Just when you thought you'd seen everything from the Obamamaniacs, here's the latest: the "Getting Through Tough Economic Times" website, brought to you by The Messiah!
Your Government will warn of depression, suicidal thinking and other serious mental illnesses. It will raise warning flags for: Persistent sadness/crying; Excessive anxiety; Lack of sleep/constant fatigue; Excessive irritability/anger.
What? Nothing for bed wetting?
http://www.samhsa.gov/economy
Why don't they just cut our freaking taxes and stop spending our money like drunken sailors?
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Not Again!
Yet another Obama cabinet nominee is a tax cheat. That makes a total of five, and Obama is now "0 for 2" on his HHS picks due to tax issues. No wonder these Democrats love to tax and spend...they never pay taxes!
Sebelius admits errors, pays $7,000 in back taxes
By ERICA WERNER
Associated Press
March 31, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) - Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius recently corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes after finding "unintentional errors"—the latest tax troubles for an Obama administration nominee. The Kansas governor explained the changes to senators in a letter dated Tuesday that the administration released. She said they involved charitable contributions, the sale of a home and business expenses.
Sebelius said she filed the amended returns as soon as the errors were discovered by an accountant she hired to scrub her taxes in preparation for her confirmation hearings. She and her husband, Gary, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas, paid a total of $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest to amend returns from 2005-2007.
Several Obama administration nominees have run into tax troubles, notably the president's first nominee for HHS secretary, former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. He withdrew from consideration while apologizing for failing to pay $140,000 in taxes and interest.
Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., quickly issued a statement supporting Sebelius.
"Congress is going to need a strong partner at the Department of Health and Human Services to achieve comprehensive health reform this year, and we have that partner in Gov. Sebelius," Baucus said. "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Gov. Sebelius has the political experience, determination, and bipartisan work ethic to get the job done with Congress this year. She's the right person for the job."
There was no comment from the White House.
Sebelius is to appear Thursday before Baucus' committee, which will vote on sending her nomination to the full Senate. Sebelius testified Tuesday before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee before the tax issue became public, getting a friendly reception.
Sebelius admits errors, pays $7,000 in back taxes
By ERICA WERNER
Associated Press
March 31, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) - Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius recently corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes after finding "unintentional errors"—the latest tax troubles for an Obama administration nominee. The Kansas governor explained the changes to senators in a letter dated Tuesday that the administration released. She said they involved charitable contributions, the sale of a home and business expenses.
Sebelius said she filed the amended returns as soon as the errors were discovered by an accountant she hired to scrub her taxes in preparation for her confirmation hearings. She and her husband, Gary, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas, paid a total of $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest to amend returns from 2005-2007.
Several Obama administration nominees have run into tax troubles, notably the president's first nominee for HHS secretary, former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. He withdrew from consideration while apologizing for failing to pay $140,000 in taxes and interest.
Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., quickly issued a statement supporting Sebelius.
"Congress is going to need a strong partner at the Department of Health and Human Services to achieve comprehensive health reform this year, and we have that partner in Gov. Sebelius," Baucus said. "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Gov. Sebelius has the political experience, determination, and bipartisan work ethic to get the job done with Congress this year. She's the right person for the job."
There was no comment from the White House.
Sebelius is to appear Thursday before Baucus' committee, which will vote on sending her nomination to the full Senate. Sebelius testified Tuesday before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee before the tax issue became public, getting a friendly reception.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said through a spokeswoman that he is reserving judgment until the vetting process, including the nomination hearing, is completed.
In her letter to Baucus and Grassley, Sebelius wrote that the accountant discovered these errors:
- Charitable contributions over $250 are supposed to include an acknowledgment letter from the charity in order for a deduction to be taken. Out of 49 charitable contributions made, three letters couldn't be found.
- Sebelius and her husband took deductions for mortgage interest that they weren't entitled to. The couple sold their home in 2006 for less than what they owed on the mortgage. They continued to make payments on the mortgage, including interest. But since they no longer owned the home they weren't entitled to take deductions for the interest. The same thing happened with a home improvement loan. Sebelius said they "mistakenly believed" the payments were still deductible.
- Insufficient documentation was found for some business expense deductions.
An administration official said Sebelius filed the amended returns before documents formalizing her nomination were sent to the Finance Committee. Sebelius advised the committee of the mistakes, and senators requested an explanation, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
In a letter to Sebelius dated Tuesday, Baucus and Grassley wrote that they'd reviewed the three years of amended returns and "no additional items were identified that needed to be addressed."
Currency Exchange Explained...
An Asian guy was trying to exchange yen for dollars and asked the teller, "Why it change?"
Yestoday I get two hunat dollar fo yen and today only get a hunat eighty?"
The bank teller said: "Fluctuations."
The Asian guy says "Fluc you amelicans too"
Yestoday I get two hunat dollar fo yen and today only get a hunat eighty?"
The bank teller said: "Fluctuations."
The Asian guy says "Fluc you amelicans too"
The Great Oil Grab
This outrage is much more than a land grab, it is an OIL GRAB!
If these people are allowed to continue this liberal jihad, they will effectively shut down the domestic oil exploration industry. It is all part of an over-arching strategy to force America to alternative energy solutions, or what these morons refer to as "green" energy. They are all deluded in the mistaken belief that they can create a utopian world devoid of evil capitalism. There are two problems with their belief: 1) Capitalism created the industrialized world. If you shut down capitalism, you shut down the industrialized world. 2) There is nothing evil about capitalism. The evil resides in the soul of man, and it is far more evil to destroy modern civilization than it is to promote capitalism...
Lost In An Energy Wilderness
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
March 30, 2009
Energy Policy: The House approves a Senate-passed omnibus bill that puts 2 million more acres of energy-rich land off-limits. We need a government that leads us out of the energy wilderness and not into it.
Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed on a 285-148 vote the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (S.22), which confirms our theory that no good comes from legislation labeled "comprehensive" or "omnibus."
S.22 is a smorgasbord of 160 bills totaling more than 1,300 pages and, no, we're not sure how many who voted for it actually read it. A stimulus bill it is not, for it locks up an additional 2 million acres to the 107 million acres of federally owned wilderness areas. That total is more than the area of Montana and Wyoming combined.
Speaking of Wyoming, 1.1 million of these newly restricted acres are in that state. This bill, which also provides $1 billion for a water project designed to save 500 salmon in California, takes about 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of oil out of production in that state, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
The energy resources walled off by this bill would nearly match the annual production levels of our two natural gas production states — Texas and Alaska. As Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., points out: "We are not suffering from a lack of wilderness areas in the United States. According to the Census Bureau, we have 106 million acres of developed land and 107 million acres of (officially declared) wilderness land."
Earlier this year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 Utah oil and gas leases that had gone through seven years of studies, negotiations and land-use planning. They were rejected because temporary drilling operations might be "visible" from several national parks more than a mile away. We are not making this up.
Some of these parcels are in or near the Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that's been called the "Persia of the West."
This formation has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude. The Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory indicates 800 billion of these barrels are recoverable with current technology.
In comparison with Saudi Arabia's oil resources, America's recoverable oil shale resources are nearly three times as large, according to a 2008 report by the Utah Mining Association. As the report notes, the West's oil shale provides America with the "potential to be completely energy self-sufficient with no demands on external sources."
According to the BLM, 16% of the 607 million acres of land owned by the federal government is designated as wilderness in the form of 708 National Wilderness Areas located in the U.S. This bill adds over 80 new wilderness designations or additions to federal lands.
Paul Spitler of the Wilderness Society told CNSNews this is just dandy. "There are some landscapes that are simply more important for their scenic, natural, recreational and ecological values than they are for oil and gas development," he said.
We beg to differ. You can see the sun setting on America's energy and economic future over these landscapes.
Most of the locked-up lands are in Western states where there's enough oil shale to satisfy America's needs for the next 200 years. Modern technology can extract these vast resources from the earth with a minimal footprint.
Technology for shale-oil extraction is certainly further along than getting energy from switch grass or producing cellulosic ethanol. If we're going to stimulate anything, let's stimulate shale-oil production.
It took Moses 40 years to lead his people out of their wilderness to the Promised Land. The green lobby and its friends in Congress are leading the American people in the opposite direction.
If these people are allowed to continue this liberal jihad, they will effectively shut down the domestic oil exploration industry. It is all part of an over-arching strategy to force America to alternative energy solutions, or what these morons refer to as "green" energy. They are all deluded in the mistaken belief that they can create a utopian world devoid of evil capitalism. There are two problems with their belief: 1) Capitalism created the industrialized world. If you shut down capitalism, you shut down the industrialized world. 2) There is nothing evil about capitalism. The evil resides in the soul of man, and it is far more evil to destroy modern civilization than it is to promote capitalism...
Lost In An Energy Wilderness
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
March 30, 2009
Energy Policy: The House approves a Senate-passed omnibus bill that puts 2 million more acres of energy-rich land off-limits. We need a government that leads us out of the energy wilderness and not into it.
Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed on a 285-148 vote the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (S.22), which confirms our theory that no good comes from legislation labeled "comprehensive" or "omnibus."
S.22 is a smorgasbord of 160 bills totaling more than 1,300 pages and, no, we're not sure how many who voted for it actually read it. A stimulus bill it is not, for it locks up an additional 2 million acres to the 107 million acres of federally owned wilderness areas. That total is more than the area of Montana and Wyoming combined.
Speaking of Wyoming, 1.1 million of these newly restricted acres are in that state. This bill, which also provides $1 billion for a water project designed to save 500 salmon in California, takes about 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of oil out of production in that state, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
The energy resources walled off by this bill would nearly match the annual production levels of our two natural gas production states — Texas and Alaska. As Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., points out: "We are not suffering from a lack of wilderness areas in the United States. According to the Census Bureau, we have 106 million acres of developed land and 107 million acres of (officially declared) wilderness land."
Earlier this year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 Utah oil and gas leases that had gone through seven years of studies, negotiations and land-use planning. They were rejected because temporary drilling operations might be "visible" from several national parks more than a mile away. We are not making this up.
Some of these parcels are in or near the Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that's been called the "Persia of the West."
This formation has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude. The Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory indicates 800 billion of these barrels are recoverable with current technology.
In comparison with Saudi Arabia's oil resources, America's recoverable oil shale resources are nearly three times as large, according to a 2008 report by the Utah Mining Association. As the report notes, the West's oil shale provides America with the "potential to be completely energy self-sufficient with no demands on external sources."
According to the BLM, 16% of the 607 million acres of land owned by the federal government is designated as wilderness in the form of 708 National Wilderness Areas located in the U.S. This bill adds over 80 new wilderness designations or additions to federal lands.
Paul Spitler of the Wilderness Society told CNSNews this is just dandy. "There are some landscapes that are simply more important for their scenic, natural, recreational and ecological values than they are for oil and gas development," he said.
We beg to differ. You can see the sun setting on America's energy and economic future over these landscapes.
Most of the locked-up lands are in Western states where there's enough oil shale to satisfy America's needs for the next 200 years. Modern technology can extract these vast resources from the earth with a minimal footprint.
Technology for shale-oil extraction is certainly further along than getting energy from switch grass or producing cellulosic ethanol. If we're going to stimulate anything, let's stimulate shale-oil production.
It took Moses 40 years to lead his people out of their wilderness to the Promised Land. The green lobby and its friends in Congress are leading the American people in the opposite direction.
The Pay Czar!
Now Barney Fag (er..Frank) wants to tell every employee how much he or she can make...
Beyond AIG: A Bill to let Big Government Set Your Salary
By Byron York
The Examiner
March 31, 2009
It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.
But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government.
It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.
The purpose of the legislation is to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards," according to the bill's language. That includes regular pay, bonuses -- everything -- paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.
In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."
The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.)
The legislation is expected to come before the full House for a vote this week, and, just like the AIG bill, its scope and retroactivity trouble a number of Republicans. "It's just a bad reaction to what has been going on with AIG," Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey, a committee member, told me. Garrett is particularly concerned with the new powers that would be given to the Treasury Secretary, who just last week proposed giving the government extensive new regulatory authority. "This is a growing concern, that the powers of the Treasury in this area, along with what Geithner was looking for last week, are mind boggling," Garrett said.
Rep. Alan Grayson, the Florida Democrat who wrote the bill, told me its basic message is "you should not get rich off public money, and you should not get rich off of abject failure." Grayson expects the bill to pass the House, and as we talked, he framed the issue in a way to suggest that virtuous lawmakers will vote for it, while corrupt lawmakers will vote against it.
"This bill will show which Republicans are so much on the take from the financial services industry that they're willing to actually bless compensation that has no bearing on performance and is excessive and unreasonable," Grayson said. "We'll find out who are the people who understand that the public's money needs to be protected, and who are the people who simply want to suck up to their patrons on Wall Street."
After the AIG bonus tax bill was passed, some members of the House privately expressed regret for having supported it and were quietly relieved when the White House and Senate leadership sent it to an unceremonious death. But populist rage did not die with it, and now the House is preparing to do it all again.
Monday, March 30, 2009
We Need Real Debate On Global Warming
Talk about an insider's con game! A wink and a nod to the EPA from The White House and, Voila!, the President of the United States is "required" to limit greenhouse gas emissions. These con artists think they are sooo smart. When are our few remaining honest politicians going to rise up in righteous indignation and stop these people!?
By Cal Thomas
March 30, 2009
The Environmental Protection Agency has submitted a "finding" to the White House Office of Management and Budget that will force the Obama administration to decide whether to limit greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
If adopted, new laws and regulations will likely follow that have the potential to change our lifestyles and limit our freedoms. None of these laws and regulations will be preceded by debate. They will be imposed on us by fundamentalist politicians and scientists who have swallowed the Kool-Aid and declared global warming as fact; end of discussion.
Tom Brokaw hosted a Discovery Channel special called Global Warming: The New Challenge. While promoting the piece, Brokaw declared, "There is a growing consensus that global warming is real and getting worse."
Actually, there is a growing body of opinion that global warming is a fraud perpetrated by liberal politicians and their scientific acolytes who want more control over our lives.
Whenever politicians declare a crisis, or an emergency, watch out. Chances are they want to impose something before the public discovers the truth.
Any honest assessment of scientific opinion leads to the conclusion that there is significant disagreement on global warming within the scientific community among those with expertise in climatology and related fields. Yet many politicians want us to believe all of science is on board with man-made global warming and that we must act now to save the planet and ourselves from catastrophe.
You know something is up when prominent apostles of global warming, especially former Vice President and Nobel laureate Al Gore, refuse to debate or discuss the issue with any scientist who takes a contrary view. Some religious fundamentalists impose various codes of behavior and dress on their adherents and threaten expulsion (if not death) for those who fail to acquiesce to their dictates.
Is it not fundamentalist science to ignore any evidence that casts doubt on global warming? Truth is sometimes inconvenient, as Al Gore likes to say. But that cuts both ways. Truth can also be inconvenient when it shines light on propaganda. Not to allow for a full-fledged debate on global warming is censorship, a popular practice in totalitarian societies and many fundamentalist religions and cults.
By Cal Thomas
March 30, 2009
The Environmental Protection Agency has submitted a "finding" to the White House Office of Management and Budget that will force the Obama administration to decide whether to limit greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
If adopted, new laws and regulations will likely follow that have the potential to change our lifestyles and limit our freedoms. None of these laws and regulations will be preceded by debate. They will be imposed on us by fundamentalist politicians and scientists who have swallowed the Kool-Aid and declared global warming as fact; end of discussion.
Tom Brokaw hosted a Discovery Channel special called Global Warming: The New Challenge. While promoting the piece, Brokaw declared, "There is a growing consensus that global warming is real and getting worse."
Actually, there is a growing body of opinion that global warming is a fraud perpetrated by liberal politicians and their scientific acolytes who want more control over our lives.
Whenever politicians declare a crisis, or an emergency, watch out. Chances are they want to impose something before the public discovers the truth.
Any honest assessment of scientific opinion leads to the conclusion that there is significant disagreement on global warming within the scientific community among those with expertise in climatology and related fields. Yet many politicians want us to believe all of science is on board with man-made global warming and that we must act now to save the planet and ourselves from catastrophe.
You know something is up when prominent apostles of global warming, especially former Vice President and Nobel laureate Al Gore, refuse to debate or discuss the issue with any scientist who takes a contrary view. Some religious fundamentalists impose various codes of behavior and dress on their adherents and threaten expulsion (if not death) for those who fail to acquiesce to their dictates.
Is it not fundamentalist science to ignore any evidence that casts doubt on global warming? Truth is sometimes inconvenient, as Al Gore likes to say. But that cuts both ways. Truth can also be inconvenient when it shines light on propaganda. Not to allow for a full-fledged debate on global warming is censorship, a popular practice in totalitarian societies and many fundamentalist religions and cults.
The Truth About Solar Panels
Just prior to signing the infamous stimulus bill, President Barack Obama made a big deal about the solar panels atop the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. He and his ditzy vice president even did a photo-op atop the roof, gazing admiringly at the solar panels. They talked quixotically about this "exciting new green" energy and its potential for remaking the American economy.
Well, they seem to have ignored a few nagging details. Here's the whole story...
It turns out that the solar panels generate only 2%-12% of the energy needs of the museum, at a cost of $720,000!
So expensive, in fact, that the museum got them at no cost due to tax incentives paid for by - you guessed it - the unwitting customers of the local power company!
But it gets even better. Without any of the tax incentives, the payout on this particular solar system was 110 years, and the life expectancy of the system is 20-25 years! Only the government could be proud of something so ridiculous.
On a final, inspiring note, the company that your president promoted with his photo-op as a harbinger of the future has exactly four employees and exactly one customer: the museum.
And this is the so-called "green" energy that is going to save the American economy?
McCain Finds His Voice...Too Late
John McCain has finally become outraged enough to tell it like it is...but it's too late now. He will need to get virtually every Republican in the House and Senate on his team if he is to stop the Obama Jihad.Here is a link to McCain's speech to The Heritage Foundation...
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Beginning of the End
The story below should scare the hell out of you. America is standing at the precipice. If we don't stop this man, America, as we once knew her, is history. We must tell him, in a united voice, that the United States of America does not belong to him. IT BELONGS TO US!
Obama Forces Out GM CEO Wagoner
March 29, 2009
Newsmax.com
DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner will step down immediately at the request of the White House, administration officials said Sunday. The news comes as President Obama prepares to unveil additional restructuring efforts designed to save the domestic auto industry.
The officials asked not to be identified because details of the restructuring plan have not yet been made public. On Monday, Obama is to announce plans to restructure GM and Chrysler LLC in exchange for additional government loans. The companies have been living on $17.4 billion in government aid and have requested $21.6 billion more.
Wagoner, 56, joined the company in 1977, serving in several capacities in the U.S., Brazil and Europe. He has been chairman and chief executive since May 1, 2003.
Obama said Sunday that GM and Chrysler and all those with a stake in their survival need to take more hard steps to help the struggling automakers restructure for the future.
In an interview with CBS' "Face the Nation" broadcast Sunday, Obama said the companies must do more to receive additional financial aid from the government.
"They're not there yet," he said.
A person familiar with Obama's plans said last week they would go deeper than what the Bush administration demanded when it approved the initial loans last year.
Wagoner's departure indicates that more management changes may be part of the deal.
Wagoner has repeatedly said he felt it was better for the company if he led it through the crisis.
Wagoner, in an interview with The Associated Press in December, declined to speculate on suggestions from some members of Congress that GM's leadership team should step down as part of any rescue package.
"I'm doing what I do because it adds a lot of value to the company," Wagoner said in a Dec. 4 interview as GM sought federal aid from the Bush administration. "It's not clear to me that experience in this industry should be viewed as a negative but I'm going to do what's right for the company and I'll do it in consultation with the (GM) board (of directors)."
Who Is Barney Frank?
American Thinker
By Vasko Kohlmayer
"As Congress grapples with solutions for a faltering economy, Barney Frank sits at the center of power."
Thus wrote John Gallagher in The Advocate as our government officials desperately struggled to limit the fallout from the unfolding financial crisis.
Gallagher is right. As Chairman of the Financial Service Committee in the US House of Representatives, Barney Frank plays a crucial role in determining in what ways much of the bailout and stimulus money is spent. This is because the committee over which he presides oversees the housing and banking sectors, two industries that are at the center of the currenteconomic crisis.
But Frank's power and influence extend beyond his chairmanship of the important Financial Services Committee. Outspoken, smart and forceful, Frank has emerged as one of the heavyweights in the Democrat-led House and as such instrumental in shaping its course and agenda.
There are some who think that his behind-the-scenes influence exceeds even that of Nancy Pelosi. Whether or not this is so, there can be no doubt that Barney Frank is currently one of the most powerful politicians in the country. Given his present position of influence, taxpayers may want to learn more about the background of the man who directs how hundreds of billions ofdollars of their money is spent.
Barnett "Barney" Frank was first elected to Congress in 1981 at the age of forty-one from Massachusetts' 4th district. Six years later he made national news when he publicly declared his homosexuality. By that admission he became the first openly gay member of the House of Representatives. In 1991, Barney Frank received an official reprimand for reflecting"discredit upon the House."
The reprimand came as a result of hisrelationship with a man named Steve Gobi, a male prostitute whom Frank initially paid $80 for sex. Frank later took Gobi to live with him in his home, making him a personal aide. He paid him $20,000 in compensation (unreported to the IRS) and let him use his car. Subsequent investigation revealed that in the course of their relationship, Frank used hiscongressional office and stationary to fix Gobi's 33 parking fines.
Frank also used his congressional letterhead to write a reference letter to Gobi's probation officer -- Gobi was under court supervision as a convicted felon with a prison record -- in which he gave false information. Most damningly,the investigation found that Gobi ran a prostitution ring from Frank's home.
In his defense, Frank asserted he knew nothing of Gobi's illicit enterprise. The Democrat -controlled House voted 408-18 to reprimand Frank after aheated debate during which some Republicans demanded expulsion. They pointed out that the claim that Frank did not know of Gobi's criminal activities was incredible to say the least. Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe summed up their sentiments when he wrote: "Most pathetic of all was Frank's claim that he'd been 'victimized' -- that he was a just a 'good liberal' who was 'trying to help' Gobie, but got "suckered.'"
Frank's Democrat colleagues, however, insisted that this was precisely what happened. During the debate, his friend Thomas Foglietta (D-PA) said, "Barney Frank is accused of being stupid and, my friend, if being stupid were grounds for expulsion, there'd be very few of us left here."
Although the latter part of Foglietta's statement may well be true, the first part is decidedly not. Whatever else he may be, Barney Frank is certainly not stupid. A former Harvard instructor, Barney Frank twice won the title "brainiest", "funniest," and "most eloquent" member of the House in a survey of Capitol Hill staffers.
It truly strains the bounds of credulity that Frank, an accomplished congressman and a former Ivy League lecturer, could be deceived under his own roof by a street hustler. After Gobi, Barney Frank became involved in another questionable -- and possibly criminally tainted -- relationship with a man called Herb Moses.
Moses, whom Frank called his "spouse," was a high-level executive at Fannie Mae from 1991 until 1998. Dubbed a "mortgage guru" by the National Mortgage News, Moses boasted that he helped develop "many of Fannie Mae's affordable housing and home improvement lending programs."
It was, of course, these kinds of programs that ultimately led to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market that wiped out trillions of dollars from the economy and produced the economic turmoil that we now face. Even though there were those warning against the precarious nature of the enterprise, Barney Frank --whose committee oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- kept resisting reforms and besmirching those voicing concerns.
When the Bush administration proposed that oversight of Fannie and Freddie be transferred to the Treasury Department, Frank strongly opposed the plan, claiming: "These two entities...are not facing any kind of financial crisis...The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Frank continued to claim almost until the day of the collapse that the two mortgage giants were financially sound. If we lived in a sane world, Barney Frank would be compelled to testify about his culpability in the current crisis and what role his romantic involvement with Herb Moses -- as well as the campaign contributions he received from Fannie and Freddie -- played in his shilling for these two moribund institutions.
Commenting on his shenanigans, Jeff Jacoby observed that under normal circumstances Frank's questionable relationships could have well landed him in prison. Voters in his very liberal congressional district, however, have awarded him with a string of easy re-elections.
In his public life Barney Frank is known as a civil rights hawk. A feisty progressive activist, Frank has poured much of his energies into the area of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues. One of his great achievements was the founding of the National Stonewall Democrats, a gay activist arm of the Democrat Party that brought under one umbrella previously unaffiliated LGBT clubs across America.
Describing itself as "a grassroots force for social change," the organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and currently oversees more than 90 local chapters. The organization's website states that its activities focus primarily on "mobilizing the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender] community to get out to vote on Election Day for fair-minded Democrats; and standing up when Republicans attack our families..."
As could be expected from the founder of the National Stonewall Democrats, Barney Frank voted 'no' on constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. During the debate he praised the progressive leaning of his own state's body politic: "I believe the political community of Massachusetts is prepared to say, if two men love each other and are prepared to be committed to each other legally as well as emotionally, that is rather a good thing and we will say it's okay."
In 1999 Frank voted 'no' on a bill which would ban gay adoptions in Washington, D.C. Needless to say, Frank's voting record has earned him a 97% lifetime rating from the ACLU.
Throughout his career Frank has pushed for the decriminalization of medical marijuana. He recently extended the scope of his efforts to the public at large. Last year, he introduced a bill called the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008, which would have removed federal penalties for the possession of up to 100 grams (3.5 oz) of the drug.
Although Frank often talks about the "silliness" of jailing people for possessing small quantities of the substance, 100 grams is actually a large amount, which, by most accounts, makes for more than 200 doses. According to a recent analysis by High Times magazine, 100 grams of most marijuana strands goes for more than $1000 at street prices.
Defending his bill, Frank said that it was "time for the politicians to catch up with the public on this." Frank's words almost make it look like it is a common thing for Americans to walk around with $1000 worth of cannabis in their pockets.
In 2006, Frank voted against the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act, a bill aimed at restricting protests and demonstrations at soldiers' funerals. The measure passed unanimously in the Senate with Frank being one of only three legislators in the House who voted against the Act. In 2003 Barney Frank voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a brutal procedure during which a baby -- often viable -- is killed in the birth canal by having its skull pierced and its brain sucked out.
In addition, Frank also voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and against the criminalization of taking of minors across state lines by non-family members to circumvent abortion laws. Not surprisingly, Frank'svoting record earned him a 100% rating from NARAL.
In the area of national defense, Barney Frank has for years advocated a 25 percent reduction in the overall military budget of the United States. Earlier this month, he wrote in a piece that ran in the Nation, "If we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy."
He then challenged those who call for fiscal responsibility to first look "where our spending has been the most irresponsible and has produced the least good for the dollars expended - our military budget."
All those who care about the future of this country should be greatly concerned that Barney Frank, a leftist radical who publicly flaunts his homosexuality, is presently one of the most powerful politicians in America. His recent actions and statements make it amply clear that he will seek to use his present influence to implement as much of his extreme agenda as he possibly can. Given his party's hold on the White House and Congress his efforts may meet with much success.
By Vasko Kohlmayer
"As Congress grapples with solutions for a faltering economy, Barney Frank sits at the center of power."
Thus wrote John Gallagher in The Advocate as our government officials desperately struggled to limit the fallout from the unfolding financial crisis.
Gallagher is right. As Chairman of the Financial Service Committee in the US House of Representatives, Barney Frank plays a crucial role in determining in what ways much of the bailout and stimulus money is spent. This is because the committee over which he presides oversees the housing and banking sectors, two industries that are at the center of the currenteconomic crisis.
But Frank's power and influence extend beyond his chairmanship of the important Financial Services Committee. Outspoken, smart and forceful, Frank has emerged as one of the heavyweights in the Democrat-led House and as such instrumental in shaping its course and agenda.
There are some who think that his behind-the-scenes influence exceeds even that of Nancy Pelosi. Whether or not this is so, there can be no doubt that Barney Frank is currently one of the most powerful politicians in the country. Given his present position of influence, taxpayers may want to learn more about the background of the man who directs how hundreds of billions ofdollars of their money is spent.
Barnett "Barney" Frank was first elected to Congress in 1981 at the age of forty-one from Massachusetts' 4th district. Six years later he made national news when he publicly declared his homosexuality. By that admission he became the first openly gay member of the House of Representatives. In 1991, Barney Frank received an official reprimand for reflecting"discredit upon the House."
The reprimand came as a result of hisrelationship with a man named Steve Gobi, a male prostitute whom Frank initially paid $80 for sex. Frank later took Gobi to live with him in his home, making him a personal aide. He paid him $20,000 in compensation (unreported to the IRS) and let him use his car. Subsequent investigation revealed that in the course of their relationship, Frank used hiscongressional office and stationary to fix Gobi's 33 parking fines.
Frank also used his congressional letterhead to write a reference letter to Gobi's probation officer -- Gobi was under court supervision as a convicted felon with a prison record -- in which he gave false information. Most damningly,the investigation found that Gobi ran a prostitution ring from Frank's home.
In his defense, Frank asserted he knew nothing of Gobi's illicit enterprise. The Democrat -controlled House voted 408-18 to reprimand Frank after aheated debate during which some Republicans demanded expulsion. They pointed out that the claim that Frank did not know of Gobi's criminal activities was incredible to say the least. Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe summed up their sentiments when he wrote: "Most pathetic of all was Frank's claim that he'd been 'victimized' -- that he was a just a 'good liberal' who was 'trying to help' Gobie, but got "suckered.'"
Frank's Democrat colleagues, however, insisted that this was precisely what happened. During the debate, his friend Thomas Foglietta (D-PA) said, "Barney Frank is accused of being stupid and, my friend, if being stupid were grounds for expulsion, there'd be very few of us left here."
Although the latter part of Foglietta's statement may well be true, the first part is decidedly not. Whatever else he may be, Barney Frank is certainly not stupid. A former Harvard instructor, Barney Frank twice won the title "brainiest", "funniest," and "most eloquent" member of the House in a survey of Capitol Hill staffers.
It truly strains the bounds of credulity that Frank, an accomplished congressman and a former Ivy League lecturer, could be deceived under his own roof by a street hustler. After Gobi, Barney Frank became involved in another questionable -- and possibly criminally tainted -- relationship with a man called Herb Moses.
Moses, whom Frank called his "spouse," was a high-level executive at Fannie Mae from 1991 until 1998. Dubbed a "mortgage guru" by the National Mortgage News, Moses boasted that he helped develop "many of Fannie Mae's affordable housing and home improvement lending programs."
It was, of course, these kinds of programs that ultimately led to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market that wiped out trillions of dollars from the economy and produced the economic turmoil that we now face. Even though there were those warning against the precarious nature of the enterprise, Barney Frank --whose committee oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- kept resisting reforms and besmirching those voicing concerns.
When the Bush administration proposed that oversight of Fannie and Freddie be transferred to the Treasury Department, Frank strongly opposed the plan, claiming: "These two entities...are not facing any kind of financial crisis...The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Frank continued to claim almost until the day of the collapse that the two mortgage giants were financially sound. If we lived in a sane world, Barney Frank would be compelled to testify about his culpability in the current crisis and what role his romantic involvement with Herb Moses -- as well as the campaign contributions he received from Fannie and Freddie -- played in his shilling for these two moribund institutions.
Commenting on his shenanigans, Jeff Jacoby observed that under normal circumstances Frank's questionable relationships could have well landed him in prison. Voters in his very liberal congressional district, however, have awarded him with a string of easy re-elections.
In his public life Barney Frank is known as a civil rights hawk. A feisty progressive activist, Frank has poured much of his energies into the area of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues. One of his great achievements was the founding of the National Stonewall Democrats, a gay activist arm of the Democrat Party that brought under one umbrella previously unaffiliated LGBT clubs across America.
Describing itself as "a grassroots force for social change," the organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and currently oversees more than 90 local chapters. The organization's website states that its activities focus primarily on "mobilizing the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender] community to get out to vote on Election Day for fair-minded Democrats; and standing up when Republicans attack our families..."
As could be expected from the founder of the National Stonewall Democrats, Barney Frank voted 'no' on constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. During the debate he praised the progressive leaning of his own state's body politic: "I believe the political community of Massachusetts is prepared to say, if two men love each other and are prepared to be committed to each other legally as well as emotionally, that is rather a good thing and we will say it's okay."
In 1999 Frank voted 'no' on a bill which would ban gay adoptions in Washington, D.C. Needless to say, Frank's voting record has earned him a 97% lifetime rating from the ACLU.
Throughout his career Frank has pushed for the decriminalization of medical marijuana. He recently extended the scope of his efforts to the public at large. Last year, he introduced a bill called the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008, which would have removed federal penalties for the possession of up to 100 grams (3.5 oz) of the drug.
Although Frank often talks about the "silliness" of jailing people for possessing small quantities of the substance, 100 grams is actually a large amount, which, by most accounts, makes for more than 200 doses. According to a recent analysis by High Times magazine, 100 grams of most marijuana strands goes for more than $1000 at street prices.
Defending his bill, Frank said that it was "time for the politicians to catch up with the public on this." Frank's words almost make it look like it is a common thing for Americans to walk around with $1000 worth of cannabis in their pockets.
In 2006, Frank voted against the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act, a bill aimed at restricting protests and demonstrations at soldiers' funerals. The measure passed unanimously in the Senate with Frank being one of only three legislators in the House who voted against the Act. In 2003 Barney Frank voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a brutal procedure during which a baby -- often viable -- is killed in the birth canal by having its skull pierced and its brain sucked out.
In addition, Frank also voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and against the criminalization of taking of minors across state lines by non-family members to circumvent abortion laws. Not surprisingly, Frank'svoting record earned him a 100% rating from NARAL.
In the area of national defense, Barney Frank has for years advocated a 25 percent reduction in the overall military budget of the United States. Earlier this month, he wrote in a piece that ran in the Nation, "If we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy."
He then challenged those who call for fiscal responsibility to first look "where our spending has been the most irresponsible and has produced the least good for the dollars expended - our military budget."
All those who care about the future of this country should be greatly concerned that Barney Frank, a leftist radical who publicly flaunts his homosexuality, is presently one of the most powerful politicians in America. His recent actions and statements make it amply clear that he will seek to use his present influence to implement as much of his extreme agenda as he possibly can. Given his party's hold on the White House and Congress his efforts may meet with much success.
How to Catch Wild Pigs
Do you know how to catch wild pigs?
You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and tossing some corn on the ground. The pigs find it, eat it, and return everyday to eat the free corn. Once they become comfortable with returning each day, you put up a fence one side of the feeding area.
Once they are comfortable with the fence, you put up another side of the fence. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate on that last side.
The pigs, who are used to the free corn, walk right through the gate to eat. All that is left to do is to close the gate and you have caught the entire herd. The wild pigs have lost their freedom. They might run around inside the fence for a while, but they are now prisoners.
Soon they return to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they've forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves. They accept their captivity.
This is exactly what is happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism by spreading the "free corn" in the form of government entitlement programs such as welfare, food stamps, supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), medicine, drugs, etc., while we lose our freedoms one small fence at a time.
Remember: there is no such thing as a free lunch. A politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and tossing some corn on the ground. The pigs find it, eat it, and return everyday to eat the free corn. Once they become comfortable with returning each day, you put up a fence one side of the feeding area.
Once they are comfortable with the fence, you put up another side of the fence. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate on that last side.
The pigs, who are used to the free corn, walk right through the gate to eat. All that is left to do is to close the gate and you have caught the entire herd. The wild pigs have lost their freedom. They might run around inside the fence for a while, but they are now prisoners.
Soon they return to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they've forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves. They accept their captivity.
This is exactly what is happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism by spreading the "free corn" in the form of government entitlement programs such as welfare, food stamps, supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), medicine, drugs, etc., while we lose our freedoms one small fence at a time.
Remember: there is no such thing as a free lunch. A politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Obama's Strategy Behind Eliminating Deduction for Charitable Giving
Dick Morris eloquently describes the cynicism behind one of Obama's core strategies. If he eliminates the tax deductibility of charitable contributions it positions the government perfectly as the replacement for such charity...
OBAMA SOAKS THE RICH: CHURCHES, DAY CARE, HOMELESS SHELTERS
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
March 28, 2009
President Obama's glib assertion that his reduction in tax deductions will not reduce donations is absurd. His pathetic defense at his press conference - that he would still give a $100 dollar check to charity even if he only got $11 less of tax deduction from it was both disingenuous and beside the point.
And his comment that his reduced deduction would only impact one or two percent of the nation misses the point that it is these folks who are doing almost half of the donating.
In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, four million taxpayers had adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more. They comprised 3% of the tax returns, made 31% of the income, but donated 44% of all charitable contributions. Together, they provided charity with $81 billion in that year.
Obama's plan will cost them $10 billion in extra taxes on the income they allocated to charitable donations. How can the president be so glibly certain that they will not curtail their charitable contributions by a like amount or even more?Imagine all the harm Obama's program will cause. Churches will be hit most hard. They account for the largest share of charitable donations, but universities, disease research, hospitals, soup kitchens, and cultural institutions will also be hard hit. So will international relief efforts that funnel aid abroad through churches or directly.
It is totally dishonest for Obama to pretend that his curtailment of these deductions won't hurt the poor. It will most directly impact them since most of the charities Obama is hurting focus on helping the impoverished.This proposal is not about saving money. It is about controlling it. By, in effect, transferring at least $11 billion a year from private philanthropy to government spending, Obama empowers the public sector at the expense of the voluntary one.
President Obama's recommended reduction in the tax deduction for charitable giving reflects his fundamental belief that only the government can or should help the poor. He wants to keep the impoverished directly dependent on the government - and the Democratic Party - for their daily bread.
The voluntary sector has always been the backbone of compassion in the United States. Our charitable donations dwarf those of any other country. And our system of tax deductions for giving permits us to decide what charities are worthy of our generosity - a decision Obama will transfer to the politicians under his program.
OBAMA SOAKS THE RICH: CHURCHES, DAY CARE, HOMELESS SHELTERS
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
March 28, 2009
President Obama's glib assertion that his reduction in tax deductions will not reduce donations is absurd. His pathetic defense at his press conference - that he would still give a $100 dollar check to charity even if he only got $11 less of tax deduction from it was both disingenuous and beside the point.
And his comment that his reduced deduction would only impact one or two percent of the nation misses the point that it is these folks who are doing almost half of the donating.
In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, four million taxpayers had adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more. They comprised 3% of the tax returns, made 31% of the income, but donated 44% of all charitable contributions. Together, they provided charity with $81 billion in that year.
Obama's plan will cost them $10 billion in extra taxes on the income they allocated to charitable donations. How can the president be so glibly certain that they will not curtail their charitable contributions by a like amount or even more?Imagine all the harm Obama's program will cause. Churches will be hit most hard. They account for the largest share of charitable donations, but universities, disease research, hospitals, soup kitchens, and cultural institutions will also be hard hit. So will international relief efforts that funnel aid abroad through churches or directly.
It is totally dishonest for Obama to pretend that his curtailment of these deductions won't hurt the poor. It will most directly impact them since most of the charities Obama is hurting focus on helping the impoverished.This proposal is not about saving money. It is about controlling it. By, in effect, transferring at least $11 billion a year from private philanthropy to government spending, Obama empowers the public sector at the expense of the voluntary one.
President Obama's recommended reduction in the tax deduction for charitable giving reflects his fundamental belief that only the government can or should help the poor. He wants to keep the impoverished directly dependent on the government - and the Democratic Party - for their daily bread.
The voluntary sector has always been the backbone of compassion in the United States. Our charitable donations dwarf those of any other country. And our system of tax deductions for giving permits us to decide what charities are worthy of our generosity - a decision Obama will transfer to the politicians under his program.
The True History of Global Warming
The following story by John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel, tracks the history of the global warming scam from its very beginning. Part of that history includes this very interesting excerpt...
"Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government."
The Amazing Story Behind Tho Global Warming Scam
By John Coleman
January 28, 2009
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.
How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?
The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle’s mind was most of the time.
Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels.
These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.
Now let me take you back to the 1950s when this was going on. Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. Cars and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted this challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.
But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.
The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the inc reases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about .41 hundredths of one percent.
Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.
Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.
Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government. But, he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis. So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was not a pure climate study scientific organization, as we have been lead to believe. It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Over the last 25 years they have been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
At the same time, that Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global warming, Roger Revelle. He had been very politically active in the late 1950’s as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla. He won that major war, but lost an all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the first Chancellor of the new campus.
He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a Center for Population Studies. It was there that Revelle inspired one of his students to become a major global warming activist. This student would say later, "It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen undergraduates. Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but fresh out of the lab, with profound implic ations for our future!" The student described him as "a wonderful, visionary professor" who was "one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming," That student was Al Gore. He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the Balance, published in 1992.
So there it is, Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming. His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to his books, his movie, his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from the carbon credits business.
What happened next is amazing. The global warming frenzy was becoming the cause celeb of the media. After all the media is mostly liberal, loves Al Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us "the sky is falling, the sky is falling". The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.
But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at 65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts. In 1988 he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, "My own personal belief=2 0is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways." He added, "…we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer."
And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge negative impact on the economy and jobs and our standard of living. I have discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer. He assures me that Revelle was considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not a problem.
Did Roger Revelle attend the Summer enclave at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California in the Summer of 1990 while working on that article? Did he deliver a lakeside speech there to the assembled movers and shakers from Washington and Wall Street in which he apologized for sending the UN IPCC and Al Gore onto this wild goose chase about global warming? Did he say that the key scientific conjecture of his lifetime had turned out wrong? The answer to those questions is, "I think so, but I do not know it for certain". I have not managed to get it confirmed as of this moment. It’s a little like Las Vegas; what is said at the Bohemian Grove stays at the Bohemian Grove. There are no transcripts or recordings and people who attend are encouraged not to talk. Yet, the topic is so important, that some people have shared with me on an informal basis.
Roger Revelle died of a heart attack three months after the Cosmos story was printed. Oh, how I wish he were still alive today. He might be able to stop this scientific silliness and end the global warming scam.
Al Gore has dismissed Roger Revelle’s Mea culpa as the actions of senile old man. And, the next year, while running for Vice President, he said the science behind global warming is settled and there will be no more debate, From 1992 until today, he and his cohorts have refused to debate global warming and when ask about we skeptics they simply insult us and call us names.
So today we have the acceptance of carbon dioxide as the culprit of global warming. It is concluded that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a dastardly carbon footprint which we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists to offset. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our climate. The new President and the US congress are on board. Many state governments are moving on the same course.
We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is a long way from over.
And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.
Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.
John Coleman 1-29-09
"Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government."
The Amazing Story Behind Tho Global Warming Scam
By John Coleman
January 28, 2009
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.
How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?
The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle’s mind was most of the time.
Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels.
These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.
Now let me take you back to the 1950s when this was going on. Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. Cars and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted this challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.
But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.
The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the inc reases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about .41 hundredths of one percent.
Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.
Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.
Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government. But, he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis. So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was not a pure climate study scientific organization, as we have been lead to believe. It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Over the last 25 years they have been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
At the same time, that Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global warming, Roger Revelle. He had been very politically active in the late 1950’s as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla. He won that major war, but lost an all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the first Chancellor of the new campus.
He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a Center for Population Studies. It was there that Revelle inspired one of his students to become a major global warming activist. This student would say later, "It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen undergraduates. Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but fresh out of the lab, with profound implic ations for our future!" The student described him as "a wonderful, visionary professor" who was "one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming," That student was Al Gore. He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the Balance, published in 1992.
So there it is, Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming. His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to his books, his movie, his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from the carbon credits business.
What happened next is amazing. The global warming frenzy was becoming the cause celeb of the media. After all the media is mostly liberal, loves Al Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us "the sky is falling, the sky is falling". The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.
But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at 65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts. In 1988 he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, "My own personal belief=2 0is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways." He added, "…we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer."
And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge negative impact on the economy and jobs and our standard of living. I have discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer. He assures me that Revelle was considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not a problem.
Did Roger Revelle attend the Summer enclave at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California in the Summer of 1990 while working on that article? Did he deliver a lakeside speech there to the assembled movers and shakers from Washington and Wall Street in which he apologized for sending the UN IPCC and Al Gore onto this wild goose chase about global warming? Did he say that the key scientific conjecture of his lifetime had turned out wrong? The answer to those questions is, "I think so, but I do not know it for certain". I have not managed to get it confirmed as of this moment. It’s a little like Las Vegas; what is said at the Bohemian Grove stays at the Bohemian Grove. There are no transcripts or recordings and people who attend are encouraged not to talk. Yet, the topic is so important, that some people have shared with me on an informal basis.
Roger Revelle died of a heart attack three months after the Cosmos story was printed. Oh, how I wish he were still alive today. He might be able to stop this scientific silliness and end the global warming scam.
Al Gore has dismissed Roger Revelle’s Mea culpa as the actions of senile old man. And, the next year, while running for Vice President, he said the science behind global warming is settled and there will be no more debate, From 1992 until today, he and his cohorts have refused to debate global warming and when ask about we skeptics they simply insult us and call us names.
So today we have the acceptance of carbon dioxide as the culprit of global warming. It is concluded that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a dastardly carbon footprint which we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists to offset. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our climate. The new President and the US congress are on board. Many state governments are moving on the same course.
We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is a long way from over.
And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.
Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.
John Coleman 1-29-09
Sen. Judd Gregg on Obama's Fiscal Plans
If I triple my household budget over the next ten years, I will either need to borrow the money or steal it from someone in order to pay for my increased spending. The U.S. government is going to do both by massive borrowing from foreign countries like China and by stealing from you and me in the form of massive tax increases...
"In the next five years, President Obama's budget will double the national debt. In the next 10 years, it will triple the national debt," said Gregg, R-N.H.
"His budget assumes the deficit will average $1 trillion every year for the next 10 years and will add well over $9 trillion in new debts to our children's backs," said Gregg, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. "He also is proposing the largest tax increase in history, much of it aimed at taxing small business people who have been, over the years, the best job creators in our economy."
Gregg said Obama's proposals "represent an extraordinary move of our government to the left."
He acknowledged that Obama "is very forthright in stating that he believes that by greatly expanding the spending, the taxing and the borrowing of our government, this will lead us to prosperity."
"In the next five years, President Obama's budget will double the national debt. In the next 10 years, it will triple the national debt," said Gregg, R-N.H.
"His budget assumes the deficit will average $1 trillion every year for the next 10 years and will add well over $9 trillion in new debts to our children's backs," said Gregg, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. "He also is proposing the largest tax increase in history, much of it aimed at taxing small business people who have been, over the years, the best job creators in our economy."
Gregg said Obama's proposals "represent an extraordinary move of our government to the left."
He acknowledged that Obama "is very forthright in stating that he believes that by greatly expanding the spending, the taxing and the borrowing of our government, this will lead us to prosperity."
Argentina's Failed Experiment with Socialism
The following news article is a harbinger of things to come...although I disagree with the author's description of Michelle Obama as "glamorous". If she's glamorous, I'm Robert Redford...
Jeffrey Kuhner
Washington Times
The disastrous path on which America is currently embarked was tried in another country. A fact not well known is that Argentina, prior to World War II, was an economic powerhouse. Beginning in the 1880s and continuing through the 1920s and 1930s, it was regarded as one of the most prosperous and advanced nations in the world. Then Juan Peron and his wife, Eva, took control in the 1940s until a coup in 1955 ousted them from power.
Argentina had a strong industrial base, thriving agricultural exports, huge cattle ranches, and a broad and expanding middle class. Like America, it served as a magnet for immigrants from all over the world, especially Italians. Within 15 years under the Perons, Argentina, however, went from being one of the richest to one of the poorest countries. To date, it has never fully recovered.
Upon coming to office, Peron, along with his popular beautiful wife, Eva, created a state characterized by lavish social spending, elaborate welfare programs, protectionism, confiscatory taxation, and runaway deficits. Juan Peron used class warfare rhetoric. He attacked big business, the banks, the private corporations, and the propertied class. He gave the labor unions power and made them pivotal allies of his regime. Then Peron expanded the bloated government bureaucracy to intervene in every aspect of business and life, which led to internal corruption.
Peron's central socialist economic planning destroyed industrial productivity and growth. The world's investment capital fled. Taxes, inflation, unemployment, and interest rates soared and the middle class was wiped out. Finally, an independent judiciary and media ceased to exist. Eva's cult of supporters fostered a climate of violence and political enemies of the regime were exterminated. Argentina degenerated into the typical debt-ridden Latin American country that it still is today.
The failure of Argentina under Peron should serve as a warning to us. Socialism and a sky-rocketing debt can permanently impoverish even the wealthiest of nations and America is not immune from the laws of economics.
Obama is taking the first dangerous steps toward an American version of Peronism. His followers see him as a political messiah and a revolutionary change agent. He and the Democrats are plundering the country, using it as a vehicle to reward supporters and punish foes.
They plan to confiscate wealth by taxing the rich and successful business class. Obama's plan to do away with secret ballets will strengthen the labor unions. His wife, Michelle, is the Eva Peron of our time, a glamorous, chic, socialist fashion trend-setter who is beloved by the media.
Jeffrey Kuhner
Washington Times
The disastrous path on which America is currently embarked was tried in another country. A fact not well known is that Argentina, prior to World War II, was an economic powerhouse. Beginning in the 1880s and continuing through the 1920s and 1930s, it was regarded as one of the most prosperous and advanced nations in the world. Then Juan Peron and his wife, Eva, took control in the 1940s until a coup in 1955 ousted them from power.
Argentina had a strong industrial base, thriving agricultural exports, huge cattle ranches, and a broad and expanding middle class. Like America, it served as a magnet for immigrants from all over the world, especially Italians. Within 15 years under the Perons, Argentina, however, went from being one of the richest to one of the poorest countries. To date, it has never fully recovered.
Upon coming to office, Peron, along with his popular beautiful wife, Eva, created a state characterized by lavish social spending, elaborate welfare programs, protectionism, confiscatory taxation, and runaway deficits. Juan Peron used class warfare rhetoric. He attacked big business, the banks, the private corporations, and the propertied class. He gave the labor unions power and made them pivotal allies of his regime. Then Peron expanded the bloated government bureaucracy to intervene in every aspect of business and life, which led to internal corruption.
Peron's central socialist economic planning destroyed industrial productivity and growth. The world's investment capital fled. Taxes, inflation, unemployment, and interest rates soared and the middle class was wiped out. Finally, an independent judiciary and media ceased to exist. Eva's cult of supporters fostered a climate of violence and political enemies of the regime were exterminated. Argentina degenerated into the typical debt-ridden Latin American country that it still is today.
The failure of Argentina under Peron should serve as a warning to us. Socialism and a sky-rocketing debt can permanently impoverish even the wealthiest of nations and America is not immune from the laws of economics.
Obama is taking the first dangerous steps toward an American version of Peronism. His followers see him as a political messiah and a revolutionary change agent. He and the Democrats are plundering the country, using it as a vehicle to reward supporters and punish foes.
They plan to confiscate wealth by taxing the rich and successful business class. Obama's plan to do away with secret ballets will strengthen the labor unions. His wife, Michelle, is the Eva Peron of our time, a glamorous, chic, socialist fashion trend-setter who is beloved by the media.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Great Video by Dick Morris About Obama's Agenda
Dick Morris has a very interesting theory about Obama. He says that everyone has it backwards...that most pundits are wondering how he can be successful with his profligate spending and with his equally puzzling bank bailout strategy. Click this link to hear Dick's theory about Obama's agenda...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o__BTaIyTps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o__BTaIyTps
Released Guantanamo Prisoners to Receive Welfare
Dennis Blair is Obama's "Director of National Intelligence". Based on this story, that's the oxymoron of the year!
March 26, 2009
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - During his news conference, Blair also said the Obama administration is still wrestling with what to do with the remaining 240 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which the president has ordered closed.
Some of the detainees, deemed non-threatening, may be released into the United States as free men, Blair confirmed.
That would happen when they can't be returned to their home countries, because the governments either won't take them or the U.S. fears they will be abused or tortured. That is the case with 17 Uighers (WEE'-gurz), Chinese Muslim separatists who were cleared for release from the jail long ago. The U.S. can't find a country willing to take them, and it will not turn them over to China.
Blair said the former prisoners would have get some sort of assistance to start their new lives in the United States.
"We can't put them out on the street," he said.
Blair said the U.S. government is building dossiers on each of the prisoners at Guantanamo and is still developing the process that will determine what happens to them. Some may face criminal trials in the U.S. civilian courts and be imprisoned in U.S. jails. Others will be remanded to their home governments for continued jailing or potential rehabilitation.
The Pentagon claims more than 60 former Guantanamo inmates have been released by their home governments and are believed to be engaged in militant activities. It has not released a list of those former prisoners. Two of the top al-Qaida leaders in Yemen are former inmates, according to both al-Qaida and U.S. intelligence officials. And the Taliban's top operations officer in southern Afghanistan was released from Guantanamo in 2007, according to U.S. intelligence and military officials.
Out of Touch? I Don't Think So...
Obama has an agenda. He believes in government control of all aspects of our lives. If you pay close attention, you will see that his initiatives do one of two things: they either increase the role of government through massive government spending (he calls it "investment"), or they increase crippling regulation of capitalist enterprises. The ultimate goal is government control, through increased government intervention. He believes that "the people" are the rightful owners of everything in America, and he has anointed himself and his governmental apparatus "The People's Representative"...
NewsMax.com
March 27, 2009
By Ronald Kessler
Obama Shows He Is Out of Touch With Americans
President Barack Obama’s press conference this week demonstrated how out of touch he is with most Americans.
As a result of the financial turmoil and plunging stock market, most Americans have learned how pernicious debt can be and how important it is to cut costs and save.
Not Barack Obama.
At his press conference, the president defended adding another $9.3 trillion to the national debt, doubling the amount in six years and nearly tripling the debt in 10 years, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office. As Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., has said, “The practical implications of this is bankruptcy for the United States.”
Most Americans abhor making excuses and pointing the finger of blame at others.
Not Barack Obama.
At the press conference, Chip Reid of CBS referred to Obama’s statement during the campaign that he wasn’t running for president to pass on problems to the next generation. Citing the $9.3 trillion increase in debt proposed by Obama over the next 10 years, Reid said, “Isn’t that kind of debt exactly what you were talking about when you said ‘passing on our problems to the next generation’?”
Obama began by saying, as he often does, that he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from the Republicans. When Ed Henry of CNN asked whether he worries about passing an even bigger fiscal mess on to his daughters, he again referred to what he inherited.
Yet when Obama took office, the deficit was $569 billion. He wants to add another $1.276 trillion to the deficit this year alone. Moreover, the deficit Obama inherited was a result of budgets passed by a Congress that was controlled during the last two years of the Bush administration by Democrats.
Most Americans have learned that this is a time to sit tight and not plan any vast new spending.
Not Barack Obama.
He spoke of plans to pour massive new sums into healthcare, education, and environmental programs. Yet Obama’s plans are vague, and the savings Obama projects are largely illusory. Obama has claimed that computerizing medical records would save $80 billion a year. But that is based on a Rand study financed in part by companies that stand to gain by obtaining contracts to deploy such a system.
The Rand study based its projections on the idea that a computerized system would point doctors to ways to deliver higher-quality care, thus diminishing the burden on the healthcare system. But a study published in Circulation, a top cardiology journal, and another study by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that computerized systems make no difference in quality of healthcare.
Most Americans recognize that the 100 percent tax deduction currently permitted for charitable donations is a chief reason people give such gifts.
Not Barack Obama.
He suggested that capping deductions for Americans in the highest tax bracket will not affect giving. “Now, if it's really a charitable contribution, I'm assuming that that shouldn't be the determining factor as to whether you're giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street,” he said.
Obama is so out of touch with Americans that he seems to think he can get away with claiming, as he did in his press conference, that his budget moves America “from an era of borrow and spend” to “save and invest.”
Certainly Obama’s comment during the campaign about “bitter” small-town voters who “cling” to their faith, along with their guns and their “antipathy to people who aren’t like them,” suggests disdain for a large segment of Americans.
“You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time,” Abraham Lincoln said.
Obama’s sinking poll numbers suggest Americans are catching on.
NewsMax.com
March 27, 2009
By Ronald Kessler
Obama Shows He Is Out of Touch With Americans
President Barack Obama’s press conference this week demonstrated how out of touch he is with most Americans.
As a result of the financial turmoil and plunging stock market, most Americans have learned how pernicious debt can be and how important it is to cut costs and save.
Not Barack Obama.
At his press conference, the president defended adding another $9.3 trillion to the national debt, doubling the amount in six years and nearly tripling the debt in 10 years, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office. As Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., has said, “The practical implications of this is bankruptcy for the United States.”
Most Americans abhor making excuses and pointing the finger of blame at others.
Not Barack Obama.
At the press conference, Chip Reid of CBS referred to Obama’s statement during the campaign that he wasn’t running for president to pass on problems to the next generation. Citing the $9.3 trillion increase in debt proposed by Obama over the next 10 years, Reid said, “Isn’t that kind of debt exactly what you were talking about when you said ‘passing on our problems to the next generation’?”
Obama began by saying, as he often does, that he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from the Republicans. When Ed Henry of CNN asked whether he worries about passing an even bigger fiscal mess on to his daughters, he again referred to what he inherited.
Yet when Obama took office, the deficit was $569 billion. He wants to add another $1.276 trillion to the deficit this year alone. Moreover, the deficit Obama inherited was a result of budgets passed by a Congress that was controlled during the last two years of the Bush administration by Democrats.
Most Americans have learned that this is a time to sit tight and not plan any vast new spending.
Not Barack Obama.
He spoke of plans to pour massive new sums into healthcare, education, and environmental programs. Yet Obama’s plans are vague, and the savings Obama projects are largely illusory. Obama has claimed that computerizing medical records would save $80 billion a year. But that is based on a Rand study financed in part by companies that stand to gain by obtaining contracts to deploy such a system.
The Rand study based its projections on the idea that a computerized system would point doctors to ways to deliver higher-quality care, thus diminishing the burden on the healthcare system. But a study published in Circulation, a top cardiology journal, and another study by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that computerized systems make no difference in quality of healthcare.
Most Americans recognize that the 100 percent tax deduction currently permitted for charitable donations is a chief reason people give such gifts.
Not Barack Obama.
He suggested that capping deductions for Americans in the highest tax bracket will not affect giving. “Now, if it's really a charitable contribution, I'm assuming that that shouldn't be the determining factor as to whether you're giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street,” he said.
Obama is so out of touch with Americans that he seems to think he can get away with claiming, as he did in his press conference, that his budget moves America “from an era of borrow and spend” to “save and invest.”
Certainly Obama’s comment during the campaign about “bitter” small-town voters who “cling” to their faith, along with their guns and their “antipathy to people who aren’t like them,” suggests disdain for a large segment of Americans.
“You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time,” Abraham Lincoln said.
Obama’s sinking poll numbers suggest Americans are catching on.
The Goal of Global Warming Alarmists: End Capitalism
In this excerpt from the larger article below, you can see that the goal of global warming fanatics is the complete dismantling of capitalism. Which begs the question: To what end?
"In an influential but highly controversial paper called "Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change," British economist Nicholas Lord Stern, formerly a high British Treasury official, has declared that industrial economies would need to cut their per capita carbon dioxide emissions by "at least 80% by 2050," while the biggest economies, like the U.S.'s, would have to make cuts of 90 percent.
By way of comparison, according to the U.S. Department Of Energy, roughly 72 percent of U.S. electrical power generation in 2007 was derived from burning fossil fuels, with just 6 percent coming from hydro-power and less than 3 percent from non-nuclear renewable and "other" sources. And even then, those "other" non-fossil sources included wood and biomass — which, when burned, are major emitters of carbon."
March 27, 2009
FOX News
By George Russell
U.N. 'Climate Change' Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy
A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.
Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming.
The 16-page note, obtained by FOX News, will be distributed to participants at a mammoth negotiating session that starts on March 29 in Bonn, Germany, the first of three sessions intended to hammer out the actual commitments involved in the new deal.
In the stultifying language that is normal for important U.N. conclaves, the negotiators are known as the "Ad Hoc Working Group On Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol." Yet the consequences of their negotiations, if enacted, would be nothing short of world-changing.
Getting that deal done has become the United Nations' highest priority, and the Bonn meeting is seen as a critical step along the path to what the U.N. calls an "ambitious and effective international response to climate change," which is intended to culminate at the later gathering in Copenhagen.
Just how ambitious the U.N.'s goals are can be seen, but only dimly, in the note obtained by FOX News, which offers in sparse detail both positive and negative consequences of the tools that industrial nations will most likely use to enforce the greenhouse gas reduction targets.
The paper makes no effort to calculate the magnitude of the costs and disruption involved, but despite the discreet presentation, makes clear that they will reverberate across the entire global economic system.
Among the tools that are considered are the cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions that has been espoused by the Obama administration; "carbon taxes" on imported fuels and energy-intensive goods and industries, including airline transportation; and lower subsidies for those same goods, as well as new or higher subsidies for goods that are considered "environmentally sound."
Other tools are referred to only vaguely, including "energy policy reform," which the report indicates could affect "large-scale transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports." When it comes to the results of such reform, the note says only that it could have "positive consequences for alternative transportation providers and producers of alternative fuels."
In the same bland manner, the note informs negotiators without going into details that cap-and-trade schemes "may induce some industrial relocation" to "less regulated host countries." Cap-and-trade functions by creating decreasing numbers of pollution-emission permits to be traded by industrial users, and thus pay more for each unit of carbon-based pollution, a market-driven system that aims to drive manufacturers toward less polluting technologies.
The note adds only that industrial relocation "would involve negative consequences for the implementing country, which loses employment and investment." But at the same time it "would involve indeterminate consequences for the countries that would host the relocated industries."
There are also entirely new kinds of tariffs and trade protectionist barriers such as those termed in the note as "border carbon adjustment"— which, the note says, can impose "a levy on imported goods equal to that which would have been imposed had they been produced domestically" under more strict environmental regimes.
Another form of "adjustment" would require exporters to "buy [carbon] offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically."
The impact of both schemes, the note says, "would be functionally equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered foreign producers." (There is no definition in the report of who, exactly, is "foreign.") The note adds that "If they were implemented fairly, such schemes would leave trade and investment patterns unchanged." Nothing is said about the consequences if such fairness was not achieved.
Indeed, only rarely does the "information note" attempt to inform readers in dollar terms of the impact of "spillover effects" from the potential policy changes it discusses. In a brief mention of consumer subsidies for fossil fuels, the note remarks that such subsidies in advanced economies exceed $60 billion a year, while they exceed $90 billion a year in developing economies."
But calculations of the impact of tariffs, offsets, or other subsidies is rare. In a reference to the impact of declining oil exports, the report says that Saudi Arabia has determined the loss to its economy at between $100 billion and $200 billion by 2030, but said nothing about other oil exporters.
One reason for the lack of detail, the note indicates, is that impact would vary widely depending on the nature and scope of the policies adopted (and, although the note does not mention it, on the severity of the greenhouse reduction targets).
But even when it does hazard a guess at specific impacts, the report seems curiously hazy. A "climate change levy on aviation" for example, is described as having undetermined "negative impacts on exporters of goods that rely on air transport, such as cut flowers and premium perishable produce," as well as "tourism services." But no mention is made in the note of the impact on the aerospace industry, an industry that had revenues in 2008 of $208 billion in the U.S. alone, or the losses the levy would impose on airlines for ordinary passenger transportation. (Global commercial airline revenues in 2008 were about $530 billion, and were already forecast to drop to an estimated $467 billion this year.)
In other cases, as when discussing the "increased costs of traditional exports" under a new environmental regime, the report confines itself to terse description. Changes in standards and labeling for exported goods, for example, "may demand costly changes to the production process." If subsidies and tariffs affect exports, the note says, the "economic and social consequences of dampening their viability may, for some countries and sectors, be significant."
Much depends, of course, on the extent to which harsher or more lenient greenhouse gas reduction targets demand more or less drastic policies for their achievement.
And, precisely because the Bonn meeting is a stage for negotiating those targets, the note is silent. Instead it suggests that more bureaucratic work is needed "to deepen the understanding of the full nature and scale of such impacts."
But outside the Bonn process, other experts have been much more blunt about the draconian nature of the measures they deem necessary to make "effective" greenhouse gas reductions.
In an influential but highly controversial paper called "Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change," British economist Nicholas Lord Stern, formerly a high British Treasury official, has declared that industrial economies would need to cut their per capita carbon dioxide emissions by "at least 80% by 2050," while the biggest economies, like the U.S.'s, would have to make cuts of 90 percent.
Stern also calls for "immediate and binding" reduction targets for developed nations of 20 percent to 40 percent by 2020.
To meet Stern's 2050 goals, he says, among other things, "most of the world's electricity production will need to have been decarbonized."
By way of comparison, according to the U.S. Department Of Energy, roughly 72 percent of U.S. electrical power generation in 2007 was derived from burning fossil fuels, with just 6 percent coming from hydro-power and less than 3 percent from non-nuclear renewable and "other" sources. And even then, those "other" non-fossil sources included wood and biomass — which, when burned, are major emitters of carbon.
"In an influential but highly controversial paper called "Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change," British economist Nicholas Lord Stern, formerly a high British Treasury official, has declared that industrial economies would need to cut their per capita carbon dioxide emissions by "at least 80% by 2050," while the biggest economies, like the U.S.'s, would have to make cuts of 90 percent.
By way of comparison, according to the U.S. Department Of Energy, roughly 72 percent of U.S. electrical power generation in 2007 was derived from burning fossil fuels, with just 6 percent coming from hydro-power and less than 3 percent from non-nuclear renewable and "other" sources. And even then, those "other" non-fossil sources included wood and biomass — which, when burned, are major emitters of carbon."
March 27, 2009
FOX News
By George Russell
U.N. 'Climate Change' Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy
A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.
Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming.
The 16-page note, obtained by FOX News, will be distributed to participants at a mammoth negotiating session that starts on March 29 in Bonn, Germany, the first of three sessions intended to hammer out the actual commitments involved in the new deal.
In the stultifying language that is normal for important U.N. conclaves, the negotiators are known as the "Ad Hoc Working Group On Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol." Yet the consequences of their negotiations, if enacted, would be nothing short of world-changing.
Getting that deal done has become the United Nations' highest priority, and the Bonn meeting is seen as a critical step along the path to what the U.N. calls an "ambitious and effective international response to climate change," which is intended to culminate at the later gathering in Copenhagen.
Just how ambitious the U.N.'s goals are can be seen, but only dimly, in the note obtained by FOX News, which offers in sparse detail both positive and negative consequences of the tools that industrial nations will most likely use to enforce the greenhouse gas reduction targets.
The paper makes no effort to calculate the magnitude of the costs and disruption involved, but despite the discreet presentation, makes clear that they will reverberate across the entire global economic system.
Among the tools that are considered are the cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions that has been espoused by the Obama administration; "carbon taxes" on imported fuels and energy-intensive goods and industries, including airline transportation; and lower subsidies for those same goods, as well as new or higher subsidies for goods that are considered "environmentally sound."
Other tools are referred to only vaguely, including "energy policy reform," which the report indicates could affect "large-scale transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports." When it comes to the results of such reform, the note says only that it could have "positive consequences for alternative transportation providers and producers of alternative fuels."
In the same bland manner, the note informs negotiators without going into details that cap-and-trade schemes "may induce some industrial relocation" to "less regulated host countries." Cap-and-trade functions by creating decreasing numbers of pollution-emission permits to be traded by industrial users, and thus pay more for each unit of carbon-based pollution, a market-driven system that aims to drive manufacturers toward less polluting technologies.
The note adds only that industrial relocation "would involve negative consequences for the implementing country, which loses employment and investment." But at the same time it "would involve indeterminate consequences for the countries that would host the relocated industries."
There are also entirely new kinds of tariffs and trade protectionist barriers such as those termed in the note as "border carbon adjustment"— which, the note says, can impose "a levy on imported goods equal to that which would have been imposed had they been produced domestically" under more strict environmental regimes.
Another form of "adjustment" would require exporters to "buy [carbon] offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically."
The impact of both schemes, the note says, "would be functionally equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered foreign producers." (There is no definition in the report of who, exactly, is "foreign.") The note adds that "If they were implemented fairly, such schemes would leave trade and investment patterns unchanged." Nothing is said about the consequences if such fairness was not achieved.
Indeed, only rarely does the "information note" attempt to inform readers in dollar terms of the impact of "spillover effects" from the potential policy changes it discusses. In a brief mention of consumer subsidies for fossil fuels, the note remarks that such subsidies in advanced economies exceed $60 billion a year, while they exceed $90 billion a year in developing economies."
But calculations of the impact of tariffs, offsets, or other subsidies is rare. In a reference to the impact of declining oil exports, the report says that Saudi Arabia has determined the loss to its economy at between $100 billion and $200 billion by 2030, but said nothing about other oil exporters.
One reason for the lack of detail, the note indicates, is that impact would vary widely depending on the nature and scope of the policies adopted (and, although the note does not mention it, on the severity of the greenhouse reduction targets).
But even when it does hazard a guess at specific impacts, the report seems curiously hazy. A "climate change levy on aviation" for example, is described as having undetermined "negative impacts on exporters of goods that rely on air transport, such as cut flowers and premium perishable produce," as well as "tourism services." But no mention is made in the note of the impact on the aerospace industry, an industry that had revenues in 2008 of $208 billion in the U.S. alone, or the losses the levy would impose on airlines for ordinary passenger transportation. (Global commercial airline revenues in 2008 were about $530 billion, and were already forecast to drop to an estimated $467 billion this year.)
In other cases, as when discussing the "increased costs of traditional exports" under a new environmental regime, the report confines itself to terse description. Changes in standards and labeling for exported goods, for example, "may demand costly changes to the production process." If subsidies and tariffs affect exports, the note says, the "economic and social consequences of dampening their viability may, for some countries and sectors, be significant."
Much depends, of course, on the extent to which harsher or more lenient greenhouse gas reduction targets demand more or less drastic policies for their achievement.
And, precisely because the Bonn meeting is a stage for negotiating those targets, the note is silent. Instead it suggests that more bureaucratic work is needed "to deepen the understanding of the full nature and scale of such impacts."
But outside the Bonn process, other experts have been much more blunt about the draconian nature of the measures they deem necessary to make "effective" greenhouse gas reductions.
In an influential but highly controversial paper called "Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change," British economist Nicholas Lord Stern, formerly a high British Treasury official, has declared that industrial economies would need to cut their per capita carbon dioxide emissions by "at least 80% by 2050," while the biggest economies, like the U.S.'s, would have to make cuts of 90 percent.
Stern also calls for "immediate and binding" reduction targets for developed nations of 20 percent to 40 percent by 2020.
To meet Stern's 2050 goals, he says, among other things, "most of the world's electricity production will need to have been decarbonized."
By way of comparison, according to the U.S. Department Of Energy, roughly 72 percent of U.S. electrical power generation in 2007 was derived from burning fossil fuels, with just 6 percent coming from hydro-power and less than 3 percent from non-nuclear renewable and "other" sources. And even then, those "other" non-fossil sources included wood and biomass — which, when burned, are major emitters of carbon.
Brazil’s leader blames white people for crisis
Well, good, we can cross them off as needing any foreign aid...
By Jonathan Wheatley
March 27 2009
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.
Speaking in BrasÃlia at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”
He added: “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimised more than any other should pay for the crisis.”
By Jonathan Wheatley
March 27 2009
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.
Speaking in BrasÃlia at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”
He added: “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimised more than any other should pay for the crisis.”
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Obama's "Civilian Army" Takes Shape
Our disgusting and disconnected from reality ruling class just can't seem to stop spending money that we do not have. It was a truly breathtaking spectacle as they all congratulated themselves for honoring Senator Ted Kennedy with our money!
ANN SANNER
Associated Press
March 26, 2009
Senate votes to triple AmeriCorps, spur more opportunities for national service
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted Thursday to give tens of thousands of people more opportunities to mentor children, clean parks and help the poor, a sweeping call to national service in a time of need.
The legislation would triple the size of the Clinton-era AmeriCorps and broadly expand incentives for students and seniors to give back to their communities, at a cost of $5.7 billion over five years. It also would create five groups to help poor people, improve education, encourage energy efficiency, strengthen access to health care and assist veterans.
The vote was 79-19. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., changed his vote after the roll call to support the measure.
The bill was named for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who is being treated for brain cancer but returned to the Senate to vote on legislation that he has long championed. Kennedy, joined by his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., received a standing ovation from his Senate colleagues at the conclusion of the vote.
The legislation would increase AmeriCorps to 250,000 from its current 75,000 positions over eight years, its largest expansion since the program was launched in 1993.Bolstering national service programs has been a priority of President Barack Obama, who credits his service as a community organizer in his early 20s for giving him direction in life. Obama said Thursday during an online town-hall meeting, "I think there are young people all across America who are eager for that opportunity."
The House, which passed a similar bill last week, plans to bring the Senate version to a vote as early as Monday.
The measure won support from both parties despite assertions by some Republicans that it represents a costly and unnecessary intrusion by government into something Americans already do eagerly and in great numbers — help their neighbors and communities.
One opponent, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said volunteerism is "alive and well" and Congress should stay out of the way.
"Could we agree that just maybe there's one area of our society in which we don't have to add more government?" Kyl asked during debate on the measure. "I think volunteering to help our neighbors might be a good place to start."
But Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who co-sponsored the bill with Kennedy, said government's role will be limited, with volunteers and national service participants doing the heavy-lifting.
"Help offered by a compassionate neighbor will always be superior to government-driven approaches designed in Washington," Hatch said, adding that the measure ensures that service action would be spurred by local organizations and community needs.
The Senate bill would set up a fund to help nonprofit organizations draw more volunteers and establish a summer program for middle and high school students, who would earn a $500 education award. The measure would also create $1,000 fellowships for older people who get involved in public service. It would also increase the education awards of AmeriCorps participants, whose work ranges from building homes to responding to disasters.
After completing their service, AmeriCorps participants can receive up to $4,725 to help pay for college or pay off student loans. The Senate bill would increase that award to $5,350 and require that it match any future increases in Pell Grant scholarships. Unlike the House-passed legislation, the Senate version would allow older AmeriCorps members to transfer their education awards to their children or grandchildren.
Some AmeriCorps participants get a living stipend while they are working for 10-12 months. The stipend ranges from $11,400 to $22,800 for the year. Most participants, who are predominantly ages 18 to 26, get $11,800.
Obama's proposed budget for next year calls for more than $1.1 billion for national service programs, an increase of more than $210 million.
AmeriCorps was created during President Bill Clinton's administration. Its first class of 20,000 members started serving in 1994.
Over the last year, the program has received three applications for every slot, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service, the agency that oversees the program.
ANN SANNER
Associated Press
March 26, 2009
Senate votes to triple AmeriCorps, spur more opportunities for national service
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted Thursday to give tens of thousands of people more opportunities to mentor children, clean parks and help the poor, a sweeping call to national service in a time of need.
The legislation would triple the size of the Clinton-era AmeriCorps and broadly expand incentives for students and seniors to give back to their communities, at a cost of $5.7 billion over five years. It also would create five groups to help poor people, improve education, encourage energy efficiency, strengthen access to health care and assist veterans.
The vote was 79-19. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., changed his vote after the roll call to support the measure.
The bill was named for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who is being treated for brain cancer but returned to the Senate to vote on legislation that he has long championed. Kennedy, joined by his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., received a standing ovation from his Senate colleagues at the conclusion of the vote.
The legislation would increase AmeriCorps to 250,000 from its current 75,000 positions over eight years, its largest expansion since the program was launched in 1993.Bolstering national service programs has been a priority of President Barack Obama, who credits his service as a community organizer in his early 20s for giving him direction in life. Obama said Thursday during an online town-hall meeting, "I think there are young people all across America who are eager for that opportunity."
The House, which passed a similar bill last week, plans to bring the Senate version to a vote as early as Monday.
The measure won support from both parties despite assertions by some Republicans that it represents a costly and unnecessary intrusion by government into something Americans already do eagerly and in great numbers — help their neighbors and communities.
One opponent, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said volunteerism is "alive and well" and Congress should stay out of the way.
"Could we agree that just maybe there's one area of our society in which we don't have to add more government?" Kyl asked during debate on the measure. "I think volunteering to help our neighbors might be a good place to start."
But Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who co-sponsored the bill with Kennedy, said government's role will be limited, with volunteers and national service participants doing the heavy-lifting.
"Help offered by a compassionate neighbor will always be superior to government-driven approaches designed in Washington," Hatch said, adding that the measure ensures that service action would be spurred by local organizations and community needs.
The Senate bill would set up a fund to help nonprofit organizations draw more volunteers and establish a summer program for middle and high school students, who would earn a $500 education award. The measure would also create $1,000 fellowships for older people who get involved in public service. It would also increase the education awards of AmeriCorps participants, whose work ranges from building homes to responding to disasters.
After completing their service, AmeriCorps participants can receive up to $4,725 to help pay for college or pay off student loans. The Senate bill would increase that award to $5,350 and require that it match any future increases in Pell Grant scholarships. Unlike the House-passed legislation, the Senate version would allow older AmeriCorps members to transfer their education awards to their children or grandchildren.
Some AmeriCorps participants get a living stipend while they are working for 10-12 months. The stipend ranges from $11,400 to $22,800 for the year. Most participants, who are predominantly ages 18 to 26, get $11,800.
Obama's proposed budget for next year calls for more than $1.1 billion for national service programs, an increase of more than $210 million.
AmeriCorps was created during President Bill Clinton's administration. Its first class of 20,000 members started serving in 1994.
Over the last year, the program has received three applications for every slot, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service, the agency that oversees the program.
Legalizing Marijuana #1 Question at Obama Town Hall Meeting
But of course...we non pot smokers were busy working!
CNN.com
March 26, 2009
"In a lighthearted moment, the president said that the White House had received many questions about the potential economic upside of legalizing marijuana. Obama did not display any of the questions, but he did briefly address the topic.
Watch Obama say legalizing marijuana 'not a good strategy' »
"This was a fairly popular question. ... I don't know what this says about the online audience," the president joked. "No, I don't think this is a good strategy to grow our economy."
Duh...
CNN.com
March 26, 2009
"In a lighthearted moment, the president said that the White House had received many questions about the potential economic upside of legalizing marijuana. Obama did not display any of the questions, but he did briefly address the topic.
Watch Obama say legalizing marijuana 'not a good strategy' »
"This was a fairly popular question. ... I don't know what this says about the online audience," the president joked. "No, I don't think this is a good strategy to grow our economy."
Duh...
Obama's Foreign Policy Report Card
After reading the following report card you will have a clear understanding of what happens when you project weakness to foreign enemies...
O'S FOREIGN FAILURES
By RALPH PETERS
FOX News Contributor
AMERICA'S enemies smell blood and it's type "O." All new administrations stumble a bit as they seek their footing. But President Obama's foreign-policy botches have set new records for instant incompetence. Contrary to left-wing myths, I wasn't a fan of the Bush administration. (I called for Donald Rumsfeld to get the boot in mid-2001.) But fair's fair. Despite his many faults, Bush sought to do good. Obama just wants to look good.
Vice President Dick Cheney was arrogant. Vice President Joe Biden is arrogant and stupid. Take your pick. Don't worry about the new administration's ideology. Worry about its terrifying naivete. Consider a sampling of the goofs O and his crew have made in just two months:
China: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (you know that gal married to the Saudi hireling) crawled to Beijing to tell the party bosses that human rights don't matter. Our "relationship" is more important than freedom and human dignity. Beijing's response? A staged military confrontation with an unarmed US Navy vessel; continued screw-America currency cheating; a renewed crackdown on dissidents and, yesterday, a call for a new global currency to replace the dollar. Thanks, Hill. You're a sweetheart.
Pakistan: With viral corruption throughout and Islamist fanatics sweeping half of its territory, Pakistan's coming apart. Its Dem-adored prez tries to ban opposition parties and gut the judiciary. It has nukes and seethes with hatred of America. And Islamabad controls our primary supply route into Afghanistan, using it as an extortion tool. Obama's response? Billions in new aid for Pak pols to pocket. We'd be better off handing the money to AIG to pay out more bonuses.
Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam. Am I the only American who remembers that candidate Obama had a plan to capture Osama bin Laden and fix our previous "mistakes" in Afghanistan? President Obama doesn't have a clue.
Iran: Obama tried to reach out, to talk. After all, talking got him to the White House. But America-bashing is what keeps Iran's leaders in office, it's their political essence. After 30 years of fierce hostility, hasn't anyone figured out that the senior mullahs need us as an enemy? Without the Great Satan America to blame, they'd have some real explaining to do to their homies. So O got the left-hand finger. He wanted to chat with the Taliban, too. They told him he could stick it where the sun don't shine.
North Korea: Obama wanted a fresh start. North Korea's response? Threats of war with South Korea and the kidnapping of two American journalists. And the renewed pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, along with rocket tests.
Cuba: Obama would like to liberalize our relationship. The Castro boys told him to kiss off. They need an enemy, too. (Dear Mr. President: It's not always about us or how evil America is.)
Venezuela: Guess who else needs an enemy?
Mexico: The good news: Obama knows where it is on a map and recognizes that Mexico's government faces a narco-insurgency that threatens our country, too. His first action? Cave to the Teamsters, violate a lawful treaty on cross-border trucking, reignite fading anti-Americanism and undercut President Felipe Calderon.
Poland: Obama's stance on our bravest ally on the European continent? The Russians are more important than you are. He's sending the same message to Ukraine and Georgia.
Russia: Bolshie Biden, the commuting commissar, knows he's the man who can turn Russia into our best pal. After "Friend of Bill" Strobe Talbott tried and failed disastrously. And after poor W saw into Putin's soul, only to get his butt handed to him. "Uncle Joe" Biden has nothing to learn from past failures, though: He's got a re-set button. Moscow's response to the Obama administration's bid for a new start? It threatens NATO members it once occupied and continues to back Iran's nuclear program. Plus, it bribes Kyrgystan to kick us off the critical-to-Afghanistan Manas airbase (then offers to help replace that supply lifeline, giving Russia a choke-hold on our troops). Next, the Kremlin threatens massive re-armament and demands the abandonment of the dollar as the international reserve currency. Obama's response? Push that re-set button again. And again.
At what point does naivete become cowardice? As for our allies, Obama apparently needs them less than Bush did. O treated Britain's prime minister like the deputy Paraguayan veterinary inspector, and he blindsided the leaders of the Czech Republic, Poland, Mexico and Canada on issues ranging from missile defense to trade. But he'd like them to take the Gitmo terrorists off our hands, please.
The one bright spot thus far has been Iraq, where Obama quickly tossed aside his campaign promises. The O-man doesn't want to be on the blame-line for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Baghdad. And his MoveOn.org supporters can throw all the tantrums they want. (Breaking news, folks: O's a professional pol, not the messiah . . . )
Apart from Iraq success Sen. Obama did all he could to prevent his foreign policy's an instant wasteland. By comparison, the Carter administration is starting to look like a model of manly strength, courage and patriotism.
Ralph Peters recently became Fox News' first "strategic analyst."
O'S FOREIGN FAILURES
By RALPH PETERS
FOX News Contributor
AMERICA'S enemies smell blood and it's type "O." All new administrations stumble a bit as they seek their footing. But President Obama's foreign-policy botches have set new records for instant incompetence. Contrary to left-wing myths, I wasn't a fan of the Bush administration. (I called for Donald Rumsfeld to get the boot in mid-2001.) But fair's fair. Despite his many faults, Bush sought to do good. Obama just wants to look good.
Vice President Dick Cheney was arrogant. Vice President Joe Biden is arrogant and stupid. Take your pick. Don't worry about the new administration's ideology. Worry about its terrifying naivete. Consider a sampling of the goofs O and his crew have made in just two months:
China: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (you know that gal married to the Saudi hireling) crawled to Beijing to tell the party bosses that human rights don't matter. Our "relationship" is more important than freedom and human dignity. Beijing's response? A staged military confrontation with an unarmed US Navy vessel; continued screw-America currency cheating; a renewed crackdown on dissidents and, yesterday, a call for a new global currency to replace the dollar. Thanks, Hill. You're a sweetheart.
Pakistan: With viral corruption throughout and Islamist fanatics sweeping half of its territory, Pakistan's coming apart. Its Dem-adored prez tries to ban opposition parties and gut the judiciary. It has nukes and seethes with hatred of America. And Islamabad controls our primary supply route into Afghanistan, using it as an extortion tool. Obama's response? Billions in new aid for Pak pols to pocket. We'd be better off handing the money to AIG to pay out more bonuses.
Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam. Am I the only American who remembers that candidate Obama had a plan to capture Osama bin Laden and fix our previous "mistakes" in Afghanistan? President Obama doesn't have a clue.
Iran: Obama tried to reach out, to talk. After all, talking got him to the White House. But America-bashing is what keeps Iran's leaders in office, it's their political essence. After 30 years of fierce hostility, hasn't anyone figured out that the senior mullahs need us as an enemy? Without the Great Satan America to blame, they'd have some real explaining to do to their homies. So O got the left-hand finger. He wanted to chat with the Taliban, too. They told him he could stick it where the sun don't shine.
North Korea: Obama wanted a fresh start. North Korea's response? Threats of war with South Korea and the kidnapping of two American journalists. And the renewed pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, along with rocket tests.
Cuba: Obama would like to liberalize our relationship. The Castro boys told him to kiss off. They need an enemy, too. (Dear Mr. President: It's not always about us or how evil America is.)
Venezuela: Guess who else needs an enemy?
Mexico: The good news: Obama knows where it is on a map and recognizes that Mexico's government faces a narco-insurgency that threatens our country, too. His first action? Cave to the Teamsters, violate a lawful treaty on cross-border trucking, reignite fading anti-Americanism and undercut President Felipe Calderon.
Poland: Obama's stance on our bravest ally on the European continent? The Russians are more important than you are. He's sending the same message to Ukraine and Georgia.
Russia: Bolshie Biden, the commuting commissar, knows he's the man who can turn Russia into our best pal. After "Friend of Bill" Strobe Talbott tried and failed disastrously. And after poor W saw into Putin's soul, only to get his butt handed to him. "Uncle Joe" Biden has nothing to learn from past failures, though: He's got a re-set button. Moscow's response to the Obama administration's bid for a new start? It threatens NATO members it once occupied and continues to back Iran's nuclear program. Plus, it bribes Kyrgystan to kick us off the critical-to-Afghanistan Manas airbase (then offers to help replace that supply lifeline, giving Russia a choke-hold on our troops). Next, the Kremlin threatens massive re-armament and demands the abandonment of the dollar as the international reserve currency. Obama's response? Push that re-set button again. And again.
At what point does naivete become cowardice? As for our allies, Obama apparently needs them less than Bush did. O treated Britain's prime minister like the deputy Paraguayan veterinary inspector, and he blindsided the leaders of the Czech Republic, Poland, Mexico and Canada on issues ranging from missile defense to trade. But he'd like them to take the Gitmo terrorists off our hands, please.
The one bright spot thus far has been Iraq, where Obama quickly tossed aside his campaign promises. The O-man doesn't want to be on the blame-line for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Baghdad. And his MoveOn.org supporters can throw all the tantrums they want. (Breaking news, folks: O's a professional pol, not the messiah . . . )
Apart from Iraq success Sen. Obama did all he could to prevent his foreign policy's an instant wasteland. By comparison, the Carter administration is starting to look like a model of manly strength, courage and patriotism.
Ralph Peters recently became Fox News' first "strategic analyst."
The Dirty Dozen
Here's a link to a thumbnail of the banking/financial culprits and their "contributions" to the economic meltdown.
A very good, quick read of who had his hand in the cookie jar and what they came away with...
The Big Takeover
Here is an excerpt from an excellent story by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine that exposes the insider trading amongst the moneyed elite that created the economic meltdown. If you want to read the entire story, which is quite long, click the link after the excerpt...
"So that's the first step in wall street's power grab: making up things like credit-default swaps and collateralized-debt obligations, financial products so complex and inscrutable that ordinary American dumb people — to say nothing of federal regulators and even the CEOs of major corporations like AIG — are too intimidated to even try to understand them. That, combined with wise political investments, enabled the nation's top bankers to effectively scrap any meaningful oversight of the financial industry. In 1997 and 1998, the years leading up to the passage of Phil Gramm's fateful act that gutted Glass-Steagall, the banking, brokerage and insurance industries spent $350 million on political contributions and lobbying. Gramm alone — then the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — collected $2.6 million in only five years. The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of 38 Democrats, including some names that might surprise you: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin, even John Edwards.
The act helped create the too-big-to-fail financial behemoths like Citigroup, AIG and Bank of America — and in turn helped those companies slowly crush their smaller competitors, leaving the major Wall Street firms with even more money and power to lobby for further deregulatory measures. "We're moving to an oligopolistic situation," Kenneth Guenther, a top executive with the Independent Community Bankers of America, lamented after the Gramm measure was passed.
The situation worsened in 2004, in an extraordinary move toward deregulation that never even got to a vote. At the time, the European Union was threatening to more strictly regulate the foreign operations of America's big investment banks if the U.S. didn't strengthen its own oversight. So the top five investment banks got together on April 28th of that year and — with the helpful assistance of then-Goldman Sachs chief and future Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson — made a pitch to George Bush's SEC chief at the time, William Donaldson, himself a former investment banker. The banks generously volunteered to submit to new rules restricting them from engaging in excessively risky activity. In exchange, they asked to be released from any lending restrictions. The discussion about the new rules lasted just 55 minutes, and there was not a single representative of a major media outlet there to record the fateful decision.
Once the capital requirements were gone, those top five banks went hog-wild, jumping ass-first into the then-raging housing bubble. One of those was Bear Stearns, which used its freedom to drown itself in bad mortgage loans. In the short period between the 2004 change and Bear's collapse, the firm's debt-to-equity ratio soared from 12-1 to an insane 33-1. Another culprit was Goldman Sachs, which also had the good fortune, around then, to see its CEO, a bald-headed Frankensteinian goon named Hank Paulson (who received an estimated $200 million tax deferral by joining the government), ascend to Treasury secretary."
Here is a link to the entire article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print
"So that's the first step in wall street's power grab: making up things like credit-default swaps and collateralized-debt obligations, financial products so complex and inscrutable that ordinary American dumb people — to say nothing of federal regulators and even the CEOs of major corporations like AIG — are too intimidated to even try to understand them. That, combined with wise political investments, enabled the nation's top bankers to effectively scrap any meaningful oversight of the financial industry. In 1997 and 1998, the years leading up to the passage of Phil Gramm's fateful act that gutted Glass-Steagall, the banking, brokerage and insurance industries spent $350 million on political contributions and lobbying. Gramm alone — then the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — collected $2.6 million in only five years. The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of 38 Democrats, including some names that might surprise you: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin, even John Edwards.
The act helped create the too-big-to-fail financial behemoths like Citigroup, AIG and Bank of America — and in turn helped those companies slowly crush their smaller competitors, leaving the major Wall Street firms with even more money and power to lobby for further deregulatory measures. "We're moving to an oligopolistic situation," Kenneth Guenther, a top executive with the Independent Community Bankers of America, lamented after the Gramm measure was passed.
The situation worsened in 2004, in an extraordinary move toward deregulation that never even got to a vote. At the time, the European Union was threatening to more strictly regulate the foreign operations of America's big investment banks if the U.S. didn't strengthen its own oversight. So the top five investment banks got together on April 28th of that year and — with the helpful assistance of then-Goldman Sachs chief and future Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson — made a pitch to George Bush's SEC chief at the time, William Donaldson, himself a former investment banker. The banks generously volunteered to submit to new rules restricting them from engaging in excessively risky activity. In exchange, they asked to be released from any lending restrictions. The discussion about the new rules lasted just 55 minutes, and there was not a single representative of a major media outlet there to record the fateful decision.
Once the capital requirements were gone, those top five banks went hog-wild, jumping ass-first into the then-raging housing bubble. One of those was Bear Stearns, which used its freedom to drown itself in bad mortgage loans. In the short period between the 2004 change and Bear's collapse, the firm's debt-to-equity ratio soared from 12-1 to an insane 33-1. Another culprit was Goldman Sachs, which also had the good fortune, around then, to see its CEO, a bald-headed Frankensteinian goon named Hank Paulson (who received an estimated $200 million tax deferral by joining the government), ascend to Treasury secretary."
Here is a link to the entire article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tax Day Tea Party Website
Frustrated that your voice isn't being heard? Click on the link below and find out where a "Tax Day Tea Party" will be held near you...
There are Tax Day Tea Parties scheduled all across America on April 15th.
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Comparing Obama's Spending to Bush's
The Heritage Foundation
March 17th, 2009
Speaking to House Democrats at their Kingsmill Resort & Spa retreat last month, President Barack Obama defended his economic stimulus plan, claiming: “[We] are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. … If you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction.”
Our public policy definitely needs a change in direction. But the Obama Administration’s budget is not a change in direction. Instead, it is a foot on the accelerator taking us off that cliff. Consider:
President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
President Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new government health care fund.
President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. President Obama would double it.
President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already increased this spending by 20 percent.
President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.
The only sharp break President Obama takes away from President Bush is the amount of money he takes from the American people. President Bush reduced taxes by approximately $2 trillion; President Obama has proposed raising taxes by $1.4 trillion. Yet even after taking $1.4 trillion more out of the private sector, Obama’s budget still would double the public debt level to $15.4 trillion. Between 2008 and 2013, the budget will add $5.7 trillion ($48,000 per U.S. household) in new government debt. The annual interest on this debt would nearly equal the entire U.S. defense budget by 2019.
How does the Obama budget raise taxes by $1.4 trillion yet still double the national debt? By exploding government spending. Domestic discretionary spending (including stimulus funds) has been hiked over 80 percent over 2008 levels. Even if we set aside the stimulus spending, and take the Obama Administration’s word that all of that spending will be temporary, the expansion of government under Obama’s budget is historic. In 2007, before the recession, Washington spent $24,172 per household. By 2019, the President’s budget would spend $32,463 per household—an inflation-adjusted $8,000 per household expansion of government.
Summarizing his findings Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Brian Riedl writes: “President Obama has framed his budget as a break from the “failed policies” of the Bush Administration. Actually, his budget doubles down on President George W. Bush’s borrow, spend, and bailout policies.”
March 17th, 2009
Speaking to House Democrats at their Kingsmill Resort & Spa retreat last month, President Barack Obama defended his economic stimulus plan, claiming: “[We] are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. … If you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction.”
Our public policy definitely needs a change in direction. But the Obama Administration’s budget is not a change in direction. Instead, it is a foot on the accelerator taking us off that cliff. Consider:
President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
President Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new government health care fund.
President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. President Obama would double it.
President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already increased this spending by 20 percent.
President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.
The only sharp break President Obama takes away from President Bush is the amount of money he takes from the American people. President Bush reduced taxes by approximately $2 trillion; President Obama has proposed raising taxes by $1.4 trillion. Yet even after taking $1.4 trillion more out of the private sector, Obama’s budget still would double the public debt level to $15.4 trillion. Between 2008 and 2013, the budget will add $5.7 trillion ($48,000 per U.S. household) in new government debt. The annual interest on this debt would nearly equal the entire U.S. defense budget by 2019.
How does the Obama budget raise taxes by $1.4 trillion yet still double the national debt? By exploding government spending. Domestic discretionary spending (including stimulus funds) has been hiked over 80 percent over 2008 levels. Even if we set aside the stimulus spending, and take the Obama Administration’s word that all of that spending will be temporary, the expansion of government under Obama’s budget is historic. In 2007, before the recession, Washington spent $24,172 per household. By 2019, the President’s budget would spend $32,463 per household—an inflation-adjusted $8,000 per household expansion of government.
Summarizing his findings Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Brian Riedl writes: “President Obama has framed his budget as a break from the “failed policies” of the Bush Administration. Actually, his budget doubles down on President George W. Bush’s borrow, spend, and bailout policies.”
‘Investing’ Our Way to the Poor House
The Heritage Foundation
Ka-thump. That sound you just heard was President Barack Obama throwing 95% of all Americans under the bus. In his opening remarks during last night’s press conference, President Obama said of his budget: “This plan will provide a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families that will appear in people’s paychecks by April 1st.” But pressed later by ABC News’ Jake Tapper about compromises he was willing to make to get his budget passed, Obama said: “When it comes to the middle-class tax cut, we already had that in the recovery. We know that that’s going to be in place for at least the next two years. … The bottom line is, is that I want to see health care, energy, education, and serious efforts to reduce our budget deficit.” Translation: enjoy your extra $13 a week while you can, because Obama is not going to fight for your tax dollars.
What Obama is going to fight for is massive increases in government spending; or, as he likes to call them, “investments.” Obama said the words “invest” or “investments” 22 times last night. He is staking his entire presidency on the belief that government-made decisions are a wiser and more efficient allocator of resources than the millions of individual decisions Americans make every day through a functioning free market. Obama believes massive new federal spending and control of the health, education and energy sectors will lead to better economic growth.
He is wrong. Between 1984 and 2004, real government per pupil expenditures increased by 49% and yet reading scores and high school graduation rates have either remained flat or declined. The federal government has been subsidizing “alternative” energy since the 70s and yet, alternative energies such as wind and solar power contribute only 1% of our nation’s energy needs. On health care the only thing sure about Obama’s plans is that they expand coverage in ways that explode costs, while his cost reduction measures fall short of the fundamental reforms needed to contain costs. If government controlled health care were such an economic life saver, then why is all of Europe in the same economic mess we are in?
Obama’s massive spending explosion will do nothing to create economic growth, but it will grow our federal deficit. Again, last night, President Barack Obama claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious.
Finishing his opening remarks last night, Obama said: “At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led us to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It’s with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.”
There is no saving in Obama’s budget. Only an acceleration of the borrow and spend policies that got us where we are today.
Ka-thump. That sound you just heard was President Barack Obama throwing 95% of all Americans under the bus. In his opening remarks during last night’s press conference, President Obama said of his budget: “This plan will provide a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families that will appear in people’s paychecks by April 1st.” But pressed later by ABC News’ Jake Tapper about compromises he was willing to make to get his budget passed, Obama said: “When it comes to the middle-class tax cut, we already had that in the recovery. We know that that’s going to be in place for at least the next two years. … The bottom line is, is that I want to see health care, energy, education, and serious efforts to reduce our budget deficit.” Translation: enjoy your extra $13 a week while you can, because Obama is not going to fight for your tax dollars.
What Obama is going to fight for is massive increases in government spending; or, as he likes to call them, “investments.” Obama said the words “invest” or “investments” 22 times last night. He is staking his entire presidency on the belief that government-made decisions are a wiser and more efficient allocator of resources than the millions of individual decisions Americans make every day through a functioning free market. Obama believes massive new federal spending and control of the health, education and energy sectors will lead to better economic growth.
He is wrong. Between 1984 and 2004, real government per pupil expenditures increased by 49% and yet reading scores and high school graduation rates have either remained flat or declined. The federal government has been subsidizing “alternative” energy since the 70s and yet, alternative energies such as wind and solar power contribute only 1% of our nation’s energy needs. On health care the only thing sure about Obama’s plans is that they expand coverage in ways that explode costs, while his cost reduction measures fall short of the fundamental reforms needed to contain costs. If government controlled health care were such an economic life saver, then why is all of Europe in the same economic mess we are in?
Obama’s massive spending explosion will do nothing to create economic growth, but it will grow our federal deficit. Again, last night, President Barack Obama claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious.
Finishing his opening remarks last night, Obama said: “At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led us to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It’s with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.”
There is no saving in Obama’s budget. Only an acceleration of the borrow and spend policies that got us where we are today.
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