Monday, December 27, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, November 08, 2010
Monday, November 01, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The $3 Trillion Shakedown: The Democrat-Government Union Ponzi Scheme
They have declared war on you, the American taxpayer. They have found the legal means to reach into your pocket to feather their nests, while costing you and your children and your children’s children trillions. They’ve been doing it for 50 years.
Yesterday, we posted the simplicity of how to begin dismantling the stranglehold government unions have on America.
Step One: Understand the threat…
I want to tell you, Socialists, that I have studied your philosophy; read your works upon economics, and not the meanest of them; studied your standard works, both in English and German—have not only read, but studied them. I have heard your orators and watched the work of your movement the world over. I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years; have been closely associated with many of you, and know what you think and what you propose. I know, too, what you have up your sleeve. And I want to say that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy. I declare to you, I am not only at variance with your doctrines, but with your philosophy. Economically, you are unsound; socially, you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility.
Samuel Gompers, Founder of the American Federation of Labor, 1903
Step Two: Get Out the Vote.
[You didn't think unions are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help you reduce the size of government, did you?]
__________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
Friday, October 22, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Reporter Asks Strangers if they'd Shake Hands With a Jew
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
It’s the Shariah, Stupid
The Center for Security Policy has released a ground-breaking report today on the threat that Islam poses to the United States. It’s called “Shariah: The Threat to America”, and was produced by “Team B II”, a group of military, national security, and policy experts drawn from a number of organizations.
Here’s the text of the press release from CSP:
Shariah: The Threat to America
In-Depth Report To Be Released on Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C.—Team B II, a group of highly accomplished civilian and military national security professionals, is releasing a major new national security assessment examining the threat posed by Shariah to America. The 177-page report, Shariah: The Threat to America, will be released at a Capitol Hill press conference on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 12:30 p.m. EDT in U.S. Capitol Room HC-6. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) will offer remarks, along with leading Team B II authors including Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin and terrorism expert and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy.
Team B II Report, sponsored by the Center for Security Policy, offers a compelling and comprehensive “second opinion” on the dominant threat of our time: the totalitarian legal-political-military doctrine known within Islam as Shariah. The authoritative report, which is based on six months of intensive study, takes inspiration from the original 1976 “Team B” report that challenged the then-prevailing U.S. government intelligence estimates about the intentions and offensive capabilities of the Soviet Union during a period of “détente.” Similarly, the Team B II report challenges the status quo and conventional wisdom in Washington by elucidating the grave threat posed by Shariah to America’s legal system, Constitution, national security, and way of life.
The full report on Shariah: The Threat to America will be available as a softcover book in October, 2010, and can be downloaded from the website www.shariahthethreat.com as of 12:30 pm, Wednesday September 15, 2010.
Distinguished members of Team B II include R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence, Lieutenant General Harry “Ed” Soyster, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Andrew C. McCarthy, former Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Frank Gaffney states, “With this policy study, the Center intends to catalyze national awareness about Shariah and the peril America faces absent informed and concerted action to confront and defeat the agenda of all who support the encroachment of this alien legal system at the expense of established U.S. law and traditions.”follow link to read more ...
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The Other Ground Zero Mosque
The other Ground Zero mosque is not in New York. The other Ground Zero mosque is in Shanksville at the site where a group of American heroes, upon hearing from their loved ones that their plane was not being hijacked but being used as a missile by Muslim terrorists to take out the Capital or the White House, seized control of the aircraft in a life and death struggle. They saved the nation's capital but not themselves.
How is their courage and sacrifice being rewarded? With a huge crescent ...... "of embrace." It is an outrage.
I have blogged many times on the Flight 93 Islamic Crescent Memorial. but the media blackout was overwhelming. Perhaps with a nation roused from its slumber by the Ground Zero mega mosque, the Islamic Crescent memorial will get the attention and rebuke it so richly deserves.
With the heightened attention on the proposed mosque at Ground Zero,
it’s time equal scrutiny, exposure, and awareness be brought to the giant
outdoor mosque being built in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.Videos exposing the
travesty taking place, almost silently, at the memorial site are below. It’s
time for Americans to get educated, speak up, contact your
elected officials, and stand up for America and those murdered by Muslims in
the name of Islam!
Also read the letter
Tom Burnett, Sr. wrote to the American people and was published at Atlas Shrugs, that included this:We too need your help; we need to stop the
National Park Service building another mosque in Shanksville. PA.I served on the 2005 2nd jury that was
commissioned to select a design honoring the passengers and crew on Flight 93.
The public submitted over 1100 designs. The first jury went through those 1100
designs and selected 5 designs that were presented to the 2nd jury.When I saw Crescent of Embrace, I immediately saw
the Islamic symbols. I spoke out against the design and explained my reasons to
the other members of the jury. The vote was taken, 9 for the Crescent of Embrace
and 6 against that design. That vote was not unanimous.There were 4 excellent designs left; there was
absolutely no reason to select a design that even suggested Islamic symbols.I knew that the public would agree with me when
they saw the Crescent of Embrace design. They did, but our government would not
listen or investigate our claims. All of our letters ended up in the same hands,
the National Park Service. We can’t give up; we must stop this mosque being
built in Shanksville, as well as the one in New York.…
Other mosque features:
Mosque design is based on a dozen typical mosque
features, every one of which is realized in the Crescent/Circle design, all on
the same epic scale as the half mile wide crescent-mihrab. Note, for instance,
that the 93 foot tall minaret-like Tower of Voices is topped with another
Islamic-shaped crescent, akin to the crescent-topped minarets seen in many
Islamic countries:
An Islamic shaped crescent, soaring in the sky above the symbolic lives of
the 40 heroes, which literally dangle down below. In Islam, there is only heaven
and hell. Symbolic damnation?The Flight 93 mosque needs to be stopped, along with the Islamic victory
mosque at ground zero in Manhattan. May the fight against these two desecrations
strengthen each other.Sincerely,
Tom Burnett Senior
Loving father of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett JuniorContact information for the Flight 93 Memorial
Project here.If you would like to help stop the crescent mosque, please email Alec Rawls
(alec@rawls.org) who is helping to coordinate opposition.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Radical Ground Zero Mosque Imam: Obama’s Cairo Speech to Muslim World Came From Me
Well that’s just swell.
The radical imam who said the US is worse than Al-Qaeda, boasted to reporters last year that he provided the blue print for Obama’s apology speech to the Muslim world.
In his June 2009 speech Obama apologized for America and for imposing democracy in the Muslim World.
Special Guests reported:
The Shoebat Foundation has obtained a shocking audio recording of Rauf’s own voice boasting in Arabic that Obama’s historic speech in Cairo was provided by the Imam’s work with the Cordova Initiative in what the Imam called “The Blue Print” which, according to him, was the solution to the Islamic-American divide. Rauf claimed that Chapter 6 of the Imam’s work engineered by the Cordova Initiative was the construct for the entire speech:
“This is an example of the impact of our work in a positive way to be used by the President.”
“The blue print,” Rauf elaborated, included everything from U.S. policy to Jewish and Christian relations with Muslims.
For an Imam in New York to be involved in the orchestrating U.S. foreign policy is quite the claim. In the recording dated February 5th, 2010 Rauf boasted that:
“We have to look at it [as] how to engineer solutions. At the Cordova Initiative we think of ourselves as an engineering shop. Yes. We have an analytical approach. Our work has been that. IN THE BOOK CHAPTER 6, I WROTE ABOUT THIS BLUE PRINT as to WHAT HAS TO BE DONE BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, what has to be done by the Jewish community, what has to be done by the Christian community, what has to be done by the Muslim community, what has to be done by educators, what has to be done by the media. For example, IN MY BOOK IN THE ARABIC VERSION page 293, what did I write? WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO DO. IF YOU EXAMINE THIS CHAPTER YOU WILL FIND THAT THE OBAMA SPEECH IN CAIRO WAS ALL TAKEN FROM THIS SECTION [Section 6]. When you do a job that is very complicated. You ask yourself, what have you accomplished. All these problems can be solved but requires the will to solve it. It requires political will, resources and the right focus. The signs of how to go to the moon was known 200 years ago, but the political will and financial will for it happened during 1960-1961. When John Kennedy said that we will send an American to the moon before the end of the 60’s, he established the financial resources and the political will.”
The audio is here.
"Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Big Green Lies are Imploding
By Alan Caruba
As World War Two wound down, in 1945 Italian partisans found Benito Mussolini and his girlfriend trying to flee to Switzerland. They shot both of them and then hung them by their heels in the Piazza Loreto in Milan. He had led the National Fascist Party and had been the 40th prime minister from 1922 until being deposed, jailed, and rescued by his pal Adolf Hitler.
I was reminded of this when I read a list of 1970 Earth Day predictions because, sooner or later, lies implode and the liars must be held accountable.
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something”, said Kenneth Watt, an ecologist, when asked about global warming.
“Civilizations will end within 15 to 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” said George Wald, a Harvard biologist.
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” said Barry Commoner, a Washington University biologist.
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years,” predicted Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and author, none of whose predictions ever came true.
It’s been 40 years since the first Earth Day.
This, of course, brings us to the greatest serial liar of our era, former vice president Al Gore, author of “Earth in the Balance”, the star of “An Inconvenient Truth”, Nobel Prize winner, Oscar winner, and surely worthy of being metaphorically hung by his heels for general repudiation, disdain, and ignominy.
Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com and the GreenHellBlog, reported that Al Gore told a conference call of supporters that the battle to enact a Cap-and-Trade bill, imposing limits on so-called greenhouse gases, and creating “carbon credits” to be bought like medieval indulgences for the remission of sin, that “The federal government has failed us.”
No, what failed was the long, relentless and utterly mendacious campaign to convince people that global warming was an actual event and a genuine threat to the Earth. It never was because it was utter fiction. Well, the part about massive increases in the Earth’s overall temperature was. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and has gone through a succession of ice ages and warming periods since it began.
To demonstrate how deranged Gore is, he actually blamed a “biased right-wing media…bolstered by professional deniers.” There is The Wall Street Journal and Fox News whose reporting reflects a conservative philosophy and outlook, but the rest of the mainstream media has been so demonstrably left-wing there was little else available to the public until the advent of cable television and the Internet. And they all lied about global warming.
In November 2009 the release of thousands of emails between the small band of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “scientists” revealed they were a cabal of data fabricators who were by then increasingly alarmed that global warming wasn’t happening despite their best efforts to deceive the entire world. The event was dubbed “Climategate.”
Now we learn that a U.S. funded agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become mired in a new scandal involving numbers for the Great Lakes region that misrepresent average temperatures there. The latest word as of Wednesday, August 11, is that NOAA has removed an entire NOAA-16 satellite data set from its website--leading some to wonder if a decade’s worth of North American data will be discredited.
In sum, do not trust NOAA and most definitely, do not trust the Environmental Protection Agency that is desperately trying to get authorization to regulate carbon dioxide on the grounds that it is causing global warming. This isn’t just a rogue agency. The EPA has the look of a criminal enterprise bent on destroying the U.S. economy.
There is NO global warming and hasn’t been any for a decade as the Earth has been cooling thanks to a predictable lack of sunspot activity known to affect the overall planetary temperatures.
The Green lies are imploding. In the midst of a very ugly recession, the nation’s governors can do us all a favor by ending all funding to the various “environmental” programs tied to the global warming fraud.
The next Congress, if power is transferred to the Republican Party, should begin to trim the budget of billions of bogus “climate” and related “environmental” related programs.
It’s time to send the liars packing. It’s time to regain our fiscal and environmental sanity.
© Alan Caruba, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Grinding America Down
AGENDA: Grinding America Down (Trailer) from Copybook Heading Productions LLC on Vimeo.
When Idaho legislator Curtis Bowers wrote a “letter to the editor” about the drastic changes in America’s culture, it became the feature story on the evening news, people protested at the capitol, and for weeks the local newspapers were filled with responses. He realized then… he’d hit on something.
Ask almost anyone and you’ll hear, “Communism is dead! The Berlin Wall came down.” And though the word communism isn’t used anymore, this film will show the ideas behind it are alive and well. Join Bowers for a fascinating look at the people and groups that have successfully targeted America’s morality and freedom in their effort to grind America down. It’s not just another conspiracy theory. It’s a well documented agenda.
I’m Curtis Bowers and I made this film because I hoped that once you saw the facts you would realize what I did after researching this topic… what has happened to America hasn’t been an accident. Now is the time to get involved before the “Left” accomplishes their goal of destroying the greatest country in ALL world history!
Film website HERE
***
Monday, August 02, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
AIM “outs” Howard Zinn, as a Communist and Liar
More on Zinn.
AIM “outs” Howard Zinn, as a Communist and Liar: "
Cross posted from New Zeal Blog
Howard Zinn, the prominent “progressive” historian who died early this year, has been “outed” as both a communist and a liar
Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media writes;
The prominent “progressive” historian Howard Zinn, whose books are force-fed to young people on many college campuses, was not only a member of the Moscow-controlled and Soviet-funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA) but lied about it, according to an FBI file released on Friday.
The file, consisting of three sections totaling 423 pages, was made available on the FBI’s website and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from this writer.
Zinn taught in the political science department of Boston University for 24 years, from 1964 to 1988, and has been a major influence on the modern-day “progressive” movement that backed Barack Obama for president.
Although Zinn denied being a member of the CPUSA, the FBI file discloses that several reliable informants in the party identified Zinn as a member who attended party meetings as many as five times a week.
What’s more, one of the files reveals that a reliable informant provided a photograph of Zinn teaching a class on “Basic Marxism” at party headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. A participant in the class said that Zinn taught that “the basic teaching of Marx and Lenin were sound and should be adhered to by those present…”
Zinn was included on the “Security Index” and “Communist Index” maintained by the FBI. The “Security Index” was more ominous and included individuals who could be detained in the event of a national emergency.
Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist Party USA member who mentored the young Barack Obama, was also the “security index”.
The files confirm Zinn’s membership in the party from 1948-1953 and one says he was “believed to be a CP member as of October, 1956.” However, he denied membership in the party when interviewed by the FBI in 1953 and 1954 and claimed to be just a “liberal” or “leftist.” He did admit involvement in several CPUSA front organizations, the documents say…
In 1961, it says, Zinn “attempted to recruit students to attend 8th World Youth Festival [a communist-front gathering] and was described as pro-Castro in 1962. He publicly protested United States demand for withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.”
After WW2 service and an education on the GI Bill, Zinn taught at the all female, all black Spelman College in Atlanta.
According to one of his pupils, far left author Alice Walker, Zinn shocked an audience from a local white college by declaring “Well, I stand to the left of Mao Zedong.” – this at the height of the communist takeover of China.
Forced to leave Spelman because of his radicalism, Zinn went to teach at Boston University from 1964 to 1988.
On April 28, 1966 Howard Zinn was a sponsor of the Herbert Aptheker Testimonial Dinner. The dinner was held on the occasion of Communist Party theoretician Herbert Aptheker’s 50th birthday, the publication of his 20th book, and the 2nd anniversary of The American Institute for Marxist Studies.
It was held in the Sutton Ballroom, The New York Hilton, Avenue of the Americas, 53rd to 54th Street, New York City. Most, if not all, of the event’s sponsors came from the Communist Party’s intellectual elite.
As at February 28, 1969, Howard Zinn was listed as a sponsor of the Communist Party front Massachusetts Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.
By the 1980s Zinn had apparently switched his allegiance to another Marxist group.
At the Boston Democratic Socialists of America Socialist School, Fall 1989, Howard Zinn taught, the “History of Socialism,
By the mid 1990s Zinn was mixing with ACORN, Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party breakaway group, Committees of Correspondence.
With these people, Zinn was a founder of the radical New Party - later made famous by one of its most successful members, Barack Obama.
On September 20, 2001 500 people gathered at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City to remember the life of Democratic Socialists of America member Richard Clowar – originator of the infamous Cloward-Piven strategy, since utilized by sections of the US left to deliberately wreck the American economy.
Speakers at the event included Cloward’s widow Frances Fox Piven, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West (later a member of Obama’s Black Advisory Council), Gus Newport – (all members of Democratic Socialists of America) , New Party founder Joel Rogers, future Obama supporter and ACORN defender Miles Rapoport and Howard Zinn.
In January 2002, a group of San Francisco leftists, mainly involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM) or Committees of Correspondence and including future Obama “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, founded a national anti – Iraq War newspaper – War Times.
Endorsers of the project included Howard Zinn.
In 2004, Howard Zinn was one of 100 “prominent Americans” who signed an October 26 statement circulated by 911Truth.org calling on the US Government to investigate 9/11 as a possible “inside job”.
…we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.
This is the same petition that got Van Jones into trouble in late 2009 – strangely, Jones’ name at number 46, has been “removed by request”. Fair enough, after all he was “tricked” into signing it.
In the 2000s, Zinn was also listed as a sponsor of the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Oakland California, alongside Committees of Correspondence members and endorsers Herbert Aptheker, Anne Braden, Angela Davis, Ann Fagan Ginger, Jack Kurzweil and Maudelle Shirek, plus Communist Party supporters David Bacon, Gerald Horne and Cassandra Lopez and Herb Shore and from Democratic Socialists of America.
In 2006 Howard Zinn was an original board member of Movement for a Democratic Society – an organization established to support the newly re-founded Students for a Democratic Society.
Other MDS board members included former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bernardine Dohrn, Mark Rudd and Jeff Jones, former Students for a Democratic Society leaders Tom Hayden, Carl Davidson (an Obama associate in the New Party and later) , Mike Klonsky, Bert Garskof and Mike James, former Obama associate Rashid Khalidi, Bill Fletcher, Jr., and Barbara Ehrenreich from Democratic Socialists of America, Gerald Horne from the Communist Party USA and Charlene Mitchell, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis from Committees of Correspondence.
In early 2008, MDS Board members Carl Davidson, Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Bararbara Ehrenreich went on to found Progressives for Obama.
Howard Zinn wrote more than 20 books, which included his 1980 best-selling and influential “A People’s History of the United States”.
Movie star Matt Damon recently worked with Zinn to turn the book into a documentary for America’s history students. Damon, who grew up next door to his idol, stated in Dec. 09 that one of his favorite books was A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, a book he first started reading in 1980 at the age of 10.
No doubt Howard Zinn is currently being appropriately rewarded for his life’s work.
Boyhood mentors can influence a young man for life. Luckily Matt Damon has time left to consider his political direction.
To do so, he will have to be more honest than was his late mentor Howard Zinn.
"
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
America, the Odd Man Out
"Every dollar of government spending sucks between one and three dollars from the wealth-creating private sector."
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Creating The Myth Of Global Warming Through Fictitious Data
Global warming is actually man-made. It is the creation of a few left wing zealots trying to cash the Green Business boom and government tax receipts using fictitious data. The fact is, to this date, the NASA GISS scientist cherry pick and delete actual measurement data to create the impression there is global warming, when in fact the raw data shows no such trend.
WUWT has been spear-heading the exposure of this statistical trickery, a simple sleight of hand which uses one measurement to cover 1200 km (~750 miles). As I noted before, this is like using a temperature reading in Los Angeles, CA to reflect temperatures in Bend, OR. Here is how Steve Goddard posting at WUWT compared this chicanery:
It seems “reasonable enough” to use the Monaco weather forecast to make picnic plans in Birmingham, England. Similarly we could assume that the weather and climate in Portland, Oregon can be inferred from that of Death Valley.
…
That’s about the distance from Montreal to Washington DC. Is the temperature data in Montreal valid for applying to Washington DC.?
Would anyone in DC checking the ‘climate’ use data from Montreal, Canada? How is this nonsense even considered ’science’, let alone paid for by taxpayers? This is garbage at best, and a lie at worst.
Check out the cmplete post at WUWT, where it shows how this 1200 km ’smoothing’ is used to completely make up temperature trends out of thin air. One such example showing the difference between a 250 km smoothing (dicey at best since 100 km is a stretch) and 1200 km smoothing is this graphic for South America.
In the 250 km smoothing huge regions are not measured (shown in purple) though they could easily be sampled since temperature readings exist. But the same data smoothed over 1200 km completely blankets the real data and creates a fictitious image of warming. Warm spots appear out of nowhere in Brazil!
No one has ever proven you can accurately measure or model temp readings over 1200 km (my back of the envelope sampling referenced above shows accuracy decays over 100 kms to +/- 2-3 degrees, or worse). Therefore, since there is no peer-reviewed proof the 1200 km smoothing used to create the fiction of global warming is valid, the results are not valid.
Lazy scientists who turn a blind eye to this kind of stunt are the ones allowing their ‘industry’ to fall into ruin. Once a profession loses its credibility it takes decades to bring it back. Global Warming has been the science killer, because good intentions do not make up for crappy work. Ever. Let this propaganda stand and the entire profession – from medicine to biology to physics – will be destroyed. And for what? This crap?
"
Klein: Obama adviser has close ties to Hamas-linked group. ‘One of the chief conduits’ for bringing Saudi-style radical Islam into U.S.
"
Ahmadinejad says expects U.S. to attack MidEast soon
There goes the element of surprise.
But then again, Saddam knew we were coming too, and look how much it helped him.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Stimulus not even filling potholes.
Stimulus not even filling potholes.: "
If you’re like me and Ed Driscoll, you’re the sort who would think that if we were going to spend almost a trillion dollars that we don’t actually have on a ’stimulus program’ then we’d at least spend it on infrastructure. Well, more accurately, you’re sort who hopes that we’d spend it on infrastructure, because if you’re like me and Ed Driscoll you’d be well aware that once the Beltway Establishment gets a hold of an idea it mutates into a horrific, expensive mess.
The Beltway Establishment got a hold of the idea.
Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.
In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as “poor man’s pavement.” Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.
Let me put this situation into perspective for you.
- There was 1.25 billion dollars in stimulus money to connect the cities of Orlando (59% Obama) and Tampa Bay (53% Obama) with a high-speed rail line.
- But there was no money to keep the roads paved in Stutsman County, ND (56% McCain).
- There was 3.4 million dollars in stimulus money to create an ‘eco-passage’ for turtles in Lake County, Florida (62% Obama).
- But there was no money to keep the roads paved in Coshocton County, OH (53% McCain).
- There was 6.5 billion dollars in stimulus money to bribe Sen Arlen Specter (D) of Pennsylvania (55% Obama)
- But there was no money to keep the roads paved in Alabama (60% McCain).
Funny how that works out, isn’t it? - the way that “them that has, got,” I mean. You’d almost be ready to believe that some of this stimulus money was distributed with a look at the 2008 election returns.
But that’s just crazy talk.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
"
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Obama Science Czar Called for Carbon Tax to Redistribute Wealth
CNSNews.com - Obama Science Czar Called for Carbon Tax to Redistribute Wealth from Global 'North' to 'South'
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Why Has Barack Obama Refused To Accept International Help To Clean Up The Oil Spill In The Gulf Of Mexico?
As the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico enters a third month, many are now asking how in the world Barack Obama can keep refusing offers from other countries to help clean up the oil spill. The truth is that cleaning up oil spills is not rocket science. There have been massive oil spills in other areas of the world before and there are some folks that have some real expertise when it comes to cleaning them up. But Barack Obama and BP have been stumbling around as if they are trying to reinvent the wheel. So exactly what in the world is going on here? When it comes to Obama's approach to this crisis, there are really two options. Either this is one of the most extreme examples of presidential incompetence in modern American history, or Barack Obama is using this crisis for a particular purpose (such as advancing a particular agenda). In either event, Obama's actions during this crisis have been completely and totally unconscionable.
The truth is that 13 different countries have offered to help clean up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Barack Obama turned all 13 of them down.
.... Read more here
Monday, June 21, 2010
Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?
When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.
Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.
"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.
Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.
In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.
The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.
Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.
And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.
But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men."
If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.
But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."
Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.
And, without constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a "crisis" — which, as the president's chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to "go to waste" as an opportunity to expand the government's power.
That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country's wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard's restrictions on the printing of money.
At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law "for the relief of the German people."
That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.
The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars" controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.
Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom — are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?
Friday, June 18, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
It’s Official: 51% Won’t Be Able to Stay in Their Employer Health Plan
If you listened to the campaign rhetoric during the 2008 election you could be forgiven for thinking that health reform would mainly mean insuring people who cannot afford insurance on their own; in the process there would be no tax increases or benefit cuts for the middle class; and, “If you like the plan you are in, you can keep it!”
Turns out, the reality is 180 degrees different. Things are likely to change least for low-income people. About 18 million of them will be herded into Medicaid. But with no new doctors or nurses, they will face greater access problems than ever before and they will show up at hospital emergency rooms in increasing numbers.
It is for middle-class families who already have insurance that things will change the most
- Within the next few months senior citizens will be getting notices that their Medicare Advantage plans are being cancelled, and for those who continue there will be premium increases and benefit cuts. Over the next decade, 7.4 million Medicare Advantage enrollees will lose coverage they otherwise would have had.
- By September, between 1 million and 2 million people with limited benefit insurance are likely to lose coverage because their insurance doesn’t comply with the “no lifetime limit on benefits” regulation.
Promises, Promises
What about health plans that were supposed to be “grandfathered,” and thus immune from onerous, cost-increasing regulatory burdens? A draft of the proposed regulations, leaked all over Washington over the weekend and finally made public on Monday shows the news isn’t good. Under a “mid-range” estimate, more than half of all workers will not be in grandfathered plans within three years. Under the worst case scenario, the number will be two-thirds. Here is the full table:
Table source: Department of Health and Human Services
Under the most likely scenario, 87 million Americans will no longer be able to retain the health plan they have and the number could be as high as 117 million. Small businesses will be especially hard hit. As many as 80% will lose their grandfather status by 2013, for example. One reason: any change of insurers (say, to take advantage of lower premiums) will cause a loss of such status. By contrast, a self-insured union plan is free to change its third-party administrator and still keep its grandfather status.
Also, it now appears that “grandfathering” was never intended to be a long-term phenomenon. Eventually, all firms will lose their grandfather status.
Moreover, as I wrote in The Wall Street Journal the other day, even if you are in a grandfathered plan, your employer could drop your coverage anyway. As we previously reported here, the number of workers who will lose their employer-provided insurance is estimated at 9 million to 10 million by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), 14 million by the Medicare Chief Actuary and 35 million by former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and Verizon have all made internal calculations, according the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to determine how much could be saved by a) dropping their employer-provided insurance, b) paying a fine of $2,000 per employee, and c) leaving their employees with the option of buying highly-subsidized insurance in the newly created health-insurance exchange.
AT&T, for example, paid $2.4 billion last year to cover medical costs for its 283,000 active employees. If the company dropped its health plan and paid an annual penalty for each uninsured worker, the fines would total almost $600 million. But that would leave AT&T with a tidy profit of $1.8 billion.
Economists say employee benefits ultimately substitute for cash wages, which means that AT&T employees would get higher take-home pay. But considering that they will be required by federal law to buy their own insurance in an exchange, will they be net winners or losers? That depends on their incomes.
A CBO analysis of the House version of ObamaCare, which is close to what actually passed in March, assumed a $15,000 premium for family coverage in 2016. Yet the only subsidy available for employer-provided coverage is the same one as under current law: the ability to pay with pretax dollars. For a $30,000-a-year worker paying no federal income tax, the only tax subsidy is the payroll tax avoided on the employer’s premiums. That subsidy is only worth about $2,811 a year.
If this same worker goes to the health-insurance exchange, however, the federal government will pay almost all the premiums, plus reimburse the employee for most out-of-pocket costs. All told, the CBO estimates the total subsidy would be about $19,400 — almost $17,000 more than the subsidy for employer-provided insurance.
In general, anyone with a family income of $80,000 or less will get a bigger subsidy in the exchange than the tax subsidy available at work.
But will the insurance in the exchange be as good? In Massachusetts, people who get subsidized insurance from an exchange are in health plans that pay providers roughly Medicaid rates plus 10%. That’s less than what Medicare pays, and a lot less than the rates paid by private plans. Since the state did nothing to expand the number of doctors as it cut its uninsured rate in half, people in plans with low reimbursement rates are being pushed to the rear of the waiting lines.
The Massachusetts experience will only be amplified in other parts of the country. The CBO estimates there will be 32 million newly insured under ObamaCare. Studies by such think tanks as Rand and the Urban Institute show that insured people consume twice as much health care as the uninsured. So all other things being equal, 32 million people will suddenly be doubling their use of health care resources. In a state such as Texas, where one out of every four working age adults is currently uninsured, the rationing problem will be monumental.
Even if health plans in the exchange are identical to health plans at work, the subsidies available can only be described as bizarre. In general, the more you make, the greater the subsidy at work and the lower the subsidy in the exchange. People earning more than $100,000 get no subsidy in the exchange. But employer premiums avoid federal and state income taxes as well as payroll taxes, which means government is paying almost half the cost of the insurance. That implies that the best way to maximize employee subsidies is to completely reorganize the economic structure of firms.
Take a hotel with maids, waitresses, busboys and custodians all earning $10 or $15 an hour. These employees can qualify for completely free Medicaid coverage or highly subsidized insurance in the exchange.
So the profit-maximizing arrangement is for the hotel to fire the lower-paid employees, and contract for their labor from firms that employ them but pay fines instead of providing health insurance. The hotel could then provide health insurance for all the remaining, higher-paid employees.
Ultimately, we could see a complete restructuring of American industry, with firms dissolving and emerging solely based on government subsidies.
"
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Tammy Bruce Interviews Sarah Palin
From Tammy:
I had this podcast available exclusively for subscribers through the day, but now we are releasing it for everyone. This is an example of the special media subscribers receive as Tammy Army Members. Subscribers make this blog and Tammy Radio possible, and we’d love to have you with us! Thank you all for your support, and I hope you enjoy the interview.
Sarah Palin
With Special Guest Appearance by Piper Palin!
Listen Here
"
Thursday, June 10, 2010
NEW VIDEO: Federal Spending By The Numbers
Sent to you by Ed via Google Reader:
Did you know that the federal government spent $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly? Were you aware that Washington is on track to spend $30,543 per household in 2010? What about a recent audit that classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled?
The federal government is addicted to spending our money and can't seem to kick the habit. Heritage scholar Brian Reidl has released a new paper chronicling all this spending. Our latest video highlights just some of the startling figures he uncovered and makes the case that we must get government spending under control if we want to restore America's fiscal health.
Please take a moment to watch our video and share it with friends and family. America needs to know the scope of the problems we face.
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
Alien in the WH
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWi182CMJY8
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703302604575294231631318728.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
WHY DON'T YOU GIVE ME A CALL, MR PRESIDENT?
In an interview aired yesterday (6/08), President Obama admitted that he hasn't met with or spoken directly to BP's CEO Tony Hayward. His reasoning: "Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's gonna say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions."
#1 at amazon.com : The Road to Serfdom
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Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Obama's Gulf Oil Spill
What powers of federal authority could cap the well? What actions could have saved wildlife, or the shorelines?
Maybe the greatest casualty, will be a further stranglehold on energy production in the United States, and consequently, our economy, our prosperity.
Überleftist Robert Reich: We're Falling Into a Double-Dip Recession
Of course, the stimulus didn't work. The promise was 3.5 million new jobs. Instead, 3.5 million have been lost. Reich doesn't offer any substantive argument as to why he believes the stimulus worked. The numbers simply are not there. What's Reich's solution? More of the same:We're falling into a double-dip recession.
The Labor Department reports this morning that the private sector added a measly 41,000 net new jobs in May. But at least 100,000 new jobs are needed every month just to keep up with population growth.
In other words, the labor market continues to deteriorate.
The average length of unemployment continues to rise -- now up to 34.4 weeks (up from 33 weeks in April). That's another record.
More Americans are too discouraged to look for a job than last year at this time (1.1 million in May, an increase of 291,000 from a year earlier).
Of the small number of jobs created by the private sector in May, many came from temporary help services.
...Why are we having such a hard time getting free of the Great Recession? Because consumers, who constitute 70 percent of the economy, don't have the dough. They can't any longer treat their homes as ATMs, as they did before the Great Recession.
Businesses won't rehire if there's not enough demand for their goods and services.
The only reason the economy isn't in a double-dip recession already is because of three temporary boosts: the federal stimulus (of which 75 percent has been spent), near-zero interest rates (which can't continue much longer without igniting speculative bubbles), and replacements (consumers have had to replace worn-out cars and appliances, and businesses had to replace worn-down inventories). Oh, and, yes, all those Census workers (who will be out on their ears in a month or so).
So what's the answer? In the short term, more stimulus...
In the longer term, we need a new New Deal that will bolster America's floundering middle class. Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and extend it up through the middle class. Finance that extension through higher marginal income taxes on the wealthy, who have never had it so good.Never had it so good? Right now the bottom 47% of wage earners pay no income taxes at all. Adding tax credits will simply give them money back. As I wrote over a month ago: Not only does bottom 47% of taxpayers pay no federal income tax, but the bottom 40% GET MONEY BACK! That goes right along in consistency with a prior post of mine: 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll: 50% of Americans that don't pay taxes thinks 'rich' people ought to pay more, even though top 1% pay more than bottom 95%
Note that the bottom 50% pay almost no taxes, while the top 5% pay about 60% of the federal tax bill. I agree with one thing - this isn't fair. But I think it is the rich that are paying too much, only to be sneered at by those that pay nothing at all and get OUR money back from the government. It's now gotten so bad, so unfair, that the top 1% pay more in federal taxes than the bottom 95%:
The rich are paying far more than their fair share, and instead of being thanked are demonized by Reich and his ilk. This is the same Robert Reich, mind you, who wanted to mandate racial discrimination in the stimulus bill just over a year ago (Mandating Discrimination with Stimulus Funds):