Only One of My Least Favorite Colunnists

I had written this to send to my local paper. 

Since she is published in papers throughout the country I thought it might be alright to add it to my Blog.

                 Michelle Malkin is incredible.

She struggles so hard to find fault with President Obama and his family. Usually she launches her attack on Mrs. Obama.  She finds fault with the First Lady’s attempt to set an example for America’s kids by encouraging them to eat better and control their body fat. This has resulted in better school meals with more fruits and vegetables and less  french fries and other deep fat fried foods. How is this bad?

This week she decided to find scandals in the Obama administration where there are none. She begins by attacking Carole Browner, the President’s former adviser on air pollution. She negotiated an agreement with every supplier of cars in America which will require an average of 35.4 m/g by 2016, about the same as in China.

Malkin complains about the way this was achieved. As far as I’m concerned Ms. Browner could have locked the auto execs in a room and kept them there until they had worked out the details of this historic agreement. 

The Obama administration has built on that agreement to create a new one that will require performance equivalent to 54.5 mpg by 2025. It is estimated that these standards will over the next 14 years save Americans $1.7 trillion and by 2025 will result in an average fuel savings of over $8000 per vehicle.


I am sure Ms. Malkin and her far-right friends will still be able to find a gas guzzling truck or even a Hummer to drive around in. Maybe she should buy one now.  She can store it with all those incandescent bulbs she is saving.

She next turns her attention to the Affordable Care Act. She spouts tired old arguments regarding waivers that have been issued for existing but non-complying health care insurance packages.

There are a great many low income people who receive bare bones health insurance with big deductibles and low caps. These plans are usually referred to as “mini med plans”. Under the Act, real health insurance will not be available to them until 2014. The Act permits employers and unions to apply for waivers so these people will at least have some coverage until the act( the Supreme Court willing)  takes affect. In 2014 these plans must be replaced with plans that meet the standards set by the Act.
She also (along with most of her right-wing cronies) claims that the fact that a large number of plans in the district represented by Congresswoman Pelosi have been granted waivers shows that politics has been involved in this process. San Francisco, unlike most states or cities, requires small business owners to contribute to their employees health cost. In order to comply, a number of businesses combined to create funds known as HRA’s, which are mini med plans and qualify for a waiver. The large number of these in San Francisco accounts for the large number of waivers granted in that district. A plan administrator who obtained a great many of these waivers denied that politics was involved. In addition he pointed out that there would be no need for political help. The process was easy. You make application and if the plan qualifies it gets a waiver.

 My conclusion after reading this column was that Ms. Malkin considers any action with which she doesn’t agree a scandal. She quotes Dartmouth Political Science Professor, Dr. Nyhan, who wrote a scholarly 30 page paper setting forth the combination of events necessary to create a scandal. Ms. Malkin should have read more than the first page.


The rest of her “scandals” are the same, products of her far-right imagination. There are a number of thoughtful intelligent conservative columnists. George Will, David Krauthammer and David Brooks leap to mind. I would encourage  papers to employ one of them so that I don’t need to be, periodically, offended by Ms. Malkins far-right drivel.