My Daily Domestic Diigolet 09/21/2008

FREDDOSO: I would say that he, on economics he has rose from a typical populist anti free trade sort of position in a higher tax position that pretty much ignores the incentives involved in government tax policy. As you know, when you raise marginal tax rates, you are basically making it more difficult for small businesses. You are creating extra expenses for them and that means that wages tend to go up more slowly and perhaps even people get laid off if you have a major shift upward in the upper marginal rates. Because the people who hire other people are the ones making the large income. That is part of Obama’s tax policy is to raise the top marginal rates.

GLENN: A lot of people don’t understand, and I know you just explained. A lot of people don’t understand that this is bad. Have you and I know this is past when your book came out but can you document here at all on how Barack Obama has changed his position?

FREDDOSO: Well, you know, he even he went on Stephanopoulos just a couple of weekends ago and when asked about if we go into a recession, would you raise taxes and his answer was, well, maybe not if we go into a recession. So he’s already implying here that he understands raising taxes hurts people but he is willing to do it anyway as long as we’re not in a recession already.

FREDDOSO: Of course, you are referring to when he was asked by Charlie Gibson, I believe, about the capital gains tax, and he wants to raise the capital gains tax. He said he wants it to go up to maybe 28%. Right now it’s 15%. When you raise the capital gains tax, historically revenues go down because people engage in fewer transactions when the marginal when the capital gains rate is high. So in fact, every time that rate has been cut, the government revenues have increased and so Charlie Gibson asked him, well, if raising this tax doesn’t actually raise more money for the government, why are you going to do it. And Obama’s answer was fairness. So now we have a government I mean, and this is you could say this is a great indicator of socialism. You have the government trying to make the economy more fair by hurting some people and not helping the others. It’s a kind of laughable situation you could say.

GLENN: We have David Freddoso on. He is the author of a book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate. He is a reporter for the National Review Online. WGN in Chicago getting heat for having him on. The Obama campaign does not want this man on. There’s another guest that they had on that they also went through the roof and just did everything they could to scare WGN into not having these guests on. Why? What is it that the Obama campaign doesn’t want?

FREDDOSO: Well, this is the story of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act and it goes back to a hospital in the southwest suburbs of Chicago called Christ Hospital where they were performing on a regular basis induced labor abortions and these are late second, early third trimester abortions in which the drugs are given to the mother to induce violent labor and the baby is usually killed in the contractions and comes out. But about 15 to 20% of the time this produces a a live baby is born, I should say. And sometimes the babies will live just for a few minutes, sometimes for several hours. But this hospital was not giving any thought to medical treatment for them when they survived and could have potentially lived on and saved in incubator under whatever sort of medical technology we have to keep premature babies alive. They were simply shelving them and

FREDDOSO: This is what yeah, that is exactly what was happening and, in fact, that fact isn’t even in dispute. What is in dispute is exactly what condition that they were being left to die in. According to the nurse, Jill Stanek whom I interviewed for the kids against Barack Obama, they were one of the places they would put these babies to die while they were struggling is the utility closet where medical waste goes. According to the hospital they were putting them into comfort rooms where they would just simply leave them to die with a blanket or something. So that was the practice. And the attorney general of Illinois told Jill Stanek, this nurse, that this was not violating the law, that they couldn’t do anything about it and, you know, all protestations to the contrary, there wasn’t any law protecting these babies because the attorney general of Illinois wasn’t you know, he absolutely said, you know, no, you would need a new law if you wanted to do this.

FREDDOSO: You can certainly leave them, there’s such a thing as negligent homicide as well. But in any case, there wasn’t a law protecting them and that was what they went to the Illinois legislature to do was to pass a law that would define anyone who is already born and alive as a person. And that would have made the laws of the State of Illinois apply to these premature babies.

GLENN: How did Barack Obama stop it?

FREDDOSO: Barack Obama was the only state senator to speak against this law and

GLENN: Sorry. Repeat that, please.

FREDDOSO: He was the only state senator to speak against this law on the floor of the Illinois Senate.

FREDDOSO: Yes. Senator Obama voted he voted present on that bill. It was part of a strategy that he devised, that he and some Planned Parenthood lobbyists had devised that basically everyone would vote present instead of voting no. And just to you know, it came up the following year; he did it again. The bill, by the way, it passed the state senate and died in the state house committee. In 2003, though, Democrats had taken over the state senate and Obama was now the chairman of the Senate health committee. And as chairman he presided as they made the reason that Obama has ever since said he voted against this bill in committee is that it didn’t contain the same language that the federal board of live infants protection act contained. Sort of redundant protection against this law ever effecting the right to abortion. What he didn’t realize, didn’t or was misleading people about is that, in fact, in 2003 the bill that he voted against in his committee did contain that language, was exactly the same as the bill that had gone to the U.S. Senate floor, that Barbara Boxer had stood up and said, “I support this bill, everyone should vote for this bill.” Obama voted against it and that puts him on the very fringes when it comes to issues of human life at its very beginning.

GLENN: So wait a minute. He is Barbara Boxer was on the other side of this issue?

FREDDOSO: Every single abortion proponent in the United States Senate at the time they voted on this the roll call vote was in 2001 every single one is more protective of human life in its early stages and more respectful of human life in its early stages than is Senator Obama based on his voting record.