It is no surprise that the left doesn’t know the Constitution. After all they spend so much time trying to ignore it, subvert it and get around it. Maddow has whopping flubs pretty regularly (1, 2, 3) and when we we started to look at her statements we realized that correcting and making fun of her ignorance would become a full time job. Nonetheless this flub is pretty entertaining.
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: Congressman Akin was not alone in stumbling over a little basic U.S. history. He had some good company in the top Republican in the House, Minority Leader John Boehner.
(VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN BOEHNER (R-OHIO.): This is my copy of the Constitution. And I’m gonna stand here with our Founding Fathers who wrote in the Preamble, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
(END VIDEOTAPE):
MADDOW (waving hands): Nnn, Constitution doesn’t have a Preamble. Not. Nope. Stop it. That would be the Declaration of Independence. Ooh.
Actually, Rach, the Constitution DOES have a Preamble, and I doth quote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
As you liberals so love Wikipedia, in its section titled “Preamble to the United States Constitution”
I was very sick while this went on, but it is worth noting that the same people that fact checked a Saturday Night Live skit teasing President Obama, put vile and totally invented quotes on the air to smear Limbaugh to prevent his consortium from buying the St. Louis Rams.
MSNBC says that Limbaugh would love to say that he owns a plantation full of black men – LINK.
MSNBC Admits: ‘Unable to Verify’ False Limbaugh Quote; No Retraction or Apology- LINK.
Since the fictional Limbaugh quotes were exposed, the networks spent only 47 seconds discussing it – LINK.
Huffington Post Pulls Bogus Limbaugh Quotes after not being able to substantiate them – LINK.
CNN Reads Limbaugh’s Denial of Alleged Slavery Quote, Doesn’t Retract Use. Says there are “Other Quotes” and couldn’t substantiate those either – LINK.
So Called ‘Journalists’ Claiming Limbaugh Praised MLK’s Assassin Offer No Proof – LINK.
ANC Claims “Limbaugh has a history of making racially offensive comments” but offers no quotes and no proof – LINK.
Video: MSNBC’s Matthews muses on killing Rush Limbaugh – LINK.
Roger Goodell from the NFL, a known Obama supporter, made disparaging comments about Limbaugh and got chewed out for it during a Congressioanl hearing by Represetative Steve King. You can watch Goodell squirm. He very much deserved this public humiliation.
My critics would have you believe no conservative meets NFL ’standards.’
David Checketts, an investor and owner of sports teams, approached me in late May about investing in the St. Louis Rams football franchise. As a football fan, I was intrigued. I invited him to my home where we discussed it further. Even after informing him that some people might try to make an issue of my participation, Mr. Checketts said he didn’t much care. I accepted his offer.
It didn’t take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.
Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.’s murderer, James Earl Ray.
Next came writers in the sports world, like the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon. He wrote this gem earlier this week: “I’m not going to try and give specific examples of things Limbaugh has said over the years because I screwed up already doing that, repeating a quote attributed to Limbaugh (about slavery) which he has told me he simply did not say and does not reflect his feelings. I take him at his word. . . . “
Mr. Wilbon wasn’t alone. Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.
I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.
The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?
The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.
When Mr. Goodell was asked about me, he suggested that my 2003 comment criticizing the media’s coverage of Donovan McNabb—in which I said the media was cheerleading Mr. McNabb because they wanted a successful black quarterback—fell short of the NFL’s “high standard.” High standard? Half a decade later, the media would behave the same way about the presidential candidacy of Mr. Obama.
Having brought me into his group, Mr. Checketts now wanted a way out. He asked me to resign. I told him no way. I had done nothing wrong. I had not uttered the words these people were putting in my mouth. And I would not bow to their libels and pressure. He would have to drop me from the group. A few days later, he did.
As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. “Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.
These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.
Given that we’re spending billions of stimulus dollars to rebuild our highways, it makes sense to think about what we’ll be driving on them. For years to come, most of what we drive will be powered, at least in part, by diesel fuel or gasoline. To fuel that driving, we need access to oil. The less use we make of our own reserves, the more we will have to import, which leads to a number of harmful consequences. That means we need to drill here and drill now.
We rely on petroleum for much more than just powering our vehicles: It is essential in everything from jet fuel to petrochemicals, plastics to fertilizers, pesticides to pharmaceuticals. According to the Energy Information Administration, our total domestic petroleum consumption last year was 19.5 million barrels per day (bpd). Motor gasoline and diesel fuel accounted for less than 13 million bpd of that. Meanwhile, we produced only 4.95 million bpd of domestic crude. In other words, even if we ran all our vehicles on something else (which won’t happen anytime soon), we would still have to depend on imported oil. And we’ll continue that dependence until we develop our own oil resources to their fullest extent.
Those who oppose domestic drilling are motivated primarily by environmental considerations, but many of the countries we’re forced to import from have few if any environmental-protection laws, and those that do exist often go unenforced. In effect, American environmentalists are preventing responsible development here at home while supporting irresponsible development overseas.
My home state of Alaska shows how it’s possible to be both pro-environment and pro-resource-development. Alaskans would never support anything that endangered our pristine air, clean water, and abundant wildlife (which, among other things, provides many of us with our livelihood). The state’s government has made safeguarding resources a priority; when I was governor, for instance, we created a petroleum-systems-integrity office to monitor our oil and gas infrastructure for any potential environmental risks.
Alaska also shows how oil drilling is thoroughly compatible with energy conservation and renewable-energy development. Over 20 percent of Alaska’s electricity currently comes from renewable sources, and as governor I put forward a long-term plan to increase that figure to 50 percent by 2025. Alaska’s comprehensive plan identifies renewable options across the state that can help rural villages transition away from expensive diesel-generated electricity — allowing each community to choose the solution that best fits its needs. That’s important in any energy plan: Tempting as they may be to central planners, top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions are recipes for failure.
For the same reason, the federal government shouldn’t push a single, universal approach to alternative-powered vehicles. Electric cars might work in Los Angeles, but they don’t work in Alaska, where you can drive hundreds of miles without seeing many people, let alone many electrical sockets. And while electric and hybrid cars have their advantages, producing the electricity to power them still requires an energy source. For the sake of the environment, that energy should be generated from the cleanest source available.
Natural gas is one promising clean alternative. It contains fewer pollutants than other fossil fuels, it’s easier to collect and process, and it is found throughout our country. In Alaska, we’re developing the largest private-sector energy project in history — a 3,000-mile, $40 billion pipeline to transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas to markets across the United States. Onshore and offshore natural gas from Alaska and the Lower 48 can satisfy a large part of our energy needs for decades, bringing us closer to energy independence. Whether we use it to power natural-gas cars or to run natural-gas power plants that charge electric cars — or ideally for both — natural gas can act as a clean “bridge fuel” to a future when more renewable sources are available.
In addition to drilling, we need to build new refineries. America currently has roughly 150 refineries, down from over 300 in the 1970s. Due mainly to environmental regulations, we haven’t built a major new refinery since 1976, though our oil consumption has increased significantly since then. That’s no way to secure our energy supply. The post-Katrina jump in gas prices proved that we can’t leave ourselves at the mercy of a hurricane that knocks a few refineries out of commission.
Building an energy-independent America will mean a real economic stimulus. It will mean American jobs that can never be shipped overseas. Think about how much of our trade deficit is fueled by the oil we import — sometimes as much as half of the total. Through this massive transfer of wealth, we lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could be invested in our economy. Instead it goes to foreign countries, including some repressive regimes that use it to fund activities that threaten our security.
Reliance on foreign sources of energy weakens America. When a riot breaks out in an OPEC nation, or a developing country talks about nationalizing its oil industry, or a petro-dictator threatens to cut off exports, the probability is great that the price of oil will shoot up. Even in friendly nations, business and financial decisions made for local reasons can destabilize America’s energy market, since the price we pay for foreign oil is subject to rising and falling exchange rates. Decreasing our dependence on foreign sources of energy will reduce the impact of world events on our economy.
In the end, energy independence is not just about the environment or the economy. It’s about freedom and confidence. It’s about building a more secure and peaceful America, an America in which our energy needs will not be subject to the whims of nature, currency speculators, or madmen in possession of vast oil reserves.
Alternative sources of energy are part of the answer, but only part. There’s no getting around the fact that we still need to “drill, baby, drill!” And if those in D.C. say otherwise, we need to tell them: “Yes, we can!”
BRZEZINSKI: — but we’re all liberals and Democrats.
SCARBOROUGH: You know that everyone you worked for, they were all liberals, they were all pro-choice, they were all pro-gun control, they were all, I mean, let me ask you this question: when did you work at CBS?
BRZEZINSKI: Collectively, over a course of 10 years.
SCARBOROUGH: Give me years.
BRZEZINSKI: ‘90, 2001 to 2007.
SCARBOROUGH: OK, how many people that you worked for at CBS do you think voted for George W. Bush? Of all the thousands you worked for, how many people at CBS do you think voted for George W. Bush?
BRZEZINSKI: A very small percentage.
SCARBOROUGH: Maybe 1%?
BRZEZINSKI: I don’t know.
SCARBOROUGH: Can you think–seriously–you don’t have, just use your insight, your inside head voice here, can you think seriously of one correspondent, of one producer, of one anchor, that was a George W. Bush fan?
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present.
Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s reported sweetheart deals to VIPs.
For months Towns has refused Republican requests to subpoena records in the case. Last Thursday Committee Republicans, led by Issa, were poised to force an open vote on the subpoenas at a Committee mark-up meeting. The mark-up was abruptly canceled. Only Republicans showed up while Democrats chairs remained empty.
Republicans charged that Towns canceled the meeting to avoid the subpoena vote. Democrats first claimed the mark-up was canceled due to a conflict with the Financial Services Committee. Later they said it was abandoned after a disagreement among Democratic members on whether to subpoena records on the mortgage industry’s political contributions to Republicans.
A GOP committee staffer captured video of Democrats leaving their separate meeting in private chambers after the mark-up was supposed to have begun. He spliced the video to other footage of the Democrats’ empty chairs at the hearing room, set it to the tune of “Hit the Road, Jack” and posted it on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s minority webpage, where it remained as of press time.
The discovery that Countrywide Financial Corp. recorded phone conversations with borrowers in a controversial mortgage program that included public officials — and that those recordings have been destroyed — has prompted new congressional calls for more information about the program.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is trying to subpoena the remaining records of Countrywide’s VIP loan program. So far, the committee’s chairman, New York Democratic Rep. Edolphus Towns, has turned down that request.
“Very often the instinct for an incumbent party is to defend and justify,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster for Democratic candidates. “But in this kind of environment, the best defense is a good offense. This needs to be a cycle where Republican vulnerabilities are a central part of the debate.”
Charlie Cook, the nonpartisan political handicapper, framed the Democrats’ challenge for 2010 more bluntly. It does not track the genial, new-politics identity that President Obama has cultivated.
“They’re going to have to play really rough,” said Mr. Cook, who pegs Democrats’ chances for holding the House next year at only slightly better than even…
Democrats will “have to make the opponent the issue,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. “No. 1, try to tie them to George W. Bush — and then make it personal after that.”
The British newspaper The Independent reported today that Gulf oil producers were negotiating with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the dollar in pricing oil with a basket of currencies.[1] According to the Wall Street Journal, Arab oil officials have denied the story, but even the possibility of such a talk weakens the dollar and renews fears about its continued viability as an international reserve currency.[2] In fact, today a United Nations official called for a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar and end our “privilege” to run up huge deficits.[3] We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar.[4]
All of this is a result of our out-of-control debt. This is why we need to rein in spending, and this is also why we need energy independence. A weakened dollar means higher commodity prices. This will make it more difficult to pay our bills – including the bill to import oil.
In his book Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer points out that the Obama administration is focusing primarily on “green energy,” while ignoring our need to develop our domestic conventional energy resources.[5] We’re ignoring the looming crisis caused by our dependence on foreign oil. Because we’re dependent on foreign nations for our oil, we’re also at their mercy if they decide to dump the dollar as their trade currency. We can’t allow ourselves to be so vulnerable to the whims of foreign nations. That’s why we must develop our own domestic supplies of oil and gas.
Though the chant of “Drill, baby, drill” was much derided, it expressed the need to confront this issue head-on before it reaches a crisis point.
Bottom line: let’s stop digging ourselves into debt and start drilling for energy independence.
- Sarah Palin
[1] See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html
[2] See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125484066563367821.html
[3] See http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e272eaa74dccc30f21c6ff7638b0f37b.461&show_article=1
[4] See http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091006/ts_afp/commoditiesgoldmetalsprice_20091006144514
The rub so far, in spite of the fact that Hasan screamed the often heard ”Alluha Akbar” while shooting, had a bumper sticker on his car saying “Allah is love”, had made blog postings praising the bravery of homicide bombers, and had voiced his views about how muslims should rise up against Americans to fellow doctors, as the links above are reporting, MSNBC and the L.A. Times and other news outlets are scrubbing the islamic domestic terror connection from their coverage. Two abortionists have been shot in US history and the elite media often equates Christians with the Taliban (2). But after a long, long , long list of just these kinds of terrorist attacks around the world… nope it is just another individual.
The FBI says that there is no domestic terror connection. How many times do you have to scream “Alluha Akbar” before if becomes a domestic terror incident?
RWN Reports:
And when Jake Tapper just asked Robert Gibbs when an attack becomes a terrorist attack, the response, according to David Almacy also reporting on Twitter was this:
In an answer to @jaketapper, Robert Gibbs just said that he doesn’t have the theoretical background to define “terrorist attack.” Wow.
I am not surprised to find out that the Army knew about Hasan and did nothing. Having served in the military I can tell you that, especially under Democrat administrations, the fear for everyone because of political correctness is very real. Getting reported to “social actions” can be a career ending experience.
In my experience and opinion if Hasan were not a muslim and had similar problems he would have been gone. There are double standards.
If the government or the chain of command went in to do something about Hasan he likely would have screamed “profiling” and “muslim racial discrimination” (in spite of the fact that islam is a set of ideas, not a race). The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a well connected radical islamic apologist group who are experts at exploiting political correctness, would have been all over the elite media news outlets screaming about it.
As history has shown us on too many occasions, political correctness kills.
NPR Reports: Hasan said that if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.
NPR: Co-workers at Walter Reed Medical Medical Center pondered if he would become a terrorist. Co-workers at Walter Reed told not to talk to the FBI in fear that they could be accused of missing the obvious.
He gave a Grand Rounds presentation. . . You take turns giving a lecture on, you know, the correct treatment of schizophrenia, the right drugs to prescribe for personality disorder, you know, that sort of thing. But instead of giving an academic paper, he gave a lecture on the Koran, and they said it didn’t seem to be just an informational lecture, but it seemed to be his own beliefs. That’s what a lot of people thought.
He talked about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire. And I said well couldn’t this just be his educating you? And the psychiatrist said yes, but one of the Muslims in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand and was quite disturbed and he said you know, a lot of us don’t believe these things you’re saying, and that there was no place where Hasan couched it as this is what the Koran teaches but you know I don’t believe it. And people actually talked in the hallway afterwards about ‘is he one of these people that’s going to freak out and shoot people someday?’
UPDATE II – A common question being asked is how a man could go on a shooting ramnpage on an Army based filled with armed people. The Answer: Like schools, military bases are easy targets.
Military posts are like gun free school zones. Unless you have to use a gun in your official duties all guns must be stored in the armory or locked in your apartment (with permission) if you have the rank to get base housing instead of being stuck in the dorm.
Like gun free school zones the rules are easy to subvert if you have criminal intent, but if you are otherwise a law abiding good citizen getting caught with a firearm in the gun free school zone means trouble and it is exactly the same way on most military bases. The simple truth is that the rules they have on base make them soft, easy targets.
Another thing that is not well known, is that there are many young officers and enlisted men in the military who have no business being around a firearm and their role in the military doesn’t require it. Many young people join the military to run away from home and other problems. This is the main reason why the rules for guns on base are as strict as they are. One way to get around this problem is to allow military personnel of the rank of E6 and O5 and higher the option of always having a personal side arm.
Hasan knew it would be a while before Post Police could respond to him and likely believed that he would be the only armed man in the immediate area. Hasan was right, as he was able to inflict 51 casualties before he was engaged by an armed opponent.
UPDATE III – Hasan went to same mosque as 911 hijackers. UK Daily Telegraph:
Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.
UPDATE IV – ABC News – Intelligence Agenciues Knew Hasan Saught to Contact Al-Qaeda:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
Congresslady extraordinaire Michelle Bachmann asked for citizens to come to the capital one week ago and wow did they come.
Michelle Bachmann
Our friends at FactReal.com put together a fabulous post with all of the pictures, videos and other goodies for you to view - LINK. So be sure to pay them a visit. FactReal also put together the following list of links to help get educated on the latest version of Pelosi/ObamaCare:
Posted by GOP Leader Press Office on November 5th, 2009
Health care reform should not be used as an opportunity to use federal funds to pay for elective abortions. Health reform should be an opportunity to protect human life – not end it.
Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi’s 2,032-page government takeover of health care does just that. On line 17, p. 110, section 222 under “Abortions for which Public Funding is Allowed” the Health and Human Services Secretary is given the authority to determine when abortion is allowed under the government-run plan. The Speaker’s plan also requires that at least one insurance plan offered in the Exchange covers abortions.
What is even more alarming is that a monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run plan. It’s right there on line 16, page 96, section 213, under “Insurance Rating Rules.” The premium will be paid into a U.S. Treasury account – and these federal funds will be used to pay for the abortion services.
Section 213 describes the process in which the Health Benefits Commissioner is to assess the monthly premiums that will be used to pay for elective abortions under the government-run plan. The Commissioner must charge at a minimum $1 per enrollee per month.
This is pure insanity and as foolish politically as can be. The Democrat leadership must want this more than they want to keep their seats in 2010.
This post has been stickied to the top of the page. Please scroll down for the latest posts & updates - Editor
UPDATE: SHOCK! Speaker Pelosi’s Government-Run Health Plan Will Require a Monthly Abortion Premium – LINK.
Obama Advisor and former Labor Sec. Robert Reich. Listen for yourself:
We are going to let the old die because its to expensive and we are going to make the drug companies poor so they cant innovate new drugs so you young people likely will not live much longer than your parents. We have to make the young pay more.
And the Democrats called Sarah Palin a liar ……
.. The Roundup:
Democrats Lied About Choice: Health Care Bill Targets Most New Private Health Insurance Policies. Watch the videos to listen to their own words - LINK
Ten questions to ask your Congressman about ObamaCare – LINK.
Obama health care advisors say: Very old and very young will get less care – LINK.
Oregon State health Service tells 64 year old woman: We wont pay for the drug to save your life, but we will pay for Euthanasia – LINK.
IBD Poll: 45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Obama/Pelosi Health Care Overhaul – LINK.
Answering far left talking points on US health care – LINK.
Congressional Committee confirms: Buy Insurance, Pay ObamaCare Penalty, or Go to Jail! – LINK.
Cornell Law Professor: Palin is right about “Death Panels” for ObamaCare – LINK.
European Member of Parliament – National Health Service has made us iller” – LINK.
CBO says that ObamaCare will result in benefit cuts. AARP stands to make millions from ObamaCare – LINK.
ABC 20/20 Takes on Government Health Care:
The Case Against Nationalized Healthcare in 3 minutes 42 seconds:
GOP Health Care Alternative Bill Online. First Step in Moving Towards Consortium Based Health Pools & Away from Mandates Forced On Citizens by Employers, Union Bosses, and the State - LINK.
You can examine all of our health care coverage HERE.
The best interview you may ever see on how to help bring down health care costs and get people covered, and believe it or not it was on MSNBC. The anchor here finally asked the right questions; questions that aren’t partisan gotchas but questions that are designed to look out for the folks.
The host asks a key question in the interview; why is it that we are subject to the limits our employers, the state or the union bosses put on us when it comes to picking our own health care plan? He hit the nail on the head. The time for letting someone else have so much control over our own health care choices needs to come to an end. It is time to move away from the state, union, employer based insurance to a consortium based series of health care pools that people can buy into.
The new 219 page GOP health care bill is the first step to move in that direction by incentivizing the creation of health care pools across state lines which are now prohibited by the government. The bill also creates and provides incentives for the states to create a guaranteed high risk pool for people with pre-existing conditions.
The GOP alternative removes the government barrier to buying health insurance across state lines, lets you have more choice as to the pools that you can buy into, has bogus lawsuit reform and more. The summary of the bill can be found HERE and you can examine the full text of the bill HERE.
The CBO says that this new 219 page GOP alternative bill will lower premiums by 10%, lower the deficit by 68 billion and help more people get insurance. This bill is not the “be all end all” in health insurance reform, but it is a very smart, incremental first step. Most importantly it doesn’t do any damage.
The current 2000 page Pelosi health bill has the legal mandate word “shall” in it 3,425 times. It doesn’t take a genius to see that such a bill does not expand flexibility in making your health care choices.
NY 23: Owens 49, Hoffman 45, Scozzafava 6 – with precincts still reporting.
But what is the real news??
It was no surprise that the GOP took back the state of Virginia, what is a surprise is the massive 18 point margin. This amounts to 34 points of movement away from Democrats in Virginia since 2008. Virginia is Washington DC’s back yard so this can very much be seen as a partial referendum on the Democrats behavior since they have taken power as Bill Clinton said it would be.
New Jersey is now in GOP hands. The 5% margin for the GOP is a big shocker because New Jersey is known for vote fraud. If not for that the GOP may have won by another point.
NY 23. The awful behavior of the GOP Party leadership in that district sent voters to the Democrats in this heavy R+ district. Doug Hoffman, who was totally unknown 30 days ago, who had very little money and ran on a couple of high profile endorsements, got 45% of the vote. Imagine if NY23 had bothered to have a primary instead of Scozzafava being selected by the machine? What if Doug Hoffman had that $900,000 that the GOP spent on that campaign for Scozzafava? What if Hoffman actually lived in the district? While Hoffman being a virtual unknown certainly did hurt him in the race, there can be little doubt that the Republican machine in that district was either not trusted or even punished for their behavior in this race and it cost them votes. In my view many voters will be watching the behavior of the local GOP machine in NY23 before they decide if they will be trusted in 2010. My suggestion to NY23 Republicans; its time to get some new party leadership.
The real news!
When you look at statewide and mayoral races in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Florida Republicans did very well and won many seats. In counties where Republicans win by a few thousand votes, the margins for Republicans greatly increased. The margins for Republicans greatly increased.
Independents and cross pressured voters went for Republicans in these battleground states in a big way. Exit polls show that young people, who so overwhelmingly supported Democrats in 2008, stayed home showing a 9% turn out in surveyed precincts.
Ok its getting late and it is passed my bed time. I am sure that there will be much to chat about tomorrow.
Obama special advisor Valerie Jerrett said on a talk show that the GOP is driving moderates like Dede Scozzafava out of the party….oh and she seemed sooooo concerned (sarcasm). This is the talking point that you hear repeated by the Democratic leadership and the elite media over and over and over again.
So this begs the question is Dede Scozzafava a moderate?
Let us examine her two claims to fame.
1 – She got the support of some union leadership because she supports a policy called “card check”
2 – She is the recipient of the Margaret Sanger Award.
Card check is a very simple proposal that the unions have been fighting to get enacted into law. It strips employees of the right to a secret ballot in workplace elections and subjects them to pressure from union thugs coercing, threatening or worse into signing a card for union membership as was the case here in Indiana (LINK).
Is there anything moderate about stripping people of basic freedoms and subjecting them to coercion and violence? There are only two ways to describe such a policy and be academically honest about it. Such a policy is undemocratic and evil. I use the word evil and not a word like unfair because evil is the right word to use. Unfair is when a soda machine steals your change; this goes way, way beyond that.
Margaret Sanger was a eugenics enthusiast (LINK) who believed that those who are born should be centrally planned. Sanger believed that blacks were inferior and that society would be served by seeing to it that as many black babies were destroyed in abortion mills as possible. It is not a coincidence that so many Planned Parenthood mills are located in or near minority inner city areas. If one were to swap out “blacks” for “Jews” in such an ideal who would it remind you of?
This is the key question and answer that everyone but the Republican Party Leadership was able to understand; there is nothing even remotely close to moderate about such positions. It is true that the Republican Party is and should be a “big tent ” party, but never forget there is a tent and such views should not only be rejected by the GOP but by good people everywhere. Some may claim that gleefully accepting an award with Sanger’s name is in no way an endorsement of Sanger’s views; perhaps no more than accepting a “Joseph Goebbels Award for Excellence in Political Communications” would be. Anyone with more than a residue of humanity and good sense would find such an award to be repulsive at best. Rudy Giuliani, who like many in the GOP believe that abortion should be legal in some circumstances, would find such an award offered to him to be insulting.
So the foolish GOP leadership spent almost a million dollars on Dede Scozzafava, who pulled off her GOP face mask the day after Halloween and endorsed the Democrat, which was utterly predictable by everyone but the GOP leadership.
If one were to wonder why so many rank and file voters are more hesitant to donate to the GOP, all they need to do is take a look at how nearly a million dollars of their hard earned money was wasted.
ATTENTION GOP LEADERSHIP
This should be a big wake up call. The Republican’s best spokesmen like Newt Gingrich can no longer rail on about how the Democratic leadership has abandoned its former principles and is now in a relentless pursuit of power to only abandon principle when it means pursuing power by supporting the NT 23 picked candidate even though she holds views that are truly repulsive to most Americans. Gingrich’s stated view on this race is too convenient and the voters are now wise to it.
The party machine and the party exists to advance a cause, but what is important is the cause, not the mechanism. When the GOP forgets this simple truth they lose elections and deserve to.
There is one more lesson the GOP leadership needs to learn. Republicans must stop accepting Democrat and elite media premises about elections and policy; in fact, they should aggressively rebuke them. The NY23 GOP leadership believed that if they hand picked a “Democrat lite” candidate that they could not lose; after all, the Democrats, the elite media types like David Frum tell them to do just that. Any political strategist who examines recent history knows that this so called “conventional wisdom” wrong.
When President George H. W. Bush agreed with Democrats in signing a tax increase that resulted in a short recession it cost him the election. At the time of the signing Democrats praised the Republican president, only to have Bill Clinton’s campaign call out Bush for breaking his “read my lips” pledge and campaign to the right of him on key issues. Clinton campaigned to the right of Bob Dole as well.
Look at the strategy that former DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel used in the 2006 and 2008 congressional elections. Emanuel put together a list of “blue dog” Democrats who ran as pro-life, pro-gun and anti-illegal immigration candidates. As Democrats they campaigned to the right and swept the congress.
John McCain is the poster child “moderate republican”. Barack Obama ran as a pro-gun Democrat who couched his rhetoric in “Reaganspeak” and lambasted President Bush for not standing up to the growth of the federal government.
Of course the Democrats have governed to the far left and are working to grow government, spending and taxes at a furious pace. Where are the endless comments from the elite media about how the Democrats have driven traditionalist proven winners out of their party such as Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller? Where are the comments from the elite media calling Dede Scozzafava out as a traitor to the party when she endorsed the Democrat? Silence.
Republicans win big when there is a clear difference between the Democrat and the Republican so long as the Republicans stick to their principles and the Democrat leadership knows it. When will the Republican leadership figure it out?
The elite media is euphoric, saying the Obama stimulus package worked and we had 3.5% economic growth this quarter!
Unfortunately when I explain to you how the U.S. Government comes up with that number you are going to realize why the CBO likely never has an accurate forecast and why most economists are worse than weatherman at predicting economic trends. What I am about to explain to you is a tad arcane but Poligazette and my IUSB Vision readers are some very smart people and I have confidence that you will grasp this just fine.
The first thing that must be understood is the difference between a growth in GDP (Gross Domestic Product is the total sum of production within the borders of a country in a given year adjusted for inflation) and a growth in real GDP per capita. It is possible to claim that your economy is in “recovery” even at 1% growth (Joe Biden) but since 2% of production growth in the United States is because of improvements in technology and capital goods; and another 1% is needed for population growth, an economic growth rate of over 3% is required to reliably increase the GDP per capita of the United States. The GDP per capita is the most important measure of the standard of living and wealth of the average citizen.
With a claimed GDP growth rate of 3.5% and a non farm unemployment rising past 10%, how can each citizen be producing more per person while the unemployment rate is skyrocketing with another 530,000 NEW jobless claims just in the last month? This would have to mean that American consumers went on a spending spree to drive that number up or that each worker became way more productive and must be working lots of extra hours and overtime to get that per capita GDP up….
If you are starting to think that something sounds fishy you would be right.
I had a brief chat and open lecture with noted economist Bradley Schiller today. He told me that with the new 3.5% number that per capita GDP must be up and with unemployment also up the overtime worked hours must be way up. As you can see from the graphic, Schiller was wrong.
The graphic is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from October 29th. As you can see the hours of persons worked is way down in both categories. The total output is also down so how can this be? Where did the 3.5% growth come from? Could it be that Americans went on that spending spree? Sorry consumer confidence is down 5.7 points this quarter.
How can the output per hour have increased so high on the graphic when hours worked and total output are way down? Did Americans go into overdrive and suddenly become become super workers? The answer to why that number is artificially inflated is the same reason why the GDP number has been artificially inflated.
So how does the the US Government measure GDP? They use an old and very flawed Keynesian formula.
GDP= C+I+G+(X-N)
C = consumer consumption of goods and services measured. I = capital investment like building factories, production robots, machine tools etc. (X-N) is exports minus imports and since we have a large trade deficit that is always a negative number. G= government spending and this is where the smoke and mirrors come in.
Since GDP has to equal total production of the workforce, this means that if Mr. Bernanke at the Federal Reserve prints up a bunch of money and Nancy Pelosi spends it, congratulations, each worker in the United States just became more productive on paper. This is the effect that a $1.7 trillion yearly deficit for 2009 has on an economy. For the sake of comparison the yearly deficit spending for 2007 was a “measly” $211 billion.
This is why the old, flawed Keynesian model is favored by politicians, socialists and other leftist ideologues, because on paper it means that the more you spend the better your economy is and the more productive you appear. What this amounts to is that there is no economic dip, depression, or problem that cannot be fixed by government spending. It gets worse, because of another flawed Keynesian concept called “leakage” they actually believe that government spending is MORE efficient in growing the economy than tax cuts. When Vice-President Biden said that we have to greatly increase deficit spending so we don’t go bankrupt, now you know why.
The reality is that most government spending does not create much if any wealth and much of it simply amounts to a transfer payment. Government is gargantuan and bureaucratic. Government money is spent for political reasons and not for economic reasons or efficiency.Thus the “multiplier effect” government spending has on the economy is much less than creating real wealth like creating things or investors building a factory.
There is even an argument to be made that much of the “G” variable for government spending should be counted as a negative number towards GDP because each dollar government spends eventually is a dollar taken from you or an investor to spend it. GDP exploded after 1947 when government spending dropped from 188 billion to 58 billion. It also should be mentioned that the larger government is, it engages in more arbitrary, regulative and taxing behavior that also drives down consumer and investor confidence. Deficit spending also drives up inflation.
The old Keynesian model is what a majority of economists believe because this is what they are taught in school; they simply never think for a moment to challenge it. This is a big part of the reason why government economists are so bad at cost/revenue forecasts. The economic collapse and the inability of 80% of economists to see it coming helped to convince me that most economists are great at applying flawed theory and don’t really understand economics.
It should also be noted that some economists are saying that one percentage point of the alleged 3.5% growth measure was due to the cash for clunkers program which studies have shown mostly was utilized by those who had planned to buy a car anyways this year; so the program just borrowed some spending from the future that will result in dips in auto sales for the next two quarters. In either case, the economy really isn’t improving anywhere near the degree that the elite media and some politicians say it is.
At best the current GDP formula is not a very good measure of an economy. A new formula for GDP needs to be constructed and tested.
I saw the headline on the CBS web site “Statisticians: “Global Cooling” a Myth – Claims about Last 10 Years Are Deceptive; Temperatures Rise and Fall, But Overall Trend Is Higher”. Rest assured what is deceptive is this article that misrepresents what is already a bad study that stands in direct contradiction to a previous data set from the NCDC from January.
I was hoping that the Obama Administration had not politicized the National Climactic Data Center (NCDC) as they had the EPA when they suppressed a report showing how global warming skeptics are correct (LINK – LINK).
Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.
Only one problem: It’s not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.
Ok time to stop right there, as has been documented by us (one example we reported LINK) and others such as the Media Research Center (example LINK, LINK, LINK and I could fill a page of links with examples of this problem), that almost always, the people the elite media portray as “independent” are people who are known to the reporter or news organization, with a known point of view, who will say what the reporter wants to report. The same few “random experts” appear in the elite media over and over and over again. It is a main component of how the elite media editorializes the news and hide the fact that in reality it is the news organizations editorial point of view they are presenting.
Why is IPCC author Dr. John Christy not a common talking head in the elite media?
CBS/AP continues:
In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.
“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller “Freakonomics.” Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.
Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped – thus, a cooling trend. But it’s not that simple.
Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.
The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.
[Oh wait, could they mean this, UK Telegraph: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved – UPDATED!. This was one of our little posts that went viral on the internet and got my little IUSB Vision Web Log pronounced the second most reviled web site on global warming by the Huffington Post. I really should buy Arianna a nice lunch for the publicity she gave me on that one - Chuck Norton]
Notice how they said that the study relies on ground sensors and pay special attention to the quote “recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data” …under NOOOOOO political pressure from the new administration I’m sure…
So I headed over to the WUWT blog to see if they had found the data that I was suspecting and sure enough. The data the story relies on comes from NOAA ground sensors and ignores the oceanic data sets and other important data sets. The NOAA ground censors have been discredited as controlled data because in a great many cases the NOAA censors are placed on or near asphalt, stone, heat vents, parking lots, surrounded by black tires in junk yards etc. all of which absorb heat during the day and release it at night. Also notice how the article states that they did not rely on satellite data that tends to show cooling and that presents another problem. According to alarmist global warming theory more warmth is trapped under the “greenhouse layer” of the atmosphere causing temperatures globally to rise. This layer of the atmosphere can be read by satellites and weather balloons (the John Christy method). So if you are to measure greenhouse warming according to the theory, that is the place to do it. However, measuring it that way does not give global warming alarmists the measurements they want.
This [AP] article, however, (which is not a true independent assessment if the study was completed by NOAA scientists) is not based on the much more robust metric assessment of global warming as diagnosed by upper ocean heat content. Nor does it consider the warm bias issues with respect to surface land temperatures that we have raised in our peer reviewed papers; e.g. see and see.
So as Pielke points out at WUWT, the “study” and the AP article doesn’t even address oceanic data sets. Nor does it address other data sets. It gets worse, would you like to see examples of NOAA ground sensors??
WUWT is up to part 91 of its “How not to measure temperature” series on these NOAA ground sensors.
Oh Look! Its a NOAA sensor in a junk yard with black tires.
Oh Look! Its a NOAA sensor next to that concrete porch and look to the left, its a grill. It has no cover so I guess it has been used pretty frequently.
Oh look! Its a NOAA sensor in a parking lot of asphalt. Would you like to walk barefoot on that on a warm summer day? I wonder how much heat the cars that park right next to it give off when the people who live in those apartments come home. Hey what is that a few yards behind the sensor? It's the heat pump for a home air conditioner!
But worry not scientific community and global warming alarmists, WUWT reports in “How not to measure temperature: Part 87” that NOAA “adjusts” for these types of anomalies….yup they adjust the temperatures DOWN in the PAST thus increasing the “current statistical warming trend”!! There are 91 of these ground sensors that WUWT has catalogued so far and they all seem to have one thing in common. They are placed in areas that will artificially make them read higher temperatures.
As we stated above, the new NCDC “study” ignored other data sets such as ITS OWN North American Temperature Data Set updated just last January… hmmm now what has happened between January and today….oh yes we have a new political administration that has already demonstrated that it has no problem trying to shut scientists up (LINK – LINK) who dare tell the truth about global warming.
Yet ANOTHER dataset showing the cooling of the last 10 years.
NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black line is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.
This data set is a collection of this continent only, but it shows the same cooling trend that other global data sets have shown. Since 1998 the Earth is cooling and it happens to coincide with a similar period of unusually low solar activity.
Of course we realize that to many people, including many radicalized professors, global warming alarmism is almost like a religion. No data set or series of data sets is going to put a dent in those people. Fortunately there are still plenty of people who are not zealots who can appreciate the information. Thanks to the famed WUWT Blog for the heads up.
Maybe this article can get the Huffington Post to rank me the number one most reviled global warming columnist on the internet. Being number two just seems so second best.
Some have seen the original list of 26, but I felt compelled to few to add to my own to 46 and lets see if we can come up with a few more. I invite you to come up with some we missed in the comments section.
1. Offended the Queen of England.
2. Offended British PM By snubbing him and offering trade gifts that were a joke (25 DVD’s that wont play in England).
3. Offended the British People by returning a bust of Winston Churchill that they gave the United States (its like sending the Statue of Liberty back to France).
4. Offended the President of France by snubbing him multiple times.
5. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia.
6. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.
7. Kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek.
8. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia.
9. Sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras.
10. Announced we would meet with Iranians with no pre-conditions while they’re building their nuclear weapons.
11. Reneged on a missile shield agreement with Eastern Europe almost ending all relations with Poland and the Czech Republic.
12. Left the country of Georgia in the cold after the Russian invasion.
13. Gave away billions to AIG also without pre-conditions.
14. Expanded the bailouts.
15. Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.
16. Doubled our national debt.
17. Announced the termination of our new missile defense system the day after North Korea launched an ICBM.
18. Released information on U.S. Intelligence gathering despite urgings of his own CIA director and the prior four CIA directors.
19. Accepted without comment that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two other nominees withdrew after they couldn’t take the heat.
20. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as “dangers to the nation.”
21. Ordered that the word “terrorism” no longer be used and instead refers to such acts as “man made disasters.”
23. Circled the globe to publicly apologize for America’s world leadership.
24. Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.
25. Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from the Department of Commerce.
26. Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion to Cuba of a 9-year-old whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in the United States.
27. Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS who took down three terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush administration may stand trial for “torturing” three 9/11 terrorists by pouring water up their noses.
28. Low altitude photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers.
29. Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure them that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special manner and they might be on their own with the Muslims.
30. Praised Jimmy Carter’s trip to Gaza where he sided with terrorist Hamas against Israel.
31. Nationalized General Motors and Chrysler while turning shareholder control over to the unions and freezing out retired investors who owned their bonds. Committed unlimited taxpayer billions in the process.
31. Passed a huge energy tax in the House that will make American industry even less competitive while costing homeowners thousands per year.
32. Quietly ended the Washington DC school voucher program dooming promising children to one of the worst school districts in the nation.
33. Reversed himself on his transparency pledges multiple times.
34. After promising lobbying reform he had a financial responsibility summit that ended up being a lobbyist meet up with government. He also signed an order relaxing the lobbyist rules.
35. Allowed multiple lobbyists in the administration after promising not to.
36. After promising a new era of bi-partisanship his party locks Republicans out of bill negotiations.
37. Helped protect the bonuses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
38. Signed a bill containing over 9,000 pork earmarks after promising earmark reform.
39. Instead of using the TARP bailout funds to buy peoples mortgages and renegotiate them with citizens as promised he used the money to buy up/nationalize banks and leave citizens in the cold.
40. Committed multiple violations of the Hatch Act (see HHS.GOV).
41. Declared War on Fox News.
42. Declared War on the Chamber of Commerce.
43. Suppressed an EPA Report showing that global warming skeptics are largely correct.
44. Participating in the dismantling of the Dollar as the world reserve currency.
45. Signed into law the reversal of Bill Clinton & Newt Gingrich’s very successful and hugely popular bi-partisan welfare reform (which was the main plank of Bill Clinton’s legacy).
46. Announced nationalized health care “reform” that will strip seniors of their Medicare, cut pay of physicians, increase taxes yet another $1 trillion, and put everyone on rationed care with government bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t. Bloomberg: Daschle says, “Health care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them,” while former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm says seniors have “a duty to die.” If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that the President, Senators and Congressmen have their own special gold plated health care plan which is guaranteed the remainder of their lives and they are not subject to this new law if they pass it.
The biggest news here is the lack of transparency going on with the current process and of course all the new taxes the Democrats promised they wouldn’t levy…
In violation of the spirit of the process the bills are being merged behind closed doors with the Republicans being locked out. Remember when Obama promised transparency and how the hearings and such on the health care bill would all be on C-Span and not behind closed doors??
Just a reminder, here are Obama’s seven lies in under two minutes.
Below you will read about how what are called “Cadillac Plans” will be taxed at 40%. The bill also requires that those with pre-existing conditions and the sick cannot be turned down. It also mandates that there be limits on the differences in premiums between the old and young, healthy and sick. This will make the costs of premium go way up especially for the young. The young will choose to pay the tax penalty rather than get the insurance. But no worries, when you get sick go buy the insurance and when your better drop it.
The end result? Premiums will go up in cost and become considered Cadillac plans over time. Most good plans that are as good or better than the public option will be considered “Cadillac Plans” over time. using price forces to send you into the public option, which is the goal.
This will also make an adversarial relation ship between the doctor and the patient. The doctor will have budget schedules to meet and you will need the best care possible. One cannot serve two gods. perhaps this is why presidential advisors have said that the Hippocratic oath is taken too seriously and is a part of the problem.
This brings us back to the death panels again. Dick Morris believes that the final versions of the bill will have the same cost/benefit analysis called QARY (Quality Adjusted Remaining Years). So if you are 95 and need a pacemaker , well odds are you wont live much longer so the cost divided out over your QARY is too high so the answer is no. I know a nice married couple in their late 80’s who are in better physical shape than I am and very active. This is exactly why doctors and individuals need to make these choices and not a cost benefit analysis. And before it is said in the comments, death panels does not mean that they will decide who gets the plug pulled, rather it decides who gets the plug plugged in in the first place.
The Senate majority’s contempt for the American people rears its ugly head again. The Senate Finance Committee just voted down a GOP amendment requiring that Obamacare legislation be available online 72 hours before the panel votes. Instead, the Democrats offered to make “conceptual language” available.
Dems lied, transparency died:
WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes.
Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal. They also noted that their constituents are demanding that they read bills before voting.
Democrats said it was a delay tactic that could have postponed a vote for weeks.
Democrat leaders legislating in special deals for their states
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Nevada would get help with its Medicaid bills. The elderly in Florida and New York would receive additional Medicare benefits. And workers in so-called high-risk professions such as firefighting and construction would get a break on a new insurance tax.
Those are provisions that Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, put in an $829 billion health-care bill to shield constituents from measures intended to pay for the biggest overhaul of the medical system in four decades.
The result is the new policies may be unevenly administered, with some U.S. states getting preferential treatment, a possibility that has given Republican lawmakers ammunition to attack the legislation.
“It’s going to hurt the bill and raise the level of cynicism about Washington politics,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican. “The provisions ought to be applied to all of the states.”
The number of special provisions is likely to grow as the full Senate begins debating the measure in coming weeks. Because Democrats are unlikely to win many Republican votes, individual lawmakers will have leverage to demand changes to satisfy parochial interests.
Baucus Senate Health Bill Costs Skyrocket Over Time
Remember when health-care reform was supposed to make life better for the middle class? That dream began to unravel this past summer when Congress proposed a bill that failed to include any competition-based reforms that would actually bend the curve of health-care costs. It fell apart completely when Democrats began papering over the gaping holes their plan would rip in the federal budget.
As it now stands, the plan proposed by Democrats and the Obama administration would not only fail to reduce the cost burden on middle-class families, it would make that burden significantly worse.
Consider the bill put forward by the Senate Finance Committee. From a budgetary perspective, it is straightforward. The bill creates a new health entitlement program that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will grow over the longer term at a rate of 8% annually, which is much faster than the growth rate of the economy or tax revenues. This is the same growth rate as the House bill that Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) deep-sixed by asking the CBO to tell the truth about its impact on health-care costs.
To avoid the fate of the House bill and achieve a veneer of fiscal sensibility, the Senate did three things: It omitted inconvenient truths, it promised that future Congresses will make tough choices to slow entitlement spending, and it dropped the hammer on the middle class.
One inconvenient truth is the fact that Congress will not allow doctors to suffer a 24% cut in their Medicare reimbursements. Senate Democrats chose to ignore this reality and rely on the promise of a cut to make their bill add up. Taking note of this fact pushes the total cost of the bill well over $1 trillion and destroys any pretense of budget balance.
It is beyond fantastic to promise that future Congresses, for 10 straight years, will allow planned cuts in reimbursements to hospitals, other providers, and Medicare Advantage (thereby reducing the benefits of 25% of seniors in Medicare). The 1997 Balanced Budget Act pursued this strategy and successive Congresses steadily unwound its provisions. The very fact that this Congress is pursuing an expensive new entitlement belies the notion that members would be willing to cut existing ones.
Most astounding of all is what this Congress is willing to do to struggling middle-class families. The bill would impose nearly $400 billion in new taxes and fees. Nearly 90% of that burden will be shouldered by those making $200,000 or less.
It might not appear that way at first, because the dollars are collected via a 40% tax on sales by insurers of “Cadillac” policies, fees on health insurers, drug companies and device manufacturers, and an assortment of odds and ends.
But the economics are clear. These costs will be passed on to consumers by either directly raising insurance premiums, or by fueling higher health-care costs that inevitably lead to higher premiums. Consumers will pay the excise tax on high-cost plans. The Joint Committee on Taxation indicates that 87% of the burden would fall on Americans making less than $200,000, and more than half on those earning under $100,000.
Industry fees are even worse because Democrats chose to make these fees nondeductible. This means that insurance companies will have to raise premiums significantly just to break even. American families will bear a burden even greater than the $130 billion in fees that the bill intends to collect. According to my analysis, premiums will rise by as much as $200 billion over the next 10 years—and 90% will again fall on the middle class.
Senate Democrats are also erecting new barriers to middle-class ascent. A family of four making $54,000 would pay $4,800 for health insurance, with the remainder coming from subsidies. If they work harder and raise their income to $66,000, their cost of insurance rises by $2,800. In other words, earning another $12,000 raises their bill by $2,800—a marginal tax rate of 23%. Double-digit increases in effective tax rates will have detrimental effects on the incentives of millions of Americans.
Lieberman Says Baucus Health Bill Will Raise Prices and Taxes by $400 Billion:
Pricewaterhouse Coopers Report Baucus Bill will cause premiums to rise by $1700 per family by 2013.
You can examine the report yourself HERE. Fox News Analysis did an analysis with a GOP Senator
Clinton Advisor Dick Morris on What the Obama-care Bills Mean for You
Morris gives more details about the high price of Obama-care HERE and HERE.
Were Saved! Mew House Health Bill Only Costs $900 Billion and Will be Deficit Neutral for 10 Years….
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday new estimates showed a healthcare overhaul drafted by Democrats would reduce the U.S. budget deficit over 10 years and cost less than $900 billion.
The preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office moved Democratic leaders closer to finishing a merger of three separate healthcare reform bills into one for debate on the House floor.
Ok now how did they do it….. well this is the part where the proposal gets a lot less popular.
They do it by starting the new taxes now, cutting Medicare now, reducing the rates at which doctors are reimbursed now and kicking in the “reform” five years from now so that the new government expense for the program wont fully kick in for five years.
Those of you who are old enough to remember the 1970’s know what price controls do. They limit supply and choice. Oil lines, brown outs and rolling power outages in California etc. When you can’t make sufficient profit to cover costs, growth, and unexpected economic shocks would you produce more of it?
The $871 billion estimate — well under the $900 billion limit set by President Obama — is the latest of several versions scored by congressional budget analysts, according to a Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. The measure would include a government-run insurance plan that pays providers at rates tied to Medicare, the aide added. That so-called “robust” public option is preferred by liberals because it would save the government money and could force private insurers to lower their own reimbursement rates, driving down the cost of health care overall. (Thats price controls which result in long wait lines and reduced quality – Editor]
But the idea is opposed by many conservative Democrats from rural areas, where Medicare rates are well below the national average. A new insurance plan that paid such low rates would be devastating to their communities financially, these Democrats say. Instead, they argue that any public plan should negotiate rates directly with providers, as private plans do.
Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com has a nice detailed explanation HERE Patientpowernow.com produced the following videos:
They produced this video criticizing Oregon State run health care and yes this is what Oregon did.
Canadians Speak Out On Health Care
This is from the Mackinac Center who has more video’s and details.
242 Patients Died of Malnutrition in British Health Service Hospitals in 2007
PRISONERS HAVE A BETTER DIET THAN NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE HOSPITAL PATIENTS, SCIENTISTS WARN
Patients in Great Britain’s government-run National Health Service (NHS) hospitals are far more likely to go hungry than criminals in jail, scientists warn.
They say frail and elderly patients do not get the help they need with meals, and nobody checks whether they get enough to eat. Despite years of Government promises to tackle poor hospital nutrition, food still arrives cold, and patients often miss out because meal times clash with tests and operations. Meanwhile, prisoners are enjoying carbohydrate-rich, low-fat foods which in many cases are better than they would have been eating on the outside.
The Daily Mail has been highlighting the scandal of old people not being fed properly in hospital as part of its Dignity for the Elderly campaign. Hospital meals are often taken away untouched, because they are either unappetizing or are placed out of patients’ reach:
The latest figures show 242 patients died of malnutrition in NHS hospitals in 2007 — the highest toll in a decade.
More than 8,000 left hospital under-nourished — double the figure when Labor came to power.
The NHS throws away 11million meals every year, and many nurses say they are too busy to help the frail eat.
Earlier this year the Mail revealed that some hospitals spend less on meals than the average prison:
Ten hospitals spent less on breakfast, lunch and an evening meal than the £2.12 (about U.S.$3.54) a day allocated for food by the prison service; one spent just £1 (about U.S.$1.67).
Although most hospitals do spend more than £2.12 (about U.S.$3.45), prisoners end up better nourished than patients, say experts from Bournemouth University.
After studying the food offered to inmates and across the NHS, they found patients face more barriers in getting good nutrition.
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: “It’s incredible that so many hospitals are failing to serve healthy meals. If prisons can serve good food then so can hospitals.”
Obama Administration Violating Hatch Act by using Tax Dollars to Politic for ObamaCare
And yes it’s illegal. In short the Department of Health and Human Services Web Site has a section on the right hand side of the page to sign up to support and lobby Congress ObamaCare. Of course there is only one option, to support it.Senator Grassley fired off a letter to HHS letting them know that it is illegal. Ed Morrissey at Hotair has more details. This administration seems to be politicizing most everything. Afghanistan, the CIA, FCC etc.
CEI releases global warming study censored by Obama’s EPA
Natural forces as opposed to human activity are largely responsible for temperature fluctuations, according to a new study the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released today as Congress prepares to vote on global warming legislation.
Internal email messages show the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suppressed the report and silenced the author because the scientific evidence did not square with the Obama administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide, CEI claims. The EPA has become overly reliant upon outdated information from the United Nations and has ignored major new scientific developments, the censored study concludes.
“While we hoped that the EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its administrator has been talking transparency, since she took office,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.
New scientific data highlighted in the report shows that ocean cycles and solar cycles are probably the most important factors behind temperature fluctuations. Moreover, satellite information now indicates there is little chance of endangerment from greenhouse gases, according to the report.
Some of the major developments overlooked by EPA official include a continued decline in global temperatures, an emerging consensus that hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense and new studies that demonstrate water vapor will have a moderating influence on temperature.
The report was exposed by hard work from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. See the entire EPA Report HERE.
This is a key page in the report (Hat Tip Dwight Schultz):
This report has other gems like this one. The EPA and the UN have reports that they tried to hide from you that tell this simple truth. As we have said repeatedly in IUSB Vision coverage. The evidence is clear that there has been global cooling for over a decade and the WUWT Blog has published hundreds of articles and data sets demonstrating this. The bulk of global warming and cooling cycles is the result of solar activity. CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas and man’s contribution to that is minor. Water vapor is the chief greenhouse gas.
Most “peer reviewed” global warming studies are based on computer models. The problem is that when actual recorded data from the past is entered into such models they cannot even accurately predict climate from yesterday or last year.
The CEI unveils the evidence that the EPA ordered people to shut up about the findings and you can see the report with ALL of the emails HERE . Here are just two of the emails reveled (Via Powerline):
Here, the two scientists’ superior declines to make their report public because “the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment.” Click to enlarge:
Here, Carlin and Davidson are ordered not to communicate to the public their conclusion that the global warming alarmist theory is wrong:
Powerline sums up this scandalous behavior with a devastating analogy:
Global warming zealots are a bit like Iran’s mullahs. They are fanatically devoted to a series of false propositions. Unable to win an open scientific debate, they consistently resort to bullying and brute force to suppress their opposition. Once again, we see the Obama administration taking the lead in this regard, putting political ideology above scientific truth and demanding that all others do likewise.
UPDATE: Newsbusters notes the almost complete media blackout of this story, and contrasts it with the news media’s treatment of the Bush administration.
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is.
Not a surprise. So now it seems that when Obama gave up missile defense in Eastern Europe [1,2] with the stated goal of helping to get Russia on board he got nothing for it except his pals at GE getting some new contracts in Russia. Was it worth throwing Eastern Europe under the bus?
MOSCOW, Oct 14 (NYT): Denting President Obama’s hopes for a powerful ally in his campaign to press Iran on its nuclear programme, Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that threatening Tehran now with harsh new sanctions would be “counterproductive.”
The minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said after meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton here that diplomacy should be given a chance to work, particularly after a meeting in Geneva this month in which the Iranian government said it would allow United Nations inspectors to visit its clandestine nuclear enrichment site near the holy city of Qum.
“At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process,” he said. “Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive.”
Mr. Lavrov’s resistance was striking given that, just three weeks before, President Dmitri A. Medvedev said that “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable.” American officials had hailed that statement as a sign that Russia was finally coming around to the Obama administration’s view that Iran is best handled with diplomacy backed by a credible threat of sanctions.
It also came after the Obama administration announced that it would retool a European missile defense system fiercely opposed by Russia. That move was thought to have paid dividends for the White House when Mr. Medvedev appeared to throw his support behind Mr. Obama on Iran, though American officials say the Russian president was also likely to have been reacting to the disclosure of the secret nuclear site near Qum.
This will influence China to resist sanctions as well at the UN who also has commercial interests in Iran.
So now it has come to this, if Israel doesn’t stop Iran, no one will. Would Obama order Americans to fire in Israeli forces should they strike? Would American pilots dare to obey such an order? I wouldn’t.
German Ship Caught in Iranian Arms Smuggling
This is not a surprise. The French, Germans, Chinese and Russians were smuggling illegal weapons to Saddam’s Iraq for years and our soldiers found the direct evidence it. And we wonder why we have to clean up so many messes in Europe’s back yard….
An “embarrassing affair,” is how one German diplomat described it. The official could also have added: potentially damaging to trans-Atlantic relations.
In an operation reported on by SPIEGEL over the weekend, US soldiers entered the freighter Hansa India in the Gulf of Suez at the beginning of October and discovered seven containers full of 7.62 millimeter ammunition suitable for Kalashnikov rifles. An eighth container was full of cartridges suitable for the manufacture of additional rounds. The incident is particularly awkward for Berlin as the Hansa India is registered to the Hamburg-based shipping company Leonhardt & Blumberg.
Investigators suspect that the arms were part of an Iranian shipment bound for either the Syrian army or for Hezbollah, the militant Islamist group. US officials have pointed out that the delivery is in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747, which prohibits arms shipments either into or out of Iran.
According to Leonhardt & Blumberg, the 243-meter-long (297-foot-long) ship has for years been under charter to the state-owned shipping company Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. Two US warships halted the Hansa India after receiving a tip-off from intelligence services.
Liz Cheney Launches New Think Tank to Lead Opposition to Obama Foreign Policy
While Sarah Palin has become the main voice of GOP opposition to the far left policies of the Democratic leadership, Liz Cheney has taken the leading role in opposing administration foreign policy and national security policy.
I am an admirer of Liz Cheney, she is very smart, informed, tough, and very lovely. Palin/Cheney dream ticket?
The mission of Keep America Safe is to provide information for concerned Americans about critical national security issues. Keep America Safe seeks to influence public policy by encouraging dialogue between American citizens and their elected representatives in order to produce legislation and executive action that enhances the national security of the United States.
The United States remains a nation at war. We face a growing threat from rogue regimes that seek or have already obtained nuclear weapons. America’s interests are challenged by an authoritarian China, a resurgent Russia, and dictators in our own hemisphere who ally themselves with our adversaries. Amidst the great challenges to America’s security and prosperity, the current administration too often seems uncertain, wishful, irresolute, and unwilling to stand up for America, our allies and our interests.
Since 9/11, the United States Government, through our armed forces and our intelligence and law enforcement professionals, has succeeded in preventing any further attacks on the American homeland. This is a major achievement. By turning away from the policies that have kept us safe, by treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter, giving foreign terrorists the same rights as American citizens, launching investigations of CIA agents, cutting defense spending, breaking faith with our allies and attempting to appease our adversaries, the current administration is weakening the nation, and making it more difficult for us to defend our security and our interests.
Keep America Safe believes the United States can only defeat our adversaries and defend our interests from a position of strength. We know that America has, for 233 years, been an unparalleled force for good in the world, that our fighting forces are the best the world has ever known, and that the world is a safer place when America is trusted by our allies and feared and respected by our enemies. Keep America Safe will make the case for an unapologetic approach to fighting terrorism around the world, for victory in the wars this country fights, for democracy and human rights, and for a strong American military that is needed in the dangerous world in which we live.
Here is their introductory video:
President’s can multi-task so the complaining about the trips and golf I think was a bit cheesy, but the rest of it is spot on. Obama certainly has reneged ion his word when it comes to Afghanistan. HERE is Keep America Safe’s youtube channel.
Here is Liz Cheney talking with Sean Hannity. Sean is a little too partisan for my tastes, but Liz is in top form:
By the way the Pew Research Center polled and discovered that most Americans support the use of force to prevent Iran from getting nukes LINK.
Liz Cheney Dismantles far CNN activist/reporter Anderson Cooper:
Time Magazine has an interesting article that bucks their usual shtick. The article advocates giving nuclear weapons the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to keep several wars from happening.
UN Calls for Dropping Dollar as World Reserve Currency
The UN along with a whole host of countries is witnessing what the government and the Federal Reserve is up to. Oh wait, you don’t know what they are up to? OK quick economics lesson. There are four ways to take care of a large debt.
1. Spend less and that is out as the Democrats have increased deficit spending from the 2007 eight times.
2. You can tax the people into the ground, and while they are certainly breaking promises and raising taxes and trying to raise more the bottom line is that the debt and future entitlement obligations are so large that there just aren’t enough people to tax.
3. Grow the economy and increase GDP so there is more economy to tax. Sorry in spite of overwhelming historical evidence most leftists just don’t believe in economic growth as we know it. Besides, in order to do that you have to unleash freedom and incentivise a growth environment which means abandoning central control and that is out of the question for the far left.
4. Print money up to inflate the currency to screw those we owe money to. That is exactly what is going on now and the world is very upset with us. Obama ran on raising the standing of the Unites States in the world. Well the world is not happy at all with what is going on.
Unintended consequences. The world does all they can to get out of the dollar (happening) we lose influence in the world, our currency loses value (so you saved for retirement and what are those dollars worth? The dollar has lost 29% of its value in the last seven years. Nine percent in the last six months.) and the world drops America’s credit rating form AAA to AA. That would mean that the cost of mortgages, credit cards and government debt would skyrocket. In short it would mean economic armageddon.
The United Nations called on Tuesday for a new global reserve currency to end dollar supremacy which has allowed the United States the “privilege” of building a huge trade deficit.
“Important progress in managing imbalances can be made by reducing the reserve currency country?s ‘privilege’ to run external deficits in order to provide international liquidity,” UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, Sha Zukang, said.
Speaking at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Istanbul, he said: “It is timely to emphasise that such a system also creates a more equitable method of sharing the seigniorage derived from providing global liquidity.”
He said: “Greater use of a truly global reserve currency, such as the IMF?s special drawing rights (SDRs), enables the seigniorage gained to be deployed for development purposes,” he said.
The SDRs are the asset used in IMF transactions and are based on a basket of four currencies — the dollar, euro, yen and pound — which is calculated daily.
China had called in March for a new dominant world reserve currency instead of the dollar, in a system within the framework of the Washington-based IMF.
Countries Moving to Ditch Using the Dollar for Oil Trading
The dollar’s position as the world’s leading reserve currency faces increased pressure as the financial crisis allows emerging economies greater influence on the world stage, analysts said.
A report last week in The Independent claiming that China, Russia and Gulf States are among nations prepared to ditch the dollar for oil trades has heightened the uncertainty surrounding the US currency’s future.
The dollar slumped against rivals last week in the wake of the British daily’s controversial report.
“The US dollar is being hurt by the continued talk of a shift away from a dollar-centric world,” said Kit Juckes, an analyst at currency traders ECU Group.
“Three conclusions stand out very clearly. Firstly, the shift in economic power away from the G7 economies is continuing. “Secondly, there is a growing acceptance amongst those winners that one consequence of this power shift will be to strengthen their currencies.
“And finally, as long as the US economy is not strong enough for any rise in interest rates to be conceivable for a long time, the dollar’s underlying downtrend will remain in place,” added Juckes.
The Independent, under the front-page headline “The Demise of the Dollar”, reported last Tuesday that Gulf states, together with China, Russia, Japan and France, were considering replacing the dollar as the currency for oil deals.
Beck: US Newspapers Print More About ‘Jon and Kate’ Than Demise of the Dollar – VIDEO.
Some pinheads at politico.com are blaming Matt Drudge for the dollar woes for reporting what the American press will not. We cant blame what the government is doing….. nope they are blameless….
Durable goods orders, housing sales plunged in August
Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com has a great post showing that the economy is still tanking while the administration and some elite media outfits claims that it is a great recovery:
While Joe Biden tells Americans that the stimulus has worked “better than we hoped,” the numbers tell a different story. Seven months after passing a whopping $787 billion stimulus package, unemployment and mass layoffs both jumped in August. What didn’t go up? Orders of durable goods, which took a significant plunge instead:
New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods fell unexpectedly in August, dropping by their biggest margin in seven months, following a plunge in commercial aircraft orders, the government reported Friday.
The Commerce Department said durable goods orders tumbled 2.4 percent, the largest decline since January, after rising by a revised 4.8 percent in July. New orders for July were previously reported to have increased 5.1 percent.
Analysts polled by Reuters forecast orders rising 0.5 percent in August. Compared with the same period last year, new orders were down 24.9 percent.
Durable goods orders are a leading indicator of manufacturing activity, which in turn provides a good measure for overall business health.
Resales of U.S. homes dropped 2.7% in August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.1 million, the first decline in five months, prompting the National Association of Realtors to again plead for more taxpayer subsidies for their business. …
“It is perfectly clear that realtors are scared to death of the tax credit’s expiration,” wrote Dan Greeenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Co., noting the phrase “tax credit” appears six times in the group’s press release.
First-time buyers accounted for about 30% of sales in July and August, Yun said.
Without an extension of the taxpayer subsidy, the housing market could fall into a “double-dip” downturn, Yun said, which would stall the overall economic recovery.
The housing market is also being propped up by the Federal Reserve’s purchases of nearly $1.5 trillion in mortgage-related securities, accounting for about 80% of the market. The Fed said Wednesday it would slow its purchases and end them by next March.
Why will we hit a double dip in the recession without government subsidies? In part, it will come from the fact that the $787 billion stimulus and other government-subsidy programs don’t address the real problems of the recession.
[Morissey really hits the nail on the head and shows his understanding of economics]
The problem with the economy now is the drain of capital from the private markets, both now and especially in the future. The Obama administration has expansive dreams of big-government control of health care and energy production which will suck capital out of the private markets, where it gets used efficiently, into government bureaucracies that waste it. These massive programs are running up massive deficits, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that taxes will get hiked in huge proportions to pay for it eventually. The result: investors put their money into savings rather than risk, jobs don’t get created, and recessions continue.
More McCain Fiengold Campaign Finance Regulations Struck Down
It seems that every time the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) also known as McCain/Fiengold gets parts of it struck down every time it goes to court and it should. BCRA is so unconstitutional that makes me ill and the courts are finally catching up with what was so painfully obvious when it was passed.
The other problem with the BCRA is that it has had exactly the opposite effect of its stated intent (Quinn’s Law # 1). BCRA exponentially increased the power of 527 groups, who are often the most ideological and the elite media.
Many 527 groups are controlled by a few key players like George Soros who end up wielding way too much influence over the DNC and elected politicians. Now these 527’s can have unlimited fund raising and run unlimited ads while political parties are still castrated by the law. This puts people like Soros in a much more powerful position than even the head of the DNC. This is why the average citizen loses. The money has been taken away from the parties and given to the hard left. Hard left moneydemands hard left policy. The average Joe can effect the party at the local level and get involved in the state and national parties and its easier to get involved than one might think. Not everyone involved in the parties is as extreme as the 527’s. There are still plenty of moderate elements even in the official Democrat machine.
This also means that every special interest will have its own 527 group to wield and threaten ads to gain more influence. Parties are under pressure to at least be directionally accurate, most 527’s don’t care about such pressure and will say anything and everything. Another problem is groups such as the Tides Foundation who take funds and route then to far left organizations so tracking the money can become more difficult.
It gives me a shudder to say this, but the old way of doing campaign finance was better.
A federal appeals court overturned hard-fought campaign finance reform regulations in a ruling on Friday that will make it easier for independent political groups to raise and spend money to influence elections.
The three-judge panel struck down regulations intended to blunt the power of such organizations, including the controversial Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and MoveOn.org, which drew heavy criticism for spending tens of millions of dollars on aggressive advertisements during the 2004 presidential campaign.
The ruling, if it stands, could provide a boost to Republicans and their allies as they try to win back Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. Outside conservative groups could become particularly important in countering the fundraising juggernaut of President Obama, who shattered past records by raising more than $750 million during his 2008 campaign.
Experts suggested that the court’s decision could provide a boon to groups tapping into the fervor of anti-Obama activity and “tea party” events. It will certainly allow groups across the political spectrum to raise and spend money without pause, potentially leading to a more acerbic campaign environment.
[Of course the WashPost has to make the editorial comment swipe at conservatives. They know full well that leftist 527's are much more organized and wealthy than conservative ones. Of course after that they admit that it was a left wing 527 that sued to get this done - Editor]
The groups “are now free to accept unlimited contributions, to spend unlimited funds independently supporting or opposing federal candidates,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and an election law expert.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit came in a lawsuit brought by Emily’s List, a nonprofit political organization that backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights.
This is the portion of the ruling that will be important in the near future:
The rules required the political committees to use hard money for at least 50 percent of their generic get-out-the-vote efforts and voter registration drives. It also compelled the organizations to use hard-money accounts to pay all costs of advertisements that referred to a federal candidate. If a group’s solicitations mentioned a specific candidate, the regulations required them to treat the donation as hard money.
Kavanaugh wrote that such rules were unconstitutional because they limited speech by political groups. The rules “do not pass muster,” he wrote, adding that they did not serve an anti-corruption purpose and had been enacted to “better equalize the voices of citizens and groups who participate in the political process.”
The BCRA rules were unconstitutional because they tried to “equalize” or dare I say redistribute political speech. This does not bode well for the Obama Administration and his FCC which are trying to come up with new rules to do the same thing to talk radio and the internet with policies such as “localism”, “net neutrality” or other policies designed to have a similar impact as the tossed out “fairness doctrine” which was selectively used to shut people up that organized groups didn’t like.
Overpaid Celebrities PSA Mocked
Don’t you hate it when celebrities who are as ignorant as they day is long try to lecture you about politics and policy? You will love this.
Government Shuts Down Neighborhood “Haunted House” That Operated Safely for 15 Years
Hey who needs tyranny from Washington when we can have it three miles away? Is this what you wanted your city officials to do?
Its no trick – the Town of Tonawanda is shutting down a haunted house and that’s no treat for Halloween lovers this October.
For 15 years, the Deck family has been scaring neighbors and trick-or-treaters at their annual haunted house. But this year, the boogey man turned out to be code enforcement. “When I came home from work, they posted a No Entry sign over my sign, that no one’s allowed to use it,” said homeowner Paul Deck.
The town posted a “Unsafe Structure” notice, which states that no one is allowed to go inside. “They want me change all my displays to the outside so people could just walk around it,” said Deck.
Deck designed this house of ghouls and ghosts with his three boys. They spent over 40 hours constructing it to be like a maze inside and he says its too late to rebuild the whole thing.
“Its approximately 1200 square feet. Its built with over 300 2×4s, 400 feet of plastic. Its got between 12-15 displays. Its got everything from Freddy, to Jason, to Hannibal Lector,” he said.
Deck’s neighbors are disappointed. This haunted house is something they look forward to every Halloween. “I think it’s a shame. The kids are really disappointed. Every year he does a great thing for the kids, they love to come, they love it, come in twice sometimes if they can,” said neighbor Scott Hummel.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell: George Soros isn’t left wing …
Andrea Mitchell shows just how in the tank she is and that she is totally wrapped up in the beltway mentality. Any thinking person who takes a look at who Soros funds, his statements opposing freedom and capitalism, and the activities of his Orwellian named “Open Society Institute” could come to any other conclusion that Soros is at very best a super rich neo-marxist.
WASHINGTON – Even with an economic revival, many U.S. jobs lost during the recession may be gone forever and a weak employment market could linger for years.
That could add up to a “new normal” of higher joblessness and lower standards of livingfor many Americans, some economists are suggesting.
The words “it’s different this time” are always suspect. But economists and policy makers say the job-creating dynamics of previous recoveries can’t be counted on now.
Here’s why:
• The auto and construction industries helped lead the nation out of past recessions. But the carnage among Detroit’s automakers and the surplus of new and foreclosed homes and empty commercial properties make it unlikely these two industries will be engines of growth anytime soon.
• The job market is caught in a vicious circle: Without more jobs, U.S. consumers will have a hard time increasing their spending; but without that spending, businesses might see little reason to start hiring.
• Many small and midsize businesses are still struggling to obtain bank loans, impeding their expansion plans and constraining overall economic growth.
• Higher-income households are spending less because of big losses on their homes, retirement plans and other investments. Lower-income households are cutting back because they can’t borrow like they once did.
That the recovery in jobs will be long and drawn out is something on which economists and policy makers can basically agree, even as their proposals for remedies vary widely.
Retrenching businesses will be slow in hiring back or replacing workers they laid off. Many of the 7.2 million jobs the economy has shed since the recession began in December 2007 may never come back.
“This Great Recession is an inflection point for the economy in many respects. I think theunemployment rate will be permanently higher, or at least higher for the foreseeable future,” said Mark Zandi,chief economistand co-founder of Moody’sEconomy.com.
“The collective psyche has changed as a result of what we’ve been through. And we’re going to be different as a result,” said Zandi, who formerly advisedSen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and now is consulted by Democrats in the administration and in Congress,
Even before the recession, many jobs had vanished or been shipped overseas amid a general decline of U.S. manufacturing. The severest downturn since theGreat Depressionhas accelerated the process.
Many economists believe the recession reversed course in the recently ended third quarter and they predict modest growth in the nation’s gross domestic product over the next few years. Yet the unemployment rate is currently at a 26-year high of 9.8 percent — and likely to top 10 percent soon and stay there a while.
Why are people not investing in the United States? Why is manufacturing going over seas? The answer is simple, this government and some state governments have policies that punish the creation of wealth and are barriers to doing business. We have the second highest corporate income tax in the industrialized world, we have high capital gains taxes we have excessive regulation that is often designed to aid some competitors and punish others so that politicians to get kick backs. China has no capital gains tax.
The simple truth is that wealth goes where it is treated well. If I were to declare a war on wealth and prosperity I would do exactly what this government has been doing.
Government Wants a VAT tax. How Does This Hurt You?
Speaking of barriers to production and sending production jobs overseas. This tax is targeted to do exactly just that. Watch this video, its 6 minutes and you will learn a ton.
Propose Cap & Trade Tax Will Help Coastal States (Democrat strongholds) & Screw the Mid West
Speaking of sending more jobs overseas. This policy will do exactly just that.
While Congress debates the overhaul of one-sixth of the American economy with ObamaCare, another sixth of the economy looks as though it will get allocated on a political basis. The New York Times reports on an EPA analysis of emissions credits that favor mostly coastal states — mainly Democratic strongholds — at the expense of Midwestern and coal-belt states. Energy producers are up in arms, but everyone should be objecting to this rather corrupt allocation of emissions licenses.
Follow the link for the details, but Indiana will be hit especially hard.
Jack Abramoff. Remember him? The former Republican lobbyist who was sentenced to five years for unlawful campaign fundraising and influence peddling crimes. The elite media had him on the TV and front pages for months. The New York Times published 235 stories on Jack Abramoff and of course it was a page 1 story from the beginning.
So here we have Norman Hsu, ….well lets have Associated Press tell the story:
NEW YORK – Former Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was sentenced Tuesday to more than 24 years in prison by a judge who accused him of funding his fraud by manipulating the political process in a way that “strikes at the very core of our democracy.”
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero sentenced the 58-year-old Hsu, who raised money for Hillary Rodham Clinton and others, to 20 years in prison for his guilty plea to fraud charges and another four years and four months in prison for his conviction at trial for breaking campaign finance laws.
In a lengthy criticism of Hsu’s fraud, the judge said the former fundraiser used political contributions to win respect and impress investors as he committed campaign finance fraud.
“Mr. Hsu’s disgraceful use of political campaigns to perpetuate his Ponzi schemes, as well as his acts of campaign finance fraud, strikes at the very core of our democracy,” Marrero said.
The judge said Hsu stole more than $50 million from hundreds of investors in a 10-year Ponzi scheme by winning their confidence with his pristine reputation and friendly nature, a two-faced quality the judge noted was common among certain white collar criminals.
Norman Hsu with Hillary
The government said at trial that Hsu used clients of his fraudulent investment business, including actors and other political novices, as straw donors to make thousands of dollars in campaign donations. The scheme bypassed rules limiting what any individual or group can donate.
During the May trial, prosecutors played a voicemail recording of Clinton, then a senator, effusively praising Hsu for his support.
“I’ve never seen anybody who has been more loyal and more effective and really just having greater success supporting someone than you,” she told him. “Everywhere I go, you’re there. If you’re not, you’re sending people to be part of my events. You know, we’re going to win this campaign, Norman, because you single-handedly are going to make that happen.”
Hmm…. so why hasn’t anyone heard of this guy? I went on Google and what did I discover? Well a 50 million dollar scandal at the highest levels of government should be big page 1 news right? After all, Abramoff only got got five years in prison and Hsu got 24. Oh I almost forgot, these are Democrats so thats ‘different’. The New York Times published all of 19 stories on Norman Hsu, none of which indicate that they were on page 1.
So I decided to do some searching on the other big fundraising scandals since 1990. Maria Hsia, another name you likely never heard, who was funneling bundled checks of illegal money of which the reported source was the Chinese Government and other Chinese interests to the Democrats, saw 22 stories in the New York Times and even managed a single page 1 mention upon her conviction.
Of course the two biggest names in illegal fundraising from Chinese interests to the Democrats are John Huang and Charlie Yah Lin Trie. Once again, unless you listened to the few talk hosts who covered this story like Quinn & Rose these are names you have likely never heard of. They raised funds for Democrats and Governor Clinton and on into his presidency. The group operated for nearly a decade.
The story was made more egregious by the fact that there were a number of policy changes that happened from Interior to Commerce that benefited the Chinese/Indonesian group including Trie and Huang. Huang was even named a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Commerce Department. While plead down to just a few counts, Huang and Trie’s group raised over a million dollars for the DNC and the Clinton Legal Defense Fund alone. The New York Times published 97 articles on Huang and 50 on Trie.
For more details on the depth of this corruption the Senate Report on this scandal is published HERE and published a short bio on Maria Hsia HERE.
This is a valuable lesson about what stories the elite media gives a prominent position and which ones they do not. It is one of the most effective ways they assert their own ideological bias.
Here is most the news I wanted to talk about in the last three weeks while I have been sick. Of course this resulted in falling behind on school work which didn’t help either. Keep checking back as News Roundup Part II is on the way. – Editor
ACORN has asked an “Independent Panel” to do an investigation of the organization.
Well ok come to find out it is not so independent after all.
In a press release, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis says, that as “a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees,” the group will immediately stop accepting anyone into ACORN office for service programs, will conduct in-service training of staff, and begin an audit “to review all of the systems and processes called into question by the videos,” to be conducted by the group’s Independent Advisory Council.
The Council includes many prominent Democrats, including the man who helped President Obama Transition Team, John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; Andrew Stern, International President of the Service Employees International Union; and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Hotair.com’s new blogger Karl has a few interesting details:
Cisneros, whoworked regularly with ACORNas HUD Secretary, would laterplead guilty to lying to the FBIto cover up a political embarrassment.Perfect choice. Townsend is so inependent that she called the stories of ACORN’s frequent involvement in voter fraud a“desperate smokescreen maneuver”masking an extensive coast-to-coast GOP push to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in 2008.No bias there. Stern heads SEIU, which hasa very cozy relationship with ACORN. How cozy? ACORN controls or significantly dominates several SEIU chapters. And Stern hand-picked ACORN’s Wade Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.He could not be more independent. And Podesta runs the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which has beencoordinating the public defense of ACORN this summer.He might be even more independent than Andy Stern.
Results from a national Sacred Heart University survey released today reveal that many news consumers believe the media played a significant role in electing President Barack Obama and that the media continue to promote his presidency.
“A large majority, 89.3 percent, suggested the national media played a very or somewhat strong role in helping to elect President Obama,” according to a summary of the findings. “Just 10.0 percent suggested the national media played little or no role. Further, 69.9 percent agreed the national news media are intent on promoting the Obama presidency while 26.5 percent disagreed. Some, 3.6 percent, were unsure.”
And 86.6 percent said they believe the news media try to influence public opinion and that they have their own public policy and political positions. This compares to 87.6 percent in 2008 and 70.3 percent in 2003.
The survey, the third Sacred Heart survey of its kind, was conducted from Sept. 8-11. I am still seeking demographic information about the people who took the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
Of those surveyed, 70.4 percent said they believe the national news media are not responsive to “consumer preferences and market desires.”
Congressional Research Service: Obama Wrong, Honduras Correct to Remove Zelaya
Another shocker and it is just like we told you HERE and HERE. The CRS Report is HERE.
The legal arguments made in the report, which was prepared by Senior Foreign Law Specialist Norma Gutierrez, are quite intricate and based in Honduran law. But the bottom line is this:
The Honduran Congress appears to have acted properly in deposing President Manuel Zelaya. Unlike in the United States, the Honduran Congress has the last word when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. Although there is no provision in Honduras’s Constitution for impeachment as such, the body does have powers to disapprove of the president’s official acts, and to replace him in the event that he is incapable of performing his duties. Most importantly, the Congress also has the authority to interpret exactly what that means.
The Supreme Court was legally entitled to ask the military to arrest Zelaya. The high court, which is the constitutional venue for trials of the president and other high-ranking officials, also recognized the Congress’s ouster of Zelaya when it referred his case back down to a lower court afterward, on the grounds that he was “no longer a high-ranking government official.”
The military did not act properly in forcibly expatriating Zelaya. According to the CRS report and other news stories, Honduran authorities are investigating their decision, which the military justified at the time as a means of preventing bloodshed. In fact, Zelaya should have been given a trial, and if convicted of seeking reelection, he would have lost his citizenship. But he is still a citizen now, and the Constitution forbids the expatriation of Honduran citizens by their government.
The proper line of succession was followed after Zelaya’s ouster. Because there was no Vice President in office when Zelaya was removed (he had resigned to run for president), Micheletti was the proper successor, as he had been president of the Congress.
“The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded the removal of former President Zelaya was Constitutional, and we must respect that,” Rep. Aaron Schock said today. “It’s unconscionable the administration would attempt to force Honduras to violate its own Constitution by cutting of foreign aid.”
By the way Zelaya’s thugs trashed part of the capital of Honduras, but since the elite media is in the tank for Obama there was zero coverage of it. Gateway Pundit has the DETAILS.
Our ambassador is the only person I met there who thinks there was a ‘coup.’ Let’s release the State Department legal analysis.
In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military “coup” that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it has created.
After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders from Honduras’s government, business community, and civil society, I can report there is no chaos there. There is, however, chaos to spare in the Obama administration’s policy toward our poor and loyal allies in Honduras.
That policy was set in a snap decision the day Mr. Zelaya was removed from office, without a full assessment of either the facts or reliable legal analysis of the constitutional provisions at issue. Three months later, it remains in force, despite mounting evidence of its moral and legal incoherence.
While in Honduras, I spoke to dozens of Hondurans, from nonpartisan members of civil society to former Zelaya political allies, from Supreme Court judges to presidential candidates and even personal friends of Mr. Zelaya. Each relayed stories of a man changed and corrupted by power. The evidence of Mr. Zelaya’s abuses of presidential power—and his illegal attempts to rewrite the Honduran Constitution, a la Hugo Chávez—is not only overwhelming but uncontroverted.
As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.
The presidential election is on schedule for Nov. 29. Under Honduras’s one-term-limit, Mr. Zelaya could not have sought re-election anyway. Current President Roberto Micheletti—who was installed after Mr. Zelaya’s removal, per the Honduran Constitution—is not on the ballot either. The presidential candidates were nominated in primary elections almost a year ago, and all of them—including Mr. Zelaya’s former vice president—expect the elections to be free, fair and transparent, as has every Honduran election for a generation.
Indeed, the desire to move beyond the Zelaya era was almost universal in our meetings. Almost.
In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.
When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a “coup,” he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh’s report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied.
On the other hand, the only thorough examination of the facts to date—conducted by a senior analyst at the Law Library of Congress—confirms the legality and constitutionality of Mr. Zelaya’s ouster. (It’s on the Internet here .)
Unlike the Obama administration’s snap decision after June 28, the Law Library report is grounded in the facts of the case and the intricacies of Honduran constitutional law. So persuasive is the report that after its release, the New Republic’s James Kirchick concluded in an Oct. 3 article that President Obama’s hastily decided Honduras policy is now “a mistake in search of a rationale.”
Police association contractor charged with snooping on ‘Joe the Plumber’
Now lets have the government have all of our medical records and tax records tied together with Obamacare….
A former contractor for the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police has been charged with rummaging through state computers to retrieve confidential information about “Joe the Plumber.”
Brett A. Gerke, 52, of 2329 Woodcreek Place on the Far North Side, is charged with attempted unauthorized use of property.
The Toledo-area resident was popularized as “Joe the Plumber” by Republican John McCain in a presidential debate the night before with Democrat Barack Obama.
Gerke was project manager in the development of the Ohio Local Law Enforcement Information Sharing Network, working on the project between 2004 and 2008 as a contractor for the police chiefs’ association.
Gerke used a test account and password he received to work on the project to search for information on Wurzelbacher and others, authorities say.
He was working as a contractor for the Ohio Department of Insurance at the time of the computer checks. Gerke’s lawyer, Joseph Scott of Columbus, would not comment on the case.
The Dispatch revealed several questionable checks of state computer systems for confidential information about Wurzelbacher after the presidential debate.
Helen Jones-Kelley, then director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, authorized several computer checks on Wurzelbacher that the state inspector general concluded had no legal purpose.
Jones-Kelley, who was suspended by Gov. Ted Strickland after The Dispatch also revealed that she used her state e-mail account to raise campaign funds for Obama, later resigned. Two of her top aides also lost their jobs.
Government Blew Up GI Bill Program for Veterans Too
It’s not just cash for Clunkers, Medicare, Social Security, etc etc…
The U.S. government failed to send promised college tuition checks to tens of thousands of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars before they returned to school this fall, even after being warned that it was inadequately staffed for the job.
The Veterans Affairs Department blamed a backlog of claims filed for GI Bill education benefits that has left veterans who counted on the money for tuition and books scrambling to make ends meet.
Veterans like American University student John Kamin, who received a letter Wednesday from the Army. He was hoping it contained news that his overdue GI Bill college tuition money would soon arrive. Instead, the Iraq war veteran was informed that he may be called back into active duty.
“It felt like salt in the wound,” said the 24-year-old from New York City. He is depleting his savings account and borrowing money from his parents to make up for thousands of dollars the government promised him to complete his political science degree.
“That was really disheartening,” Mr. Kamin said.
He isn’t alone. Out of more than 277,000 veterans who have filed for the college tuition benefits this semester, more than 200,000 claims have been processed and approved, but fewer than 11 percent of the veterans have received the funding, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).
The late-payments episode is the latest in a string of embarrassing cases of VA failures for the nation’s veterans.
Earlier this year, it was discovered that three VA medical centers failed to properly sterilize endoscopes, exposing 10,000 patients to infections including the HIV virus.
Last month, the agency sent letters to 600 veterans erroneously telling them they had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Last year, the VA was embroiled in numerous scandals involving tests and medical experiments on veterans in which officials failed to follow certain standards.
For Obama American Decline is a Deliberate Choice
Charles Krauthammer’s brilliance on display once again. By the way he has a medical degree, degrees in political science and economics and is a board certified psychiatrist.
This is yet another of a very long list of sexist attacks against Sarah Palin from the elite media and the far left.
The news-Miner published an apology to Gov. Palin for calling her a broad HERE. Hotair.com rightly asks, “but an explanation of how editors signed off on the caption is also in order — and someone should be out looking for a new job”.
Journalism is it used to be is dead. Now you get more truth from some of the partisan press and at least they are honest enough to tell you that they have a point of view. We here at IUSB have an agenda to, to focus upon and highlight exactly what the elite media culture does not. Only that way can you be more fully informed.
The Power and Importance of New Media
CBS forged documents against president Bush, Monica Lewinski, Kathleeen Willey, Juanita Broaderick, Van Jones, ACORN , whats really in that House health care bill anyways; most of the big stories of our time are not broke by the elite media. They are broken by talk radio, blogs, Matt Drudge, and Fox News.
On Meet the Press this past Sunday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman railed against internet news sources, referring to them as an “open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information.” He continued to mock new media, suggesting that the American public is incapable of deciphering between facts, fiction and opinion, when he said that modems should have a warning label from the surgeon general that reads “judgment not included.” What Mr. Friedman cannot understand is that web-based information sources like blogs, wikis and vlogs (video blogs) are the new beat reporters and investigative journalists of our time.
~snip
In a June 18, 2009, article in Forbes magazine, pollster John Zogby noted that over twice as many Americans trust internet news sources more than television, newspapers and radio. That poll came just eighteen months after a Harris Poll showed that 54 percent of Americans, in general, do not trust the press.
Veteran journalists such as Mr. Friedman want you to distrust new media. But it’s clear that the American people no longer trust the old press corps. Mainstream media’s complete disregard for the Van Jones controversy has highlighted the need for a new breed of watchdog – citizen’s journalists, as well as internet based professional news organizations that can bring back the investigative journalism prowess and objectivity that is lacking in the traditional Fourth Estate.
By the way, he is wrong about the “wikis”. Wikis claim to be public information but the truth is that ideological zealots, PR pros and law firms have managed to get in as “official” editors in the wiki’s to act as “watch dogs”. Wiki’s have become nothing but PR nonsense much of which is just plain inaccurate, but we know AT means well.
ACORN Took Tax and Charity $$$ for Poor and Transfered it to Themselves, Political Allies.
Documents released by a Senate Republican on Thursday show that leaders of the ACORN community organizing network transferred several million dollars in charitable and government money meant for the poor to arms of the group that have political and sometimes profit-making missions.
ACORN’s tax-exempt groups and allied organizations [~snip] used more than half their charitable and public money in 2006 to pay other ACORN affiliates, according to an analysis by the tax staff of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
On Thursday, Grassley called the transactions a “big shell game” and said ACORN donors may be surprised by how the liberal group known for helping the poor obtain housing and health care was spending their money. He urged the Internal Revenue Service to take a closer look.
According to the Grassley report, charities “are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or to other organizations for purposes other than what the donor may have intended. . . . Dollars raised for charitable [purposes] appear to be used for impermissible lobbing and political activity.”
Fearful that they’re losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.
The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party’s spines on the contentious issue, say it’s unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they’ve been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.
State of Michigan to Mom: Stop Babysitting Neighbors Kids
IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.
Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.
“I was freaked out. I was blown away,” she said. “I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls” — that is, the mothers whose kids she watches — “every one of them.”
Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.
On Tuesday, agency Director Ismael Ahmed said good neighbors should be allowed to help each other ensure their children are safe. Gov. Jennifer Granholm instructed Ahmed to work with the state Legislature to change the law, he said.
Of course the problem is that a nameless, faceless, idiot bureaucrat had to sign off on this action. This is yet another example of how extremists, idiots and others who have no place wielding any power at all are attracted to government and education jobs.
One day after the Herald reported some surprised Bay State inmates – including murderers and rapists – were cashing in $250 stimulus checks, federal officials revealed the same behind-bars bonus was mailed to nearly 4,000 cons nationwide.
A federal watchdog is now probing how the cons were cut the checks. The same cash also may have been sent to fugitive felons, people kicked out of the country and even individuals now deceased.
All we heard from the far left during the Iraq war while they were notr just questioning it anc challenging the policy, but were actively undermining and investing in our defeat all we heard from them is “Are You Challenging My Patriotism!” and “Oh if I merely disagree with you I am Unamerican” and such rhetoric with one design. To silence their critics.
Our friend and blogging partner at Poligazette Michael van der Galien has a very good post titled “Leftists Demonize Critics” which is certainlty worth taking the time to read.
UPDATE – More leftist invective:
Included is a tny sample of the recent invective from the far left:
Bill Press, syndicated columnist and former CNN host: “There’s only one thing left: to rename the party for what it really stands for. It’s no longer the Republican Party; it’s the Hate America Party.”
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist: “Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?…As Republican leaders — except RNC Chairman Michael Steele — are beginning to realize, “I’m With the Taliban Against America” is not likely to be a winning slogan.”
CNN Headline News host Joy Behar: Guest Richard Belzer: “We see, you know, they`re cheering when we don`t get the Olympics and – and demeaning the Nobel Prize…Joy Behar: Right, which is so un-American.
MSNBC’s host Ed Schultz: “This attack on President Obama trying to get the Olympics is about the most un-American thing I think I’ve ever seen.”
Radio host Cynthia Hardy on MSNBC’s Hardball: “So [with the case of Rep. Joe Wilson] what you get is this blatant disregard for the office of the presidency, which is extremely un-American.”
MSNBC’s host Ed Schultz: “Rush must have been popping a few too many pills that particular day. Turning a hopeful message about the resiliency of Americans into a partisan attack. That’s un-American ‘Psycho Talk,’ which is par for the course.”
Blogger Steve Clemons, appearing on MSNBC: “Jesse Helms of North Carolina was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years. And many of these folks that have come into their own today, particularly in the Bush administration, were essentially tutored by Helms to bring, you know, somewhat of a ‘Fortress America’ attitude to the comments, which are, I think, quite unpatriotic.”
CNN Headline News host Joy Behar: “Now why don`t you figure that this is a little unpatriotic for [Palin] to go to Hong Kong and badmouth the president of the United States? At the very least it’s disrespectful.”
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, appearing on MSNBC: “But they’re trying to delegitimize him in any way they can, be as disrespectful, not just to him but to the office as they can. And to my mind, to be actually, what I would call unpatriotic in their approach.”
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann: “How are Democrats, anything but at best — I`ll use this combination — irresponsible at worst, unpatriotic for giving that party more say than utterly necessary than what they have already in many amendments of this bill in health care reform.”
HERE is a terrific analysis of New York Times economist/columnist Paul Krugman’s recent piece “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?”. Krugman’s regular analysis have shown to be almost consistently wrong for years. Economics is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. The simple truth is that while economists can quote you terms and fancy sounding numbers, 80% of them lack the ability to connect patterns of dots and indicators to apply the knowledge with even rudimentary directional accuracy. Only 20% of economists saw recent the bubble and collapse coming in spite of the fact that Dr. Friederich Hayak won the Nobel for Economics in part for his work on economic bubbles.
Even as an undergrad (albeit told a gifted one) I have debated PhD.’s in economics and defeated them with relative ease. The simple truth is that economists, especially Marxist economists, are not even held to a weatherman’s standard for accuracy and accountability. The government told us that without the special interest written (see Apollo Alliance) stimulus bill we would see unemployment in the country reach 8%. The predictable result is that with the stimulus bill we are skyrocketing towards the 10.5% unemployment rate which would even still be understated by the vast number of discouraged workers that have stopped looking for gainful employment. Where is the accountability for these Harvard and Berkeley trained pinheads?
Most government economists routinely understate the value of classic neo-liberal economic policy such as the increases in revenue often generated by tax cuts (Laffer Curve), they also greatly underestimate the damage of tax increases to the economy (game theory) and also greatly underestimate the cost of government programs (in the case of Medicare the government underestimated the cost of the program in the first 20 years by a factor of 10).
The reason that real economists such as Dr. Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Laffer and John Lott have been ignored by the elite media is precisely because their economic analysis is proved right more often than it is proved wrong. They just don’t happen to be leftists.
I received an email from Stephen Cannell this morning with some stills of the new A-team Movie. Cannell’s hits include The Rockford Files, Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Hunter, Riptide, Hardcastle & McCormick, 21 Jump Street, Wiseguy, The Commish, Profit, and the hit syndicated shows, Renegade and Silk Stalkings.
Cannell has an incredible story of how he was neglected by the education system as a whole which I hope to get him to tell his story for my upcoming book.
Back to The A-Team. It will be interesting to see if Liam Neeson call pull off Hannibal. The expectations are high. It will be interesting to see if Bradley Cooper can pull off a convincing ‘Face’. Faceman is more than just a smooth character. Dirk Benedict played Faceman with a great deal of nuance that will not be easy to live up to. There are some roles that an actor was born to play and no one else can quite live up to. Of course no where is that more obvious than in the character of H.M. Murdoch. Dwight Schultz, who played Murdoch in the original series, is widely recognized as one of the most gifted actors to ever grace the screen and most actors who are familiar with Schultz will tell you that.
The pressure on Sharlto Copley to come close to living up to this role is enormous and that concerns me, both for the A-Team legacy and for Copley’s career. While no one expects Copley to be able to match Schultz’s performance the trick will be to at least to play the role well enough to get in the same zip code as Schultz.
Most IUSB students are too young to have experienced the genius of Dwight Schultz so I included a few samples.
The following is a music video from the series Touched by an Angel featuring Dwight Schultz.
Sharlto Copley has big shoes to fill and we wish him well.
Stephen Cannell:
Check out these behind-the-scenes pics of Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley, Quinton Jackson and Liam Neeson on the set of “The A-Team” movie.
WASHINGTON – Congress’ chief budget officer on Tuesday contradicted President Barack Obama’s oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn’t see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.
The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.
The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.
Elmendorf said the changes “would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans.”
This is the key AARP angle. The number one seller of AARP medicare Advantage gap insurance is the AARP. AARP will have to raise rates to make up for the gap and more people will have to buy gap insurance due to the cut in benefits. AARP will make millions. Now you know why AARP is all for the latest health care proposals.
Hotair.com is reporting that the Senate Finance Committee Staff is saying the same thing:
SHAWN BISHOP, SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE PROFESSIONAL STAFF MEMBER: “The $113 billion dollars is a reduction in the extra benefits, the added, additional benefits that Medicare Advantage enrollees have available to them. And those benefits come in the form of vision, dental, reduced hospital deductible. It’s unstatutory, it’s unlawful for any Medicare Advantage plan to reduce the AB covered benefit that they provide. That’s by statute. They have to provide that. They are going to have a reduction in the added benefits that they have in Medicare Advantage. So there’s a reduction in benefits but its additional extra benefits that they have above what they’re entitled to by law on the fee for service side.” (Finance Committee, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 9/22/09)
Ed Morrissey comments:
Only an idiot would conclude that $500 billion in cuts to Medicare over 10 years would mean no reduction in benefits. Webudgeted $413 billionfor this year, which makes a $50 billion “savings” target about 12% of its budget. Obama keeps talking about how efficient Medicare is compared to private health insurance, but how efficient can it be if he can slice 12% out of the budget without affecting benefits? In comparison, private health insurers spend 96.7% of all income on care and administrative costs, with only a 3.3% average profit margin.
Elmendorf is speaking not just from hard data but also common sense. Any attempt to get that level of “savings” from Medicare will necessarily cut the benefits going to its recipients. Trying to cast that as a myth is either an indication of mathematical incompetence, political dishonesty, or both. It’s also worth noting that when previous administrations attempted to cut Medicare spending by much lower amounts, Democrats would scream from the rafters about Republicans trying to steal Medicare away from seniors. In this case, the CBO confirms that Democrats have engaged inprojection.
And what happens in the media when the CBO exposes the President as a mythmaker, not a mythbuster? Well, it’s like the proverbial tree in the forest. None of the major newspapers covered the story that ObamaCare means cuts in Medicare benefits. Notone.
UPDATE (10/20/2009) – While googling about I see that Michelle Malkin has a post on the AARP rip off angle as well. I should have known that Malkin would be all over this story. As always Michelle, nice work.
Here at IUSB Vision we have a category called “Palin Truth Squad“. You can see that we reported that the McCain campaign communications machine became more incompetent after the Palin announcement. It seems that Palin’s book is going to give us at least some of the details.
Later we reported that many of the McCain staffers were “David Frum” types like Steve Schmidt, that had previously overtly slandered religious conservatives and others in the Reagan wing of the party (LINK). Such people are mortified by Palin and by people such as Glenn Beck, John Gibson, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and even Brit Hume. This explains why McCain’s communications machine deliberately kept Palin away from Fox News and these other venues. They gave her a few moments with Carl Cameron at Fox, or perhaps she only did this after she went rogue, but at that time it was too little too late.
What McCain Campaign staffers did was let their emotional hostility of the Reagan wing of the party blind them to a clear asset that could have helped Palin to introduce herself to the country in a venue that would give her the opportunity to define herself clearly.
Palin should have been given interviews with Limbaugh and Hannity first, then Greta, Beck, John Gibson and then O’Reilly, Hume and Wallace so that Palin would have had the opportunity to define herself first and hone her interview skills with progressively tougher interviews in tougher venues.
To send a person who is new and undefined on the national stage to Charles Gibson and Katie Couric who set out with clear intent to destroy her (LINK2, 3, 4) with much tougher gotcha questions than those two ever asked Edwards, Obama or Biden (LINK) was foolish because since those were her first interviews, it would be by those interviews that people would have their first impression of her. As a result the McCain Campaign forfeited its opportunity to define its own Vice Presidential nominee.
If Palin had done the interviews I mentioned first and then did ABC and CBS she would have been ready, but more importantly the American people would already have had a solid first impression and definition of Sarah Palin in mind which would have put her in a much better position for a hostile interview. The result would have been ABC and CBS looking like they were playing a mean spirited gotcha game to get her and those interviews would have ended up helping her with cross pressured voters with a few smart commercials taking shots at ABC and CBS.
This is not just communications 101 folks, this is communications for dummies.
The clincher? Research now shows that cross pressured voters and independents watch Fox News. They might not always agree with Fox but they do watch it so the McCain Campaign stayed away from the audience that the campaign needed to reach the most.
The Wall Street Journal has the first tidbits from Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue:
Ms. Vincent didn’t reveal any details about the book, but did acknowledge it will describe Ms. Palin’s frustration over her treatment by the staffers she inherited from the McCain campaign after her surprise pick as the GOP vice presidential nominee last year. Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn’t even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. “She explained that she had been blocked from reaching her audience, so she was now ‘going rogue’ and booking her own interviews,” Mr. Beck told me. “I was thrilled she had burst out of the cage they’d built for her and we were finally talking.”
What is Palin to do next?
Sarah Palin should keep building foreign policy credibility with these overseas conferences and when the time comes she needs to start re-introducing herself to the Republican base and then to the American people.
The simple truth is that a sizable chunk of the base is dismissive of her because they were overwhelmed by the elite media and SNL slander that went almost unrefuted because Palin was kept away from non-elite media venues.
Sarah Palin should come up with a phrase or an idea that sets her apart from other Republicans rhetorically and make it hers. For example: referring to the GOP as “The Party of Lincoln”, “What happened to the Party of Lincoln” or “Its time to bring back the Party of Lincoln”. It doesn’t have to be Lincoln (obviously) but it has to be something that distinguishes her from the Romney Brand and the Huckabee Brand that inspires trust.
Talk about real principles or virtues with some good foreign policy and macroeconomic details (avoid the word values because that word has baggage). Get practice in these venues and then move to moderately tougher ones. Since independents watch Fox Palin can kill two birds with one stone with a smart communications strategy. When the time comes to face the hostile NBC or ABC interview, Palin should go in bold, prepared and with one goal, WIN. She doesn’t have to be horribly tough but don’t etiquette herself out of the election like McCain did in the debates.
Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate [who has been actively involved with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - IUSB Vision Editor] calls his new book “Three Felonies a Day,” referring to the number of crimes he estimates the average American now unwittingly commits because of vague laws. New technology adds its own complexity, making innocent activity potentially criminal.
Mr. Silverglate describes several cases in which prosecutors didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand technology. This problem is compounded by a trend that has accelerated since the 1980s for prosecutors to abandon the principle that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent.
Some say that ignorance of the law is no excuse and if thats your view I suggest that you go turn yourself in immediately because you ARE guilty of something. Our government is so large and so foolish that it has creates so many laws and regulations that no one could possibly follow them all and will inadvertently violate some of them every single day.
Do you have any idea how many laws you violate when you have a garage sale?
Idiot Indiana prosecutor goes after old woman for buying two cold medicines:
Wabash Valley woman didn’t realize second cold medicine purchase violated drug laws
CLINTON — When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.
Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others won’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.
“This is a very traumatic experience,” Harpold said.
Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.
Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.
When the police came knocking at the door of Harpold’s Parke County residence on July 30, she was arrested on a Vermillion County warrant for a class-C misdemeanor, which carries a sentence of up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine. But through a deferral program offered by Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander, the charge could be wiped from Harpold’s record by mid-September.
Harpold’s story is one that concerns some law-abiding citizens who fear that innocent people will get mistakenly caught in the net of meth abuse roundups.
But the flip side of the story comes from the law enforcement arena, which is battling a resurgence in methamphetamine production in the Wabash Valley.
As the 12th-smallest county in the state, Vermillion County ranked as the state’s fifth-largest producer of methamphetamine just a few years ago.
“I don’t want to go there again,” Alexander told the Tribune-Star, recalling how the manufacture and abuse of methamphetamine ravaged the tiny county and its families.
While the law was written with the intent of stopping people from purchasing large quantities of drugs to make methamphetamine, the law does not say the purchase must be made with the intent to make meth.
“The law does not make this distinction,” Alexander said.
Anyone who has taken a law class knows that intent or criminal neglect/recklessness is one of the three conditions for determining if a crime has been committed. The charges should be dropped all together without paying court costs. She should have been interviewed but never arrested in the first place. Alexander is a lawyer who is supposed to be educated and enlightened and yet has no ability to use some common sense or to exercise her power with reasonable restraint.
Examine the comments under the story from the Tribune-Star. At the time of publishing of this post not one commenter supported the arrest of Miss Harpold proving once again that the average Joe is wiser than the enlightened elite.
This is child abuse and I stand by that statement 110% and challenge anyone to DARE debate me publicly on the subject.
The growing list of these video’s is a real indicator of just what bad judgement many teachers have, but also to the degree the NEA will go to abuse the public trust for their own partisan reasons. How many times must we learn the lesson that cults of personality have consequences?
The caption with the video says: Sand Hill Elementary School in Asheville, NC
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
How often is this going on when we don’t find the video?
