The Rise and Fall of Hope and Change
The United States Capitol Building
The Constitutional Convention
The Continental Congress
George Washington at Valley Forge
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Debate on The Role of Government
From CSPAN:
Town Hall of Seattle
David Callahan and Yaron Brook debated the role and function of government. Among the issues they addressed were the government's role in providing security, securing fundamental freedoms, economic regulation, and protecting the common good. They also responded to questions from audience members.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/302932-1
Town Hall of Seattle
David Callahan and Yaron Brook debated the role and function of government. Among the issues they addressed were the government's role in providing security, securing fundamental freedoms, economic regulation, and protecting the common good. They also responded to questions from audience members.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/302932-1
Monday, December 26, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Elastic Currency, With a Vengeance
From The Heritage Foundation:
Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
Elastic Currency, With a Vengeance
by Alex J. Pollock
American Enterprise Institute
November 29, 2011
The Federal Reserve has become a huge holder of mortgage-related securities. This has tightened the relationship of the American central bank and the rest of the government by creating a remarkable triangle. This government triangle is composed of: 1) The Federal Reserve; 2) The government mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and 3) The U.S. Treasury Department. What are we to make of this triangle? It’s certainly providing elastic currency with a vengeance, intertwined with real estate prices, and adding a new element—government mortgage companies—to Treasury and Federal Reserve interdependence. It does not appear that we have the ability to know how this will all turn out.
URL: www.american.com/archive/2011/november/elastic-currency-with-a-vengeance
Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
Elastic Currency, With a Vengeance
by Alex J. Pollock
American Enterprise Institute
November 29, 2011
The Federal Reserve has become a huge holder of mortgage-related securities. This has tightened the relationship of the American central bank and the rest of the government by creating a remarkable triangle. This government triangle is composed of: 1) The Federal Reserve; 2) The government mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and 3) The U.S. Treasury Department. What are we to make of this triangle? It’s certainly providing elastic currency with a vengeance, intertwined with real estate prices, and adding a new element—government mortgage companies—to Treasury and Federal Reserve interdependence. It does not appear that we have the ability to know how this will all turn out.
URL: www.american.com/archive/2011/november/elastic-currency-with-a-vengeance
Eight Principles of Telecommunications Policy
From The Heritage Foundation:
Information Technology
Eight Principles of Telecommunications Policy
by Washington Policy Center
Washington Policy Center
November 29, 2011
Policy Brief
The technology and telecommunications industries are fast changing and present difficulties in balancing federal, state and local taxing and regulatory jurisdictions. The eight principles that will help provide policymakers the foundation they need to encourage that these dynamic industries remain vibrant and strong, are as follows: Do not regulate what cannot be regulated, do not regulate what does not require regulation, legislation is better than regulation, the consumers are the boss and they know what they want, neutrality should be the goal, eliminate artificial distinctions, substitution is competition, and do not use economic regulation for social goals.
URL: www.washingtonpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Eight-Principles-of-Telecommunications-Policy-PB.pdf
Information Technology
Eight Principles of Telecommunications Policy
by Washington Policy Center
Washington Policy Center
November 29, 2011
Policy Brief
The technology and telecommunications industries are fast changing and present difficulties in balancing federal, state and local taxing and regulatory jurisdictions. The eight principles that will help provide policymakers the foundation they need to encourage that these dynamic industries remain vibrant and strong, are as follows: Do not regulate what cannot be regulated, do not regulate what does not require regulation, legislation is better than regulation, the consumers are the boss and they know what they want, neutrality should be the goal, eliminate artificial distinctions, substitution is competition, and do not use economic regulation for social goals.
URL: www.washingtonpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Eight-Principles-of-Telecommunications-Policy-PB.pdf
Why Keynesianism Works Better in Theory Than in Practice
From The Heritage Foundation and AEI:
Economic and Political Thought
Why Keynesianism Works Better in Theory Than in Practice
by Tino Sanandaji
American Enterprise Institute
December 01, 2011
The first definition of “Keynesianism” is a theoretical explanation for recessions, a diagnosis of the illness. The second definition of “Keynesianism” is a policy recipe for coping with recessions, a cure for the disease of recessions. The diagnosis may be correct, but the medicine most commonly associated with it has been shown to be surprisingly impotent. One reason for this is the role played by expectations and fear. As deficits grow, the public becomes more worried about the future of the economy and responds by saving more. At some point, deficit spending starts doing more harm than good by adding to fear and uncertainty. Despite the failure of deficit spending to fix crises, Keynesianism should not be abandoned as a paradigm. During the crises, Keynesianism has demonstrated its usefulness not only as a diagnostic tool, but as an intellectual framework for discussing the business cycle.
URL: www.american.com/archive/2011/november/our-two-keynes-problem
Economic and Political Thought
Why Keynesianism Works Better in Theory Than in Practice
by Tino Sanandaji
American Enterprise Institute
December 01, 2011
The first definition of “Keynesianism” is a theoretical explanation for recessions, a diagnosis of the illness. The second definition of “Keynesianism” is a policy recipe for coping with recessions, a cure for the disease of recessions. The diagnosis may be correct, but the medicine most commonly associated with it has been shown to be surprisingly impotent. One reason for this is the role played by expectations and fear. As deficits grow, the public becomes more worried about the future of the economy and responds by saving more. At some point, deficit spending starts doing more harm than good by adding to fear and uncertainty. Despite the failure of deficit spending to fix crises, Keynesianism should not be abandoned as a paradigm. During the crises, Keynesianism has demonstrated its usefulness not only as a diagnostic tool, but as an intellectual framework for discussing the business cycle.
URL: www.american.com/archive/2011/november/our-two-keynes-problem
Rethinking U.S. Taxation of Overseas Operations: Subpart F, Territoriality, and the Exception for Active Royalties
From The Heritage Foundation:
Budget & Taxation
Rethinking U.S. Taxation of Overseas Operations: Subpart F, Territoriality, and the Exception for Active Royalties
by Joseph Henchman
Tax Foundation
November 28, 2011
U.S. corporations operating overseas face a combination of burdens not borne by their international competitors: taxes owed to the United States, taxes owed to the country where the operating activity takes place, and a complex tax system that attempts to reduce the resultant economic harm but involves an array of credits and definitions (Subpart F). To enhance international trade competitiveness a territorial taxation system would be more favorable and would reduce compliance costs, prevent capital “lockout” effects, and remove impediments that discourage foreign firms from headquartering in the United States. Subpart F should be scrubbed of policies that no longer work in today’s global economy. The “related parties” exception may have been meant to discourage firms from operating as overseas tax havens, but instead introduces uncertainty and distortions for legitimate business activity.
URL: taxfoundation.org/files/sr197.pdf
Budget & Taxation
Rethinking U.S. Taxation of Overseas Operations: Subpart F, Territoriality, and the Exception for Active Royalties
by Joseph Henchman
Tax Foundation
November 28, 2011
U.S. corporations operating overseas face a combination of burdens not borne by their international competitors: taxes owed to the United States, taxes owed to the country where the operating activity takes place, and a complex tax system that attempts to reduce the resultant economic harm but involves an array of credits and definitions (Subpart F). To enhance international trade competitiveness a territorial taxation system would be more favorable and would reduce compliance costs, prevent capital “lockout” effects, and remove impediments that discourage foreign firms from headquartering in the United States. Subpart F should be scrubbed of policies that no longer work in today’s global economy. The “related parties” exception may have been meant to discourage firms from operating as overseas tax havens, but instead introduces uncertainty and distortions for legitimate business activity.
URL: taxfoundation.org/files/sr197.pdf
America’s Public Sector Union Dilemma
From The Heritage Foundation and AEI:
Budget & Taxation
America’s Public Sector Union Dilemma
by Lee E. Ohanian
American Enterprise Institute
November 28, 2011
There may be considerable savings from state and local government reforms that systematically develop competitive compensation analyses. Bringing public sector wages closer in line with private sector wages by reducing them by 5 percent can reduce state fiscal deficits considerably. Compensation analyses should also take into account other beneficial components of public sector employment, including much greater job security. Public sector unions must understand that taxpayers will no longer accept uncompetitive agreements with unions. Rather than continue the union model of yesteryear in which unions focus on maximizing the size of the pie that members can receive, unions should understand that increasing wages for their members requires increasing productivity and reducing costs. Unions that can follow these principles will succeed, while unions that cannot will continue to come under fire.
URL: www.american.com/archive/2011/november/americas-public-sector-union-dilemma
Budget & Taxation
America’s Public Sector Union Dilemma
by Lee E. Ohanian
American Enterprise Institute
November 28, 2011
There may be considerable savings from state and local government reforms that systematically develop competitive compensation analyses. Bringing public sector wages closer in line with private sector wages by reducing them by 5 percent can reduce state fiscal deficits considerably. Compensation analyses should also take into account other beneficial components of public sector employment, including much greater job security. Public sector unions must understand that taxpayers will no longer accept uncompetitive agreements with unions. Rather than continue the union model of yesteryear in which unions focus on maximizing the size of the pie that members can receive, unions should understand that increasing wages for their members requires increasing productivity and reducing costs. Unions that can follow these principles will succeed, while unions that cannot will continue to come under fire.
URL: www.american.com/archive/2011/november/americas-public-sector-union-dilemma
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Muslim Brotherhood: Extremist Islamic Group
From Christians Under Attack:
05 December 2011
Muslim Brotherhood: Extremist Islamic Group
The Obama Administration is making a mistake by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood as if it were made up of moderates or "good guys" just because they are not blowing things up.
What moderate Arabs and Muslims do not understand is the rush of the Barack Obama Administration to endorse extremist Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood decision to run in the parliamentary elections under the banner of "Freedom and Justice" does not necessarily mean that the organization has changed its ideology.
Its credo was and remains: "Allah is our objective, the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations."
The organization believes the Quran and Sharia law (the "Justice" part of "Freedom and Justice") should be the basis for any Islamic government; that all Muslims should be unified under a Caliphate, and that its principles include "liberating Arabs and Muslims from foreign imperialism."
The Obama Administration seems deliberately to want to be unaware of "taqiyya" [dissimulation], a silent and therefore even more dangerous tactic advocated in Islam to achieve the strategic goal of soothing the infidels into submitting without their even realizing what they have submitted to until it is too late for them -- called "Stealth Sharia."
If anyone thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood will abandon jihad and extremism once its members come to power, they are living in an illusion.
Hamas did the same thing in the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, when it contested the vote under the banner of Change and Reform. In Tunisia, the Islamists chose to run under the banner of Annahda [Renaissance], while in Morocco they hid behind the name Justice and Development.
The nice and attractive names that the Islamists choose for their parties are above all intended to fool Westerners into thinking that Muslim extremists do not pose a threat to non-Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies will do everything to hide their true intentions from Western governments and people. But once they come to power, they reveal their true colors.
The US Administration, which has determined that the Muslim Brotherhood is probably not that bad after all, is most likely unaware of what happened in Cairo last week, when thousands of the organization's supporters chanted "death to the Jews" and vowed to wage jihad [holy war] against Israel.
At a rally co-sponsored by Al-Azhar University under the banner "The Friday for Supporting Al-Aqsa Mosque," Muslim Brotherhood supporters also chanted: "O Tel Aviv, the day of judgment has come!" and "We will march on Jerusalem and sacrifice millions of martyrs!"
According to Eldad Beck, an Arab affairs correspondent for the Israeli online newspaper Ynet, about 5,000 Egyptians participated in the event, held to mark the anniversary of the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine.
Mohammed Ahmed Tayeb, the imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, told the crowd that the "Al-Aqsa Mosque is currently under an offensive by the Jews. We shall not allow Zionists to Judaize Jerusalem."
The messages coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt did not surprise most Arabs and Muslims who are familiar with the organization and its agenda.
Although Hamas won the elections in 2006 under the banner of Change and Reform, the movement has since not changed its ideology, and continues to call for the destruction of Israel. Only those who are naive would believe that Hamas would ever recognize Israel's right to exist.
In 2006, the Americans made the mistake of allowing Hamas to run unconditionally in the elections. Back then, Washington should have demanded that Hamas first recognize Israel's right to exist and the Oslo Accords, and renounce terrorism as a precondition for participating in the election.
Ten years earlier, Hamas boycotted the same election: it said the vote was being held under the Oslo Accords, which the movement does not recognize.
There is nothing that Washington can do to stop the Islamists from hijacking the "Arab Spring," but by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood, the US Administration has facilitated the organization's ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.
Those who were chanting "death to the Jews" in Cairo also want to kill all "infidels," including Americans and Europeans.
On their way to achieving their goal, the Islamists will also kill the moderate Muslims -- whom they see as just a fifth column.
http://www.hudson-ny.org
01:39 Posted in
Permalink
Trackbacks
The URL to Trackback this post is: http://mychristianblood.blogspirit.com/trackback/2462673
05 December 2011
Muslim Brotherhood: Extremist Islamic Group
The Obama Administration is making a mistake by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood as if it were made up of moderates or "good guys" just because they are not blowing things up.
What moderate Arabs and Muslims do not understand is the rush of the Barack Obama Administration to endorse extremist Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood decision to run in the parliamentary elections under the banner of "Freedom and Justice" does not necessarily mean that the organization has changed its ideology.
Its credo was and remains: "Allah is our objective, the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations."
The organization believes the Quran and Sharia law (the "Justice" part of "Freedom and Justice") should be the basis for any Islamic government; that all Muslims should be unified under a Caliphate, and that its principles include "liberating Arabs and Muslims from foreign imperialism."
The Obama Administration seems deliberately to want to be unaware of "taqiyya" [dissimulation], a silent and therefore even more dangerous tactic advocated in Islam to achieve the strategic goal of soothing the infidels into submitting without their even realizing what they have submitted to until it is too late for them -- called "Stealth Sharia."
If anyone thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood will abandon jihad and extremism once its members come to power, they are living in an illusion.
Hamas did the same thing in the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, when it contested the vote under the banner of Change and Reform. In Tunisia, the Islamists chose to run under the banner of Annahda [Renaissance], while in Morocco they hid behind the name Justice and Development.
The nice and attractive names that the Islamists choose for their parties are above all intended to fool Westerners into thinking that Muslim extremists do not pose a threat to non-Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies will do everything to hide their true intentions from Western governments and people. But once they come to power, they reveal their true colors.
The US Administration, which has determined that the Muslim Brotherhood is probably not that bad after all, is most likely unaware of what happened in Cairo last week, when thousands of the organization's supporters chanted "death to the Jews" and vowed to wage jihad [holy war] against Israel.
At a rally co-sponsored by Al-Azhar University under the banner "The Friday for Supporting Al-Aqsa Mosque," Muslim Brotherhood supporters also chanted: "O Tel Aviv, the day of judgment has come!" and "We will march on Jerusalem and sacrifice millions of martyrs!"
According to Eldad Beck, an Arab affairs correspondent for the Israeli online newspaper Ynet, about 5,000 Egyptians participated in the event, held to mark the anniversary of the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine.
Mohammed Ahmed Tayeb, the imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, told the crowd that the "Al-Aqsa Mosque is currently under an offensive by the Jews. We shall not allow Zionists to Judaize Jerusalem."
The messages coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt did not surprise most Arabs and Muslims who are familiar with the organization and its agenda.
Although Hamas won the elections in 2006 under the banner of Change and Reform, the movement has since not changed its ideology, and continues to call for the destruction of Israel. Only those who are naive would believe that Hamas would ever recognize Israel's right to exist.
In 2006, the Americans made the mistake of allowing Hamas to run unconditionally in the elections. Back then, Washington should have demanded that Hamas first recognize Israel's right to exist and the Oslo Accords, and renounce terrorism as a precondition for participating in the election.
Ten years earlier, Hamas boycotted the same election: it said the vote was being held under the Oslo Accords, which the movement does not recognize.
There is nothing that Washington can do to stop the Islamists from hijacking the "Arab Spring," but by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood, the US Administration has facilitated the organization's ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.
Those who were chanting "death to the Jews" in Cairo also want to kill all "infidels," including Americans and Europeans.
On their way to achieving their goal, the Islamists will also kill the moderate Muslims -- whom they see as just a fifth column.
http://www.hudson-ny.org
01:39 Posted in
Permalink
Trackbacks
The URL to Trackback this post is: http://mychristianblood.blogspirit.com/trackback/2462673
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Hamas-linked CAIR releases presidential candidate questionnaire, pushes candidates not to resist jihad
From Jihad Watch:
Hamas-linked CAIR releases presidential candidate questionnaire, pushes candidates not to resist jihad
Here is Hamas-linked CAIR's "2012 Election Candidate Questionnaire" (thanks to Pamela Geller). Surprise of surprises: the answers it tries to elicit from the candidates all tend toward weakening our defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. What an amazing coincidence!
Note also that CAIR is printing voter guides. They are rolling in cash (and who is looking into where that money is coming from?) -- imagine the work that freedom fighters could accomplish if we had even a tenth of their resources.
(Note: Full answers will be published on the organization's website. The first 200 words of each answer will appear in print voter guides.)
1) Racial and Religious Profiling/Homeland Security: A number of law enforcement agencies use race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion to identify and target individuals for heightened security attention even where there is no indication of wrongdoing. Do you feel relying on these types of characteristics is an effective tactic for protecting America? If not, then what methods do you endorse?
In other words, do not scrutinize young Muslim males any more than octogenarian Iowa grandmothers in wheelchairs, on pain of charges of "Islamophobia."
2) Transportation Security (No Fly List): Many Americans report being subject to additional screening when traveling by air or through U.S. borders as a result being incorrectly placed on one of several government watch lists. Would you provide an effective, expeditious means through which persons placed on a government watch list could have themselves removed?
Note that Hamas-linked CAIR is not asking what candidates might propose to make air passengers safer, and to improve TSA screening procedures. Instead, they're asking about how people can stop being regarded as an object of suspicion. I myself was on a government watch list for years and put up with the nuisance of it because I shared the TSA's commitment to preventing a jihad terror attack, even if I disagreed with their methods. Hamas-linked CAIR, on the other hand, seems to have a different agenda. They want to prevent Muslims from being subject to additional screening or border checks. And what about jihadists who might slip through as a result? Hamas-linked CAIR has nothing to say about them?
3) Immigration Reform: Do you favor an immigration reform package that includes a path to legalization, an increase in family visas, and restrictions on the lengths of detentions? If not, what would you do differently?
How about this: do you favor an immigration reform package that will make even the smallest attempt to determine the level of Muslim immigrants' adherence to the jihad doctrine?
4) International 1 (Afghanistan): What is your plan for bringing our troops home from Afghanistan without sacrificing American prestige and regional stability?
The mission is unclear in Afghanistan, and it's a Sharia state anyway according to the Constitution we underwrote there. How is regional stability being enhanced by our being there now -- to say nothing of American prestige?
5) International 2 (Arab Spring): Popular protests and upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa have toppled authoritarian regimes and provided new hope that democracy will emerge in the region. How will your administration support this ongoing process of regional democratization?
In other words, how much money will you come across with for the new pro-Sharia Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic supremacist regimes?
6) Healthcare (Insurance Coverage): What is your solution to the twin problems of rising healthcare costs and large numbers of uninsured people?
Why is an Islamic advocacy group asking this question?
7) Government Benefits (Social Security and Medicare): How would you oversee the administration of the nation’s Medicare and Social Security benefits?
Same question as #6. Is this just to solidify their alliance with Leftists?
8) Education: In December 2010, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) released a report that lists our nation’s high school students 25th among industrial world nations in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading, while China’s Shanghai topped the charts. What is your plan for effectively educating our children and keeping our workforce internationally competitive?
For starters, what will you do to keep the lies and hate of Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists out of schools?
9) Economic Empowerment 1 (National Debt): The United States lost its top-tier AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's in August 2011, and the national debt stands at $14.71 trillion. Many candidates have stated that they will eliminate the national debt and restore America’s credit rating without cutting government services to the neediest. How will you solve the debt crisis?
See #7.
10) Economic Empowerment 2 (Revitalizing Economy): The current economic downturn, lack of trust in the financial market, and high unemployment rate has left far too many Americans struggling. What is your plan for the revitalizing the economy and reducing poverty in the United States?
How about cutting aid to Pakistan and bringing that money home, for starters?
11) Civil Liberties (Protecting Civil Liberties): Following the February 2011 reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT ACT, and revelations about the FBI and NYPD-CIA respectively carrying out domestic spying programs, civil liberties groups and Members of Congress continue to raise concerns over government intrusiveness into private life and the post 9/11 erosion of civil liberties. What measures will you implement to ensure the protection of the civil liberties enjoyed by Americans?
In other words, when will you stop investigating Muslims for jihad terror activity?
Posted by Robert on December 21, 2011 9:17 AM
Hamas-linked CAIR releases presidential candidate questionnaire, pushes candidates not to resist jihad
Here is Hamas-linked CAIR's "2012 Election Candidate Questionnaire" (thanks to Pamela Geller). Surprise of surprises: the answers it tries to elicit from the candidates all tend toward weakening our defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. What an amazing coincidence!
Note also that CAIR is printing voter guides. They are rolling in cash (and who is looking into where that money is coming from?) -- imagine the work that freedom fighters could accomplish if we had even a tenth of their resources.
(Note: Full answers will be published on the organization's website. The first 200 words of each answer will appear in print voter guides.)
1) Racial and Religious Profiling/Homeland Security: A number of law enforcement agencies use race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion to identify and target individuals for heightened security attention even where there is no indication of wrongdoing. Do you feel relying on these types of characteristics is an effective tactic for protecting America? If not, then what methods do you endorse?
In other words, do not scrutinize young Muslim males any more than octogenarian Iowa grandmothers in wheelchairs, on pain of charges of "Islamophobia."
2) Transportation Security (No Fly List): Many Americans report being subject to additional screening when traveling by air or through U.S. borders as a result being incorrectly placed on one of several government watch lists. Would you provide an effective, expeditious means through which persons placed on a government watch list could have themselves removed?
Note that Hamas-linked CAIR is not asking what candidates might propose to make air passengers safer, and to improve TSA screening procedures. Instead, they're asking about how people can stop being regarded as an object of suspicion. I myself was on a government watch list for years and put up with the nuisance of it because I shared the TSA's commitment to preventing a jihad terror attack, even if I disagreed with their methods. Hamas-linked CAIR, on the other hand, seems to have a different agenda. They want to prevent Muslims from being subject to additional screening or border checks. And what about jihadists who might slip through as a result? Hamas-linked CAIR has nothing to say about them?
3) Immigration Reform: Do you favor an immigration reform package that includes a path to legalization, an increase in family visas, and restrictions on the lengths of detentions? If not, what would you do differently?
How about this: do you favor an immigration reform package that will make even the smallest attempt to determine the level of Muslim immigrants' adherence to the jihad doctrine?
4) International 1 (Afghanistan): What is your plan for bringing our troops home from Afghanistan without sacrificing American prestige and regional stability?
The mission is unclear in Afghanistan, and it's a Sharia state anyway according to the Constitution we underwrote there. How is regional stability being enhanced by our being there now -- to say nothing of American prestige?
5) International 2 (Arab Spring): Popular protests and upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa have toppled authoritarian regimes and provided new hope that democracy will emerge in the region. How will your administration support this ongoing process of regional democratization?
In other words, how much money will you come across with for the new pro-Sharia Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic supremacist regimes?
6) Healthcare (Insurance Coverage): What is your solution to the twin problems of rising healthcare costs and large numbers of uninsured people?
Why is an Islamic advocacy group asking this question?
7) Government Benefits (Social Security and Medicare): How would you oversee the administration of the nation’s Medicare and Social Security benefits?
Same question as #6. Is this just to solidify their alliance with Leftists?
8) Education: In December 2010, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) released a report that lists our nation’s high school students 25th among industrial world nations in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading, while China’s Shanghai topped the charts. What is your plan for effectively educating our children and keeping our workforce internationally competitive?
For starters, what will you do to keep the lies and hate of Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists out of schools?
9) Economic Empowerment 1 (National Debt): The United States lost its top-tier AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's in August 2011, and the national debt stands at $14.71 trillion. Many candidates have stated that they will eliminate the national debt and restore America’s credit rating without cutting government services to the neediest. How will you solve the debt crisis?
See #7.
10) Economic Empowerment 2 (Revitalizing Economy): The current economic downturn, lack of trust in the financial market, and high unemployment rate has left far too many Americans struggling. What is your plan for the revitalizing the economy and reducing poverty in the United States?
How about cutting aid to Pakistan and bringing that money home, for starters?
11) Civil Liberties (Protecting Civil Liberties): Following the February 2011 reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT ACT, and revelations about the FBI and NYPD-CIA respectively carrying out domestic spying programs, civil liberties groups and Members of Congress continue to raise concerns over government intrusiveness into private life and the post 9/11 erosion of civil liberties. What measures will you implement to ensure the protection of the civil liberties enjoyed by Americans?
In other words, when will you stop investigating Muslims for jihad terror activity?
Posted by Robert on December 21, 2011 9:17 AM
How Reforms Would Affect Social Security’s Funding Shortfalls, Total Spending, and Distribution of Benefits and Taxes
From The National Center for Policy Analysis and The Heritage Foundation:
Retirement/Social Security
How Reforms Would Affect Social Security’s Funding Shortfalls, Total Spending, and Distribution of Benefits and Taxes
by Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
National Center for Policy Analysis
December 21, 2011
The current Social Security program and the changes considered in the study all require benefit cuts and/or tax increases to reduce Social Security’s unfunded obligations. Several of the provisions, including raising the retirement age and progressive indexing, can be part of a reform that includes individually-owned accounts funded by savings. Funding the accounts would require additional savings during a transition period, but in the end the reformed program would provide retirement benefits that are partially prepaid.
URL: www.ncpa.org/pdfs/st337.pdf
Retirement/Social Security
How Reforms Would Affect Social Security’s Funding Shortfalls, Total Spending, and Distribution of Benefits and Taxes
by Liqun Liu, Andrew J. Rettenmaier
National Center for Policy Analysis
December 21, 2011
The current Social Security program and the changes considered in the study all require benefit cuts and/or tax increases to reduce Social Security’s unfunded obligations. Several of the provisions, including raising the retirement age and progressive indexing, can be part of a reform that includes individually-owned accounts funded by savings. Funding the accounts would require additional savings during a transition period, but in the end the reformed program would provide retirement benefits that are partially prepaid.
URL: www.ncpa.org/pdfs/st337.pdf
Warren Buffett: A Wealthy Philanthropist with Some Bad Ideas
From The Capitol Research Center and The Heritage Foundation:
Philanthropy
Warren Buffett: A Wealthy Philanthropist with Some Bad Ideas
by Martin Morse Wooster
Capital Research Center
December 16, 2011
Foundation Watch
Warren Buffett has a genius for making money but he has some very bad ideas about taxing people who know how to make money. Unfortunately President Obama is listening; having dubbed his tax on the rich and super-rich the “Buffet rule”. Buffet ought to be advocating policies that ensure the creation of more great fortunes instead of trying to punish the successful by calling for higher taxes on their wealth. A smaller government would be less likely to ask the rich for “shared sacrifice.” If he wants to restore America’s prosperity, it’s not too late for him to call for lower taxes and minimal government.
URL: capitalresearch.org/2011/11/warren-buffett-a-wealthy-philanthropist-with-some-bad-ideas/
Philanthropy
Warren Buffett: A Wealthy Philanthropist with Some Bad Ideas
by Martin Morse Wooster
Capital Research Center
December 16, 2011
Foundation Watch
Warren Buffett has a genius for making money but he has some very bad ideas about taxing people who know how to make money. Unfortunately President Obama is listening; having dubbed his tax on the rich and super-rich the “Buffet rule”. Buffet ought to be advocating policies that ensure the creation of more great fortunes instead of trying to punish the successful by calling for higher taxes on their wealth. A smaller government would be less likely to ask the rich for “shared sacrifice.” If he wants to restore America’s prosperity, it’s not too late for him to call for lower taxes and minimal government.
URL: capitalresearch.org/2011/11/warren-buffett-a-wealthy-philanthropist-with-some-bad-ideas/
Brave New Films: Using Online Videos for Agitation and Propaganda
From The Capitol Research Center and The Heritage Foundation:
Philanthropy
Brave New Films: Using Online Videos for Agitation and Propaganda
by Neil Maghami
Capital Research Center
December 16, 2011
Organization Trends
In an age when attention spans are short, people like veteran Hollywood producer Robert Greenwald are successfully using online videos to market the Left’s message and build up the their power base using nonprofits funded by foundation grants. The goal of Brave New Films is not to produce an informative leftwing documentary but to do “virtual community organizing”; to comment and petition as an online militia.
URL: capitalresearch.org/2011/11/brave-new-films-using-online-videos-for-agitation-and-propaganda
Philanthropy
Brave New Films: Using Online Videos for Agitation and Propaganda
by Neil Maghami
Capital Research Center
December 16, 2011
Organization Trends
In an age when attention spans are short, people like veteran Hollywood producer Robert Greenwald are successfully using online videos to market the Left’s message and build up the their power base using nonprofits funded by foundation grants. The goal of Brave New Films is not to produce an informative leftwing documentary but to do “virtual community organizing”; to comment and petition as an online militia.
URL: capitalresearch.org/2011/11/brave-new-films-using-online-videos-for-agitation-and-propaganda
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Ahmed Rehab of Hamas-linked CAIR: "Radical Right, not Islam" is "greatest threat to the American way"
From Jihad Watch:
Ahmed Rehab of Hamas-linked CAIR: "Radical Right, not Islam" is "greatest threat to the American way"
Fashion plate Rehab in unaltered image from his website (since removed!)
All you really need to read is the headline: "Let's Face it: It's the Radical Right, not Islam, that is the Greatest Threat to the American Way," by Ahmed Rehab of Hamas-linked CAIR in the Huffington Post, December 16 (thanks to T.T.). From the headline alone you can fill in the rest: whining, victimhood posturing, and no hint whatsoever that any Muslims are waging jihad against the United States.
And obviously Rehab is right. Just look at the Radical Right-wingers who have perpetrated or attempted to perpetrate violent attacks against innocent Americans: there was Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood right-wing mass murderer; and Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be right-wing mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; and Muhammad Hussain, the would-be right-wing bomber in Baltimore; and Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be right-wing bomber in Portland; and Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square right-wing mass-murderer; and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station right-wing murderer; and Naveed Haq, the right-wing mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; and Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be right-wing mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a right-wing plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane right-wing bomber; and many others like them who have plotted and/or committed mass murder in the name of the Radical Right and motivated by its texts and teachings.
And then there were all these right-wing declarations of imminent right-wing takeover in the U.S.:
"We reject the U.N., reject America, reject all law and order. Don't lobby Congress or protest because we don't recognize Congress. The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it. . . . Eventually there will be a Muslim in the White House dictating the laws of Shariah." -- Muhammad Faheed, Muslim Students Association meeting, Queensborough Community College, 2003
"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth." -- CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad, 1998 (denial noted and full story explained at link)
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future." -- CAIR spokesman Ibrahim "Honest Ibe" Hooper, 1993
"If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate." -- prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj, 2002
No, wait --
Anyway, this deflection strategy from Rehab should come as no surprise. The thuggish Rehab has also spoken up in defense of the Islamic supremacist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir's right to hold its convention in Chicago (Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned in many countries), while working to suppress the freedom of speech of anti-jihadists.
Posted by Robert on December 17, 2011 10:09 AM
Ahmed Rehab of Hamas-linked CAIR: "Radical Right, not Islam" is "greatest threat to the American way"
Fashion plate Rehab in unaltered image from his website (since removed!)
All you really need to read is the headline: "Let's Face it: It's the Radical Right, not Islam, that is the Greatest Threat to the American Way," by Ahmed Rehab of Hamas-linked CAIR in the Huffington Post, December 16 (thanks to T.T.). From the headline alone you can fill in the rest: whining, victimhood posturing, and no hint whatsoever that any Muslims are waging jihad against the United States.
And obviously Rehab is right. Just look at the Radical Right-wingers who have perpetrated or attempted to perpetrate violent attacks against innocent Americans: there was Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood right-wing mass murderer; and Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be right-wing mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; and Muhammad Hussain, the would-be right-wing bomber in Baltimore; and Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be right-wing bomber in Portland; and Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square right-wing mass-murderer; and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station right-wing murderer; and Naveed Haq, the right-wing mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; and Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be right-wing mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a right-wing plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane right-wing bomber; and many others like them who have plotted and/or committed mass murder in the name of the Radical Right and motivated by its texts and teachings.
And then there were all these right-wing declarations of imminent right-wing takeover in the U.S.:
"We reject the U.N., reject America, reject all law and order. Don't lobby Congress or protest because we don't recognize Congress. The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it. . . . Eventually there will be a Muslim in the White House dictating the laws of Shariah." -- Muhammad Faheed, Muslim Students Association meeting, Queensborough Community College, 2003
"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth." -- CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad, 1998 (denial noted and full story explained at link)
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future." -- CAIR spokesman Ibrahim "Honest Ibe" Hooper, 1993
"If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate." -- prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj, 2002
No, wait --
Anyway, this deflection strategy from Rehab should come as no surprise. The thuggish Rehab has also spoken up in defense of the Islamic supremacist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir's right to hold its convention in Chicago (Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned in many countries), while working to suppress the freedom of speech of anti-jihadists.
Posted by Robert on December 17, 2011 10:09 AM
Obama Accused of Treating Israel ‘Like a Punching Bag’
From Newsmax:
Obama Accused of Treating Israel ‘Like a Punching Bag’
Jewish-American conservatives have taken out a full-page ad in leading newspapers urging the Obama administration to “stop blaming Israel first.”
The ad by the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) ran Thursday in The New York Times, Miami Herald and several other papers.
Under the headline “Why does the Obama administration treat Israel like a punching bag?” the ad cites the recent exchange between President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy complaining about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ad states that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta blames Israel for “the failure of talks with the Palestinians,” citing his remark at a forum calling on Israel to “get to the damn table.”
The ad also quotes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who charged Israel with discrimination against women, and U.S. envoy to Belgium Howard Gutman, who recently linked the rise of anti-Semitism in the Arab world to the unsolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Following the quotes, the ad states: “Enough with the cheap shots. It’s time for the Obama Administration to stop blaming Israel first.”
In remarks reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, ECI director Noah Pollak said: "In a month that has seen Islamists come to power in Egypt, rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, progress on the Iranian nuclear program, and the continued slaughter of civilians in Syria, the Obama administration has chosen to repeatedly condemn the only liberal democracy in the region: Israel."
The ad ran a day before President Obama’s appearance at a conference of 6,000 Jewish-Americans in Washington sponsored by the Union for Reform Judaism.
Obama’s 51 percent approval rating among Jews in a recent Gallup poll is higher than his national average — 48 percent — but the lowest among Jews in his three years in office.
Obama Accused of Treating Israel ‘Like a Punching Bag’
Jewish-American conservatives have taken out a full-page ad in leading newspapers urging the Obama administration to “stop blaming Israel first.”
The ad by the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) ran Thursday in The New York Times, Miami Herald and several other papers.
Under the headline “Why does the Obama administration treat Israel like a punching bag?” the ad cites the recent exchange between President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy complaining about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ad states that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta blames Israel for “the failure of talks with the Palestinians,” citing his remark at a forum calling on Israel to “get to the damn table.”
The ad also quotes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who charged Israel with discrimination against women, and U.S. envoy to Belgium Howard Gutman, who recently linked the rise of anti-Semitism in the Arab world to the unsolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Following the quotes, the ad states: “Enough with the cheap shots. It’s time for the Obama Administration to stop blaming Israel first.”
In remarks reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, ECI director Noah Pollak said: "In a month that has seen Islamists come to power in Egypt, rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, progress on the Iranian nuclear program, and the continued slaughter of civilians in Syria, the Obama administration has chosen to repeatedly condemn the only liberal democracy in the region: Israel."
The ad ran a day before President Obama’s appearance at a conference of 6,000 Jewish-Americans in Washington sponsored by the Union for Reform Judaism.
Obama’s 51 percent approval rating among Jews in a recent Gallup poll is higher than his national average — 48 percent — but the lowest among Jews in his three years in office.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Obama's War on Domestic Oil Production
From Town Hall:
Obama's War on Domestic Oil Production
Christopher Prandoni
Dec 16, 2011
Sign-Up
This week the Department of Interior (DOI) sold its first oil lease in the Gulf of Mexico in over a year. Withholding drilling permits and cancelling leases, the Obama Administration has made what was once routine nearly impossible.
Upon assuming office, President Obama cancelled 31 oil and gas lease sales, delaying thousands of jobs and billions in economic activity. Not letting any crisis go to waste, the Department of Interior imposed a six month drilling moratorium on the Gulf following the Macondo disaster.
The Obama Administration’s recent offshore drilling plan codifies the White House’s anti-energy, anti-jobs position. The Obama 2012-2017 draft drilling plan closes a majority of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to new energy production. In fact, less than 3 percent of America’s OCS will be available for development.
While the moratorium technically ended, only a handful of permits have been issued earning this era the nomenclature, “permatorium.” Compared to pre-moratorium levels, almost twice as many exploration and development plans are stuck at DOI. Approval of plans has decreased by 86 percent explaining why the median number of days for approving an exploration plan has increased from 36 to 131 days. Most telling, revenue from offshore lease sales dropped from $9.5 billion in 2008 to $36 million in 2011.
DOI Secretary Ken Salazar told Politico that “total U.S. crude oil production was higher in 2010 than in any year since 2003. The Obama administration continues to take meaningful steps to grow America’s domestic energy economy and secure our energy future.” While technically accurate, the increase in total U.S. production can be completely attributed to increased production on state and private lands, like development of North Dakota’s Bakken formation.
Production on federal lands, territory under Salazar’s purview, has been decreasing since Obama was sworn in. The fact that America’s oil output has increased is a testament to oil and natural gas companies revolutionary extracting techniques—like hydraulic fracturing—and has nothing to do with the federal government.
Adding insult to injury, foreign countries from all over the world are drilling near our coasts. Canada is drilling near Maine, Russia near Alaska, and Mexico is busy developing its vast reserves. Cuba is now soliciting help to drill within its waters, a mere 60 miles away from Florida. The position of this Administration is pro-drilling, as long as the oil wells being developed are in foreign waters. President Obama laid out this policy when speaking in Brazil, “We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”
President Obama’s refusal to embrace domestic drilling from American companies has exacerbated our economic downturn. Simply allowing U.S. companies to develop natural resources currently prohibited by the federal government would have huge economic and geopolitical benefits. A million jobs would be created over the next ten years—literally. Drilling projects are enormously expensive, labor intensive projects that cost billions to undertake. These new wells would nearly double our domestic oil output adding another 4 million barrels to our daily production. And lastly, the government would receive around $127 billion in additional revenue, all according to a Wood Mackenzie study.
House Republicans have passed numerous bills that would expedite permitting in pro-drilling states like Alaska and Virginia only to watch them die in the Senate. With unemployment hovering around nine percent the American people are crying out for jobs. President Obama and his Department of the Interior should get out of the way and let American oil and natural gas producers do what they do best—employ Americans.
Tags: Oil , Government Regulations , Energy , War , war , Obama Administration , Oil and Gas , Oil Companies , Job killing regulation , energy independence , Jobs and Economy , War , War , War , War , war
Christopher Prandoni
Christopher Prandoni serves as a Federal Affairs Manager of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR).
Obama's War on Domestic Oil Production
Christopher Prandoni
Dec 16, 2011
Sign-Up
This week the Department of Interior (DOI) sold its first oil lease in the Gulf of Mexico in over a year. Withholding drilling permits and cancelling leases, the Obama Administration has made what was once routine nearly impossible.
Upon assuming office, President Obama cancelled 31 oil and gas lease sales, delaying thousands of jobs and billions in economic activity. Not letting any crisis go to waste, the Department of Interior imposed a six month drilling moratorium on the Gulf following the Macondo disaster.
The Obama Administration’s recent offshore drilling plan codifies the White House’s anti-energy, anti-jobs position. The Obama 2012-2017 draft drilling plan closes a majority of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to new energy production. In fact, less than 3 percent of America’s OCS will be available for development.
While the moratorium technically ended, only a handful of permits have been issued earning this era the nomenclature, “permatorium.” Compared to pre-moratorium levels, almost twice as many exploration and development plans are stuck at DOI. Approval of plans has decreased by 86 percent explaining why the median number of days for approving an exploration plan has increased from 36 to 131 days. Most telling, revenue from offshore lease sales dropped from $9.5 billion in 2008 to $36 million in 2011.
DOI Secretary Ken Salazar told Politico that “total U.S. crude oil production was higher in 2010 than in any year since 2003. The Obama administration continues to take meaningful steps to grow America’s domestic energy economy and secure our energy future.” While technically accurate, the increase in total U.S. production can be completely attributed to increased production on state and private lands, like development of North Dakota’s Bakken formation.
Production on federal lands, territory under Salazar’s purview, has been decreasing since Obama was sworn in. The fact that America’s oil output has increased is a testament to oil and natural gas companies revolutionary extracting techniques—like hydraulic fracturing—and has nothing to do with the federal government.
Adding insult to injury, foreign countries from all over the world are drilling near our coasts. Canada is drilling near Maine, Russia near Alaska, and Mexico is busy developing its vast reserves. Cuba is now soliciting help to drill within its waters, a mere 60 miles away from Florida. The position of this Administration is pro-drilling, as long as the oil wells being developed are in foreign waters. President Obama laid out this policy when speaking in Brazil, “We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”
President Obama’s refusal to embrace domestic drilling from American companies has exacerbated our economic downturn. Simply allowing U.S. companies to develop natural resources currently prohibited by the federal government would have huge economic and geopolitical benefits. A million jobs would be created over the next ten years—literally. Drilling projects are enormously expensive, labor intensive projects that cost billions to undertake. These new wells would nearly double our domestic oil output adding another 4 million barrels to our daily production. And lastly, the government would receive around $127 billion in additional revenue, all according to a Wood Mackenzie study.
House Republicans have passed numerous bills that would expedite permitting in pro-drilling states like Alaska and Virginia only to watch them die in the Senate. With unemployment hovering around nine percent the American people are crying out for jobs. President Obama and his Department of the Interior should get out of the way and let American oil and natural gas producers do what they do best—employ Americans.
Tags: Oil , Government Regulations , Energy , War , war , Obama Administration , Oil and Gas , Oil Companies , Job killing regulation , energy independence , Jobs and Economy , War , War , War , War , war
Christopher Prandoni
Christopher Prandoni serves as a Federal Affairs Manager of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR).
War on Poverty Keeps Bureaucrats Employed
From The Heritage Foundation:
InsiderOnline Blog: December 2011
War on Poverty Keeps Bureaucrats Employed
If the government really wanted to lift people above the official poverty levels, it could do so for far less money than it currently spends on means-tested assistance, as Hadley Heath observes:
Our federal government spent nearly $700 billion on means-tested welfare programs in 2011. States added $250 billion to that for a rough total of $950 billion. Divide that by the 49 million Americans who are poor. That’s nearly $19,400 per person, or $77,600 for a family of four.
The federal government says you’re poor if you live alone and make less than $10,890, or if you’re in a family of four earning less than $22,350 per year. The problem, of course, is that just cutting people a check would put a lot of the bureaucrats out of work.
This observation comes from Heath’s report, “Welfare and Charity: Two Different Things,” published by the Independent Women’s Forum, December 2011.
Posted on 12/14/11 03:57 PM by Alex Adrianson
Blog Archive
InsiderOnline Blog: December 2011
War on Poverty Keeps Bureaucrats Employed
If the government really wanted to lift people above the official poverty levels, it could do so for far less money than it currently spends on means-tested assistance, as Hadley Heath observes:
Our federal government spent nearly $700 billion on means-tested welfare programs in 2011. States added $250 billion to that for a rough total of $950 billion. Divide that by the 49 million Americans who are poor. That’s nearly $19,400 per person, or $77,600 for a family of four.
The federal government says you’re poor if you live alone and make less than $10,890, or if you’re in a family of four earning less than $22,350 per year. The problem, of course, is that just cutting people a check would put a lot of the bureaucrats out of work.
This observation comes from Heath’s report, “Welfare and Charity: Two Different Things,” published by the Independent Women’s Forum, December 2011.
Posted on 12/14/11 03:57 PM by Alex Adrianson
Blog Archive
How the IPCC Reports Mislead the Public, Exaggerate the Negative Impacts of Climate Change and Ignore the Benefits of Economic Growth
From The Heritage Foundation and the Reason Foundation:
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
How the IPCC Reports Mislead the Public, Exaggerate the Negative Impacts of Climate Change and Ignore the Benefits of Economic Growth
by Indur M. Goklany, Julian Morris
Reason Foundation
December 15, 2011
Policy Study
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is inconsistent in the way they assess impacts. They systematically overestimate the negative impact of global warming, while underestimating the positive impact; ignoring any adaptations and new technologies the poor will logically have adopted if the IPCC’s prediction of a doubled GDP per capita by 2100, is correct. Human well-being in all countries including poorer ones is likely to be advanced most effectively by sustained economic development and least by emission reductions. This approach would not only address all of the current problems that might get worse in the future but would also enable humanity to address more effectively any other future problems it encounters, whether climate-related or otherwise.
URL: reason.org/files/how_ipcc_misleads_on_climate_change_impacts.pdf
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
How the IPCC Reports Mislead the Public, Exaggerate the Negative Impacts of Climate Change and Ignore the Benefits of Economic Growth
by Indur M. Goklany, Julian Morris
Reason Foundation
December 15, 2011
Policy Study
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is inconsistent in the way they assess impacts. They systematically overestimate the negative impact of global warming, while underestimating the positive impact; ignoring any adaptations and new technologies the poor will logically have adopted if the IPCC’s prediction of a doubled GDP per capita by 2100, is correct. Human well-being in all countries including poorer ones is likely to be advanced most effectively by sustained economic development and least by emission reductions. This approach would not only address all of the current problems that might get worse in the future but would also enable humanity to address more effectively any other future problems it encounters, whether climate-related or otherwise.
URL: reason.org/files/how_ipcc_misleads_on_climate_change_impacts.pdf
History, Ideology, and U.S. Climate Policy: Beyond the Orthodoxies of Left and Right
From The Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute:
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
History, Ideology, and U.S. Climate Policy: Beyond the Orthodoxies of Left and Right
by Lee Lane
Hudson Institute
December 13, 2011
Instead of demanding rigorous climate policy analysis, U.S. political leaders tend to cling to the dogmas of either the right or the left. Such rigorous analysis would probe the forces that have defeated or, worse, perverted, greenhouse gas (GHG) controls. It would explore other ways of lessening the risks of climate change and examine how the factors that have brought GHG control efforts to naught would affect these other strategies. Finally, it would scrutinize how major global trends might affect both climate change and the measures intended to counter it. Climate change does pose risks, yet those risks do not imply that massive social engineering for GHG control is either possible or desirable. As awareness of this reality sinks in among public intellectuals, a more serious policy discourse is likely to emerge.
URL: www.hudson.org/files/publications/LeeLaneClimatePolicyDec2011.pdf
Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
History, Ideology, and U.S. Climate Policy: Beyond the Orthodoxies of Left and Right
by Lee Lane
Hudson Institute
December 13, 2011
Instead of demanding rigorous climate policy analysis, U.S. political leaders tend to cling to the dogmas of either the right or the left. Such rigorous analysis would probe the forces that have defeated or, worse, perverted, greenhouse gas (GHG) controls. It would explore other ways of lessening the risks of climate change and examine how the factors that have brought GHG control efforts to naught would affect these other strategies. Finally, it would scrutinize how major global trends might affect both climate change and the measures intended to counter it. Climate change does pose risks, yet those risks do not imply that massive social engineering for GHG control is either possible or desirable. As awareness of this reality sinks in among public intellectuals, a more serious policy discourse is likely to emerge.
URL: www.hudson.org/files/publications/LeeLaneClimatePolicyDec2011.pdf
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
An Imperial Presidency Revealed
From The American Spectator:
An Imperial Presidency Revealed
By Ken Blackwell & Ken Klukowski on 9.7.11 @ 6:06AM
President Barack Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is on a job-killing rampage. It's claiming unprecedented powers far beyond what federal law allows. Taken with Obama's other agencies, these executive actions paint a picture of what has become an imperial presidency.
A federal appeal is certain once NLRB's shocking attack on Boeing Co. goes through the administrative process. In a free-market society, government bureaucrats cannot dictate to a private company where they can and cannot open factories or create jobs. Boeing -- whose general counsel was formerly one of the most brilliant federal judges in America, Michael Luttig -- should win this court battle.
NLRB's power grab is not limited to Boeing. It's also claiming authority over St. Xavier University, saying that the school doesn't qualify for the religious exemption to NLRB's authority because St. Xavier is not Catholic enough. NLRB even cites to a 1979 Supreme Court case as giving it this authority, when that case instead makes clear that this government agency would be running afoul of the First Amendment by presuming to rate the religiosity of bone fide church organizations.
Just recently NLRB came down with three other far-left decisions. One was repealing an earlier NLRB ruling, stripping workers of the right to promptly contest the results of a vote to form a union. Another was ruling that employers everywhere must post signs on forming a union, giving the appearance that unionizing was encouraged both by the government and even the employer. Even more disturbing, NLRB took this action on its own initiative, not in response to a group filing a petition with NLRB, which is how such ruling are supposed to originate.
The third and most damaging was ruling that even where unions do not exist, employees can form micro-unions in part of a company. This would make a mess of labor laws by creating countless possible entities with which business owners and management must constantly negotiate, seriously complicating efforts to have company policies that are stable, predictable, and profitable.
Nor will the president's handpicked appointees allow others to promote the free market. When Arizona and other states recently passed laws protecting workers' right to a secret ballot to decide whether to form unions, NLRB filed a lawsuit to undo the results of the democratic process. That lawsuit is ongoing today.
And NLRB isn't done. Even the Democrat-controlled Congress refused to pass President Obama's federal card-check legislation to abolish the secret ballot. Afterward Obama's appointees, such as hard-line labor activist Craig Becker, argued that NLRB could create this legislation through executive fiat without Congress. They may yet act on this shocking claim of lawmaking power.
Nor is this executive power grab confined to NLRB. The EPA is promulgating sweeping new regulations, imposing expensive mandates on everything from power plants to car mileage. The FCC has claimed power to control the Internet, in violation of a federal appeals court ruling. And Obamacare is proving a cornucopia of governmental controls, with HHS issuing reams of new regulations, further burdening employers and insurers.
And on immigration, President Obama has discovered a wondrous new power -- just don't enforce the law. If you don't like the statutes on the books, ignore your oath to ensure those laws are faithfully executed. Who needs the people's representatives in Congress to change the law, when you can just ignore it? Obama might even tout the efficiency of this lawless approach.
An imperial presidency is one in which the executive branch usurps Congress, which is the only branch with authority to make laws, and exercises power forbidden to it by the Constitution. President Obama is now claiming powers far beyond what any president has before, remaking America's economy even when Congress refuses to go along with him.
For the sake of restoring our constitutional order, each of these issues must be taken to court as soon as possible. And next year the American people must replace the current occupant of the White House with one who understands and adheres to his constitutional role of enforcing the laws as written, and unleashing the power of the private sector to create jobs and restore prosperity to our nation.
Messrs. Blackwell and Klukowski are the authors of Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America.
Letter to the Editor
Ken Blackwell, a board member of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.
An Imperial Presidency Revealed
By Ken Blackwell & Ken Klukowski on 9.7.11 @ 6:06AM
President Barack Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is on a job-killing rampage. It's claiming unprecedented powers far beyond what federal law allows. Taken with Obama's other agencies, these executive actions paint a picture of what has become an imperial presidency.
A federal appeal is certain once NLRB's shocking attack on Boeing Co. goes through the administrative process. In a free-market society, government bureaucrats cannot dictate to a private company where they can and cannot open factories or create jobs. Boeing -- whose general counsel was formerly one of the most brilliant federal judges in America, Michael Luttig -- should win this court battle.
NLRB's power grab is not limited to Boeing. It's also claiming authority over St. Xavier University, saying that the school doesn't qualify for the religious exemption to NLRB's authority because St. Xavier is not Catholic enough. NLRB even cites to a 1979 Supreme Court case as giving it this authority, when that case instead makes clear that this government agency would be running afoul of the First Amendment by presuming to rate the religiosity of bone fide church organizations.
Just recently NLRB came down with three other far-left decisions. One was repealing an earlier NLRB ruling, stripping workers of the right to promptly contest the results of a vote to form a union. Another was ruling that employers everywhere must post signs on forming a union, giving the appearance that unionizing was encouraged both by the government and even the employer. Even more disturbing, NLRB took this action on its own initiative, not in response to a group filing a petition with NLRB, which is how such ruling are supposed to originate.
The third and most damaging was ruling that even where unions do not exist, employees can form micro-unions in part of a company. This would make a mess of labor laws by creating countless possible entities with which business owners and management must constantly negotiate, seriously complicating efforts to have company policies that are stable, predictable, and profitable.
Nor will the president's handpicked appointees allow others to promote the free market. When Arizona and other states recently passed laws protecting workers' right to a secret ballot to decide whether to form unions, NLRB filed a lawsuit to undo the results of the democratic process. That lawsuit is ongoing today.
And NLRB isn't done. Even the Democrat-controlled Congress refused to pass President Obama's federal card-check legislation to abolish the secret ballot. Afterward Obama's appointees, such as hard-line labor activist Craig Becker, argued that NLRB could create this legislation through executive fiat without Congress. They may yet act on this shocking claim of lawmaking power.
Nor is this executive power grab confined to NLRB. The EPA is promulgating sweeping new regulations, imposing expensive mandates on everything from power plants to car mileage. The FCC has claimed power to control the Internet, in violation of a federal appeals court ruling. And Obamacare is proving a cornucopia of governmental controls, with HHS issuing reams of new regulations, further burdening employers and insurers.
And on immigration, President Obama has discovered a wondrous new power -- just don't enforce the law. If you don't like the statutes on the books, ignore your oath to ensure those laws are faithfully executed. Who needs the people's representatives in Congress to change the law, when you can just ignore it? Obama might even tout the efficiency of this lawless approach.
An imperial presidency is one in which the executive branch usurps Congress, which is the only branch with authority to make laws, and exercises power forbidden to it by the Constitution. President Obama is now claiming powers far beyond what any president has before, remaking America's economy even when Congress refuses to go along with him.
For the sake of restoring our constitutional order, each of these issues must be taken to court as soon as possible. And next year the American people must replace the current occupant of the White House with one who understands and adheres to his constitutional role of enforcing the laws as written, and unleashing the power of the private sector to create jobs and restore prosperity to our nation.
Messrs. Blackwell and Klukowski are the authors of Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America.
Letter to the Editor
Ken Blackwell, a board member of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.
Flowers For ObamaCare
From The American Spectator:
PrintEmail
The Right Prescription
Flowers for Obamacare
By David Catron on 9.7.11 @ 6:10AM
In Daniel Keyes' novel, Flowers for Algernon, a medical experiment nearly triples the IQ of the protagonist, Charlie Gordon. Apparently, the President's experiment with our health care system has produced a similar effect on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. For two decades, progressives have claimed that he is intellectually unfit to sit on the Court. They have repeatedly told us that Thomas is, as one commentator recently phrased it, "a dunce and a worm." However, as myriad constitutional challenges to Obamacare work their way through the courts toward an inevitable showdown before the Supreme Court, the dunce's intellectual powers have somehow improved. In fact, we are now advised that Thomas is not merely intelligent, but that he is an evil genius with an outsized influence on the rest of the Court.
This miraculous metamorphosis was recently described in a New Yorker profile of Justice Thomas and his wife titled "Partners." According to the author of this remarkable piece of instant revisionism, Jeffrey Toobin, "In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court … when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government … the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more." Toobin's inclusion of Thomas' potential ability to influence the views of other justices on the powers of the federal government is, of course, a reflection of progressive fears concerning the Court's eventual ruling on the constitutionality of Obamacare's individual mandate.
And these fears are entirely justified. Justice Thomas is a fervent advocate of "originalism," the interpretive principle which holds that the Court should base its rulings on the original meaning of the Constitution. Thus, if Thomas truly does wield the kind of intellectual influence now attributed to him by Toobin and other progressives, the individual mandate is indeed in grave danger. Obviously, originalism includes the view that the powers of the federal government are limited to those enumerated to it by the Constitution. That list does not include the authority to order Americans to buy products or services sold by private enterprises. And it is a virtual certainty that Thomas will reject any argument suggesting that the Interstate Commerce Clause confers such power on Congress.
Why, then, would a "reform" advocate like Toobin suddenly pronounce Thomas the intellectual leader of the Court when he knows the man will want to strike down the President's "signature domestic achievement"? Michael Barone provides a plausible answer: "It's possible to read Toobin's article as a partisan hit job, echoing the demands of 74 Democratic House members that Justice Thomas recuse himself from sitting on a case challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare because of his wife's involvement in the Tea Party movement." If Thomas is a dunce, how big a threat could he be? But if he's actually a Machiavellian manipulator of Court opinion plotting Obamacare's destruction with the aid of his Tea Partier wife, then he cannot be trusted to pass judgment on the law's constitutionality.
This would explain why Toobin, in the fourth sentence of a 9,100-word essay, mentions that ridiculous demand by a group of far-left Democrats for Thomas to recuse himself. Never mind that no code of ethics or statute requires him to do so. The relevant section of the U.S. code states that a justice should recuse himself "in cases where he served in government employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, advisor or material witness concerning the proceedings or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy." Note the absence of any verbiage relating to the political opinions of a spouse. The only passage containing that word refers to a husband or wife with a financial interest in an entity that is itself before the court, not a spouse with an ideological interest in the outcome of a case.
It is worth noting that the leader of those 74 Democrats demanding Thomas' recusal was that paragon of ethical conduct, Anthony Weiner. This may be why Toobin urged his fellow journalists not "to make a federal case" of the New York congressman's … er …foibles. Oddly enough, Toobin feels no such reticence when it comes to Justice Thomas' wife. Much of his New Yorker profile is devoted to her connection with the Tea Party movement, which he insinuates is somehow improper. He portentously points out, for example, that she has spoken out against Obamacare: "[H]er particular target was the health-care-reform law, which was, in her view, clearly unconstitutional." The clear implication is, of course, that Justice Thomas has a conflict of interest pursuant to his wife's opposition to "reform."
Oddly, Toobin has never demonstrated any similar concern about a very real conflict of interest involving the newest Supreme Court appointee. As it happens, the language quoted above from the United States code (Section 455 of Title 28) so closely matches the pre-nomination activities of Justice Elena Kagan that it may as well have been included in her job description as U.S. Solicitor General. In fact, Neal Katyal, the acting Solicitor General who unsuccessfully defended the individual mandate in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, was assigned to the litigation team by Kagan herself. Toobin's lack of interest in this, combined with his reluctance to hold one of Justice Thomas' most vehement congressional critics accountable for behavior that was both unethical and disgusting, suggests that his main concern is saving Obamacare.
The irony of all this is that Toobin is probably right about the intellectual heft of Justice Thomas. Moreover, that the left has consistently underestimated him has been good for the country. There isn't the slightest possibility that he will recuse himself when Obamacare finally makes its way to the Supreme Court and he will assure that the individual mandate is ruled unconstitutional, and perhaps convince four additional justices to strike down the rest of the pernicious health care law as well. Once the Supreme Court has issued its ruling, however, we can expect Thomas's intellectual powers to recede just as Charlie Gordon's did in Flowers for Algernon. It won't be long before progressives are once again telling us that he is an idiot. But, in the interim, we can place a few flowers on Obamacare's grave.
Letter to the Editor
David Catron is a health care revenue cycle expert who has spent more than twenty years working for and consulting with hospitals and medical practices. He has an MBA from the University of Georgia and blogs at Health Care BS.
PrintEmail
The Right Prescription
Flowers for Obamacare
By David Catron on 9.7.11 @ 6:10AM
In Daniel Keyes' novel, Flowers for Algernon, a medical experiment nearly triples the IQ of the protagonist, Charlie Gordon. Apparently, the President's experiment with our health care system has produced a similar effect on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. For two decades, progressives have claimed that he is intellectually unfit to sit on the Court. They have repeatedly told us that Thomas is, as one commentator recently phrased it, "a dunce and a worm." However, as myriad constitutional challenges to Obamacare work their way through the courts toward an inevitable showdown before the Supreme Court, the dunce's intellectual powers have somehow improved. In fact, we are now advised that Thomas is not merely intelligent, but that he is an evil genius with an outsized influence on the rest of the Court.
This miraculous metamorphosis was recently described in a New Yorker profile of Justice Thomas and his wife titled "Partners." According to the author of this remarkable piece of instant revisionism, Jeffrey Toobin, "In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court … when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government … the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more." Toobin's inclusion of Thomas' potential ability to influence the views of other justices on the powers of the federal government is, of course, a reflection of progressive fears concerning the Court's eventual ruling on the constitutionality of Obamacare's individual mandate.
And these fears are entirely justified. Justice Thomas is a fervent advocate of "originalism," the interpretive principle which holds that the Court should base its rulings on the original meaning of the Constitution. Thus, if Thomas truly does wield the kind of intellectual influence now attributed to him by Toobin and other progressives, the individual mandate is indeed in grave danger. Obviously, originalism includes the view that the powers of the federal government are limited to those enumerated to it by the Constitution. That list does not include the authority to order Americans to buy products or services sold by private enterprises. And it is a virtual certainty that Thomas will reject any argument suggesting that the Interstate Commerce Clause confers such power on Congress.
Why, then, would a "reform" advocate like Toobin suddenly pronounce Thomas the intellectual leader of the Court when he knows the man will want to strike down the President's "signature domestic achievement"? Michael Barone provides a plausible answer: "It's possible to read Toobin's article as a partisan hit job, echoing the demands of 74 Democratic House members that Justice Thomas recuse himself from sitting on a case challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare because of his wife's involvement in the Tea Party movement." If Thomas is a dunce, how big a threat could he be? But if he's actually a Machiavellian manipulator of Court opinion plotting Obamacare's destruction with the aid of his Tea Partier wife, then he cannot be trusted to pass judgment on the law's constitutionality.
This would explain why Toobin, in the fourth sentence of a 9,100-word essay, mentions that ridiculous demand by a group of far-left Democrats for Thomas to recuse himself. Never mind that no code of ethics or statute requires him to do so. The relevant section of the U.S. code states that a justice should recuse himself "in cases where he served in government employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, advisor or material witness concerning the proceedings or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy." Note the absence of any verbiage relating to the political opinions of a spouse. The only passage containing that word refers to a husband or wife with a financial interest in an entity that is itself before the court, not a spouse with an ideological interest in the outcome of a case.
It is worth noting that the leader of those 74 Democrats demanding Thomas' recusal was that paragon of ethical conduct, Anthony Weiner. This may be why Toobin urged his fellow journalists not "to make a federal case" of the New York congressman's … er …foibles. Oddly enough, Toobin feels no such reticence when it comes to Justice Thomas' wife. Much of his New Yorker profile is devoted to her connection with the Tea Party movement, which he insinuates is somehow improper. He portentously points out, for example, that she has spoken out against Obamacare: "[H]er particular target was the health-care-reform law, which was, in her view, clearly unconstitutional." The clear implication is, of course, that Justice Thomas has a conflict of interest pursuant to his wife's opposition to "reform."
Oddly, Toobin has never demonstrated any similar concern about a very real conflict of interest involving the newest Supreme Court appointee. As it happens, the language quoted above from the United States code (Section 455 of Title 28) so closely matches the pre-nomination activities of Justice Elena Kagan that it may as well have been included in her job description as U.S. Solicitor General. In fact, Neal Katyal, the acting Solicitor General who unsuccessfully defended the individual mandate in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, was assigned to the litigation team by Kagan herself. Toobin's lack of interest in this, combined with his reluctance to hold one of Justice Thomas' most vehement congressional critics accountable for behavior that was both unethical and disgusting, suggests that his main concern is saving Obamacare.
The irony of all this is that Toobin is probably right about the intellectual heft of Justice Thomas. Moreover, that the left has consistently underestimated him has been good for the country. There isn't the slightest possibility that he will recuse himself when Obamacare finally makes its way to the Supreme Court and he will assure that the individual mandate is ruled unconstitutional, and perhaps convince four additional justices to strike down the rest of the pernicious health care law as well. Once the Supreme Court has issued its ruling, however, we can expect Thomas's intellectual powers to recede just as Charlie Gordon's did in Flowers for Algernon. It won't be long before progressives are once again telling us that he is an idiot. But, in the interim, we can place a few flowers on Obamacare's grave.
Letter to the Editor
David Catron is a health care revenue cycle expert who has spent more than twenty years working for and consulting with hospitals and medical practices. He has an MBA from the University of Georgia and blogs at Health Care BS.
Letter To A Liberal Friend
From The American Spectator:
PrintEmail
The Obama Watch
Letter to a Liberal Friend
By Green Lantern on 9.8.11 @ 6:09AM
I went to one of those prestigious Eastern colleges that turn out the bureaucrats who populate President Obama's administration so I have an unusual perspective on his supporters. I know these people very well, yet I can't figure out their motivation.
As class secretary, I spend quite a bit of time gathering news for the Alumni Notes. When I call to chat, nearly all my former classmates are staunchly liberal, enraged at the Tea Party and alarmed at the possibility that President Obama may not be re-elected. This is kind of strange. Forty years ago, many of these people were football jocks or party animals who had very little concern for politics. Yet they have someone "matured" into staunch liberals. All this was summed up by one alumnus who wrote in the class notes a few years ago, "I continue to prosper while moving rapidly toward the angry left."
One of the classmates I contacted this year is a Washington tort lawyer. He told me how he recently represented an entrepreneur who got a permit from the Department of Interior to develop a coal mine in Tennessee, spent $3 million developing infrastructure, and was then told by the bureaucrats that they had changed their mind -- the mine was too close to a national forest.
"I won a $300 million settlement before a federal administrative judge, working on contingency," he said. "But when it went up to the appeals level, the three-judge panel threw it out. They said the government can do anything it wants. It makes me sick."
"Isn't that the sort of thing the Tea Party is complaining about?" I asked.
"Tea Party!" He was astounded. "You're not one of those Tea Party people, are you? They're all crazy."
Another class member is now a prominent professor at the University of Wisconsin. I asked him what it was like in Madison during last summer's demonstrations and he said, "Heck, I was in them. We've got an absolutely insane governor in this state, Governor Walker. The man is crazy. He wants to gut the entire system. We were out there to stop him."
In the next breath was telling me about his second home in the Caribbean. "We have a little compound down there," he said. "We got hit by a hurricane ten years ago and I had to go down to rebuild the place. There are only about 100 people on the island so we all helped each other out."
Somehow the incongruity of an affluent college professor with a hideaway home in the Caribbean who is also a member of the oppressed working masses who must demonstrate against an insane governor who is foolish enough to be upset because his state is going bankrupt did not register in his head.
I've had several conversations with liberals lately and they have one simple explanation for the President's current troubles -- "racism." "What's really going on is these Tea Party people can't stand the idea of being ruled by a black man, don't you think that's it?" Nine percent unemployment, 20 million people out of work, a 27-year-high in unemployment among African-Americans -- if George Bush were President, he would be being charged with racism.
So I've composed a letter to my liberal friends who are beginning to realize that Obama may be a one-term President. We've seen this before -- Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush both tripped over the economy and failed to get re-elected. Nobody argued it was because Carter was a Southern Baptist or Bush was Skull-and-Bones. So why should it be hard to fathom that 43rd President might face the same experience?
"Dear Liberal Friend,
"We are facing what could become a very ugly election. At this point it seems quite possible that Barack Obama may be voted out office. The charge will immediately be raised that all this represents 'racism' and America has reverted to type. That they elected Obama as the first African-American over an Old White Male in 2008 was just an accident.
"I think it should be clear to you now, before the election really picks up steam, how wrong this perspective is and how harmful it will be to the country to make such a charge. If Tea Party Republicans succeed in electing a President, it won't be about race. It will be about class. Specifically, it will have been a revolt of what might be called the lower reaches of the middle class against the upper-educated-going-on-aristocracy that you represent. Tea Party people are not rich. They are working people, small business owners, people who went to state schools and agricultural colleges where they learned to make a living rather than to collect law degrees and become "policymakers" telling other people what to do. Most of all they are people who are tired of having these "policymakers" interfering in their lives and telling them that they must therefore surrender larger and larger portions of their income so that the government can build a separate but equal economy.
"Rick Perry is prototypical. When asked to define the difference between himself and George Bush, Jr., he responded, 'George Bush went to Yale, I went to Texas A&M.' Conan O'Brien immediately picked up on this and announced, 'So his main qualification is that he's not as smart as George Bush.' That completely misses the point and only shows how parochial the precincts and Manhattan and late night television can be. There are places in this country, believe it or not, where having a Yale degree is not an automatic sign of superior intelligence. It often suggests something more like snobbishness. 'You can always tell a Harvard man but you can't tell him much.' Did you ever hear that expression?
"If Obama fails to win re-election, it will not be because all those poor folk in the hinterland who didn't go to Ivy League colleges are inherent racists and not properly respectful of an Ivy League degree. It will be because their Ivy League-educated President has proved a rather one-dimensional individual with a very constricted view of the world -- one about as broad as the view outside the faculty lounge.
"Or maybe it's because he's still fairly young and hasn't been around long enough to see the world 'from both sides now.' Our most successful Presidents have been those who have been sensible enough to realize that, even though your party's side is fixed and predictable, the other side often has a point. President Nixon was one of the world's most rabid anti-communists in his younger days but by the time he came to office he was smart enough to realize that his perspective was restricted and it made no sense to ignore a country of a billion people on the other side of the world. The result was the greatest diplomatic maneuver of the 20th century. President Clinton was a solid liberal but after three years in office he had seen enough to realize that conservative criticisms of the welfare system was valid and that it was one of the most destructive social programs ever invented. That made him a successful President.
"Even now, Obama could rescue his administration by doing one simple thing. He could admit that Keynesianism is wrong. The premise that you can cure the economy by coming down to Washington and spending as much money as you can on your favorite programs has to be one of the biggest academic frauds of all time.
"But he won't. He won't because everything he knows has been picked up in some graduate seminar. He has no idea that there's a big world out there of people who didn't go to Ivy League college but who know something about themselves and the world. Those are the people he most despises because those are the people academics most despise.
"Instead, the President is going to sound one note from now until next November -- 'Hate the rich.' Never mind that he has Jeff Immelt and Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and the entire board of directors of Goldman Sachs are kowtowing to him -- the enemy will be those amorphous 'millionaires and billionaires' who mysteriously retain the sinister power to will the economic devastation that Obama's faculty-approved policies have caused.
"I hope you take all this into account before the election next year.
"Sincerely, Green Lantern"
WHAT WORRIES ME about these people is that, if Obama loses next year, they will go off the deep end. They will never be able to accept the idea that their guy had two years in Washington when he could do whatever he wanted and still screwed it up by pursuing bad ideas. It will be all the Tea Party's fault. They sabotaged the economy so that Obama would lose. Environmentalists, now embarrassed about being arrested in front of the White House for opposing their favorite President's policies, will be right back where they want to be -- throwing their bodies at the juggernaut of the American economy. Young fanatics will be blowing up pipelines and power plants because they are unable persuade 300 million Americans to give up prosperity and live on wind and sunshine.
In the current of City Journal, Heather Mac Donald reports asking an Ivy League professor about his experience in recording one of the Great Courses with the Teaching Company. The professor was responsive until he realized she was with the Manhattan Institute. Then he refused all further communication on the grounds that there is an "undeclared civil war" in this country.
Such a war exists now only in the fevered imagination of academics. With the un-election of Obama, however, it could become much more tangible.
PrintEmail
The Obama Watch
Letter to a Liberal Friend
By Green Lantern on 9.8.11 @ 6:09AM
I went to one of those prestigious Eastern colleges that turn out the bureaucrats who populate President Obama's administration so I have an unusual perspective on his supporters. I know these people very well, yet I can't figure out their motivation.
As class secretary, I spend quite a bit of time gathering news for the Alumni Notes. When I call to chat, nearly all my former classmates are staunchly liberal, enraged at the Tea Party and alarmed at the possibility that President Obama may not be re-elected. This is kind of strange. Forty years ago, many of these people were football jocks or party animals who had very little concern for politics. Yet they have someone "matured" into staunch liberals. All this was summed up by one alumnus who wrote in the class notes a few years ago, "I continue to prosper while moving rapidly toward the angry left."
One of the classmates I contacted this year is a Washington tort lawyer. He told me how he recently represented an entrepreneur who got a permit from the Department of Interior to develop a coal mine in Tennessee, spent $3 million developing infrastructure, and was then told by the bureaucrats that they had changed their mind -- the mine was too close to a national forest.
"I won a $300 million settlement before a federal administrative judge, working on contingency," he said. "But when it went up to the appeals level, the three-judge panel threw it out. They said the government can do anything it wants. It makes me sick."
"Isn't that the sort of thing the Tea Party is complaining about?" I asked.
"Tea Party!" He was astounded. "You're not one of those Tea Party people, are you? They're all crazy."
Another class member is now a prominent professor at the University of Wisconsin. I asked him what it was like in Madison during last summer's demonstrations and he said, "Heck, I was in them. We've got an absolutely insane governor in this state, Governor Walker. The man is crazy. He wants to gut the entire system. We were out there to stop him."
In the next breath was telling me about his second home in the Caribbean. "We have a little compound down there," he said. "We got hit by a hurricane ten years ago and I had to go down to rebuild the place. There are only about 100 people on the island so we all helped each other out."
Somehow the incongruity of an affluent college professor with a hideaway home in the Caribbean who is also a member of the oppressed working masses who must demonstrate against an insane governor who is foolish enough to be upset because his state is going bankrupt did not register in his head.
I've had several conversations with liberals lately and they have one simple explanation for the President's current troubles -- "racism." "What's really going on is these Tea Party people can't stand the idea of being ruled by a black man, don't you think that's it?" Nine percent unemployment, 20 million people out of work, a 27-year-high in unemployment among African-Americans -- if George Bush were President, he would be being charged with racism.
So I've composed a letter to my liberal friends who are beginning to realize that Obama may be a one-term President. We've seen this before -- Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush both tripped over the economy and failed to get re-elected. Nobody argued it was because Carter was a Southern Baptist or Bush was Skull-and-Bones. So why should it be hard to fathom that 43rd President might face the same experience?
"Dear Liberal Friend,
"We are facing what could become a very ugly election. At this point it seems quite possible that Barack Obama may be voted out office. The charge will immediately be raised that all this represents 'racism' and America has reverted to type. That they elected Obama as the first African-American over an Old White Male in 2008 was just an accident.
"I think it should be clear to you now, before the election really picks up steam, how wrong this perspective is and how harmful it will be to the country to make such a charge. If Tea Party Republicans succeed in electing a President, it won't be about race. It will be about class. Specifically, it will have been a revolt of what might be called the lower reaches of the middle class against the upper-educated-going-on-aristocracy that you represent. Tea Party people are not rich. They are working people, small business owners, people who went to state schools and agricultural colleges where they learned to make a living rather than to collect law degrees and become "policymakers" telling other people what to do. Most of all they are people who are tired of having these "policymakers" interfering in their lives and telling them that they must therefore surrender larger and larger portions of their income so that the government can build a separate but equal economy.
"Rick Perry is prototypical. When asked to define the difference between himself and George Bush, Jr., he responded, 'George Bush went to Yale, I went to Texas A&M.' Conan O'Brien immediately picked up on this and announced, 'So his main qualification is that he's not as smart as George Bush.' That completely misses the point and only shows how parochial the precincts and Manhattan and late night television can be. There are places in this country, believe it or not, where having a Yale degree is not an automatic sign of superior intelligence. It often suggests something more like snobbishness. 'You can always tell a Harvard man but you can't tell him much.' Did you ever hear that expression?
"If Obama fails to win re-election, it will not be because all those poor folk in the hinterland who didn't go to Ivy League colleges are inherent racists and not properly respectful of an Ivy League degree. It will be because their Ivy League-educated President has proved a rather one-dimensional individual with a very constricted view of the world -- one about as broad as the view outside the faculty lounge.
"Or maybe it's because he's still fairly young and hasn't been around long enough to see the world 'from both sides now.' Our most successful Presidents have been those who have been sensible enough to realize that, even though your party's side is fixed and predictable, the other side often has a point. President Nixon was one of the world's most rabid anti-communists in his younger days but by the time he came to office he was smart enough to realize that his perspective was restricted and it made no sense to ignore a country of a billion people on the other side of the world. The result was the greatest diplomatic maneuver of the 20th century. President Clinton was a solid liberal but after three years in office he had seen enough to realize that conservative criticisms of the welfare system was valid and that it was one of the most destructive social programs ever invented. That made him a successful President.
"Even now, Obama could rescue his administration by doing one simple thing. He could admit that Keynesianism is wrong. The premise that you can cure the economy by coming down to Washington and spending as much money as you can on your favorite programs has to be one of the biggest academic frauds of all time.
"But he won't. He won't because everything he knows has been picked up in some graduate seminar. He has no idea that there's a big world out there of people who didn't go to Ivy League college but who know something about themselves and the world. Those are the people he most despises because those are the people academics most despise.
"Instead, the President is going to sound one note from now until next November -- 'Hate the rich.' Never mind that he has Jeff Immelt and Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and the entire board of directors of Goldman Sachs are kowtowing to him -- the enemy will be those amorphous 'millionaires and billionaires' who mysteriously retain the sinister power to will the economic devastation that Obama's faculty-approved policies have caused.
"I hope you take all this into account before the election next year.
"Sincerely, Green Lantern"
WHAT WORRIES ME about these people is that, if Obama loses next year, they will go off the deep end. They will never be able to accept the idea that their guy had two years in Washington when he could do whatever he wanted and still screwed it up by pursuing bad ideas. It will be all the Tea Party's fault. They sabotaged the economy so that Obama would lose. Environmentalists, now embarrassed about being arrested in front of the White House for opposing their favorite President's policies, will be right back where they want to be -- throwing their bodies at the juggernaut of the American economy. Young fanatics will be blowing up pipelines and power plants because they are unable persuade 300 million Americans to give up prosperity and live on wind and sunshine.
In the current of City Journal, Heather Mac Donald reports asking an Ivy League professor about his experience in recording one of the Great Courses with the Teaching Company. The professor was responsive until he realized she was with the Manhattan Institute. Then he refused all further communication on the grounds that there is an "undeclared civil war" in this country.
Such a war exists now only in the fevered imagination of academics. With the un-election of Obama, however, it could become much more tangible.
A History Lesson For The Racist Bob Beckel
From Town Hall:
Humberto Fontova
A History Lesson for the Racist Bob Beckel
9/9/2011
Email Humberto Fontova
Columnist's Archive
Sign-Up
“I still have my Che Guevara poster. Che Guevara was a freedom fighter.” (Bob Beckel on FoxNews’ “The Five” Sept. 5th)
If Bob Beckel’s “freedom-fighter” had been allowed his fondest bit of “freedom-fighting” Bob Beckel’s incinerated remains would fit in a gin bottle today. “America is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination!...If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City.”
For the record: Ernesto “Che” Guevara was second in command, chief executioner, and chief KGB liaison for a regime that jailed more political prisoners per capita than did Stalin’s during the Great Terror and murdered more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler’s murdered (out of a population of 70 million) in its first six. Many, perhaps most, of those murdered and jailed by the regime Che Guevara co-founded were Batista opponents.
The Stalinist regime Che Guevara imposed on Cuba also stole the savings and property of 6.4 million citizens, made refugees of 20 percent of the population from a nation formerly deluged with immigrants and whose citizens had achieved a higher standard of living than those residing in half of Europe. Many opponents of the regime Che Guevara co-founded qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Che Guevara’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s Gulag. Most of these had been Batista opponents.
“Don't put him in a list of fascists. The fascists (Batista) were the ones he was trying to get rid of.” (Bob Beckel on FoxNews’ “The Five” Sept. 5th)
For the record: According to the Cuba Archive Project, the Castro regime – with firing squads, forced-labor camps, torture and drownings at sea – has caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths. According to the Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War, Nazi repression caused 172,260 French civilian deaths during the occupation. France was nation of 42 million in 1940. Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million in 1960. My calculator reveals that Beckel’s freedom-fighter caused an enormously higher percentage of deaths among the people he “freed” than the Nazis caused among the French they enslaved and tortured with the SS and Gestapo.
Beckel tells the “Fox Five” that the CIA killed many more people than Che and implies that in the 50’s the agency was Che’s enemy.
In fact during the late 1950’s the Castro brothers and Che Guevara had no better friends--and Fulgencio Batista few worse enemies--than the CIA. “Me and my staff were all Fidelistas,” (Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s “Caribbean Desk’s specialist on the Cuban Revolution” from 1957-1960.)
“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except (Republican) ambassador Earl Smith.” (CIA operative in Santiago Cuba, Robert Weicha.)
“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever.” (crackerjack Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel 1958.)
“Listen, we (the U.S.) did not have the most stellar reputation in Latin America and South America during the 1950s and '60s….when the CIA was complicit in the assassination of Allende, that was killing a head of state.” (Bob Beckel)
Ground control to Major Bob: Allende died in the 70’s. But whatever. The leftist proverb that he was assassinated by the CIA was spun and spread only by the hardest of hard-left wackos. Not even Allende’s own family believed it. An investigation including an autopsy by Chilean authorities just last month confirmed that Salvador Allende committed suicide. Surely you read the New York Times, Bob?
“(Che) did help Fidel Castro get rid one of the biggest thugs and murdering bastards there ever was, and that was Batista in Cuba.” (Bob Beckel)
Batista was a mulatto grandson of slaves born on the dirt floor of a palm roofed shack in the Cuban countryside. As President (via honest elections 1940-44, bloodless coup 1952-58) he always enjoyed the support of Cuba’s labor unions. And under Batista, according to a study by the International Labor Organization, the Cuban workforce was more highly unionized than the U.S. work force, with Cuba’s Industrial laborers earning the 8th highest wages in the world.
“Cuba’s laborer’s always maintained a stony indifference to Fidel Castro’s movement,” admitted Cuba’s richest man and Fidel and Che bankroller Julio Lobo, who knew because he employed thousands of them.
So here’s Bob Beckel bashing a black politician of lowly origin who enjoyed overwhelming unionized labor support--while hailing the lily-white rich-boys, Fidel and Che, who outlawed labor unions and sent such as Richard Trumka and Jimmy Hoffa to the firing squad or prison. Where’s Trumka, Hoffa and Maxine Waters on this? Using liberals’ own standards Beckel sure sounds like an elitist--and a racist to boot.
No doubt Beckel picked up the leftist proverb about Batista as “one of the biggest murdering bastards there ever was” from a meme hatched in 1957 by a Fidelista Cuban magazine publisher named Miguel Angel Quevedo. The meme asserts that Batista’s police and army “murdered 20,000 Cubans” and is still parroted by the MSM/Academia axis.
For the record: Ten years after he hatched and spread the lie, Quevedo (from exile, he scooted out just ahead of a Fidelista firing squad) confessed to the lie and greatly regretted how the lie helped the propaganda campaign to put Fidel and Che in power. The regret for the calamity he helped bring upon Cuba was such that, that right after signing the letter, Miguel Angel Quevedo put a gun to his head and blew his brains out.
“The idea of picking Che Guevara and calling him a mass-murder is crazy.” (Bob Beckel)
“Certainly we execute!” boasted Che Guevara while addressing the hallowed halls of the U.N. General Assembly Dec. 9, 1964. “And we will continue executing as long as it is necessary! According to the “Black Book of Communism,” those firing-squad executions (murders, actually; execution implies a judicial process) had reached 14,000 by the end of the ’60s, the equivalent, given the relative populations, of almost a million executions in the U.S. “I don’t need proof to execute a man,” snapped Che to a judicial toady in 1959. “I only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him.”
Tags: Foreign Affairs , Media and Culture , Che Guevara , Bob Beckel
Humberto Fontova
Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who idolize Him and Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant. Visit www.hfontova.com
Humberto Fontova
A History Lesson for the Racist Bob Beckel
9/9/2011
Email Humberto Fontova
Columnist's Archive
Sign-Up
“I still have my Che Guevara poster. Che Guevara was a freedom fighter.” (Bob Beckel on FoxNews’ “The Five” Sept. 5th)
If Bob Beckel’s “freedom-fighter” had been allowed his fondest bit of “freedom-fighting” Bob Beckel’s incinerated remains would fit in a gin bottle today. “America is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination!...If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City.”
For the record: Ernesto “Che” Guevara was second in command, chief executioner, and chief KGB liaison for a regime that jailed more political prisoners per capita than did Stalin’s during the Great Terror and murdered more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler’s murdered (out of a population of 70 million) in its first six. Many, perhaps most, of those murdered and jailed by the regime Che Guevara co-founded were Batista opponents.
The Stalinist regime Che Guevara imposed on Cuba also stole the savings and property of 6.4 million citizens, made refugees of 20 percent of the population from a nation formerly deluged with immigrants and whose citizens had achieved a higher standard of living than those residing in half of Europe. Many opponents of the regime Che Guevara co-founded qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Che Guevara’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s Gulag. Most of these had been Batista opponents.
“Don't put him in a list of fascists. The fascists (Batista) were the ones he was trying to get rid of.” (Bob Beckel on FoxNews’ “The Five” Sept. 5th)
For the record: According to the Cuba Archive Project, the Castro regime – with firing squads, forced-labor camps, torture and drownings at sea – has caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths. According to the Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War, Nazi repression caused 172,260 French civilian deaths during the occupation. France was nation of 42 million in 1940. Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million in 1960. My calculator reveals that Beckel’s freedom-fighter caused an enormously higher percentage of deaths among the people he “freed” than the Nazis caused among the French they enslaved and tortured with the SS and Gestapo.
Beckel tells the “Fox Five” that the CIA killed many more people than Che and implies that in the 50’s the agency was Che’s enemy.
In fact during the late 1950’s the Castro brothers and Che Guevara had no better friends--and Fulgencio Batista few worse enemies--than the CIA. “Me and my staff were all Fidelistas,” (Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s “Caribbean Desk’s specialist on the Cuban Revolution” from 1957-1960.)
“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except (Republican) ambassador Earl Smith.” (CIA operative in Santiago Cuba, Robert Weicha.)
“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever.” (crackerjack Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel 1958.)
“Listen, we (the U.S.) did not have the most stellar reputation in Latin America and South America during the 1950s and '60s….when the CIA was complicit in the assassination of Allende, that was killing a head of state.” (Bob Beckel)
Ground control to Major Bob: Allende died in the 70’s. But whatever. The leftist proverb that he was assassinated by the CIA was spun and spread only by the hardest of hard-left wackos. Not even Allende’s own family believed it. An investigation including an autopsy by Chilean authorities just last month confirmed that Salvador Allende committed suicide. Surely you read the New York Times, Bob?
“(Che) did help Fidel Castro get rid one of the biggest thugs and murdering bastards there ever was, and that was Batista in Cuba.” (Bob Beckel)
Batista was a mulatto grandson of slaves born on the dirt floor of a palm roofed shack in the Cuban countryside. As President (via honest elections 1940-44, bloodless coup 1952-58) he always enjoyed the support of Cuba’s labor unions. And under Batista, according to a study by the International Labor Organization, the Cuban workforce was more highly unionized than the U.S. work force, with Cuba’s Industrial laborers earning the 8th highest wages in the world.
“Cuba’s laborer’s always maintained a stony indifference to Fidel Castro’s movement,” admitted Cuba’s richest man and Fidel and Che bankroller Julio Lobo, who knew because he employed thousands of them.
So here’s Bob Beckel bashing a black politician of lowly origin who enjoyed overwhelming unionized labor support--while hailing the lily-white rich-boys, Fidel and Che, who outlawed labor unions and sent such as Richard Trumka and Jimmy Hoffa to the firing squad or prison. Where’s Trumka, Hoffa and Maxine Waters on this? Using liberals’ own standards Beckel sure sounds like an elitist--and a racist to boot.
No doubt Beckel picked up the leftist proverb about Batista as “one of the biggest murdering bastards there ever was” from a meme hatched in 1957 by a Fidelista Cuban magazine publisher named Miguel Angel Quevedo. The meme asserts that Batista’s police and army “murdered 20,000 Cubans” and is still parroted by the MSM/Academia axis.
For the record: Ten years after he hatched and spread the lie, Quevedo (from exile, he scooted out just ahead of a Fidelista firing squad) confessed to the lie and greatly regretted how the lie helped the propaganda campaign to put Fidel and Che in power. The regret for the calamity he helped bring upon Cuba was such that, that right after signing the letter, Miguel Angel Quevedo put a gun to his head and blew his brains out.
“The idea of picking Che Guevara and calling him a mass-murder is crazy.” (Bob Beckel)
“Certainly we execute!” boasted Che Guevara while addressing the hallowed halls of the U.N. General Assembly Dec. 9, 1964. “And we will continue executing as long as it is necessary! According to the “Black Book of Communism,” those firing-squad executions (murders, actually; execution implies a judicial process) had reached 14,000 by the end of the ’60s, the equivalent, given the relative populations, of almost a million executions in the U.S. “I don’t need proof to execute a man,” snapped Che to a judicial toady in 1959. “I only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him.”
Tags: Foreign Affairs , Media and Culture , Che Guevara , Bob Beckel
Humberto Fontova
Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who idolize Him and Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant. Visit www.hfontova.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)