Saturday, March 29, 2014

This Is the Stuff of Third World Dictators


White House is foiling FOIA - Requiring that documents requested by Congress be sent to White House first. Entirely Illegal.  

There are two problems with the unprecedented White House review that the Obama administration has instituted. The first is that it takes forever. White House lawyers can simply sit on a subpoena until a year or two have gone by, and the potentially embarrassing issue has been forgotten. But the second problem is still more diabolical. The White House is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This means that if White House lawyers decide to cover up an Obama scandal by shredding documents that make the administration look bad, no one–no reporter, no Congressional committee, no private citizen–can serve a request that requires the White House to disclose what documents it destroyed. So adding a layer of White House lawyer review to the production of any sensitive documents–those with “White House equities”–means that inconvenient information may sink without a trace. We have no way of knowing how often this has happened over the last five years.

Which is, of course, exactly the way the least transparent administration in history wants it.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

The Cabal Conservatives Are Battling


Subject: Washington Post and Journalism Today

John Hinderaker

On Thursday, the Washington Post published an article by Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin titled “The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.” The article’s first paragraph included this claim:

The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David.

The theme of the article was that the Keystone Pipeline is all about the Koch brothers; or, at least, that this is a plausible claim. The Post authors relied on a report by a far-left group called International Forum on Globalization that I debunked last October.

So Thursday evening, I wrote about the Post article here. I pointed out that Koch is not, in fact, the largest leaser of tar sands land; that Koch will not be a user of the pipeline if it is built; and that construction of the Keystone Pipeline would actually be harmful to Koch’s economic interests, which is why Koch has never taken a position on the pipeline’s construction. The Keystone Pipeline, in short, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Koch brothers. My post garnered a great deal of attention, and Mufson and Eilperin undertook to respond to it here

. It isn’t much of a response: they don’t deny the truth of anything I wrote, and they don’t try to sustain the proposition that Koch is even in favor of the pipeline, let alone the driving force behind it. They lamely suggest that if Koch leased 2 million acres, rather than 1.1 million as they reported on Thursday, then Koch might be the largest leaseholder. But they make no attempt to respond to the official Province of Alberta maps that I posted, which clearly show that Canadian National Resources, Ltd., for example, leases more acreage than Koch.

The Post’s response attempted to explain “Why we wrote about the Koch Industries [sic] and its leases in Canada’s oil sands.” Good question! What’s the answer?

The Powerline article itself, and its tone, is strong evidence that issues surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year. That’s why we wrote the piece.

So in the Post’s view, it is acceptable to publish articles that are both literally false (Koch is the largest tar sands leaseholder) and massively misleading (the Keystone Pipeline is all about Koch Industries), if by doing so the paper can “stir and inflame public debate in this election year?” I can’t top Jonah Goldberg’s comment on that howler:

By this logic any unfair attack posing as reporting is worthwhile when people try to correct the record. Why not just have at it and accuse the Kochs of killing JFK or hiding the Malaysian airplane? The resulting criticism would once again provide “strong evidence that issues surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year.”

Juliet Eilperin

Juliet Eilperin

Let me offer an alternative explanation of why the Washington Post published their Keystone/Koch smear: 1) The Washington Post in general, and Mufson and Eilperin in particular, are agents of the Left, the environmental movement and the Democratic Party. 2) The Keystone Pipeline is a problem for the Democratic Party because 60% of voters want the pipeline built, while the party’s left-wing base insists that it not be approved. 3) The Keystone Pipeline is popular because it would broadly benefit the American people by creating large numbers of jobs, making gasoline more plentiful and bringing down the cost of energy. 4) Therefore, the Democratic Party tries to distract from the real issues surrounding the pipeline by claiming, falsely, that its proponents are merely tools of the billionaire Koch brothers–who, in fact, have nothing to do with Keystone one way or the other. 5) The Post published its article to assist the Democratic Party with its anti-Keystone talking points.

Which frames a very interesting contrast. The Keystone Pipeline is by no means the only energy-related controversy these days. “Green” energy is also highly controversial. “Green” energy is controversial, in part, because, unlike the Keystone Pipeline, it harms the consumer: solar and wind energy are inefficient, and therefore raise energy costs to consumers. “Green” energy is also controversial because it harms taxpayers: because they are inefficient, solar and wind energy can survive only through taxpayer-funded subsidies. Further, the federal government has invested in numerous “green” energy projects that have gone bankrupt, sticking taxpayers with the tab. Solyndra is only one of a number of such debacles.

“Green” energy is also controversial because it has been used to enrich government cronies. Let’s take, for instance, the billionaire Tom Steyer. Steyer has made much of his fortune by using his government connections to secure support for uneconomic “green” energy projects that have profited him, to the detriment of consumers and taxpayers. See, for example, here, here ,here ,here, herehere and here. As is explained here, Tom Steyer is a bitter opponent of the Keystone Pipeline. His financial interests, in “green” energy and perhaps also in pre-pipeline oil sources like BP, stand to benefit if Keystone is killed.

Haven’t heard much about Tom Steyer, you say? Maybe that’s because he isn’t heavily involved in politics. Heh–just kidding. Steyer, as you probably know, is one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party and its candidates. This year, he has pledged to contribute $100 million to the campaigns of Democratic candidates, as long as they toe the line on environmental issues–which includes, presumably, taxpayer support for “green” energy and opposition to Keystone.

So the Post could have written a very different story about the Keystone Pipeline. The Post could have written that opposition to the pipeline is being funded in large part by a billionaire who has a personal financial interest in the pipeline not being built. And that’s not all! The billionaire is a political crony who has used his connections in Washington to get rich and to fleece consumers and taxpayers. Now, with Keystone, he is doing it again! How is that for a story that would “stir and inflame public debate in this election year?”

The Post, of course, didn’t write that story. But the Post has written about Tom Steyer. Not only that–what a coincidence!–Juliet Eilperin has written about Steyer. In this February 2013 puff piece, to which Mufson also contributed, she promoted Steyer’s campaign to be named Energy Secretary: John Podesta, who chairs the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, said Steyer has “got the right skill set, the understanding and attitude to lead an energy transformation in this country.”

“I think he would be a fabulous choice for energy secretary,” Podesta added, “and I’ve let my friends in the administration know that.”

Here is a thought experiment: imagine Juliet Eilperin writing about a campaign to get Charles Koch named Secretary of Energy. Eilperin went on to describe a public appearance by Steyer in glowing terms:

On Sunday, he spoke to a crowd that organizers estimated at 35,000, gathered on the Mall to call for a stronger national climate policy.“I’m not the first person you’d expect to be here today. I’m not a college professor and I don’t run an environmental organization,” he said. “For the last 30 years I’ve been a professional investor and I’ve been looking at billion-dollar investments for decades and I’m here to tell you one thing: The Keystone pipeline is not a good investment.”

The move stems from an uncomfortable conclusion Steyer has reached: The incremental political victories he and others have been celebrating fall well short of what’s needed to avert catastrophic global warming.

There is lots more, all of it adoring. Of course, neither Steyer nor Eilperin mentioned that killing Keystone, capping carbon emissions and so on would all benefit Steyer financially.

So we have a contrast that couldn’t be clearer: the Washington Post published a false story aboutsupport for Keystone because it fit the Democratic Party’s agenda. It covered up a similar, but truestory about opposition to the pipeline (and about “green” politics in general) because that, too, fit the Democratic Party’s agenda. I don’t think we need to look any further to connect the dots.

And yet, a still deeper level of corruption is on display here. Juliet Eilperin is a reporter for the Washington Post who covers, among other things, environmental politics. As I wrote in my prior post, she is married to Andrew Light. Light writes on climate policy for the Center for American Progress, a far-left organization that has carried on a years-long vendetta against Charles and David Koch on its web site, Think Progress. Light is also a member of the Obama administration, as Senior Adviser to the Special Envoy on Climate Change in the Department of State. The Center for American Progress is headed by John Podesta, who chaired Barack Obama’s transition team and is now listed as a “special advisor” to the Obama administration. Note that Ms. Eilperin quoted Podesta, her husband’s boss, in her puff piece on Tom Steyer.

Oh, yes–one more thing. Guess who sits on the board of the Center for American Progress? Yup. Tom Steyer.

This kind of incest is common in Washington. You can’t separate the reporters from the activists from the Obama administration officials from the billionaire cronies. Often, as in this instance, the same people wear two or more of those hats simultaneously. However bad you think the corruption and cronyism in Washington are, they are worse than you imagine. And if you think the Washington Post is part of a free and independent press, think again.

The New "Uncle Sam"


Saturday, March 22, 2014

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

The Price of Nationalized Healthcare


Wisdom from Tacitus

 
The Great Roman Historian, Born 70 AD

Your Tax Dollars at Work


$1.2071 TRILLION IN FEDERAL CONTRACTS AWARDED TO THE FORTUNE 100 SINCE 2000

The federal government contracts with private enterprise across the entire continuum of public service. Competitively bid contracts can bring in “best-in-class” services to fill needs. However, many times the government’s incumbent contracts are “amended and/or extended” and the corresponding lack of competition by circumventing the procurement process can result in waste of taxpayer dollars.  

We advocate the frequent use of real-time “reverse auctions” to transparently bid-down the cost of government services to qualified bidders.  

Among our findings: 

The Top Five Fortune 100 in Contracts: 

1. Lockheed Martin ($392.039 billion),

2. Boeing ($269.623 billion)

3. General Dynamics ($170.469 billion),

4. United Technologies ($73.248 billion),

5. General Electric ($35.875 billion)  

Over two-thirds ($832 billion) of Fortune 100 contracts went to three defense contractors: General Dynamics, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Plains All American Pipeline was the only company in Fortune 100 receiving ZERO federal monies: searches for its subsidiaries and acquisitions also zeroed.

General Electric received $35.8 billion- an amount equal to 7X more than the $5 billion GE 2010 profit.

Coke is it, for the feds. Coca-Cola ($1.0642 billion) beat PepsiCo ($436 million)

Kraft Foods received $1.4 billion in Dept. of Defense Commissary food contracts

Google received only $1.4 million while Microsoft gleaned $900 million and Apple received $29 million in contracts.

Built Tough - Ford ($3.4 billion) out drove General Motors ($2.3 billion).

Home Depot received $36 million in contracts ahead of Lowe’s at $2.8 million.

The world on time- FedEx ($14 billion) out-delivered UPS ($3.042 billion)

Berkshire Hathaway received $2.4 billion in contracts, but no monies in grants, loans, direct payments, or insurance.

IBM ($18 billion) out-sold Dell ($12 billion), but Hewlett-Packard ($29 billion) beat them both.

AT&T ($8.4 billion) out-contracted Verizon ($7 billion). Both companies have a more robust product suite than Comcast ($38 million).

Prudential scored $1.185 billion, MetLife ($188 million) and Allstate, State Farm, New York Life and Mass Mutual all had very low dollar amounts.

Somehow, Walt Disney received $19 million in federal contracts.

Phillip Morris ($1.246 million) received mostly “personal service” contracts

© 2014 OpenTheBooks.com | A project of American Transparency 501(c)3 All Rights Reserved

General Electric: General Electric (GE) ($35.8 billion in federal contracts since 2000) has seen its share of federal contracts under the Obama Administration cut by 29.2%. In the last year of the Bush Administration, GE had $3.835 billion in contracts and by 2012 GE contracts amounts were the lowest since 2005- only $2.712 billion. Despite this, GE has grown their federal contract awards 58% since 2000. That’s nearly double inflation.

The Problem With Keynesianism


The Problem with Keynesianism

By John Mauldin

Let’s start with a classic definition of Keynesianism from Wikipedia, so that we can all be comfortable that I’m not coloring the definition with my own bias (and, yes, I admit I have a bias). (Emphasis mine.)

Keynesian economics (or Keynesianism) is the view that in the short run, especially during recessions, economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total spending in the economy). In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy; instead, it is influenced by a host of factors and sometimes behaves erratically, affecting production, employment, and inflation.

The theories forming the basis of Keynesian economics were first presented by the British economist John Maynard Keynes in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, during the Great Depression. Keynes contrasted his approach to the aggregate supply-focused “classical” economics that preceded his book. The interpretations of Keynes that followed are contentious, and several schools of economic thought claim his legacy.

Keynesian economists often argue that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes which require active policy responses by the public sector, in particular, monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government, in order to stabilize output over the business cycle. Keynesian economics advocates a mixed economy – predominantly private sector, but with a role for government intervention during recessions.

(Before I launch into a critique of Keynesianism, let me point out that I find much to admire in the thinking of John Maynard Keynes. He was a great economist and taught us a great deal. Further, and this is important, my critique is simplistic. A proper examination of the problems with Keynesianism would require a lengthy paper or a book. We are just skimming along the surface and don’t have time for a deep dive.)

Central banks around the world and much of academia have been totally captured by Keynesian thinking. In the current avant-garde world of neo-Keynesianism, consumer demand –consumption – is everything. Federal Reserve monetary policy is clearly driven by the desire to stimulate demand through lower interest rates and easy money.

And Keynesian economists (of all stripes) want fiscal policy (essentially, the budgets of governments) to increase consumer demand. If the consumer can’t do it, the reasoning goes, then the government should step in and fill the breach. This of course requires deficit spending and the borrowing of money (including from your local central bank).

Essentially, when a central bank lowers interest rates, it is trying to make it easier for banks to lend money to businesses and for consumers to borrow money to spend. Economists like to see the government commit to fiscal stimulus at the same time, as well. They point to the numerous recessions that have ended after fiscal stimulus and lower rates were applied. They see the ending of recessions as proof that Keynesian doctrine works.

There are several problems with this line of thinking. First, using leverage (borrowed money) to stimulate spending today must by definition lower consumption in the future. Debt is future consumption denied or future consumption brought forward. Keynesian economists would argue that if you bring just enough future consumption into the present to stimulate positive growth, then that present “good” is worth the future drag on consumption, as long as there is still positive growth. Leverage just evens out the ups and downs. There is a certain logic to this, of course, which is why it is such a widespread belief.

Keynes argued, however, that money borrowed to alleviate recession should be repaid when growth resumes. My reading of Keynes does not suggest that he believed in the continual fiscal stimulus encouraged by his disciples and by the cohort that are called neo-Keynesians.

Secondly, as has been well documented by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, there comes a point at which too much leverage on both private and government debt becomes destructive. There is no exact number or way of knowing when that point will be reached. It arrives when lenders, typically in the private sector, decide that the borrowers (whether private or government) might have some difficulty in paying back the debt and therefore begin to ask for more interest to compensate them for their risks. An overleveraged economy can’t afford the increase in interest rates, and economic contraction ensues. Sometimes the contraction is severe, and sometimes it can be absorbed. When it is accompanied by the popping of an economic bubble, it is particularly disastrous and can take a decade or longer to work itself out, as the developed world is finding out now.

Every major “economic miracle” since the end of World War II has been a result of leverage. Often this leverage has been accompanied by stimulative fiscal and monetary policies. Every single “miracle” has ended in tears, with the exception of the current recent runaway expansion in China, which is now being called into question. (And this is why so many eyes in the investment world are laser-focused on China. Forget about a hard landing or a recession, a simple slowdown in China has profound effects on the rest of the world.)

I would argue (along, I think, with the “Austrian” economist Hayek and other economic schools) that recessions are not brought on by insufficient consumption but rather by insufficient income. Fiscal and monetary policy should aim to grow incomes over the entire range of the economy, and that is accomplished by increasing production and making it easier for entrepreneurs and businesspeople to provide goods and services. When businesses increase production, they hire more workers and incomes go up.

Without income there are no tax revenues to redistribute. Without income and production, nothing of any economic significance happens. Keynes was correct when he observed that recessions are periods of reduced consumption, but that is a result and not a cause.

Entrepreneurs must be willing to create a product or offer a service in the hope that there will be sufficient demand for their work. There are no guarantees, and they risk economic peril with their ventures, whether we’re talking about the local bakery or hairdressing shop or Elon Musk trying to compete with the world’s largest automakers. If they are hampered in their efforts by government or central bank policies, then the economy stagnates.

Keynesianism is favored by politicians and academics because it offers a theory by which government actions can become the decisive factor in the economy. It offers a framework whereby governments and central banks can meddle in the economy and feel justified. It allows 12 people sitting in a board room in Washington DC to feel that they are in charge of setting the price of money (interest rates) in a free marketplace and that they know more than the entrepreneurs and businesspeople do who are actually in the market risking their own capital every day.

This is essentially the Platonic philosopher king conceit: the hubristic notion that there is a small group of wise elites that is capable of directing the economic actions of a country, no matter how educated or successful the populace has been on its own. And never mind that the world has multiple clear examples of how central controls eventually slow growth and make things worse over time. It is only when free people are allowed to set their own prices as both buyers and sellers of goods and services and, yes, even interest rates and the price of money, that valid market-clearing prices can be determined. Trying to control those prices results in one group being favored over another.

In today's world, the favored group is almost always bankers and the wealthy class. Savers and entrepreneurs are left to eat the crumbs that fall from the plates of the well-connected crony capitalists and to live off the income from repressed interest rates. The irony of using “cheap money” to try to drive consumer demand is that retirees and savers get less money to spend, and that clearly drives down their consumption. Why is the consumption produced by ballooning debt better than the consumption produced by hard work and savings? This is trickle-down monetary policy, which ironically favors the very large banks and institutions. If you ask Keynesian central bankers if they want to be seen as helping the rich and connected, they will stand back and forcefully tell you “NO!” But that is what happens when you start down the road of financial repression. Someone benefits. So far it has not been Main Street.

And, as we will see as we examine the problems of the economic paper that launched this essay, Keynesianism has given rise to a philosophical framework that justifies the seizure of money from one group of people to give to another group of people. This is a particularly pernicious doctrine, as George Gilder noted in our opening quote:

Those most acutely threatened by the abuse of American entrepreneurs are the poor. If the rich are stultified by socialism and crony capitalism, the lower economic classes will suffer the most as the horizons of opportunity close. High tax rates and oppressive regulations do not keep anyone from being rich. They prevent poor people from becoming rich. High tax rates do not redistribute incomes or wealth; they redistribute taxpayers – out of productive investment into overseas tax havens and out of offices and factories into beach resorts and municipal bonds.

Thomas Sowell Knows the Truth About Obama


Free Enterprise


The Way It's Always Been and The Way it Will Always Be

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship. 

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage."
 
When will we ever learn?

Two Women


By Dewie Whetsell, Alaskan Fisherman

As posted in comments on Greta Van Susterin’s article referencing the MOVEON ad about Sarah Palin.

The last 45 of my 66 years I've spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska. I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here's the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets it. It's not about persona, style, rhetoric, it's about doing things.. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I'm about to mention here.

1. Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor's office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican's "Corrupt Bastards Club" (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing, "la la la la" (well, you know how they are).. Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar.
 

2. Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called "ACES." Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them, "don't let the door hit you in the stern on your way out." They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course, the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar. 

3. The other thing she did when she walked into the governor's office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as "pork." She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the "when-hell-freezes-over" stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we'll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor's jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor's cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State-provided security force (never mentioning - I imagine - that she's packing heat herself). I'm still waiting to hear the names of those other governors. 

4. Now, even with her much-ridiculed "gosh and golly" mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America.. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn't impress you, then you're trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand. 

5. For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn't start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. Then, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out.They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again. 

6. President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025 Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewable by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona. Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that's just a cover-up. I'm still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years.. I won't be holding my breath.

By the way, she was content to return to Alaska after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn't let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better.
 

You have just read the truth about Sarah Palin that sends the media, along with the Democrat party, into a wild uncontrolled frenzy to discredit her. I guess they are only interested in skirt chasers, dishonesty, immoral people, liars, womanizers, murderers, and bitter ex-presidents' wives..

So "You go, Girl." I only wish the men in Washington had your guts, determination, honesty, and morals. I rest my case. Only FOOLS listen to the biased media.
 

Now, if you've read this far, open your eyes to this....


First Lady Michelle Obama's Servant List and Pay Scale

The First Lady Requires Twenty-Two (22) Attendants

1. $172,200 - Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff)
2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Policy And Projects For The First Lady)
3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary)
4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)
5. $100,000 - Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
6. $90,000 - Medina , David S. (Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M (Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady)
8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady)
9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady)
10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
11. $64,000 - Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events Coordinator For The First Lady)
13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady)
14. $57,500 - Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady)
15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary to The First Lady)
16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special-2 Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide to The First Lady)
17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of Correspondence For The First Lady)
18. $43,000 - Tubman, Samantha (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office)
19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Assistant to the Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary)
21. $35,000 - Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant)
22. $35,000 - Jackson, Deilia A. (Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)

There has NEVER been anyone in the White House at any time who has created such an army of staffers whose sole duties are the facilitation of the First Lady's social life. One wonders why she needs so much help, at taxpayer expense, when even Hillary, only had three; Jackie Kennedy one; Laura Bush one; and prior to Mamie Eisenhower social help came from the President's own pocket.
 
  
Note: This does not include makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Miles, 49, and "First Hairstylist" Johnny Wright, 31, both of whom traveled aboard Air Force One to Europe.
   
FRIENDS.....THESE SALARIES ADD UP TO SIX MILLION, THREE HUNDRED SIXTY FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS ($6,364,000) FOR HER FIRST FOUR YEARS OF OFFICE…WHILE THE COUNTRY IS IN A RECESSION! 

Sunday, March 16, 2014

A Nation of Laws?




President Pinocciho Lies Again


A chastened President Pinocchio is now being forced to tell the truth… 


Of course, HE is now safe, having used the lie to get reelected. But the Dumbocrats will take it in the shorts for his and their Obamacare lies in just a few short months from now. 

Let the games begin!

Obama's Track Record

This video compares Obama's worthless promises to his actual track record as president...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=626431014085686

Thoughts on Obamacare


From Charles R. Kesler (Author of I Am The Change:  Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism) 

“The problem with Obamacare is not merely that it will ruin health care, but that it undermines the whole notion of rights – natural rights – that come not from government but from our own nature and from God. Yes, it is unfair, unworkable, and unaffordable. But to leave the argument at that leaves the Constitution out of the picture. So when denouncing Obamacare, let’s hear more about its unconstitutional aspects. 

The fattest target is the Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB), which is unconstitutional on its face. IPAB consists of 15 members who are not elected by the people but appointed by the president. Their job is to make recommendations to limit Medicare’s budget by reducing reimbursements to doctors. Unless both houses of Congress overrule IPAB by passing their own equal or greater cuts to Medicare, IPAB’s proposals automatically become law. What’s worse,  Obamacare conspires to make IPAB permanent by mandating that no resolution to repeal it can be introduced before January 1, 2017. In other words, the Constitution would be operational for one month only – and even then the repeal must pass by August 15, 2017, in order to be valid, and it could not take effect until 2020! 

Congress could presumably unravel these restrictions and undo IPAB anytime it wanted. Nonetheless, the spirit and the letter of this kind of regulation suggest just how averse (and adverse) to the Constitution Obamacare really is. To think that Congress couldn’t repeal it, except for one month, and that even then repeal wouldn’t take effect for three years afterwards, is astounding.”

Where Does the Carbon Dioxide Really Come From?

More common sense answers to the phony global warming scam...

Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology.
PLIMER: "Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland . Since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you. 

Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.

I know....it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs.....well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days. 

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes, FOUR DAYS - by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY. 

I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth. 

Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over One Year - think about it. 

Of course, I shouldn't spoil this 'touchy-feely tree-hugging' moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.

And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.

Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the bogus 'human-caused' climate-change scenario.

Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention 'Global Warming' anymore, but just 'Climate Change' - you know why? It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down. 

And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme - that whopping new tax - imposed on you that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.
 

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Obama's Life Before Politics


What Is It, Exactly, That We Owe Mexico's Illegal Immigrants?


California's Drought Isn't Due To Global Warming, But Politics


Investors.com - Powered by Investors Business Daily

Posted 02/14/2014 07:18 PM ET 

Water Wars: President Obama visited California's drought-hit Central Valley Friday, offering handouts and blaming global warming. But the state's water shortage is due to the left's refusal to deal with the state's water needs.

Following legislative action last month by Speaker John Boehner and California's Central Valley Representatives David Valadao, Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy, whose Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act was designed to resolve the long-standing problem of environmental water cutbacks that have devastated America's richest farmland, Obama is grandstanding in California, too.

His aim, however, is not a long-term solution for California's now-constant water shortages that have hit its $45 billion agricultural industry, but to preach about global warming. Instead of blaming the man-made political causes of California's worst water shortage, he's come with $2 billion in "relief" that's nothing but a tired effort to divert attention from fellow Democrats' dereliction of duty in using the state's water infrastructure.

The one thing that will mitigate droughts in California — a permanent feature of the state — is to restore the water flow from California's water-heavy north to farmers in the central and south. That's just what House Bill 3964, which passed by a 229-191 vote last week, does.

But Obama's plan is not to get that worthy bill through the Senate (where Democrats are holding it up) but to shovel pork to environmental activists and their victims, insultingly offering out-of-work farmers a "summer meal plan" in his package.

"We are not interested in welfare; we want water," Nunes told IBD this week. He and his fellow legislator Valadao are both farmers who represent the worst-hit regions of the Central Valley in Congress and can only look at the president's approach with disbelief.

"He's not addressing the situation," Valadao told us.

"They want to blame the drought for the lack of water, but they wasted water for the past five years," said Nunes.

The two explain that California's system of aqueducts and storage tanks was designed long ago to take advantage of rain and mountain runoff from wet years and store it for use in dry years. But it's now inactive — by design. "California's forefathers built a system (of aqueducts and storage facilities) designed to withstand five years of drought," said Nunes.

"We have infrastructure dating from the 1960s for transporting water, but by the 1990s the policies had changed," said Valadao.

Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of 3 million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years.

That hasn't helped the smelt any. But that doesn't seem to matter to Obama or his environmentalist friends.

The shutdown has been made worse by the inaction of California's Democrats, who for years have refused to build adequate storage facilities so that rainwater and snowmelt runoff can be stored for use by a growing population during dry years, another element of the earlier system. With no storage, the rain goes wasted.

"We can't make it rain, but what we can do is (conserve water) and save it for today, and we did not do that for two years," said Valadao, citing a recent wet year.

"We went into 2013 with reservoirs 80% full and ended the year at 20% full, and now we have 0%," said Valadao, citing the failure to build adequate storage for water. "We had lots of opportunities to prepare," he noted, but Democrats "blew it."

Nunes said the problem is serious and calls for concrete solutions, not dreamy social re-engineering efforts based on the unproven science of global warming.

"It's not global warming that led us to this problem, but math and engineering, because we let 3 million acre-feet of water go wasted over the past five years," Nunes said. "If we had that water, we would not be in an unmitigated disaster."

But that's right where California finds itself now. 

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The Endangered Species Act provides water for fish but not humans

Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Thursday, February 13, 2014
llustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times more >
 
With that famous phrase at his 1981 inauguration, Ronald Reagan called out the federal government for overregulation that helped drive the economy into a ditch.

For Californians today experiencing a severe drought, Reagan's words should once again hit home.

Of course, the weather is the prime culprit. Until a desperately needed storm moved in this past weekend, it had been a dry winter, — and the storm hasn't compensated for the months without rainfall.

However, the damaging effects have been magnified by destructive regulations. Federal policies under the Endangered Species Act are making things worse, not better.

The scale of "this present crisis" — what Gov. Gov. Jerry Brown warned could be a "mega-drought" — can be seen in some compelling numbers. Seventeen rural communities were put on a watch list for severe water shortages, and for the first time, water agencies serving 25 million people were told they won't receive any of their allocation from state-run reservoirs.

This past week's rainfall will help, "but we need more," as a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services told the San Jose Mercury News.

It's not surprising that President Obama has scheduled a visit to Fresno this Friday for a firsthand evaluation.

While rationing has been promoted in many communities, and vast areas of farmland have been removed from production, people ought to be asking: Where is the water that should have been saved for a non-rainy day?

Answer: Millions of gallons were diverted from human use because of federal regulations intended to help a tiny fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the delta smelt.

The smelt is listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act, and the feds claim it benefits if less water is available to be pumped south to the San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego.

For example, from December 2012 to February 2013 alone, more than 800,000 acre-feet of water that could have been conserved behind dams was allowed to flow to the sea. That water could have provided for the needs of 800,000 families. It could have irrigated 200,000 acres of cropland.

This flushing of torrents of water to the sea is a new practice in California, threatening to make not just the current drought, but every future one, far more painful than necessary.

The trigger for this destructive new policy was the feds' 2008 "biological opinion" for the smelt, which essentially said people's needs for water may not even be considered.

Result: The state's water "treasuries" were raided.

In the era before the Endangered Species Act was controlling California's water supply, management formulas were calibrated to ensure water for dry times. Like money in the bank, water was husbanded, and deliveries to users were based on fall and winter rainfall and storage from previous years.

Even in what the media calls "the great drought of 1977," San Joaquin Valley farmers still received a water allocation of 25 percent. Why? Because reservoirs had been used for one of their intended purposes — to capture water that might be needed in the future.

Now, after one dry year, 2012-13, and the current year that's shaping up as critical unless we get many more storms like this past weekend's, water users have been told to brace for no deliveries — thanks in significant part to federal biologists pulling the plug on California's traditional water-storage practices.

The smelt regulations have also been imposing significant taxes on urban users. Southern California's Metropolitan Water District, which gets much of its water from the delta, raised charges on its scores of member cities and water districts by 20 percent after the smelt biological opinion was first issued.

"The [feds'] environmental decision has impacted the flow of water to Southern California by approximately 35 percent," a water manager in the Orange County city of Garden Grove told the Orange County Register in 2009. Remember — that was five years before the current drought.

Ironically, while the harms for cities and farms are real, the benefits for the smelt are speculative — as the "biological opinion" concedes. Numerous factors have contributed to the species' long decline, and holding back water from people has not reversed it.

Let's not water down the truth: California has suffered not just from a lack of rain, but also from a drought of common sense among federal bureaucrats. Congress is also on the hook for giving Endangered Species Act officials too much leeway, allowing the ignorant or ideological to push destructive agendas.

In a wrongheaded environmental strategy that harms humans without helping the environment, they opened California's rainy-day reservoirs and deliberately let the precious contents spill away.

Damien Schiff is a principal attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation. Julie MacDonald is a former deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks at the U.S. Interior Department.

Marxism In One Minute


MARXISM IN ONE MINUTE
By Henry Hazlitt

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than your are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others.

Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weaknesses, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects--his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidty. Never believe in the honesty or disinterestedness of anyone who disagrees with you.

This basic hatred is the heart of Marxism. This is its animating force. You can throw away the dialectical materialism, the Hegelian framework, the technical jargon, the 'scientific' analysis, and millions of pretentious words, and you sitll have the core: the implacable hatred and envy that are the raison d'etre for all the rest.

San Francisco Liberals Outlaw Storing Items in Your Own Garage



Sunday, March 2, 2014

How Do You Say "Michigan" in Arabic?


Dearborn, Michigan makes the news...

Can't work in the school system front offices if you don't speak Arabic now and need to know many dialects as some Arabs can't understand others Arabic language.

Everybody goes back to the homeland for months and expects to get passed on to the next grade it's crazy as I am at ground zero on this.

Kids (assuming girls, can't tell for sure) roaming the hallways in full-blown burkas.

Kids attending classes that can't speak or understand English

All school monies are being moved from the English end of town (irish, Polish, Italian, etc.) to the east end (95% arabic) in the attempt to prop up the poorly performing schools .

6th graders are reading at a 3rd grade level. Forget math and sciences.

Everybody gets free breakfasts and lunches after being dropped off in Land Rovers, and the car of choice here: Mercedes or Escalade

It is very common to have 3 families live in 1 house.

All garages are being converted into living spaces complete with stoves (against all codes) and the city council can't find the nerve to enforce the safety regulations.

Cars end up parked all over the streets affecting snow plowing, garbage pick up, ambulance runs.

I'll send you some pics as I take them.

If this doesn't scare you, you haven't been watching what has happened to our country in recent years.

*I bet you can't guess what this is!*

*•إذا كان دخلك الشهري الإجمالي أقل من 150 دولار و 100 دولار أو أقل في
الأصول*
*السائلة )نقود في اليد، الحسابات الجارية أو حسابات التوفير، شهادات
التوفير(، أو*
*•إذا كان مجموع دخلك الإجمالي وأصولك السائلة أقل من مجموع إيجارك الشهري
أو*
*قسط القرض العقاري زائد فاتورة التدفئة والمنافع العامة، أو*
*•إذا كنت معدومالدخل أو أجير موسمي متنقل أو عامل مزارع موسمي ولديك 100*
*دولار أو أقل في الأصول السائلة.*
**المعدوم هو أن يكون دخلك قد توقف قبل تاريخ تقديم الطلب، أو أن دخلك قد
بدأ*
*ولكنك تتوقع أن لا تقبض أكثر من 25 دولار في غضون ال 10 أيام القادمة.*
*إذا كان أهل بيتك مؤهلاً لمعالجة الطلب في غضون سبعة أيام، فيجب عليك:*
*•أن تشترك في مقابلة، و*
*•أن تقدّم إثباتاً بهويتك الشخصية، و*
*•استكمال عملية الطلب بكامله.*
*لمواصلة تلقي مخصصات الإعانة الغذائية، سيُطلب منك أن تقدم إثباتاً
لمعلومات أخرى*
*)مثل الدخل، مكان الإقامة، ...إلخ(. إذا قمت بإعطاء الإثبات عند التقديم،
فيمكن أن تُعطى*
*فترة أطول من مخصصات الإعانة الغذائية.*
*المقابلات المعنية ببرنامج الإعانة الغذائية*

*Food Assistance Program: FAP*


*يجوز التنازل عن إجراء مقابلة وجهاً لوجه وإجراء مقابلة هاتفية في الحالات
التي يشكل*
*ذلك على أهل بيتك مشقةوتتضمن المشقات على سبيل المثال ولا تقتصر على
التالي:*
*•المرض.*
*•صعوبات في النقل.*
*•دوام ساعات العمل الذي يمنع من الاشتراك في مقابلة مكتبية.*
*إذا كنت تعاني من مشقة وتحتاج إلى إجراء DHS أخبر الأخصائي المسؤول عنك ف*

Well, it's part of the instructions for how to apply for food stamps in the great state of Michigan -- in Arabic!!

Read on.

I actually called the Michigan Dept of Human Services to check this out and it is true.

Have we gone completely nuts!!

Muslim men are allowed to have as many as 4 wives. Many Muslims have immigrated into the U.S. and brought their 2-3-or 4 wives with them, but the U.S. does not allow plural marriages, so the man lists one wife as his, and signs the other 2 or 3 up as extended family on welfare and other free Government programs! Michigan has the highest population of Muslims in the United States .

When President Obama took office the United States paid several millions of dollars to have a large number of Palestinians, (All Muslim ), immigrated here from Palestine. Why? We don't pay for other persons to immigrate here, and I'm sure that some of those Muslims moved into Michigan with the large current number of Muslims already established there.

So now in Michigan when you call the Public Assistance office you are told to “Press 1 for English. Press 2 for Spanish, or Press 3 for Arabic”!


CHECK IT OUT YOURSELF - Here is the number 1-888-678-8914.

Every time you add a new language to an American program it requires an additional number of persons fluent in that language to process those persons who refuse to learn English in order to live here at an additional cost to the taxpayer! Why are we even allowing persons to immigrate here who cannot provide for themselves, and putting them in our welfare system?

Press 3 for Arabic.

This is quite alarming!!! This seems to have happened clandestinely, for, as far as I know, no public announcement or opportunity to vote on this was offered to the American people. They're just adopting an official stance, and very likely using tax-payer money for it, in various capacities, without public knowledge or approval.

The following link takes you into the State of Michigan Public Assistance page, (as in Food Stamps etc.). You won't have to scroll far before you see the
assistance-letters options for ... (get this) ... English, Spanish, and ARABIC!!!

When did the ARABIC option sneak into our culture? Will we soon have to listen to our governmental offices, stores, and other venues offer us the option of "pressing 3 for ARABIC?"

Check it out for yourself.

html<http://www.michigan.gov/dhs/0%2c1607%2c7-124-5453_5527---%2c00.html>

(When you get to this web site, just click on the FORMS AND PUBLICATIONS button - those forms in Arabic are listed as ending in AR!!)

Please inform every red-blooded American you know, that this is happening. It is outrageous! The camel's nose is literally now OFFICIALLY under the tent!