, we deliver.”

If Tiger does end up in Wickenburg, the number of paparazzi that will descend on the tiny town is certain to cause a boom for the local economy. Some tabloids are even rumored to have placed journalists in the rehab center themselves, in order to get the real dirt on the golf great.

Paying lots of money to stop having sex with hot women seems an odd thing to do.  From my experience he could take up playing Dungeons and Dragons and have the same result for a lot less money.

Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region.

But before the bill to create two new Mojave national monuments has even had its first hearing, the California Democrat has largely achieved her aim. Regardless of the legislation’s fate, her opposition means that few if any power plants are likely to be built in the monument area, a complication in California’s effort to achieve its aggressive goals for renewable energy.

I think that there is an important lesson here that even “clean” energy sources have environmental downsides.  Its funny how things come full circle – thirty years ago I used to argue with people who had obsessive concerns about nuclear waste.  I would say that the volume of waste was really small, and in fact coal and oil were no different in that they generated a lot of waste but that they spewed their waste all over the atmosphere — at least nuclear waste was compact and defined and easy to store.

Anyway, I actually think Feinstein is correct here.   Here is the origin of the plot of land:

For Mrs. Feinstein, creation of the Mojave national monuments would make good on a promise by the government a decade ago to protect desert land donated by an environmental group that had acquired the property from the Catellus Development Corporation.

“The Catellus lands were purchased with nearly $45 million in private funds and $18 million in federal funds and donated to the federal government for the purpose of conservation, and that commitment must be upheld. Period,” Mrs. Feinstein said in a statement.

I have some bias in this, because my personal charities of choice tend to be private land trusts, that use private funds to buy lands for conservation.   I have always argued from an individual liberty angle that people who want land conserved shouldn’t be demanding that government take it, they should be putting their money where their mouth is and helping to buy the land.  This story actually gives me another argument, because you can see that the private conservation buyers made a mistake in giving it to the Feds.  The Bush Administration, looking to score a PR victory in the alternative energy front, reneged on the promised conservation and committed the land to solar projects.

I am hoping that we have a similar situation with Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas.  The story is so wacky it simply defies easy description, but Arpaio and Thomas have been pursuing a number of corruption probes against their bosses in the County government.  All well and good, except for the funny fact that the targets of the probes all seem to be historic critics of Arpaio and Thomas, who have brought out their biggest guns for the one Democrat on the County Council (Arpaio and Thomas are both Republicans).

Both these men have  a history of indifference to civil liberties.   When Arpaio is not busy arresting folks for breathing while Mexican (he once managed to make a crime sweep through the 99% Anglo neighborhood of Fountain Hills and arrest 75% Mexicans), he likes to haul folks off to jail whose only crime is speaking out against the Sheriff .   He arrested (with Thomas’s help) newspaper reporters and editors who wrote critically of him.  This is a man who in his paranoia invented an assassination plot (against himself, of course) and got the city to spend $500,000 protecting him.  If his deputies want to see a defense attorney’s working papers, they just take them.  If he can’t get a judge to release computer records, he has his posse storm into the County computer center and take it over at gunpoint.

Most recently, Thomas and Arpaio wanted a judge who has handed them a number of court losses removed from a certain case.  To make that happen, Arpaio and Thomas bizarrely charged the judge and numerous other county employees in a giant RICO case, a case attorneys are still laughing about because it was so transparent and shoddy.  When that didn’t work, he charged the judge with felony bribery, apparently on the interesting theory that getting a new, updated court house building was effectively a bribe to the judges working there.

It gets much weirder even than this, with Arpaio’s stealing documents from a defense counsel in court (caught on video) with this same judge holding Arpaio’s deputy in contempt for the action and then the sheriff’s deputies essentially going on strike at court, refusing to bring in prisoners.

But after years of fawning, positive publicity as “Americas Toughest Sheriff,” the dam may finally be breaking.  When the AZ Republic finally covers it, you know the situation has to be bad:

Hundreds of attorneys gathered on the courthouse steps in downtown Phoenix to protest Thomas and Arpaio’s public campaign against public corruption.

LOL, I have a picture of these guys with suits and holding placards.  Anyway, this was a real blow:

And, in a scathing letter to The Arizona Republic, the Yavapai County attorney

, who previously handled some of Thomas’ cases against county officials, blasted the prosecutor and sheriff as “a threat to the entire criminal-justice system.”

Oops, so much for the respect of your peers.  Shelia Polk, the Yavapai County attorney (that is a neighboring county) handled the investigations into some of Arpaio and Thomas’s early charges against our County officials, so she knows the details of the story.  And she is a Republican, the same party as Arpaio and Thomas:

In her letter, Polk wrote that although Maricopa County isn’t her jurisdiction, she can’t sit by and watch the abuses from a distance anymore.

“I am conservative and passionately believe in limited government, not the totalitarianism that is spreading before my eyes,” she wrote. “The actions of Arpaio and Thomas are a disservice to the hundreds of dedicated men and women who work in their offices and a threat to the entire criminal-justice system.”

Polk had stayed out of the legal drama in Maricopa County, and her remarks offer the first insight from an outside law-enforcement official who has some knowledge of the cases Arpaio and Thomas have lodged against county officials.

Arpaio’s response was predictable:

Hendershott spoke on behalf of Arpaio. Hendershott said that Polk’s office repeatedly failed to issue subpoenas the Sheriff’s Office needed.

“It seemed clear to us that this case was being deliberately stalled,” he said. “We basically let her know that her work product was ineffective.”

This is a constant refrain from the sheriff – anyone who seeks to impose any limit on his power is therefore evil and conspiring to thwart his will.  It comes up time and time again – he simply does not react well when denied a subpoena, or a search warrant, or access to certain information.  If they are not rubber stamping Sheriff Joe’s requests, then they must be corrupt.  If he had been honest, his RICO charges would have simply read “they didn’t give me what I want.”  But there is a reason these third parties are part of the process, and you can see it in Polk’s letter:

Polk said she worked with the Sheriff’s Office on the cases for the next six months, then returned the cases to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

In Polk’s letter, she wrote that she was “happy to remove myself from the cases and from contact with Sheriff Arpaio. My discomfort grew daily and my role in restraining potential abuses of power increasingly more difficult.”

A three-judge panel determined there were errors both in my conviction and my sentencing. The panel reversed both with directions for me to be tried again before a different judge.

In other words, they realized that Judge Jose L. Fernandez allowed his personal bias to affect my trial, including in how he allowed the prosecutor to use my blog against me – even though I did not even launch the blog until after my arrest – and how he allowed those blog postings to affect my sentencing.

The charge was effectively one of taking pictures of police in public, a perfectly legal and Constitutionally-protected activity that many police have none-the-less convinced themselves should be illegal, so they treat it as such.  The actual charge was “resisting arrest without violence,” perhaps the most abusable statute on record.   Especially when there is no underlying illegal activity for the arrest in the first place.  In effect, if a police officer hassles someone for no reason, the citizen responds verbally that the officer is out of line – boom, “resisting arrest without violence.” It’s amazing one can be convicted of this without there being any underlying crime justifying the arrest, but I guess Martha Stewart went to jail for lying to the police about something that turned out not to be a crime as well.

In this particular  case, the Judge made this outrageous statement to Miller during sentencing:

I can’t imagine why you thought this situation was worth getting arrested for. I can’t imagine for the life of me.

I don’t know if you think you’re some kind of hero or something like that, but if you want to see a hero, go visit Arlington. All right? I don’t think any of those people that are back here are those people that are giving you the — the thumbs up on your blog.

If I were to sentence you to jail, none of those people would volunteer to go in there to serve the time with you. They might say they would, but I guarantee you they wouldn’t. I’m shocked at your lack of remorse.

Miller gets double extra style points for defending himself through this whole process, and managing to win a victory at appeals when fewer than 1 in 15 trained attorneys are able to do so.

From the outset, the White House’s core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they’re sticking to that story. “Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn’t read the bills,” Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.

This is hilarious.  Not only had few people been able to slog through the old 2000+ page bill, but Harry Reid threw the whole thing out and substituted a double secret replacement bill on Saturday the NO ONE has read, Obama included.  So this statement is technically true, but reverse statement is also equally true – “anyone who agrees with the President simply hasn’t read the bill, either.”

One contentious comma inserted two years ago into the United Nations road map for a new deal to fight global warming is again causing squabbles among delegates from the 193 nations in Copenhagen devising the pact.The comma was inserted on the first page, section 1 b (ii), of the so-called Bali Action Plan at the meeting on the Indonesian island in 2007 at the insistence of the U.S. It caused a debate that ran for two hours as the punctuation mark left open to interpretation the responsibilities of rich and poor nations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions….

Delegates from the U.S. argued for the comma to be inserted so that “actions” by developing countries and not just support from industrialized nations, would be measurable, reportable and verifiable, or MRV in UN jargon.

“It took almost two hours to debate the comma,” Quamrul Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi envoy who’s negotiated climate issues since before the Rio Earth summit in 1992, said in an interview in Copenhagen. “One comma creates a lot of trouble.”

Even with the comma, the clause is still argued over….

“The comma is a manifestation of a massive area of disagreement still among the parties,” Havercamp of the Environmental Defense Fund said.

It is totally clear to me that Obama and Pelosi will spend any amount of money to pass their key legislative initiatives.  In the case of Waxman-Markey, the marginal price per vote turned out to be about $3.5 billion.  But they didn’t even blink at paying this.  That is why I fear that some horrible form of health care “reform” may actually pass.  If it does, the marginal cost per vote may be higher, but I don’t think our leaders care.

Instapundit, December 21, 2009

CASH FOR CLOTURE: “You can’t even dignify this squalid racket as bribery: If I try to buy a cop, I have to use my own money. But, when Harry Reid buys a senator, he uses my money, too. It doesn’t ‘border on immoral’: it drives straight through the frontier post and heads for the dark heartland of immoral.”

Plus, Oh, Nebraska. So what exactly was different about what Rod Blagojevich did?

Plus, keeping track of the bribes.