Lucid Links (050310, Morning)

The sickening news that “A baby boy abandoned by doctors to die after a botched abortion was found alive nearly a day later,” and that the “disability justification” for the procedure was that the child had “a cleft lip and palate,” brings to mind the fact that our nation has a president who is okey-dokey with leaving babies to die (HT RedState and a RedState commenter):

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Pointing out the obvious, from Business Insider, and adding two qualifiers:

We’re guessing that unlike Bush, Obama will largely get a pass. Katrina played into a narrative of Bush ignoring the plight of the poor and African-Americans. Nobody is suggesting that Obama is bad on the environment. Also, just generally, an ecological disaster won’t elicit the same kind of emotional response as a human tragedy (for good reason).

Let’s at least acknowledge the obvious opposite, that if we were currently in a Republican administration that had just okayed offshore drilling in America, and they had gone eight days without serious action, they’d be getting absolutely pilloried in the press.

The qualifiers are:

• New and alternative media are stronger and their impact is more immediate than 4 years ago, so the free pass from the establishment press, which is itself weaker, won’t mean quite as much.
• The enviro community isn’t necessarily as controllable as other leftists factions, and is already a bit miffed that Obama even broached the idea of additional offshore drilling (though very weakly and cynically) several weeks ago.

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Leftist control freaks have wanted this for decades (HT Villainous Company), courtesy of Nancy “We’ll Tell You What’s In It After We Pass It” Pelosi:

A few wording changes to the tax code’s section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare.

… businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.

It was either during Bush 41’s administration or during the early Clinton years, but I clearly recall that Democrats proposed a $10 threshold for such reporting, and that it made some progress towards making it into law. That’s right, $10. For them, it is and always has been about command and control.