Elliot Spitzer was desperately trying to wrap Senator Elect Rand Paul’s words around his axle and Senator Paul wasn’t having it. One loaded question with a false premise after another. When that didn’t work Spitzer tried mischaracterize Sen. Paul’s answer mere seconds after he made it.
Spitzer tried to make it personal and Paul throws Spitzers criminal past right back in his face. Spitzer tries on Social Security and Medicare, but Rand Paul had substantive answers for those questions.
Senator Paul says he will start looking into cuts for people under age 55 and then the next generation (means testing is an example), look for big cuts or elimination of some programs so that the cuts to the big entitlements do not have to be so draconian. If we cut reimbursements for doctors than we have to cut pay for all federal employees (except the military) because we cant balance the budget on one group of people and the economic reality is that we have to pay doctors enough so they will take Medicare patients.
Senator Paul said that he has a team going through all of the budget and he will have come January or February balanced budget plans for 1 year to balance, 5 year to balance, etc so Congress will have options on how to tackle it. Paul is right that the process has to be given teeth or in the future Congress may ignore the rules. If Senator Paul delivers on these budget plans and they turn out to be at least directionally realistic and doable, he may replace Glenn Beck as George Soros’ public enemy number one.
Spitzer ends with the biggest and most laughable canard there is and insults the Senator at the last minute. Remember when the CBO said that ObamaCare would save a trillion dollars? That is because the CBO has to score based on the assumptions given to them. The assumptions included a massive cut in doctor reimbursements at some future date that we all know wont happen, passing a large part of the burden to the states, which also wont happen due to state balanced budget amendments, and other cute accounting tricks. When asked straight up what it may cost the CBO and Obama’s own medicare actuary agree, the costs go up. This is no secret as it has all been well reported and we have reported on it here.
We all know from Spitzer’s past that he abused his position and engaged in behavior that is just plain scuzzy, tonight we get to see some of the scuzzy side of Spitzer.
Its hard to compete when you face all of the costs associated with a government that costs $3 trillion a year… and a California government that is bloated and getting worse. California just elected a bunch of Democrats like Jerry Brown as Governor….. what a mess.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States heardarguments in an appeal of a 9th Circuit decision, Winn v Garriott, a challenge to one of Arizona’s education tax credit programs. It’s been getting more press than I’d expected, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today. That’s great news, because the case is far more important than just saving a program that improves education and expands educational freedom.
The 9th Circuit’s reasoning arrogates to the state all property , dissolving the distinction between public and private funds as well as public and private choices. It is a disturbing, dangerous decision.
They assert that tax cuts are the equivalent of government funds, a conclusion possible only if one assumes that all personal income belongs by default to the state rather than to the individual who earned the money. It asserts as well that when taxpayers and parents privately choose to support religious educational organizations, they are in violation of the First Amendment. This reasoning blatantly ignores the logic and plain meaning of the 2002 Zelman decision upholding school vouchers, among others.
Here is a prediction; the court will have their absurd ruling on an Arizona education tax credit program posted on the wall of judicial shame like so many others issued from their Circuit.
But I want more from the Court. This ruling is so awful that I can only pray SCOTUS rules beyond the questionable standing of the plaintiffs and comprehensively dismembers this most egregious 9th Circuit decision.
Schaeffer received his Ph.D. in American politics, with a focus in political behavior, media effects, and coalitional politics, from the University of Virginia and his MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago.
Soros is a dangerous man who mas manipulated currency, been accused of mass financial crimes, toyed with governments, tries to influence our elections with fraud and his “Secretary of State Project”, he controls Media Matters and other smear outfits to trash his enemies with lies and half truths, he funds all sorts of far left think tanks and political groups and is by and large the top sugar daddy of the Democratic Leadership. Soros wants the dollar devalued, thinks the U.S. is the problem in the world, he despises the limits the Constitution imposes and he despises the Western Judeao/Christian culture.
Some consider Soros to be the most powerful man in the world.
Glenn Beck, has had enough of his crap and the economic damage he has caused. If you want to see America return to economic and cultural prosperity, start behaving in a way that helped to make us great, and to regain the moral authority that Polish anti-communist revolutionary Lech Walesa says we have lost, then the plans of George Soros must be stopped.
DURHAM – University of New Hampshire and outside researchers are creating a computer model to help organic dairy farmers cut greenhouse gas emissions such as methane, because Beano probably isn’t an option.
Nitrogen- and carbon-based greenhouse gases are produced via a complicated system at dairy farms that is affected by everything from the weather to the soil to the feed to cow burps, among other things.
“Cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence,” said the project’s principal investigator, Ruth Varner of UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space.
UNH has been awarded a $700,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to create a computer model that measures the amount of greenhouse gases an organic dairy farm produces and thus provide ways to cut those emissions.
You would think that a priority of the police would be to help enhance the public trust. It would seem that someone forgot to let Orange County authorities in on the secret.
It does not please me to have to report stories like this, but without restraint and a little common sense there can be no freedom.
As many as 14 armed Orange County deputies, including narcotics agents, stormed Strictly Skillz barbershop during business hours on a Saturday in August, handcuffing barbers in front of customers during a busy back-to-school weekend.
It was just one of a series of unprecedented raid-style inspections the Orange County Sheriff’s Office recently conducted with a state regulating agency, targeting several predominantly black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Pine Hills area.
In “sweeps” on Aug. 21 and Sept. 17 targeting at least nine shops, deputies arrested 37 people — the majority charged with “barbering without a license,” a misdemeanor that state records show only three other people have been jailed in Florida in the past 10 years.
The operations were conducted without warrants, under the authority of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspectors, who can enter salons at will. Deputies said they found evidence of illegal activity, including guns, drugs and gambling. However, records show that during the two sweeps, and a smaller one in October, just three people were charged with anything other than a licensing violation.
Orange County sheriff’s Capt. Dave Ogden, who commands the area that includes Pine Hills, described the operations as a “minuscule” part of a larger effort to snuff out crime in one of Central Florida’s notorious hot spots.
Asked why his unit made arrests for licensing violations, Ogden said: “It was a misdemeanor crime being committed in our presence. We decided to make arrests.”
But many of the barbers who were swept up in the operations are still angry months later.
They made a big charade about it,” barber Jason Abrams said, “like we were selling drugs or something.”
Ok so if they found all these illegal guns and drugs etc, where are all the big charges and impending prosecutions? What was that….no big felony charges…. Oh so you just said that to the press to justify playing Miami Vice against people of color who cut someone’s hair… thanks that’s what I thought.
How could they be so stupid?
Is this what we hire police and SWAT teams for? I have a crazy idea, when you see someone cutting hair without a license, how about you send them a nice letter telling them to get a license in such a period of time or pay a fine? Maybe the local government in Orange County ran out of stamps or maybe they ran out of violent criminals to arrest.
The damage done to relations in the community by Orange County authorities is not worth the few dollars in fines they are hoping to glean from these raids. Did anyone internally dare to speak up and say, “You know this might not be a good idea.”
Under the old rules each freshman class had only one seat on the steering committee. There will also be a new “Tea Party” position on the caucus elected leadership team.
Incoming Speaker John Boehner:
November 9, 2010
Dear Freshman Member–Elect,
As you prepare to come to Washington for Orientation during the week of November 14th, we wanted to bring to your attention the various leadership opportunities available to your class.
The incoming GOP freshman class for the 112th Congress is no ordinary freshman class, and this is no ordinary time for our nation. Accordingly, the incoming GOP freshman class will have a larger voice at the leadership table and on the Steering Committee than previous GOP freshman classes in previous Congresses. In addition, there are various other non-elected roles in which freshmen can participate which we look forward to discussing with you during orientation.
Your class will elect the following positions on November 17th following our Conference Organizing activities. We will arrange for a room for you to conduct your deliberations and voting.
1) Freshman Class President
2) Freshman Class Steering Committee Representative #1
3) Freshman Class Steering Committee Representative #2
4) Freshman Representative to the Elected Leadership Team
5) Freshman Representative to the Policy Committee
If you have any questions about these positions, please feel free to call the Office of the Republican Leader at 202-225-XXXX or the Office of the Republican Whip at 202-225-XXXX.
A rule that is taught in every journalism school is this, when you write on a person and/or a subject be sure to check your own papers archives on the issue and subject.
Apparently Sudeep Reddy at the Wall Street Journal was absent the day that was covered in class…and missed the question on the test (as opposed to this writer got his degree with honors and got the question correct in Prof. Klimek’s class).
Sarah Palin on the other hand, has a journalism degree and when Mr. Ruddy blasted Sarah Palin for saying that food prices are rising…. well read on:
Ever since 2008, people seem inordinately interested in my reading habits. Among various newspapers, magazines, and local Alaskan papers, I read the Wall Street Journal.
So, imagine my dismay when I read an article by Sudeep Reddy in today’s Wall Street Journal criticizing the fact that I mentioned inflation in my comments about QE2 in a speech this morning before a trade-association. Here’s what I said: “everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher.”
Mr. Reddy takes aim at this. He writes: “Grocery prices haven’t risen all that significantly, in fact.” Really? That’s odd, because just last Thursday, November 4, I read an article in Mr. Reddy’s own Wall Street Journal titled “Food Sellers Grit Teeth, Raise Prices: Packagers and Supermarkets Pressured to Pass Along Rising Costs, Even as Consumers Pinch Pennies.”
The article noted that “an inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America’s supermarkets and restaurants…Prices of staples including milk, beef, coffee, cocoa and sugar have risen sharply in recent months.”
Now I realize I’m just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper. I’m surprised a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal doesn’t.
- Sarah Palin
Those of you who are fans of our humble web site, you know that this very website editor is grinning from ear to ear.
On a serious note. Palin is correct about food prices and any of us who do some of the shopping and/or work retail know this very well. For example, recently Wal-Mart raised the price of the Great Value brand apple juice from $1.48 to $1.98. Wal-Mart also has had giant submarine sandwiches for $4.98. Now it is like someone took a shrink ray to the sandwiches and removed much of the meat. I could list 100 of these.
It is not just the Wall Street Journal that is reporting the increase in prices. American Business Analytics & Research tells the Salem-News that if the government still calculated inflation the way it was calculated during Carter and Reagan (changed under Clinton) the inflation rate would be 10%.
This is no surprise as the dollar has been tanking for a long time which causes each one of our dollars to be worth less. This also directly raises the price of anything that is imported. To compound the problem new regulations and taxes are impacting prices as well. The Federal reserve going on a printing frenzy to monetize the debt has the same effect.
I sent this note to Governor Palin:
Governor, that is exactly how to treat these clowns and this is exactly the kind of communications strat I have been advocating for years on my humble little web site. If they are going to try and destroy you anyways, make them a part of the story and knock them down a peg. Well done and God Bless!
UPDATE - Notice how I used the example of Wal-Mart prices going up? Well take a look at this:
Secret Walmart Survey Shows Inflation Already Here
There might not have been a second round of quantitative easing, if Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke shopped at Walmart.
A new pricing survey of products sold at the world’s largest retailer showed a 0.6 percent price increase in just the last two months, according to MKM Partners. At that rate, prices would be close to four percent higher a year from now, double the Fed’s mandate.
The “inaugural price survey shows a small, but meaningful increase on an 86-item grocery basket,” said Patrick McKeever, MKM Partners analyst, in a note. Most of the items McKeever chose to track were every day items like food and detergent and made by national brands.
On November 3, the Fed announced its much-anticipated purchase of $600 billion in Treasury securities. An effort to keep market rates low since the central bank’s benchmark rate is already at zero. The Federal Open Market Committee’s statement said, “Currently, the unemployment rate is elevated, and measures of underlying inflation are somewhat low, relative to levels that the Committee judges to be consistent, over the longer run, with its dual mandate.”
But since that statement, interest rates have actually gone up, backfiring on a Fed chief who wants his quantitative easing to spark inflation of 2 percent annually. A moderate amount of inflation would be considered good for the economy. The problem is that inflation is already running well above a healthy level, investors said, Bernanke is just not looking in the right place, like a Walmart.
Sarah wins the argument again, and we win the argument again, and the American people lose.
“I made the decision to go ahead and do it. And, it proved as costly politically as we expected. Probably actually a little more costly than we had expected… Partly because I couldn’t get the kind of cooperation from Republicans that I hoped for. We thought that if we shaped a bill that wasn’t that different from previous bills that had introduced by Republicans, including the Republican governor in Massachusetts who’s now running for president, that we would be able to find some common ground there and we just couldn’t.”
Here are a few points regarding his statement:
- The health care bill was passed before not after the unpopular financial bill.
- Mitt Romney is not currently running for president.
- We’ve never been a bill like this proposed nationally unless you count Hillarycare.
- Obama was pushing the bill for over a year before democrats rammed it through.
- It was the central focus of his first two years in office.
- They didn’t even read the bill.
- Democrats thought it would be more popular by the midterm election.
- His other emergency economic proposals were complete bombs, too.
Of course, Steve Croft did not bother to question the president about any of his inaccurate statements.
Well by all means allow us to pile on:
You “couldn’t get the cooperation from Republicans”… you had an overwhelming majority in both chambers of Congress most of that time and you passed it with no Republican votes.
Republicans never pushed most of the bad ideas that are in ObamaCare. One of the few good ideas was a step towards tort reform, but that was a bone in an effort to claim bipartisanship.
Republicans offered amendment after amendment trying to insure in law what you Democrats promised, no rationing, no system that statistically discriminated against seniors, the very young or the elderly, and an amendment forcing members of Congress and their staff to actually live under the bill and not be exempt from it, all shot down.
So called “RomneyCare” in Massachusetts is a failure as its cost overruns are through the roof and insurers are starting to want out. It was a statewide experiment not a nationwide one.
People are already losing coverage and seeing premiums skyrocket because of the bill, which is exactly the opposite you promised repeatedly.
The people, the Republicans and most anyone not in the leadership only had access to the final bill for a very short time before it was voted upon which is why even now people are still finding SNAFU’s in the bill.
If Sarah Palin had said similar things the elite media would be grilling her.
UPDATE – ABC lied when the pressure was put on. This is a very educational and interesting interview.
Andrew Breitbart is a nice guy and he doesn’t deserve this at all.
Friends, if you want evidence that newsrooms are mostly filled with like-minded elitist leftists, this fact doesn’t get illustrated much better than this story.
Kurtz was right to stand up for Brietbart, but is a also wrong about the so called “misleading video” comment. This is what happens when people believe the elite media narrative without checking the facts – more on that below.
Andrew Brietbart is a one man media empire. He is also a conservative activist. He has straight news web sites, commentary news web sites, blogs, a video news clips service, Hollywood connections and influence, D.C. connections and influence etc.. If you read the news regularly online you can be sure you have read news from Brietbart web sites.
Andrew Brietbart is the employer of the investigative journalists that brought ACORN and their illegal activities in tax fraud, vote registration fraud and other illegal activities burning to the ground. ACORN was a huge power player among leftist circles and wow is the left upset.
Brietbart is despised by the left. He is media public enemy number three among the left after Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
Andrew Brietbart wrote a blog post about a Youtube video of showing Shirley Sherrod at a 2010 NAACP event where she had talked about how she used her position to plot against a white farmer because he was white and she perceived a “superior attitude” from him. The story whipped up a big firestorm in the elite media. The elite media ran with the story, as they got excited when they saw “racism” and they aired snippets of the clip where Sherrod tells about the racist plotting. The media trimmed video clips down for time which is not unusual. The inflammatory nature of the story they thought they had was just too juicy to go back and check carefully. The administration fired Sherrod for “racism”. Most of the people that viewed the clips they saw on TV took it at face value and demanded her head (including Rush Limbaugh if memory serves).
The administration fired Sherrod for “racism”. Most of the people that viewed the snippet they saw on TV took it at face value and demanded her head (including Rush Limbaugh if memory serves). Sherrod said that when she was fired over the phone that they told her that Glenn Beck was going to blast her as a racist on his show the following day. Even though Beck got the story right the first time, the left started blaming him.. at first….
Glenn Beck did something the elite media did not expect. Beck spoke up against the firing of Shirley Sherrod and indicated that the story might not be as it appears in the elite media. After the entire “Glenn Beck and the Tea Party is racist” canard from the elite media you can understand why they were shocked. The question is WHY was Beck right about this story so early on? Keep that question in mind as we will return to it in a moment.
A few days later the NAACP released the 43 minute tape of the event. The tape showed that later in her speech Sherrod talked about how this event with the white farmer helped her to realize that racism is wrong and how it helped her in her journey to overcome racism. It turns out that Sherrod is not quite the racist as the elite media television narrative had made people think. The media and the administration realized they had egg on their face and the finger-pointing began.
Then the elite media en mass said that Brietbart carefully edited the tape to set Sherrod up and that they were tricked. This is the lie that the elite media and the left still puts out today…… BUT…
…it turns out that the elite media didn’t listen to the entire Youtube clip very carefully. It turns out that Brietbart did not chop it up to make Sherrod look guilty, in fact the Youtube video Brietbart linked to and blogged about includes a part of her mea-culpa. Brietbart was not even the creator of the Youtube video.
This is why Glenn Beck got the story correct the first time. Beck never believes the elite media narrative on face value and prefers to check the facts out for himself. Beck and/or his staff ignored the clips that the TV was playing and instead went to Brietbart’s web site to examine the entire Youtube video carefully. It was at that time Beck had realized the obvious, that Sherrod was starting to explain how she realized her racism was wrong.
The elite media and far left web sites like HuffPost, Daily KOS, Young Turks, Media Matters etc are still lying about this and claiming that Brietbart edited the video to set Sherrod up.
Here is part I of the the video Brietbart blogged about. Sherrod starts talking about how she plotted against the white farmer at 20 seconds and the NAACP audience is shown obviously approving of what she was plotting with nods, “that’s right’s” and approving laughter through the 55 second mark; as you can see scorn and condemnation of a racist act is no where near anyone in the audiences demeanor. At 1:25 in the video she starts talking about how she began to realize that her racism was wrong. -
Brietbart did not say in his blog post about the video that Sherrod should be fired as that was not even the point of his post, rather Brietbart made his point clearly. When Sherrod told how she plotted against a white farmer the NAACP audience laughed and nodded approvingly at her for that discriminationbefore Sherrod made her the mea-culpa and talked about how this event helped her to realize that racism is wrong. What Brietbart saw and blogged about at the NAACP event was exactly what the elite media falsely accused the Tea Party of, the applauding and/or tolerating racism in their ranks. [The NAACP also pressured the Obama administration to drop the case against members of the Black Panthers who showed up to polling places armed to intimidate white voters into not voting - Editor].
Just how bad is the elite media corruption on this issue?
Among the elite media culture, the first to get this story correct was Chris Mathews of MSNBC …but let us hold off our praise for just a moment till you see what comes next. The video below is the 5PM broadcast of Hardball with Chris Mathews. This is a sight to see:
Notice Mathews says that he saw the original Brietbart internet post and insists that the video linked to includes the part with Sherrod’s mea-culpa. Howard Dean tried to make the case that it wasn’t, accuses Mathews of being like Fox News for sticking to the truth, and then relents and admits that he did not go to Brietbart’s web site and view the original video, but rather all he saw was what appeared on TV. Howard Dean says that the entire clip is not what he saw on Fox…. guess what Howard, according to all of the blogs, comments, posted clips, and searches I can find, Fox never aired the clip until AFTER Sherrod was fired. Nice try.
But come 7PM the video was yanked from MSNBC’s web site and when the 7PM version of Hardball aired the part of Mathews getting the story correct was gone. BigGovernment.com has both clips side by side for your inspection. They also asked politico.com for a correction:
At the very end of one of the video excerpt’s, Ms. Sherrod begins to explain how she later realized her initial discrimination of the white farmer was wrong. In Andrew’s article about the speech he noted
Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help.
If we were trying to show that Ms. Sherrod was “boasting” of discrimination and were prone to editing the tape as evidence, wouldn’t we have cut that part out?
Politico would not correct the record or respond, which is becoming habitual for them.
Back to ABC. In a way I am glad Brietbart was not on ABC for several reasons. Brietbart is a brilliant guy and the media empire he has built makes that self-evident, but Brietbart is one of those guys who gets nervous and a bit choked up when in front of a camera with hostiles. There are some people who do not speak well in front of an audience no matter how smart they are. I know Andrew has been working to improve on this but he still needs improvement. I also do not trust ABC for many good reasons that we have documented over the years on this very web site. I believe that it would have been a three or four on one gang up on Brietbart for much of the evening if he were to appear.
1 – The massive tax code allows the super rich to hide money so they don’t pay their fair share. The tax code also picks winners and losers and slants the playing field against small and medium-sized domestic businesses.
2 – The cost of compliance with the tax code is in itself a massive tax.
3 – We need a fairer, flatter and simpler tax system that encourages people to create wealth.
4 – Change the tax code so that the rate for small business S-Corps is smaller than the high wage earner rate and not tied to it.
5 – There are not enough “rich” people to sock anyways to handle the deficit.
6 – Lower the corporate income tax but eliminate some loopholes to help attract wealth back from overseas. We have the second highest corporate income tax in the industrialized world. That sends jobs away.
7 – The best way to increase revenue is with lower tax rates that stimulate and attract wealth creation and investment. Creating and inviting more wealth to tax is the best way to increase revenue. When jobs, wealth, investment goes to China, we can’t tax it.
8 – Wealth goes where it is treated well and more and more that isn’t here.
9 – The private sector simply cannot support a government that costs $3 trillion dollars a year and stay competitive.
On Spending & Legislation:
Reform on spending has to come in forms both large and small. Remember that Obama said in the 2008 campaign that he wanted to cut spending from the 2008 levels (and instead it went through the roof).
1 – Cut spending back to 2008 levels immediately (except unemployment).
2 – Earmark abuse must come to an end. Granted legislative earmarks usually add up to less than $20 billion a year, many of these earmarks go to lobbyists clients and are used for paybacks and corruption.
3 – End funding for NPR, Arts and other fluff. Sorry folks we are dangerously in debt now.
4 – For many unionized and other federal employees, their pay is 30-300% higher than their counterparts in the private sector. On top of that many federal employees pay next to nothing for their benefits. This must be reformed. This goes for many of the states as well.
5 – We need means testing for Social Security & Medicare. We do not need to be paying for Rush Limbaugh’s and Bill Gates’ Medicare.
6 – We need to reign in executive earmark/pork spending like much of the stimulus package and the $411 Billion pork bill that was passed days after.
7 – We need a massive reform in education spending as most of it goes to bureaucrats and vested interests, not toward educating the kids.
8 – Pass SERIOUS mortgage reform.
9 – Have a review of every government agency. Either shape up, reform or ship out. Is their expense justified or is it better just to take that money and return it to the states or pay the debt.
10 – Reign in the Federal Reserve and stop them from trashing our currency.
11 – Pass FDA reform so our companies can bring new medicines and innovations to market cheaper.
12 – Pass wage & hour reform to make exceptions for apprenticeships. The minimum wage is high enough now that apprenticeship jobs for young people to teach them trade skills have almost all disappeared. Young people who do not wish to go to college need skills so they can have good jobs later. The lack of skilled labor has brought in illegal aliens to do those jobs, especially in construction.
13 – Review laws that have little benefit but kill jobs (the light bulb law comes to mind)
14 – Create enterprise zones with incentives to attract wealth.
15 – 80%+ of college graduates are not finding good jobs, student loan repayment penalties should be suspended till the economy recovers.
16 – Deal with ObamaCare problems.
17 – Re-enable the Clinton/Gingrich/Kasich Welfare Reform law that was reversed with the stimulus package.
18 – Allow states to make their own low cost health care programs like the brilliant Indiana HIP program (and many other reforms).
With the Republicans poised to retake majority control of the House of Representatives following Tuesday’s midterm elections, the presumptive chairman of the Rules Committee, Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., is setting a new standard of transparency for his committee’s hearings.
In a letter addressed to the House chief administrative officer Dan Strodel, Dreier ordered that video cameras be installed in the hearing room so citizens can keep an eye on Congress.
“Given the important nature of our work, my Republican Rules Committee colleagues and I have repeatedly requested that the majority undertake the installation of cameras in the Rules Committee hearing room to the end that we begin webcasting our proceedings,” Dreier wrote. According to The Hill, the personal letter emphasized the GOP’s interest in “genuine openness and transparency.” Currently, the Rules Committee hearing room is one of only three without cameras — the others being the ethics and Intelligence committee rooms.
As the ranking Republican on the committee, Dreier initially went public with his request during the heated debate over health care this past spring. “We’ve been asking for months for cameras to be installed in the Rules Committee hearing room and now the American people understand why it’s so necessary,” Dreier said at the time.
With Democrats’ health care overhaul plan now the law of the land, the GOP is looking to set a new example for government accountability. “The Rules Committee is being used to manipulate the process to avoid accountability and transparency,” Dreier noted in March. “If the Majority is going to insist on hiding votes on bills behind rules, the least they could do is let the American people watch the action.”
David Gregory, like so many elite media “journalists”, parrots DNC talking points and/or blog points that they glean from smear sites like Media Matters and the Huffington Post. By far the favorite narrative/talking point/bogus premise from the elite media is that tax cuts cause deficits and that you have to raise taxes to increase revenue (they are still fighting Reagan and never got over it).
After the Reagan tax cuts were passed revenue doubled. Now I will try to explain this is such a way that even a Marxist professor might be able to understand. If your income goes way up and so does your debt, that is an indication of a spending problem, not a revenue one.
Basketball star LeBron James had a choice to play pro basketball in New York or Florida. He chose Florida because New York Taxes would have cost him a fortune.
Lets say that you are a gifted hi-tech designer, you have a choice of going to New York which has penalties for high wage earners, or you go to work for Boeing in Washington State because the voters there just voted down a “tax the rich” tax. Where do you go?
Recently 153 businesses have moved from California to Texas 1, 2.
Maryland instituted a “millionaire’s tax” and guess what, a third of their millionaire tax returns went POOF… some might not have been millionaires any more, but some left the state and others put more effort into putting money in tax shelters so that Maryland couldn’t take it. The result was a $100 million loss in state revenue.
[Note to every GOP candidate or office holder that goes on any show to talk about taxes, print these out and keep them with you at all times. This is just a sample of the evidence I have stored in my archive. Every time one of the David Gregory's in the world starts down this bogus narrative whip these out and start quoting; then explain to him that his premise is a cute far left talking point but just isn't reality. So after you lay a couple of these quotes on him I would say something like this:
David I have been watching you promote this bogus talking point for years. I am sorry that you never found the time to do your homework on this issue, but maybe you don't read the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and all the rest of these. Well I do. So David I would like to think that you just didn't do your homework, but if its otherwise you may be fooling yourself, but your not fooling me and your certainly not fooling them (while you point at the camera)
Remember, these elite media people are not there to give the news objectively, often they are there to destroy you. They are going to trash you anyways, so you might as well make news by knocking them down a peg. The next elite media "journalist" will think twice before pulling a tactic like that on you.
Major network news shows ran 69 stories about Sarah Palin between September 29 and October 12. 37 stories were negative, just 2 were positive, and 30 were neutral. Not a single evening news show ran a positive story about Palin
- Chuck Norton, Editor]
By all means lets settle this argument right now. Tax cuts often increase revenue because more jobs means more taxpayers and more income means more taxes paid and more economic activity. David Gregory is an advocate and the following evidence puts his bogus narrative to rest.
Reducing the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 15% increased capital gains tax receipts by 79% from 2000 to 2004. Cutting the dividend tax rate by more than half–from 39.6% to 15%–increased dividend tax receipts by 35% from 2002 to 2004. And corporate tax receipts have nearly tripled since 2003, reaching $250 billion for the past nine months, 26% higher than the same period last year. (WSJ July 25, 2006)
WASHINGTON — The federal deficit in the budget year that just ended fell to a four-year low of $247.7 billion _ a figure President Bush touted Wednesday as “proof that pro-growth policies work.” The deficit for the budget year that ended Sept. 30 was 22.3 percent lower than the $318.7 billion imbalance for 2005, handing Bush a welcome economic talking point as Republicans battle to hold onto control of Congress in the midterm elections. (AP Oct. 11, 2006)
One place it has come from are corporations, whose tax collections have climbed by 76% over the past two years thanks to greater profitability. Personal income tax payments are up by 30.3% since 2004 too, despite the fact that the highest tax rate is down to 35% from 39.6%. The IRS tax-return data just released last month indicates that a near-record 37% of those income tax payments are received from the top 1% of earners — “the rich,” who are derided regularly in Washington for not paying their “fair share.” (WSJ Oct. 6 2006) – The rich are paying more in real dollars since the tax cuts.
US Treasury Sets New 1-Day Tax Receipt Record Of $85.8 Billion
Tuesday September 19th, 2006 / 0h04
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. government recorded record-high overall and corporate tax receipts on Sept. 15, which was a quarterly deadline for tax payments, the Treasury said Monday.
Total tax receipts were $85.8 billion on Friday, compared with the previous one-day record of $71 billion on Sept. 15 of last year, the Treasury said.
Within the overall figure, corporate tax receipts Friday were $71.8 billion, up from $63 billion in September of last year.
Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Randal Quarles said Friday’s numbers provided a “continuing demonstration of the strength of the U.S. economy.”
“In fact, Friday’s gross receipts were the largest in a single day in the nation’s history – 20% higher than receipts on the same quarterly tax payment date last year,” Quarles said in a statement.
It’s official — Arthur Laffer wins. New data show federal revenues surged in the first three quarters of the current fiscal year. Corporate tax receipts are up more than 26% over the same period last year, ringing in at $250 billion. Individual income tax collections, at $791 billion, are up 14% over the first nine months of fiscal 2005. The Congressional Budget Office projects corporate tax receipts will total $330 billion by the end of the fiscal year. As a result, the deficit for the year is expected to be about $300 billion, down from $318 billion last year and $412 billion the year before.
What, you ask, has led to this miraculous event? A tax cut, it turns out. Or rather, an array of tax cuts, on corporate income, personal income, and capital gains. These tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, appear to be having the desired effect of spurring economic growth by creating addition incentives for work and entrepreneurship. The latest numbers, moreover, offer some hard data to challenge some of the charges leveled against President Bush and congressional Republicans in respect of tax cuts. These tax cuts haven’t exactly benefited “the rich.” A third of those higher income-tax revenues came from the highest-earning 1% of households, according to the New York Times.
Budget Deficit Drops $296B Under Estimate
Jul 11, 11:01 AM (ET)
By ANDREW TAYLOR My Way
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush touted new deficit figures Tuesday showing considerable improvement upon earlier administration predictions, saying it shows the wisdom of his tax cuts.
Bush himself announced the figures – a task that for the most part has been left to lower-ranking administration officials in the past. The new figures show the deficit for the budget year ending Sept. 30 will be $296 billion – much better than the $423 billion that Bush predicted in February and a slight improvement over 2005.
WASHINGTON, July 8 — An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief.
Graphic: Mixed Signals On Tuesday, White House officials are expected to announce that the tax receipts will be about $250 billion above last year’s levels and that the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what they projected six months ago. The rising tide in tax payments has been building for months, but the increased scale is surprising even seasoned budget analysts and making it easier for both the administration and Congress to finesse the big run-up in spending over the past year.
Tax revenues are climbing twice as fast as the administration predicted in February, so fast that the budget deficit could actually decline this year.
A flood of income tax payments pushed up government receipts to the second-highest level in history in April, giving the country a sizable surplus for the month. In its monthly accounting of the government’s books, the Treasury Department said Wednesday that revenue for the month totaled $315.1 billion as Americans filed their tax returns by the April deadline. The gusher of tax revenue pushed total receipts up by 13.4 percent from April 2005. (AP May 10, 2006)
WASHINGTON, July 8 — An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief. (NYT July 9, 2006)
And just for good measure here is President Kennedy on tax cuts –
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) vowed on Spanish-language television to bring the DREAM Act back for a vote in the lame-duck session.
On the Univision program “Al Punto,” Reid was repeatedly hammered by host Jorge Ramos on whether the vote would happen, win or lose on Tuesday.
“The answer is yes,” Reid said.
“I have the right to do that, you know, I have the right to bring that up any time I want, that’s why I brought it up the first time,” he said. “I am a believer in our needing to do something. … We all support the DREAM Act. I just need a handful of Republicans to help me.”
Of the lack of Republican support he’s received on the DREAM Act or comprehensive immigration reform, Reid said, “They want to keep talking about this issue, and I say it’s demagoguery in its worst fashion and is unfair to the Hispanic community.”
Reid said he was doing “fine” in his midterm campaign and “our polling is right where we want it to be.”
“We believe that the Republicans know where we are, and that’s why my opponent’s been so desperate doing some things that have been very, very, very mean spirited,” he said.
He denounced Sharron Angle’s ads, including one calling Reid “the best friend an illegal alien ever had,” to be “totally without fact or foundation… some people have said they’re racists; others can draw their own conclusion.”
Reid said it was “pretty clear” that Democrats would hold onto control of the Senate on Tuesday.
“How many the numbers will be, we’ll have to decide that on November 3rd, but we feel comfortable,” he said.
Division of Elections Fails to Notify Miller Campaign of Absentee Ballot Validation
Anchorage, Alaska. November 6, 2010 — The Joe Miller for U.S. Senate Campaign is concerned that the Absentee Ballot validation process began yesterday at 10 a.m without notification to the campaign. The Miller Campaign was told of the news from a Republican Party member approximately 11am yesterday who was informed of the decision that morning. In an e-mail to the Miller campaign, the Director of the Division of Elections, Gail Fenumiai, stated, “It is not the practice of the division to contact candidates or parties to notify them of the review dates,” even though the DOE’s “Election Observers’ Handbook” [version B14 (Rev 11/07), page 8] provides that the Division must “notify” the campaign “24 hours in advance the time of ballot review….”
[IUSB Vision Editor's Note - This is preposterous, of course it is the policy to contact the candidates, they have a right to inspect the process and that IS the whole point of having judges and inspectors from both parties to observe the count. Anyone who has worked elections before knows that any such policy would be so fabulously ridiculous that it is impossible. To claim that they have a policy that directly contradicts the published rules and goes against there very notion of having all parties involved to observe, which every state sets up a process to accomplish, is beyond unbelievable. I am calling out Gail Fenumiai as a liar as her statement is equal to saying that the state can hold a recount and not tell a candidate that it is happening. It cannot be understated how outrageous this is. - Chuck Norton]
In response to this news, Joe Miller said, “Our goal is to uphold the integrity of the voting process. Every vote that is cast correctly should be counted. All Alaskans deserve a free, open and fair election. Unfortunately, the State Division of Elections has decided to call that process into question with the constant maneuvering of dates and procedures.” Since the election Tuesday, the Miller Campaign has vowed to oversee the process to its conclusion, to ensure that the voters of Alaska have their rights protected.
Miller went on to say, “The State of Alaska has a statutorily defined election process, anything or anyone that deviates from that process is unsettling. It is fundamental that the public be informed of the ballot review schedule in advance. Our democratic voting process has at its foundation the Constitution and the statutes of this state, and any manipulation of this process for the purposes of expediency or convenience compromises those principles.”
Spokesman Randy DeSoto added that “we don’t know how many ballots were reviewed without fair scrutiny.”
The absentee validation is occurring across the state in various locations. It is unclear why the Miller Campaign was not notified about the decision to begin validation Friday.
You would think that if you are going to lie about someone or an event, perhaps it should be an event that wasn’t witnessed by 7 million people. This is exactly the same nonsense that Media Matters does on a regular basis.
Our pal JohnnyDollar, who has been on a roll lately with his vigilance, captured the video:
UPDATE – Karl Rove weighs in on Milbank’s response. Wow this Dana Milbank is turning out to be his own worst enemy:
One can always count on NBC to come up with the false premise that insults the intelligence of the audience. The elite media narrative is silly. In essence it is “You weren’t perfect and you didn’t win every race so you are a failure.” The truth is that most Tea Party endorsed candidates won.
Also to consider; for the Tea Party and most Tea Party candidates this was their first attempt at a big nationalized election and look at the results. Tea Party candidates will learn from their tactical mistakes and improve. Four years ago no one would have imagined a new movement engaging in a first election and having such a success.
[Note on the video - sometimes MSNBC puts in a playlist rotation. If you do not see Senator DeMint on Meet the Press just hit the playlist button when you hit play. A menu will appear where you can click the picture of Senator DeMint for the proper video - Editor]
The simple truth is that O’Donnell lost by the same margin as other Republicans in Delaware did, which means that most people in Delaware voted a straight party line ticket. I worked elections in my state and most Democrats here voted a straight ticket. Keep in mind that in Delaware Obama’s approval ratings are still higher than his negatives. This means that Castle would have lost as well.
Would O’Donnell have gotten more votes with a more effective communications machine, you bet, but she would have still likely lost. I swapped emails with the O’Donnell campaign with an offer to write commercials for them because her ads were not good enough for some very substantive reasons, they told me they loved what I wrote, but I guess their communications team didn’t want to share “the glory”. Her ads did not do the most important job that needed to be done in her race and it is obvious what that job is, yet the GOP communications machine keeps missing the target. [Someone has already asked what is so obvious that I see and they did not. Sorry guys I save my best stuff for those who wish me to help represent them - Editor]
Bottom line, Castle very likely would have lost as well. In Delaware, as with several other states, this election was a referendum on Obama (and the Dem Leadership) and with his positives there this is how the vote turned out.
A federal contractor who gets your money, politicking on your time, to get more of your money. This cycle has to stop and this is the kind of things that public sector unions do with your money.
If you wish to support Joe Miller:
Joe Miller for US Senate needs your help as some Alaska officials are changing the rules on the fly to count the absentee ballots and write ins. https://joemiller.us/goal/index_notover.php
WASHINGTON – AARP’s endorsement helped secure passage of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Now the seniors’ lobby is telling its employees their insurance costs will rise partly as a result of the law.
In an e-mail to employees, AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8 percent to 13 percent next year because of rapidly rising medical costs.
And AARP adds that it’s changing copayments and deductibles to avoid a 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law. Aerospace giant Boeing also has cited the tax in asking its workers to pay more. Shifting costs to employees lowers the value of a health care plan and acts like an escape hatch from the tax.
AARP raising premiums, citing ObamaCare, but said when they were pushing it that this wouldn’t happen…
White House on Health Care: ‘Nothing’ From Election Suggests People Want Repeal –
IBD – 3M cites ObamaCare – Forced to drop care for 23,000 retirees:
Here’s a Post-it note for ObamaCare supporters and opponents: Over the weekend 3M (MMM), the maker of the ubiquitous sticky message pads, along with electronics, optics and more, decided to end its retirees’ access to its health care plan beginning in 2013. According to the Wall Street Journal:
“health care reform has made it more difficult for employers like 3M to provide a plan that will remain competitive,” (3M said in a) memo. The White House says retiree-only plans are largely exempt from new health insurance regulations under the law.
The company didn’t specify how many workers would be impacted. It currently has 23,000 U.S. retirees.
Americans become eligible for the Medicare insurance program at age 65. Starting in 2015, 3M retirees too young to qualify for Medicare will receive financial support through what the company called a “health reimbursement arrangement” and won’t be able to enroll in the company’s group insurance plan. The company described that as an account retirees can use to purchase individual insurance through exchanges that the health law will create in 2014. 3M didn’t provide details on the financial contributions. [Grats that taxpayer subsidized so WE pay for it - Editor]
Or, as opponents of ObamaCare predicted, they’re finding it cheaper to dump their retirees onto the exchange.
Also on Thursday, the Principal Financial Group (PFG) announced it would stop selling health insurance, which means 840,000 employees who receive Principal coverage through their employers will have to look elsewhere. Just the day before, President Obama said, “So there’s nothing in the bill that says you have to change the health insurance that you’ve got right now.” And he’s right: the bill doesn’t say it; it just causes it.
Indeed, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care was giving the lie to Obama’s statement as he was making it. Harvard Pilgrim announced that it would end its Medicare Advantage plans at the end of the year, leaving its 22,000 Advantage customers scrambling for coverage.
A week before that, a number of health plans including Anthem (WLP), Aetna (AET), Cigna (CI), Humana (HUM), CoventryOne (CVH) and some Blue Cross Blue Shield companies decided that they would stop selling coverage in the child-only market. It makes sense, given that under the new ObamaCare regulations, no child can be denied health insurance for a pre-existing condition and insurers can no longer vary premiums based on health status. Thus, the cagey parent will now wait until his or her child is sick before getting insurance. This is known as adverse selection: The healthy drop out, and those remaining in the insurance pool tend to be sicker. As insurers found out when a number of states tried this in early 1990s, it doesn’t make for a very viable business plan.
Of course, the evidence of what happened when these reforms were tried on the state level was available in a short, easy-to-read format for all of the so-called reformers. But, as IBD has noted before, since when has health care reform been about evidence? It has always been about power — the power politicians have over insurance companies, doctors, hospitals and, ultimately, patients.
Remember we were told the bill would lower premiums?
OBAMA: A system where we’re gonna work with your employers to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
October 4, 2008
OBAMA: We will start by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family.
September 6, 2008
OBAMA: Here’s what change is saying to people who already have health insurance and the employers who are providing it: We’ll work to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
May 3, 2008
OBAMA: I also have a health care plan that would save the average family $2,500 on their premiums.
January 3, 2008
OBAMA: And if you already have health care, then we’re gonna reduce costs an average of $2,500 per family on premiums.
October 7, 2008
OBAMA: We’re gonna work with your employer to lower the costs of your premiums by up to $2,500 a year.
Campaign Ad
OBAMA: And we’ll cut the costs of a typical family’s health care by up to $2,500 per year.
March 14, 2008
OBAMA: And if you’ve got health care, we’re gonna work with your employer to lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year.
February 23, 2008
OBAMA: And we will lower premiums for the typical family by $2,500 a year.
June 17, 2007
OBAMA: And cut the cost of health care by up to $2,500 per family.
August 17, 2008
OBAMA: And if you already have health care, then we’re gonna work with your employer to lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
Campaign Ad
EVAN BAYH: Barack’s policies will provide health care cost reductions of about $2,500 for the typical family.
June 27, 2008
OBAMA: It’s time to bring down the typical family’s premium by about $2,500. And it’s time to bring down the costs for the entire country.
February 19, 2008
OBAMA: And if you already have health insurance, we will lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year.
April 22, 2008
OBAMA: We’re gonna work with your employer through a catastrophic reinsurance plan to lower premiums by $2,500 per family per year.
October 15, 2008
OBAMA: The only thing we’re gonna try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed on to you. And we estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 a year.
March 1, 2008
OBAMA: We’ll work with your employer to lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year.
Campaign Ad
NARRATOR: Barack Obama will provide rural America with affordable health care, and save the typical American family $2,500 a year.
May 30, 2008
OBAMA: And reduces every family’s premiums by as much as $2,500.
April 20, 2008
OBAMA: If your employer does offer you health care, then we’re gonna work with your employer to lower premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
March 13, 2008
OBAMA: And cut the cost of a typical family’s premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.
Others include Governor Elect Nikki Haley (from India), Senator Elect Marco Rubio (Cuban) etc etc.. All Tea Party approved.
The man in the center is Lt. Col. Allen West who in Iraq was put in a “Jack Bauer moment” made his prisoner talk and stopped an ambush that would have killed the men under his command. West has a powerful rhetorical and intellectual ability that I can best describe as a cross between Sam Adams and Frederick Douglass. His speeches are amazing.
Steve Malzberg interviews Allen West [West talks about how Democrats smeared his family, mailed out copies of private documents etc]
Michael Savage interviews Allen West [awesome interview you don't want to miss]
What is it with public schools, universities and news rooms that attracts these radicalized, unhinged, uninformed loons? [... OK the answer to that is obvious but it is fun to pose the question - Editor]
A Florida school official is taking heat for sending an e-mail calling Tea Partiers “dangerous, radical hate mongers” who want to take the nation back to the days of the Ku Klux Klan.
“These people hate Blacks,” the e-mail says. “They hate Latinos. They hate Gays. They hate Muslims and have made many anti-Semitic statements.”
The writer also urged people to vote Democratic, stating, “The Republican Party has been hijacked by dangerous, radical hate mongers called the ‘Tea Party.’”
A spokeswoman for the Duval County School District in Jacksonville, Fla., confirmed to Fox News Radio that the e-mail was sent by Cynthia Jones-Humphrey, a school employee. She is listed on a district directory as a technical manager in the community and family engagement department.
The spokeswoman said Jones-Humphrey was not the author of the e-mail but forwarded it to individuals on her distribution list from a school computer.
Now keep in mind that many of these new candidates won in gerrymandered districts that were designed so that a Republican could never win, just like Indiana 2 as half of Elkhart and other parts of our community were gerrymandered out by Democrats. Many other new Tea Party candidates barely lost by 1-2%.
Come February that little problem will be fixed by new GOP legislators.
In 2012 the Tea Party/Republicans may very well enjoy overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate in Washington D.C..
Bottom line, even a mediocre candidate will beat Joe Donnelly in 2012 and he knows it.
The measure amends the state constitution to forbid judges from considering Islamic law or international law when making a ruling.
I am all for it. I say we start making amendments that forbid using foreign law as well.
CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, which has been accused of being a happy faced front for violent Islamic extremism, is suiug claiming discrimination.
My first thought was:
And banning communism is discrimination against people of Russian dissent, so under nondiscrimination will will use the 14th Amendment to make the Constitution unconstitutional!!
Sharia is a system of law affiliated with a religion, Islam, just as western law is based on Christian Scholasticism. No one has a right to impose a system of law on you. If a judge is stupid enough to buy the bogus 1st/14th Amendment argument CAIR is certain to use then Jews will sue saying that we have to enforce Levitical Law or we are antisemitic. Of course under both kinds of law gays could be in serious trouble….
Any judge who tries to turn the Constitution into a pretzel by buying such a preposterous argument is going to get the wrath of the American people and Congress that they so richly deserve. The only place where this ruling would have a chance at the appeals level is the 9th Circus. This will just give the GOP more ammunition to eliminate the 9th with a new Judicial Act in 2013. I hate to say it, but if a lower court activist abandons all law and common sense and upholds CAIR’s argument politically it will do wonders for Republicans and Tea Party candidates.
PHOENIX (November 5, 2010) – Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) issued the following statement regarding the passage of Oklahoma’s State Question 755.
“As Muslims dedicated to modernity, reform and our one law system in the west and in the United States, AIFD applauds the people of Oklahoma for passing State Question 755 and making “the legal precepts of other nations or cultures” off-limits to Oklahoma courts and specifically denying the use of Sharia Law.
The issue is simple. As Americans we believe in the Constitution, the Establishment Clause, and our one law system. SQ755 reaffirms the First amendment to the Constitution and prevents the Establishment or empowerment of a foreign legal system like the specific shariah legal systems implemented in many Muslim majority nations and in western shariah courts seen in places like Britain.
By filing a lawsuit, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has wasted no time in proving once again that they are unable to stand behind public declarations that the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and our one law system supersede and are preferable to a sharia law system. They are using the American cover of religious freedom to try and knock down a simple law that prohibits the domination of one religion over others.
SQ755 is not about religious freedom or minority rights. It is about the inviolable sanctity of the U.S. constitution and our country’s foundational belief in a legal system based in one law that is based in reason and individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The law has no impact on the personal practice of Islam or the personal interpretation of “shariah” (God’s law to a Muslim), but rather SQ755 focuses on shariah as a total legal system that the people of Oklahoma wanted to make clear shall not be used or respected systemically in deciding law in Oklahoma. CAIR’s assertion that it is akin to France’s ban of the hijab or personal head covering for women is absurd. There is no evidence that this law prevents any of the personal manifestation of the practice of Islam or the use of personal religious principles in arguing law based in reason in state or federal court. Shariah as a legal system can just not be used as prima facie evidence in court.
SQ755 also thus prevents the establishment of separate shariah or Islamic courts in Oklahoma. As we have seen in Britain, Islamists have transformed the British arbitration system to the point that they are operating upwards of 85 shariah courts now. These courts are mostly operated out of mosques in Britain. While they claim that the courts are voluntary, as Canadians voiced loudly in their rejection of shariah courts, these groups exploit tribal pressures and coercion within Muslim communities in order to circumvent the one law and one legal system of Britain and western nations. It is naïve and ignorant to believe that such courts are purely “voluntary”. Just ask many of the women who get pressured through them and pressured to stay “out of western un-Islamic courts.”
CAIR’s lawsuit proves that they are part of an Islamist establishment in America that do not and will not believe in the separation of mosque and state and that they promote the ideology of political Islam. This ideology is based in a belief in the supremacy of Islamic legal systems and is often a conveyer belt toward radicalization. CAIR shows once again that they are part of the problem not the solution.
UPDATE II – It didn’t take long for a federal Clinton appointee to put the Oklahoma Constitution on hold:
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Monday to block a new amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution that would prohibit state courts from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases.
U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange handed down the order after an Oklahoma man filed a lawsuit claiming the amendment stigmatized his religion and would invalidate his will, which he said is partially based on Islamic Law, also known as Sharia Law.
“My constitutional rights are being violated through the condemnation of my faith,” said Muneer Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma. “Islam was the target of this amendment. This amendment does not have a secular purpose.”
The measure, State Question 755, was approved with 70 percent of the vote in the Nov. 2 general election. The judge’s order prevents the state Election Board from certifying the results of that vote, which it had planned to do Tuesday afternoon.
Our take:
Clinton appointee – shocker. It violates his rights because it makes him feel bad. The point here is not discrimination it is Popular Sovereignty. The American people have a right to chose the system of law they live under. We could pass an Amendment preventing judges from using the Russian Constitution as a basis for rulings, does that mean we have to use the Russian Constitution and graft it into our Constitution just so Russians wont feel bad or feel discriminated against?
The problem with too many of these judges is simple, they are not legal minds, they are hacks who make rulings based on politics and personal whims. They do not respect popular sovereignty or the limits of their office.
I am sure there are several leftist judges who would be willing to rule that it is the intent of the Founders and the Constitution for our judges to make case law based on Sharia. Of course this undermines legitimacy. Our system of law should be reasonably predictable, if courts can rule not on the Constitution but rather anything goes, people will have no faith in the law or reason to believe justice can be had in the courts (do women get justice under Sharia?). Those of us political science scholars know where that leads us.
After a noon conference call with his caucus, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., fresh off his own hard-fought re-election, told reporters, “The one thing that we are focused on like a laser is that we are going to cut taxes for the middle class. Now, I would hope that the Republicans will not block that.”
But Republicans have repeatedly said that is not good enough and have introduced legislation to make all of the tax cuts permanent, saying a recession is no time in which to raise taxes.
It seems everything old is new again. This is the exact same rhetoric and fight we heard before the election.
This is the exact same rhetoric that the Democrats just got shellacked on, even in liberal Washington State. If you don’t know what your taxes will be down the road how does that encourage you to hire again? Politically this is a gift for Republicans and Tea Party activists as they have a poster child to pin this rejected thinking on who has an 11% approval rating AND looks bad on TV..
The mega rich guys who supported this are big time hypocrite. As 5% means nothing to them and since much of their income is not in the form of taxable wages they would have been exempted from most of it anyways. The producer class though would have gotten soaked.
The truth is we need wealth. Wealth goes where it is treated well and in case you haven’t noticed it is being treated well in China. We have lost 14,000 factories in the last 10 years. We want wealth to come to our communities, not drive them away.
The plan devised by the father of the Microsoft Corp co-founder to slap a 5 percent tax on earnings over $200,000 — Initiative Measure 1098 — was rejected by 65 percent of voters, with almost two-thirds of precincts reported.
The result is a boon for the anti-tax Tea Party movement and suggests Americans may be in the mood to extend tax cuts introduced by former President George W. Bush even for the wealthiest citizens. It also signals that Americans are unwilling to accept higher taxes as a way of balancing state budgets ravaged by the recession.
It is a stinging defeat for Bill Gates senior, who put $600,000 of his own money behind the campaign and also for his son, the world’s second richest person, who let it be known he would vote for the measure.
The vote is the fourth failure to introduce a state tax in Washington in the last 70 years and leaves the state as one of only seven without one.
Although the new tax would have affected fewer than 70,000 people out of the state’s 6.7 million residents, an opposition campaign run by an organization called Defeat 1098 persuaded voters that the tax on the wealthy would be extended to lower earners.
Major backers of Defeat 1098 include Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who contributed $425,000 to the campaign, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
Microsoft, Boeing and Alaska Airlines, all major employers in the state, also contributed to the opposition campaign, fearing that a tax on high-earners would hurt their ability to lure talented workers to the state.
Texas Governor Rick Perry recently seized on the issue to invite top businesses in Washington state to relocate to Texas, which does not have an income tax.
Anyone who is in the public eye, even your humble blogger gets hate mail, threats and all that jazz. Most of the time I blow it off but for fun I post one from time to time.
The following is from Dana Kincaid of Indianapolis, Indiana… and yes she sent her his? picture along with the comment… but upon further examination and a little investigating … the real Dana is the picture below… :
Not Dana Kincaid
“I get a thrill when I think of peeing on your head. LOL LOL LOL”
At first I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of fetish sexual come on or what (sorry Dana I am just not into that), then I saw that she he? is a fan of Rachel Maddow and Moveon.org and I concluded that it may be hate mail. I am glad that she could amuse herself with her brilliant comment.
This is what happens when judges and others refuse to accept the limits of their office and/or the Constitution. There is simply no way that the Founders intended to create a right to gay marriage with the 14th Amendment or any other. There is no right to heterosexual marraige so how can there be a right to homosexual marraige? To put it simply, if I have a right to get married and no one will marry me my rights are violated under this thinking. This is why rights apply to individuals not groups.
If you support gay marraige or not is not the issue, this is a matter of law and popular sovereignty. If the states wish to have gay marraige people are just going to have to vote on it.
Notice the absolutely pinheaded comment Drake University Law School Dean Allan Vestal. I hate to put it this way, but some academics are so painfully dumb it makes me cringe at the thought that such a person has access to our kids.
Three Iowa Supreme Court Justices were tossed as a result of their votes mandating that same-sex couples be allowed to marry. They are the first Justices who failed to be retained since 1962, when the current system was implemented.
Although I don’t understand the complaint of Drake University Law School Dean Allan Vestal that this was a “misuse” of the right of voters to vote on judicial retention. Isn’t this exactly what the retention power is intended to do?
In Federalist 51 Madison defined the fundamental challenge of constitutional government: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” There is no solution to this, just a tradeoff. You can increase the independence of elected officials, which makes it easier for the government to control the governed by insulating them from majoritarian and interest-group pressures. But if you increase independence you run the risk of increased agency costs when the government is unable to control itself–when politicians (including judges) pursue their own self or ideological interest instead of the purposes for which they are given independence in the first place. And vice-versa: more democratic control will make politicians more responsive to the governed but also reduce the risk of agency costs.
Iowa has set up one system that tries to balance this. If the voters of Iowa concluded that the Justices of the state Supreme Court abused their power in creating a right to same-sex marriage, and that this represents the Justices reading their own ideological views into the law, then it is entirely appropriate for them to toss some or all of the offending Justices. That’s not a “misuse” of the retention power; that’s what it is there for.
Whether Iowa has struck a proper balance between independence and accountability, or should balance it in some other way is a different question. And whether any other system has struck the balance correctly (whether more or less democratic) is also a separate question. But having struck the balance in this manner it seems to me that this was an entirely appropriate use of the voters’ recall power–to get rid of judges who the voters believe are misusing their authority to impose their personal views on the law.
And before some pinhead says it in comments, I have gay friends. I absolutely oppose those who wish violence towards gays or anyone else for that matter. The Golden Rule applies people.This is not a hate issue, this is a popular sovereignty issue.
Secrecy, arrogance, and the abuse of power have shattered the bonds of trust between the people and their elected leaders. Repairing that trust requires sweeping change, beginning with an end to earmarks.
The political landscape has been permanently reshaped over the past two years. Overreaching by elected officials—in the form of pork-laden “stimulus” spending, permanent bailouts, and policies that force responsible taxpayers to subsidize irresponsible behavior—has awakened something deep in our national character. This has led to a surge of activism by citizens demanding smaller, more accountable government and a repudiation of Washington in Tuesday’s elections.
Tired of politicians who refuse to listen, Americans who previously were not involved or minimally involved in the political process are now helping to drive it. While their backgrounds are as diverse as the country itself, their message to Washington is the same: Government leaders are servants of the people; the people are not servants of their government.
The members of the 112th Congress must heed this message if there is to be any hope of repairing the shattered bonds of trust between the American people and their elected leaders. And that begins with the speaker of the House, who as leader of the institution must lead by example.
Accordingly, there are several steps I believe the next speaker should be prepared to take immediately. Among them:
• No earmarks. Earmarks have become a symbol of a broken Washington, and an entire lobbying industry has been created around them. The speaker of the House shouldn’t use the power of the office to raid the federal Treasury for pork-barrel projects. To the contrary, the speaker should be an advocate for ending the current earmark process, and should adhere to a personal no-earmarks policy that stands as an example for all members of Congress to follow.
I have maintained a no-earmarks policy throughout my time of service in Congress. I believe the House must adopt a moratorium on all earmarks as a signal of our commitment to ending business as usual in the spending process.
• Let Americans read bills before they are brought to a vote.The speaker of the House should not allow any bill to come to a vote that has not been posted publicly online for at least three days. Members of Congress and the American people must have the opportunity to read it.
Similarly, the speaker should insist that every bill include a clause citing where in the Constitution Congress is given the power to pass it. Bills that can’t pass this test shouldn’t get a vote. House Republicans’ new governing agenda, “A Pledge to America,” calls for the speaker to implement such reforms immediately.
• No more “comprehensive” bills. The next speaker should put an end to so-called comprehensive bills with thousands of pages of legislative text that make it easy to hide spending projects and job-killing policies. President Obama’s massive “stimulus” and health-care bills, written behind closed doors with minimal public scrutiny, were the last straw for many Americans. The American people are not well-served by “comprehensive,” and they are rightly suspicious of the adjective.
• No more bills written behind closed doors in the speaker’s office.Bills should be written by legislators in committee in plain public view. Issues should be advanced one at a time, and the speaker should place an emphasis on smaller, more focused legislation that is properly scrutinized, constitutionally sound, and consistent with Americans’ demand for a less-costly, less-intrusive government.
The speaker of the House, like all members of Congress, is a servant of the American people. The individual entrusted with that high honor and responsibility should act accordingly. A speaker’s mission should not be to consolidate power in the speaker’s office, but rather to ensure that elected officials uphold their oath to defend the Constitution and the American people we serve. If a speaker carries out that mission successfully, the result should be legislation that better reflects the considerable challenges we face as a nation.
The American people deserve a majority in Congress that listens to the people, focuses on their priorities and honors their demands for smaller, more accountable government. Accountability starts at the top, in the office of the speaker.
