The Lobbying Boom – The numbers are in

This is exactly what Barack Obama ran against, and instead he relaxed lobbying rules in the administration and hired them to work in the White House - LINKS – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,

National Examiner:

Since March, I’ve been looking at lobbying numbers and lobbying filings and detecting a possible lobbying boom under President Obama. Today, the Center for Responsive Politics gives us the hard numbers:

In all, federal lobbyists’ clients spent more than $3.47 billion last year, often driven to Washington, D.C.’s power centers and halls of influence by political issues central to the age: health care reform, financial reform, energy policy.

That figure represents a more than 5 percent increase over $3.3 billion worth of federal lobbying recorded in 2008, the previous all-time annual high for lobbying expenditures. And it comes in a year when a recession persisted, the dollar’s value against major foreign currencies declined and joblessness rates increased….

Last year’s 4th quarter also marked the first quarter in U.S. history that federal lobbying expenditures cracked the $900 million mark — which they did with ample room to space, hitting a record $955.1 million for the quarter, the Center’s research shows….

“Lobbying appears recession proof,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s executive director. “Even when companies are scaling back other operations, many view lobbying as a critical tool in protecting their future interests, particularly when Congress is preparing to take action on issues that could seriously affect their bottom lines.”

I discussed the causes and nature of this boom in my Christmas column, “Barack Obama and The Miracle on K Street,” but I think the Cato Institute’s David Boaz put it best: “Lay out a picnic, you get ants. Hand out more wealth through government, you get lobbyists.”

Is Dan Coats the same man he used to be?

Dan Coats is running for senate again after leaving office to go back to the private sector.

While Evan Bayh has proven to be a disappointment (1, 2, 3) with his “Conserva-Dems” rhetoric proving to just be spin in order to save face with traditional voters, he faces the first competitive race in a long, long time. The result is that many people in the GOP are lining up to replace him. Former Senator Dan Coats, who proved to be a formidable campaigner, wishes to return to office.

When I heard that Senator Coats was running again I was almost ready to vote for him, but as you all know, I don’t support anyone without taking a long, careful look at him/her.

Is Senator Coats the same man we used to know? Has he compromised his values too much in the private sector? The following articles address that very question. Either way, any candidate is going to have to demonstrate to me that he/she is worthy of my vote.

National Examiner (which is an excellent newspaper):

Dan Coats, lobbyist for fat cats, plots Senate return

By: Timothy P. Carney

Examiner Columnist

February 10, 2010 Republicans in 2010 have an opportunity to capitalize politically on popular anger with elites in Washington and Wall Street and with an exploding government that tramples on the little guy in service of the well-connected. But now, in a competitive Senate race, Republicans have tapped a corporate lobbyist who has grown wealthy inside the Beltway by begging for government favors on behalf of the biggest banks, drug companies, automakers, and other leeches in the Washington swamp.

Former Sen. Dan Coats wants to pass through the revolving door again, leaving his plush job at a K Street lobbying firm to challenge two-term Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., for the Senate seat Coats held for a decade before he cashed out.

Democrats have been quick to attack Coats as a lobbyist who has done the bidding of the fattest fat cats. But, ironically, the policies Coats advanced on behalf of his corporate clients are the same bailouts, regulations, and overspending that President Obama has championed in the name of “change.” And Coats’ biggest clients — Google and the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America — have been intimate Obama allies.

Coats represented Bank of America in the third quarter of 2008, when the collapsing bank begged for and received tens of billions of bailout dollars — a bailout that was passed with Obama’s blessing and that enflamed the populist anger that led to the tea-party rebellion of 2009.

For Coats, that was just the beginning. Acting on behalf of Cerberus Capital Management, the hedge fund that owned Chrysler, he lobbied to expand the Wall Street bailout to Detroit, according to the October 2008 lobbying report filed by Coats’ employer, King & Spalding. Presidents Bush and Obama agreed with Coats and Cerberus, and taxpayers soon bailed out Chrysler.

Coats also was on the side of domestic manufacturers who convinced Obama this year to impose tariffs on steel tubing from China. Coats represented the Ad Hoc Coalition for Fair Pipe Imports from China, the group of steel-pipe manufacturers who sued Chinese pipe manufacturers in the World Trade Organization. In January, that group struck gold when Obama announced tariffs on steel pipe from China — consumers and other manufacturers lost with Obama’s big-government action, while labor unions and Coats’ clients won.

Another Coats client was billionaire private-equity mogul Julian Robertson. But Coats wasn’t lobbying on the taxation of private equity managers or regulation of the finance industry. He was lobbying for the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill that would restrict energy use in the name of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Robertson was invested in Chinese biofuels and in nuclear power, both of which would benefit from a cap-and-trade scheme, such as the one included in Lieberman-Warner and in the current Waxman-Markey climate bill, that would constrain the use of fossil fuels like coal.

Coats’ other clients include a lineup of subsidy sucklers and regulatory robber barons, many of which spent 2009 at President Obama’s side, fighting for the Democrats’ “reform” agenda. For instance, Google is one of the president’s closest allies — Fortune magazine, for instance, carried a story last October headlined “Obama & Google (A Love Story),” with the thesis, “In Google, the $22-billion-a-year online-advertising Goliath, Obama appears to have found a corporate kindred spirit.” Google is also a Coats client. Lobbying filings show Coats has lobbied on Google’s behalf for “Openness and competition in the online services market,” which presumably means he worked for Google’s coveted “net neutrality” regulation — effectively price controls on networks, to the benefit of Google and other content giants.

Democrats have attacked Coats for representing drug makers Amgen and the Medicines Company as well as PhRMA, the biggest spender of all single-industry lobby groups over the past decade. But it’s the GOP and its conservative base that should be upset about this dossier — PhRMA was an early and enthusiastic backer of Obama’s health care “reform,” which would have profited the industry. And MDCO’s priority for which they hired Coats — a tailor-made five-year extension of MDCO’s monopoly on one drug, Angiomax — was slipped into the final reform bill by Democrats just before Scott Brown’s election torpedoed it.

Populist anger is burning over bailouts, overspending, government growth, and the closed-door Washington collusion between the wealthy and the powerful. This anger has Democrats worried. But if Republicans nominate Coats, a Beltway insider specializing in corporate welfare, the Tea Party might be tarring and feathering the GOP as well.

Timothy P. Carney, The Examiner’s lobbying editor

 

This article is devastating and makes a case that Coats has sold out for cash and his opponents will try to define him early and knock him out.

Politico.com:

The Nuking of Dan Coats

In the week since Dan Coats announced he was preparing to challenge Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, Democrats have launched a withering, no-holds-barred assault on the former Republican senator, throwing him off balance and raising questions about whether his prospective candidacy has suffered lasting damage.

The oppo research mill began cranking up within hours of word last week that he was readying a campaign for his former Senate seat in Indiana. First came a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee statement referring to him as a “federally registered lobbyist whose client lists include banks, private equity firms and defense contractors.”

Then Coats was blasted for being registered to vote in Virginia, rather than Indiana, and for being soft on Osama bin Laden. The takedown continued as a YouTube video surfaced showing Coats telling North Carolina delegates at the 2008 GOP convention that he was planning to retire to their state.

By Monday, less than a week after he floated the idea of a comeback bid for the seat he held for one full term in the 1990s, Democrats had framed the former senator as a carpetbagger, a Washington lobbyist for PhRMA and big banks and a foreign agent with ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Yemeni interests — with almost no noticeable pushback until Coats brought on a campaign spokesman at the beginning of this week.

The ferocious barrage — a coordinated effort unleashed by a small core of senior Democratic strategists in Washington, top Bayh political hands and Indiana Democratic Party officials — has partisans on both sides of the aisle wondering not whether Coats has been bruised by the punches but whether he will be able to pick himself up off the canvas.

“We just hit him with a freight train,” one Democratic official familiar with the anti-Coats effort said Monday. “It’s Politics 101: Frame the guy early.”

Indiana Republican Party Chairman Murray Clark said it was “too early to tell” whether the Democratic attacks had inflicted lasting damage on Coats’s campaign.

Dr. Glenn Harlan Reynolds: What I Saw at the Tea Party Convention

Read this carefully.

Reynolds via WSJ:

The attendees want politicians who will deliver on Obama’s promise of clean and open government.

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.

These weren’t the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.

Mr. Obama made those promises because the ideas they represented were popular with average Americans. So popular, it turns out, that average Americans are organizing themselves in pursuit of the kind of good government Mr. Obama promised, but has not delivered. And that, in a nutshell, was the feel of the National Tea Party Convention. The political elites have failed, and citizens are stepping in to pick up the slack.

Angela McGlowan enters the GOP primary to represent Mississippi’s First District.

 

This response has brought millions of Americans to the streets over the past year, and brought quite a few people to the posh Opryland Resort (with its indoor waterfalls and boat rides, it’s like a casino without the gambling) for the convention.

Pundits claim the tea partiers are angry—and they are—but the most striking thing about the atmosphere in Nashville was how cheerful everyone seemed to be. I spoke with dozens of people, and the responses were surprisingly similar. Hardly any had ever been involved in politics before. Having gotten started, they were finding it to be not just worthwhile, but actually fun. Laughter rang out frequently, and when ne w-media mogul Andrew Breitbart held forth on a TV interview, a crowd gathered and broke into spontaneous applause.

A year ago, many told me, they were depressed about the future of America. Watching television pundits talk about President Obama’s transformative plans for big government, they felt alone, isolated and helpless. That changed when protests, organized by bloggers, met Mr. Obama a year ago in Denver, Colo., Mesa, Ariz., and Seattle, Wash. Then came CNBC talker Rick Santelli’s famous on-air rant on Feb. 19, 2009, which gave the tea-party movement its name.

Tea partiers are still angry at federal deficits, at Washington’s habit of rewarding failure with handouts and punishing success with taxes and regulation, and the general incompetence that has marked the first year of the Obama presidency. But they’re no longer depressed.

Instead, they seem energized. And surprisingly media savvy. William Temple donned colonial dress knowing that it would be an irresistible lure to TV cameras. When the cameras trained on him, he regaled interviewers with well-informed discussion of constitutional history. Other attendees were hawking DVDs, books, and Web sites promoting tea-party ideals, while discussing the use of tools like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for political organizing.

Press attention focused on Sarah Palin’s speech, which was well-received by the crowd. But the attendees I met weren’t looking to her for direction. They were hoping she would move in theirs. Right now, the tea party isn’t looking for leaders so much as leaders are looking to align themselves with the tea party.

It’s easy to see why. A recent Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP poll found that three-fourths of independent voters have a favorable opinion of the tea party. This enthusiasm, however, does not translate into an embrace of establishment Republicanism. One of the less-noted aspects of Mrs. Palin’s speech was her endorsement of primary challenges for incumbent Republicans, something that is already underway. Tea partiers I talked to hope to replace a lot of entrenched time-servers and to throw a scare into others.

One primary challenger is Les Phillip. He is running against Republican Parker Griffith in Alabama’s fifth congressional district. Mr. Phillip, a black businessman and Navy veteran who immigrated with his parents from Trinidad in his youth, got his start in politics speaking at a tea-party protest in Decatur, Ala., last year.

“Somebody had to speak,” he told me, “so I stepped up.” He did well enough that he was invited to speak at another protest in Trussville, Ala., after which things sort of snowballed. Of the tea partiers, he says, “Their values are pretty much mine. I live in a town in North Alabama where there are plenty of blacks driving Mercedes and living in big houses. Only in America can someone come from a little island and live the dream. I’ve liked it, and that’s what I want for my children. [But] I saw the window closing for my own kids.”

Mr. Phillip has gotten tea-party endorsements, as well as one from Mike Huckabee. The Republican establishment is siding with Mr. Griffith, who only recently switched from Democrat to Republican. That support is perhaps understandable as realpolitik, but it’s not the sort of thing that sits well with tea partiers, who think that too much realpolitik is what rendered the Republican Party corrupt and ossified over the past decade.

Mr. Phillip isn’t the only black tea-party candidate in the deep south—Angela McGlowan, who spoke in Nashville, has entered the Republican primary in Mississippi’s first district—and primary challenges aren’t the only way activists are exerting influence. Cincinnati tea-party activists are running candidates for Republican precinct executive in every precinct in their area—if elected, these candidates will help set policy platforms within the GOP and have sway over which candidates the party endorses. Activists in other states are doing the same. Adam Andrzejewski, who ran in the Republican primary for governor in Illinois, told me he will run candidates in each of Illinois’ precincts, and Utah activists are turning that state’s convention-based nominating system into a trial for incumbent Republican Sen. Robert Bennett. Plus, tea-party activists used their convention to launch a political action committee.

If 2009 was the year of taking it to the streets, 2010 is the year of taking it to the polls. With ordinary Americans setting out to reclaim the political process, it’s likely to be a bumpy ride for incumbents of both parties. I suspect the Founding Fathers would approve.

Mr. Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee.

Elite leftist pinhead quote of the day

Joe Queenan in the UK Guardian:

The Tea Partyers are mostly pasty-faced middle-Americans, holding the sorts of smallish, grassroots, inbred gatherings that could easily be ignored in the pre-viral era before cable television and the internet. No more. Now 212 angry white people shouting down a rattled congressman in rural Idaho can command as much media attention as a roadside bombing in Iraq. An 18th-century political movement is using 21st-century technology to persuade America to return to its bedrock 19th-century values.

I love it when the progressive secular left outs themselves with a moment of honesty. Usually the far left is trying to fool the voter, trying to make them believe that they are not arch leftists who want to take the country from something that is free to something they can control; much like how Barack Obama couched much of his campaign rhetoric in a Reagan like style and critiquing the government under President Bush for too much government spending only to come to office and raise spending by a factor of eight.

Those who understand the mind of the statist, elitist progressive see that they believe that the ideals that America was founded on are bad ones. They believe that those ideals based on Christianity, scholasticism and those backwards ancient Greeks are nothing more than mysticism. Indeed, 6000 years of human experience and discovery through trial and error mean nothing now that they and their superior self-serving virtues are here to rescue us all. All we have to do to live in their created utopia is surrender our western culture and much of our economic and political freedom to them, our betters.

Queenan went on to say the following:

Democrats have been reluctant to wave the flag and are uncomfortable with anything that evokes the spirit of ’76.

I must say that I am shocked at the honesty of this statement, but then he goes on to say something dishonest in an attempt to mitigate the damage:

Words like “patriot” and “minuteman” unnerve them, not only because they have been co-opted by the right, but because they are used to christen nuclear weapons and vigilante groups along the Mexican border.

So I did a Google search on spirit of 76 and nuclear weapons to find a match and found none, but such a statement is yet another indicator that the progressive secular left, ashamed of American ideals and values, is uncomfortable with the idea of American military superiority; they are much more comfortable with the idea of UN military superiority and in the cold war made it clear that they were more comfortable with Soviet military superiority. As far as vigilante groups, I am not aware of any genuine vigilante groups along the border waving a flag. I am aware of the group that called the police and the border patrol when they saw people committing a crime. Of course it is the nature of the left, when reality doesn’t suit them, to redefine reality and the meaning of simple words to suit themselves when it is convenient. Their postmodernist philosophy embraces such intellectual dishonesty as a virtue.

Of course we live in a day when the New York Times and the rest of the elite media will publish five articles in a single day trashing Sarah Palin, while ignoring her record and demeaning traditionalists, libertarians and conservatives. In such a world the statist progressive feels perfectly comfortable pronouncing the most outrageous denials of reality and trying to make it all sound so good.

Progressives Blow It When Attacking Palin Again.

So I saw this tweet from left wing activist Tanya Acker and it pointed to the following blog post.

The Raw Story Blog:

Fact check: Palin’s claims in Tea Party speech debunked.

WASHINGTON — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lauded the virtues of the Constitution in her Tea Party Convention speech Saturday, but some of her claims appear markedly flawed. Reports over the weekend also challenged her account of recent history on national security and terrorism.

In her speech, Palin made numerous claims related to Obama, the constitution and terrorism.

“The [constitutional] protections provided,” Palin said, “we’re going to bestow them on a terrorist who hates our Constitution and wants to destroy our Constitution and our country? This makes no sense because we have a choice in how we’re going to deal with the terrorists.”

But a 2008 Supreme Court ruling, Boumediene v. Bush, declared that alleged terrorists who aren’t convicted of a crime — irrespective of their citizenship — have the constitutional right to have their case heard in federal court.

The case declared unconstitutional some of the Bush administration’s decisions to strip rights from those who are designated enemy combatants by the Executive Branch.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said such actions fail to meet “the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus” guaranteed in the constitution, as the New York Times reported.

 

Ok and now for the rest of the facts which change everything they just said:

First, President Bush did not decide “to strip rights from those who are designated enemy combatants by the Executive Branch” as The Raw Story claims.

Before the war, the Ahrens case and the Eisentrager case in 1948 (LINK) set the rules for dealing with enemy combatants which stood in line with all American and international precedent that enemy combatants are not entitled to Habeas Corpus during wartime. In short, the President has war powers and enemy combatants are held for security and intelligence reasons, not because we are going to charge them with robbing the local convenience store. No country has ever given enemy combatants access to civilian courts untill now.

So as you can see, Presidnet Bush didn’t “strip the rights” from enemy combatants.

While recent decisions since the war from the court have said that the President himself can no longer deny Habeas Corpus to enemy combatants as was the case in the past, Congress still can as it is an expressed power in the Constitution.

Also, while the decision quoted by The Raw Story can be interpreted to mean that enemy combatants have access to federal courts, there is still this little thing called Article III of the United States Constitution which gives Congress complete control over the juristiction of these matters in the courts. 

AND…

Congress has the ability to make military tribunals federal courts with special rules and juristiction which is exactly what Congress has been doing and this is why the President can still decide to use civilian federal courts or military tribunals at his discresion.

Article III:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

If progressives weren’t always so concerned with getting around the Constitution and just started reading it they would not make the kind of silly mistakes the blogger above has made.

Bottom line: Palin was right.

The article goes to to quote a few things from Media Matters, I find this amusing because without exception, when a commentor has used Media Matters as a source here in an attempt to refute what was written, the Media Matters claims could not withstand a few minutes of public records searches. I have often pondered who it is that tells more half truths, Media Matters or Alex Jones’ Prison Planet.

Palin: Your Doing It Right in Texas!

Texas has had the most job creation and is the state that has enjoyed some of the best economic performance in these troubled times.

Texas leads in private sector job growth, has the top five housing markets in the country, no government debt and in fact has an 8 billion dollar surplus etc etc etc….

Texas Governor Rick Perry is running for re-election and Sarah Palin is by his side campaigning with him.

I admire Rick Perry, he says what he means and means what he says and is one of the very few politicians who actually meets my ethical standards.

If you need an example of why Sarah Palin can raise money like gangbusters, check out her performance at this campaign stop and you will see why.

Frugal Hoosier: Evan Bayh Residency Issue?

Follow the LINK.

Governor Palin Tea Party Convention Speech

Q&A:

SarahPAC takes in 1.4 million in a few months

In 92% of races for national office the candidate who raises the most money wins.

Chris Wallace: “I threw everything I had at Sarah Palin in the interview – Palin serious political player”

News veteran Chris Wallace:

The Chris Wallace interview with Governor Palin is below:

Andrew Klavan: Elite Leftist Hollywood Culture vs. Reality

Andrew Klavan is a noted Hollywood screen writer and author.

Saudi girl, 13, sentenced to 90 lashes after she took a mobile phone to school

American press is so lousy at covering this stuff, anyone care to guess why?

UK Daily Mail:

A 13-year-old Saudi schoolgirl is to be given 90 lashes in front of her classmates after she was caught with a mobile camera phone.

The girl, who has not been named, was also sentenced to two months in jail by a court in the eastern city of Jubail.

Transparency, Congress & Corruption: AIG and Fannie Mae Bonuses

The Democrat Leadership claims that this Congress is the most ethical and transparent in history. What do you think?  

About that $210 Million in bonuses using your money… LINK.

The future of vote fraud: Universal Voter Registration

John Fund on how universal voter registration will be used to overwhelm the registratiuon roles and make them so unreliable that making the dead and illegal aliens vote will be easier (video’s courtesy of David Horowitz and Big Govt.com):

Cloward & Piven Attending the Motor Voter Legislation Signing

This is a primary goal of what is known as the Cloward-Piven Stategy. Cloward and Piven were two professors from Columbia University. They wrote a plan on how to bring down the social-economic strength of the United States by overwhelming the election, welfare, government services and private sector with laws, regulations and government spending that would make prospertity unsustainable for the purpose of bringing about economic collapse. The purpose of this collapse was to blame capitalism and freedom for all of the problems and use the crisis as an excuse to bring about central control of the economy and our lives, as well as control of the political system by the “elites”.

The video below is Wade Rathke, the Founder of ACORN (the vote fraud people who get your tax money thanks to Congress) See how Rathke makes it all sound so reasonable:

…except it won’t be implemented cleanly, it will be implemented “Chicago Style” so that the dead can vote everywhere as they do there. I wrote a paper on how some European countries have mandatory voting, often the courts and reghulations are used and interpreted in a such a way to keep the incumbants in power and keep upstart challanger parties off the ballots.

The Washington Times:

The proposal is to register everyone on every welfare list, everyone getting unemployment insurance, everyone with a driver’s license, everyone who has had run-ins with the legal system, everyone owning any property – basically everyone on every list the government keeps. People will be registered to vote whether or not they want to be registered. If individuals are on any public record, they will be automatically registered.

Obviously a lot of illegal aliens have driver’s licenses, and many get other government benefits. Quite a few have rap sheets. People’s names and other identification information are frequently recorded differently across these different lists, which means that one could be registered a separate time for every slight variation in how their personal information is kept on file.

The legislation is also expected to give felons the right to vote. Why Democrats insist on letting someone who has raped multiple women vote on social policy is beyond us. According to Democrats, robbers who have preyed on helpless victims – and even murderers – have the judgment to tell us how law enforcement should be run in this country.

In May 2005, Public Opinion Strategies surveyed felons who had their voting rights restored and nonfelons who voted in Washington state. Even after accounting for the voters’ race, gender, education level, religious habits, employment, age and county of residence, the book Freedomnomics found that “felons were 36 percent more likely than nonfelons with the same characteristics to have voted for [John] Kerry [a Democrat] over [George W.] Bush [a Republican] and 37 percent more likely to be registered Democratic.”

For years, Democrats have fought against requiring photo IDs at polling places. The practice, which is simply a way to make sure voters are who they say they are, is used in about 100 other countries. Mexico, for example, has cracked down on voter fraud and is strict about requiring photo identification to vote. If Democrats have their way, it will be easier for Mexicans to vote in America than in their own country.

UPDATE – American Thinker has a series on the Cloward-Piven Strategy which is worth your time to get to know HERE.

China: It’s getting harder to buy U.S. Treasuries…

Shanghai Daily:

IT is getting harder for governments to buy United States Treasuries because the US’s shrinking current-account gap is reducing supply of dollars overseas, a Chinese central bank official said yesterday.

The comments by Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, referred to the overall situation globally, not specifically to China, the biggest foreign holder of US government bonds.

Chinese officials generally are very careful about commenting on the dollar and Treasuries, given that so much of its US$2.3 trillion reserves are tied to their value, and markets always watch any such comments closely for signs of any shift in how it manages its assets.

China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange reaffirmed this month that the dollar stands secure as the anchor of the currency reserves it manages, even as the country seeks to diversify its investments.

In a discussion on the global role of the dollar, Zhu told an academic audience that it was inevitable that the dollar would continue to fall in value because Washington continued to issue more Treasuries to finance its deficit spending.

He then addressed where demand for that debt would come from.

“The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries,” Zhu said, according to an audio recording of his remarks. “Double the holdings? It is definitely impossible.”

China is very careful about what it says publically. Make no mistake, China is sending the United States a message that is a borderline threat. China, as well as much of the world, wants us to stop the overspending and over printing of the dollar.

Deficit Spending: FDR vs. Clinton vs. Bush vs. Obama

The cold hard truth and how it is the opposite from the rhetoric.

By the way, politicians always give you the too rosey best case scenario, so if Obama is admitting to these numbers, how bad is it really likely to be?

Bloomberg: 77% of U.S. investors believe Obama is anti-business

Bloomberg News:

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. investors overwhelmingly see President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and four-out-of-five are only somewhat confident or not confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency.

Think about it, you blame everything on “the wealthy”, you tell them that you are going to punish them for investing by raising capital gains taxes from 15% to 28%, he unilaterally trie dto break the law and change the rules so that the GM bond holders didn’t get paid and his political allies did. Why would someone invest and buy bonds if the government can change the rules at the drop of a hat?

Let us not forget that Obama and the Democrats have been attacking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and even the Black Chamber of Commerce.

By the way, the capital gaines tax in China is zero, maybe that is a big part of the reason people are investing there and not here.

News Legend Brit Hume: Speak the name of Jesus Christ and all hell breaks loose

Very interesting clip with Brit Hume. 

Democrats: Give illegals amnesty to give them free health care (on your dime)

We first told you this was coming back in September and now it is back.

TPM (Left of center blog site):

A source familiar with the negotiations between Congress and the White House told TPMDC the Congressional Hispanic Caucus will demand an agreement from Obama that health care coverage for illegals who earn a path to citizenship will be addressed in an immigration bill.

The Senate’s health care bill bars illegal immigrants from any sort of coverage, a provision embraced after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted “You lie!” during Obama’s address to Congress when the president said that illegal immigrants would not be able to get health care under the legislation.

Those familiar with the talks say any immigration legislation will include various amnesty provisions to allow for health care coverage.

Amnesty – progressives in both parties tried to pass it and the overwhelming number of Republicans, Independents and Democrats opposed this, but the current crew really doesn’t seem to care about that, after all they know better than you, just ask them and they will tell you.

Bankruptcies up 32% to 1.4 million

AP/Yahoo:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — U.S. consumers and businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a pace that made 2009 the seventh-worst year on record, with more than 1.4 million petitions submitted, an Associated Press tally showed Monday.

The AP gathered data from the nation’s 90 bankruptcy districts and found 1.43 million filings, an increase of 32 percent from 2008. There were 116,000 recorded bankruptcies in December, up 22 percent from the same month a year before.

Legendary Polish Freedom Movement Leader: U.S. No Longer Leads Morally

Lech Walesa is someone who isn’t spoken of much in school or in text books. Walesa was the head of the “Solidarity” freedom movement in Poland that gained long time international attention resisting communism. Walesa stands second only to Ronald Reagan in his efforts to bring the cold war version of communism to an end. Walesa is a true hero and has the scars to prove it. Perhaps one should ask themselves why one of the world’s greatest leaders in history is not a houshold name to every school aged child.

Walesa considered Reagan to be a great moral leader as well as Lady Thatcher.

Poland is was our most dedicated European ally until President Obama broke a  missile defense shield agreement with Poland in exchange for nothing other than Putin agreeing to a few new business dealings with General Electric (the owner of NBC/MSNBC). Poland sent troops and vehicles to Iraq and stepped up to the plate when we asked for help. Polish newspapers are now saying that the United States has betrayed them.

In fact after abandoning Poland’s missile shield Putin said “thanks” and vowed to develop new offensive weapons systems – LINK.

Lech Walesa (via translator):

The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it. Militarily.  They also lead economically but they’re getting weak. But they don’t lead morally and politically anymore.  The world has no leadership.  The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations.  There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States.  Today, we lost that hope.

UPDATE – Leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India blow off one on one meetings with Obama. – LINK.

Obama’s War on Wealth Continues: IRS hires “hundreds” for new wealth unit

/Sarcasm – so what, it’s those evil rich who don’t pay their fair share anyways, screw them!

The reality.

1. First of all the John Kerry like rich often pay less than 13% of their income in federal taxes and there is a reason why so many Democrats in the Senate are super rich; they design the tax laws so that much of their income is defined as non-taxable income or they legislate other favors for themselves.

2. The investment class didn’t get to be the investment class by not know what to do with money, they will move wealth to China or move it off shore in many circumstances anyways. This causes American economic casualties because they money isn’t being put to good use here in America. When investment or risk taking class is under assault by our government and society, why would they do business here. Money and capital go where it is treated best, which isn’t America. This costs jobs.

3. So what is left? The productivity class, the upper middle class, small to medium-sized businesses who employ more than a dozen people, are defined as “the rich” in the tax code and they are the ones who pay a huge amount of taxes and can produce and hire less as a result.

4. The top 10% of wage earners pay 50% of all income taxes. These wage earners are NOT the John Kerry rich nor are they the investment class, these are the upper middle class and the productivity class.

Reuters:

The IRS high wealth unit, part of a broader effort to combat international tax evasion, is focusing on “the entire web of business entities controlled by a high wealth individual,” IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told a tax conference this week.

Another IRS official told Reuters “hundreds” of people have already been hired to staff the new unit, including some from within the agency.

“We have drawn top talent within the IRS that have expertise involving wealthy individuals as well as examination of their related entities,” said Mae Lew, an IRS special counsel.

The high-wealth unit is focusing on trusts, real estate investments, privately held companies and other business entities controlled by rich individuals.

While use of sophisticated legal structures can be legal, in other instances they “mask aggressive tax strategies,” Shulman said.

Will they get some of the people in the investment class who are hiding their money from an increasing assault upon them by the U.S. Government, sure they will, but the money they recover will be a drop in the bucket compared to the loss in confidence and under siege feeling these people will have which will keep even more of their wealth going to China. The capital gains tax rate here in the US approaches 30%, in China the rate is ZERO as China just appreciates people taking risk by investing in China. If you were a member of the investment class what would you do?

Pinhead of the day: Noted Journalist & Scholar Calls for Forced One Child Policy…

…and has two children of her own.

I appreciate Diane Francis because she is a quintessential example of the typical “progressive intellectual”. She is absolutely convinced of her own virtue and “moral authority”, believes that elites like herself should plan our society rather than letting the rabble participate in the animated contest of freedom; she does so to the point of advocating a point of view that brushes up against social darwinism and eugenics, whose attitudes and themes are epidemic among leftist academia and journalism.

Like almost all “progressive intellectuals” Francis has one standard for herself and another for everyone else. This is a reoccurring theme among the progressive elite, free speech for me and not for thee, the desire to criminalize opposing them politically and of course, only those deemed worthy like herself should have more children. Since most progressives are “post modernists” their “reality” is a mental construct that is self-serving to themselves. As Stalin once said, “The truth to a communist is anything that supports communism”.

Like all social darwinists, each member of the progressive elite is convinced that they themselves are the genetic and/or intellectual ideal.

Diane Francis:

Humans are the only rational animals but have yet to prove it. (translation – I am rational and the rabble are not – Editor) Medical and other scientific advances have benefited by delivering lower infant mortality rates as well as longevity. Both are welcome, but humankind has not yet recalibrated its behavior to account for the fact that the world can only accommodate so many people, especially if billions get indoor plumbing and cars.

The fix is simple. It’s dramatic. And yet the world’s leaders don’t even have this on their agenda in Copenhagen. Instead there will be photo ops, posturing, optics, blah-blah-blah about climate science and climate fraud, announcements of giant wind farms, then cap-and-trade subsidies.

None will work unless a China one-child policy is imposed. Unfortunately, there are powerful opponents. Leaders of the world’s big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control (Thousands of years of human experience and wisdom since the time of Abraham mean nothing now that Diane Francis is here! And that whole Jesus thing, don’t you fools know that now that we have Diane Francis, Jesus has been rendered irrellevent and backwards! – Editor) . And most political leaders in emerging economies perpetuate a disastrous Catch-22: Many children (i. e. sons) stave off hardship in the absence of a social safety net or economic development, which, in turn, prevents protections or development.

China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet. (Ahhh yes once again the problem is the middle class, or shall I say bourgeoisie, the problem is YOU, and just like every other crisis both real and imagined, central control of elites like Francis is always the answer. – Editor)

For those who balk at the notion that governments should control family sizes, just wait until the growing human population turns twice as much pastureland into desert as is now the case, or when the Amazon is gone, the elephants disappear for good and wars erupt over water, scarce resources and spatial needs. (Actually in spite of the growth in population, we have more food then ever because technology in innovation and efficiency means we get more food from less. History and economics prove that policies of central control result in scarcity. The problem is not that that food is difficult to produce in great supply, the problem in most of the world is the lack of freedom to do so. As less and less of our population works in agriculture, food supplies grow more and more. – Editor)

Real Clear Politics Confirms IUSB Vision Analysis: Latest Health Care Bill Designed to Wreck Private Insurance & Make People Cry Out for a Public Option

UPDATE: Pelosi confirms….video and more commentary see update below.

Read this carefully…

As we at IUSB Vision have stated again and again and again…. 

Real Clear Politics:

Rather than increasing the number of insured by making health insurance more affordable, this bill makes health insurance more expensive and increases the incentive to simply drop your insurance until you need someone to pay for your medical bills. It is an attempt to turn health insurance into what the left really wants: another welfare program in which everyone is entitled to free benefits, mandated by the government. But this would wreck private health insurance, making the whole industrial financially unsustainable.

Following the usual pattern of government intervention, the health-care bill offers another intervention as the solution for the problem created by the first. The “individual mandate” requires everyone to buy health insurance and subjects us to a tax if we fail to do so. But this is an especially onerous new tax, the first tax not tied to any kind of income or activity. It’s not a tax on stock-market profits, say, or a tax on buying cigarettes. It’s just a tax for existing.

So fearing a public backlash, Congress didn’t have the guts to make this new tax very large-only $750. Yet actual insurance can cost more than $3,000 per year-and as we shall see, this legislation goes out of its way to drive up those rates by mandating more lavish coverage. So we end up getting the worst of both worlds. This provision won’t actually drive anyone to buy health insurance and prop up the risk pools for those who are insured. All it will accomplish is to create a brand new form of tax.

But the biggest power-grab in the bill is the government takeover of the entire market for health insurance. The bill requires all new policies to be sold on a government-controlled exchange run by a commissioner who is empowered to dictate what kinds of insurance policies can be offered, what they must cover, and what they can charge.

Right now, your best option for reducing the cost of your health insurance is to buy a policy with a high deductible, which leaves you to pay for routine checkups and minor injuries (preferably from savings held in a tax-free Health Savings Account) but which covers your needs in catastrophic circumstances-a bad car accident, say, or expensive treatment for cancer. This is the kind of coverage I have.

But the health-insurance exchange is intended to eliminate precisely this kind of low-cost catastrophic coverage. Its purpose is to force health-insurance companies to offer comprehensive coverage that pays for all of your routine bills-which in turn comes at a higher price. So under the guise of making health insurance more affordable, this bill will restrict your menu of choices to include only the most expensive options.

So there we have the real essence of this bill. It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one’s very existence.

By all means, let’s debate some of that in the Senate.

When you understand what this bill does, you can see why the Democrats would be happy to compromise and drop the public option-for now. This bill so comprehensively wrecks private health insurance that pretty soon a “public option” will seem like the only alternative, and they will already have put into place one of the new taxes needed to pay for it. If the left’s goal is to impose socialized medicine in America, this bill does it in the most callous and destructive way possible. It smashes private health care-then leaves us stranded in the rubble, at which point we will be expected to come crawling back to the same people who caused the disaster and ask them to save us.

UPDATE – Speaker Pelosi used IUSB Vision writer Chuck Norton’s exact words “make them cry out for a public option” on C-Span.

Also in the clip Speaker Pelosi makes the outrageous statement that the Health Care Bill negotiations were the most transparent ever. Pelosi said that they had witnesses in committee hearings, townhall meetings and people talked about the bill on the internet.

What she doesn’t say is that most of the bills were written outside of the normal committee markup process which makes that irrellevent and Republicans and the public/press got to see the 2000 page bills only just a short time before a final vote….at which time it was a mad scramble to see what was in them and talk about it on the internet before the vote.

An example of the most transparent process ever…. LINK

Of course Speaker Pelosi loved townhall meetings before she demonized them LINK.

Tea Party leads both Democrats and Republicans on the generic congressional ballot among independents.

We informed readers previously that Democrat Party ID (voter self identification) is at an all time low, but now we move to something even more interesting. 

The Tea Party leads both Democrats and Republicans on the generic congressional ballot among independents. This means that generic tea Party candidate vs generic Democrat candidate vs generic Republican candidate the Tea Party candidate wins.

Rasmussen polls have called elections often within a tenth of a point of the actual result.  

It is difficult to understate the impact of this news.

Keep in mind that Ross Perot received about 19% of the vote and the last successful third-party sweep of election was Abraham Lincoln’s new Republican Party which formed to oppose the Democrats and the Whigs.

Expect Democrats to try and demonize the Tea Party people with smears and lies, such as what MSNBC has been doing by taking pictures and information from LaRouchie’s and attributing them to the Tea Party participants LINK.

Rasmussen Reports:

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

Among Republican voters, 39% say they’d vote for the GOP candidate, but 33% favor the Tea Party option.

Obama Appoints Another Judicial Radical – Says Rulings Depend on Race

We had told you about the first judicial radical President Obama appointed Judge Hamilton, who tried to dictate to the Indiana Legislature what kind of prayers could be delivered at the opening of session. Hamilton’s silly ruling was overturned on appeal as has many others of his. Hamilton has also been scolded for ignoring law and precedent.

I would have posted this earlier but I had missed this story and ran into it recently.

Washington Times:

Another day, another Obama nominee who doesn’t appear to love America. Another nominee who thinks the United States is inherently racist. Another nominee who thinks that judges should let their “ethnic and racial background” have an effect on how they conduct their trials. President Obama’s radicalization of American government needs to be stopped.

In this case, the nominee is Northern California federal district court nominee Edward Chen, forwarded by the Senate Judiciary Committee to the full Senate last Friday on a party-line vote. Mr. Chen is currently a federal magistrate in San Francisco, and a lawyer long active with the American Civil Liberties Union before that.

Judge Chen’s words speak for themselves. When the congregation sang “America the Beautiful” at a funeral, Judge Chen told the audience of his “feelings of ambivalence and cynicism when confronted with appeals to patriotism – sometimes I cannot help but feel that there are too much [sic] injustice and too many inequalities that prevent far too many Americans from enjoying the beauty extolled in that anthem.”

In a speech on Sept. 22, 2001, he said that among his first responses to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America was a “sickening feeling in my stomach about what might happen to race relations and religious tolerance on our own soil. … One has to wonder whether the seemingly irresistible forces of racism, nativism and scapegoating which has [sic] recurred so often in our history can be effectively restrained.”

And talking about the role of judges, he in effect embraced the “empathy standard” that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was forced to denounce in her own confirmation hearings: “Simply put, a judge’s life experiences affect the willingness to credit testimony or understand the human impact of legal rules upon which the judge must decide. These determinations require a judge to draw upon something that is not found in the case reports that line the walls of our chambers. Rather judges draw upon the breadth and depth of their own life experience…. Inevitably, one’s ethnic and racial background contributes to those life experiences.”

You get the picture. To quote and paraphrase Sen. Charles E. Schumer from another occasion, this man’s attitude “doesn’t even whisper ‘judge.’ ” Instead, it yells out that he is a biased radical willing to impose his own politics from the bench. Judge Chen should not be confirmed.